If I leave, and I suppose I shall, I have a few things to do before I go. I want badly to get my hands on the letters that passed between Virginia Armistead and her sultan friend. Faye Longchamp-Mantooth is not going to give me access to them until they’re accessible to the public and other scholars. I will need to file an advance request with Samuel so I can have access when that time comes. Because I think he is no more capable of running a research facility than a toy poodle, I will also ask Faye to let me know when the museum is open for business. I think she’ll do that, as a matter of professional courtesy. If not, I shall badger Samuel until he gives me the right answer.
The other two things I need to do while I’m in Rosebower can be accomplished at the same time. The first one is simple. They’re both simple, actually.
First, I want video of Dara and Willow as they perform. I will never crack their code without watching the tricks over and over again, back to back. Hidden cameras are awkward and they carry a risk of discovery. Until now, I haven’t wanted to take that risk, but I’ve already been exposed as a magician and I’m leaving town. What do I have to lose? The only risk I will incur by taping tomorrow night’s performance is being publicly embarrassed. I’m fifty-six years old. I will survive a little embarrassment.
I own a concealed camera that looks like a wristwatch. (You may be asking why I own such a thing. Well, a magician wants to keep up with her competition, and if an illusion is good, even the best practitioner may have trouble figuring it out on the first viewing. I only steal from the best.)
If I am not welcome at the diner, then I assuredly will not be welcomed by Dara and Willow at their show. Fortunately, I am a very fair disguise artist. Early in my career, I was often hired to be the assistant planted in the audience, waiting for the magician to “randomly” pick me. My disguises were always more elaborate than the situation required, because I love my work too much. Tomorrow night, a “man” whom Dara and Willow could not possibly recognize will be sitting in an aisle seat, recording the proceedings with “his” wristwatch—that is to say, with my wristwatch.
My second goal tonight is even simpler. I want to see how long Willow actually participates in the nightly shows. Unless I miss my guess, his part of the act is over in under an hour. Dara carries the rest of the show on her back, alone. I find it interesting that Willow has an hour every night to move around Rosebower, unsuspected. Once I know exactly what time he leaves the show, I will tell Avery. She can compare this information with the timing of Tilda’s housefire and draw her own conclusions.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow night’s masquerade. A girl never gets too old to enjoy a good game of dress-up.
Chapter Twenty-four
Skipping the breakfast at a bed-and-breakfast is not the best way to get the most for one’s money, but Faye, Joe, and Amande had no other choice. They needed to get to Rosebower for a day that included an early-morning séance, a stint of photo-taking at a burned-out house, and probably an uncomfortable meeting with their client. The B&B’s proprietor, grateful to save the money and effort involved in cooking their breakfast, gifted them with granola bars and travel mugs of coffee as they hurried out the door.
The reason for their murderously early departure? Dara had declared that the spirit world was most accessible when the day dawns and when the sun sets. Every sunset of the week was consumed by her stage show, so dawn was the best time for her to make contact with her mother. Faye yawned as she drove, wishing that Dara had been so willing to inconvenience herself for her mother when Tilda was alive.
Amande was asleep in the backseat, sagging against her shoulder restraint. Joe sat beside Faye, studying the agenda for the previous night’s council meeting and the brochure for Gilbert Marlowe’s proposed resort. Faye had been telling him about the goings-on in Rosebower since her first day on the job, but she knew he understood things better when he could see and feel them. The two documents spread across Joe’s lap gave a succinct summary of Rosebower’s issues and, even better, the brochure included a map. If Joe could picture the town in his head, he could function there. That was the way his mind worked.
As they neared the town, Joe looked at the map, then looked out the window, time and again. Was this one of the ways he gave his learning disabilities the runaround? If so, it was one that Faye had never noticed.
Finally, she said, “Are you ground-truthing that map? It’s based on the tourist map they gave me at the visitor’s center, which has been working pretty well for me. I haven’t gotten lost once.”
“The streets look fine. It’s the trees that bother me.”
“I can’t tell you anything about the trees. The map shows me which streets will get me from Point A to Point B, and that’s all I use a map to do.”
“I’m just wondering why Marlowe’s map shows trees where there’s not any. This stretch is open country, mostly pastures and row crops. It wouldn’t have been hard to get his map right. A few seconds with Google Earth and boom. You know where the trees are and you know where the farms are. It ain’t rocket science.”
“He probably just hired a lazy mapmaker. Why would Marlowe fake something like that?”
“For starters, this map is drawn to make it seem like there’s no other place in the whole world to put that development. Nobody likes to cut trees, so maybe Marlowe put trees on all the other land to take our mind off it.”
“Maybe.”
“Except I think he needs that land, trees or not. Didn’t you say he was planning a golf course? Where’s he going to put it?”
Faye risked a car crash by yanking the map out of Joe’s hands. Now she knew why this map had bothered her so, when she first saw it at the council meeting.
Joe was right. She’d heard talk of a golf course from more than one mouth, but Marlowe had failed to mention it during his presentation and he’d left it off this map. If he planned to build one, he needed the land that he was hiding under all those fake trees.
Faye had just two questions. Did he own it? And why was he trying to distract people from it? If she had learned anything from Toni the Astonisher, it was the importance of misdirection.
***
When they arrived at Myrna’s house, the séance room was already set up for a crowd. Myrna and Sister Mama were seated at the table holding a pretty decent conversation, considering that Sister Mama couldn’t actually talk. Myrna’s skill at interpreting her meaning probably came from fifty years of friendship and the power of love. Or maybe she was more psychic than everyone believed. Sister Mama looked the same as she had all week. It was as if the encounter with an opium-soaked sponge hadn’t happened.
Avery beckoned for Faye to join her on the back doorstep. “Do you understand what’s going on here? We’re recreating the circumstances of Tilda’s death. What’s to stop someone from nailing us in this room and setting this house on fire?”
Faye felt very stupid for failing to consider this.
“Umm…the killer would have to want at least one of us dead. We have no reason to think that this is true. But we have no reason to think that it’s not. Also, there are no convenient oil lamps sitting around, but a killer who means business will bring whatever it takes.”
Avery nodded impatiently. “It’s broad daylight, so that’s another point in our favor, but still. Faye, this is not worth the risk.”
“What reason will you give for calling this thing off? These people don’t know that Tilda was murdered. They think she was killed by a random house fire.”
“Unless one of them is the killer. But you’re right. Calling off the séance would tip my hand.”
Joe was standing in the back door, beckoning. “They’re waiting for you.”
“Here’s our answer,” Faye said. “We’ve got Joe. He’s got nothing to do until his meeting with Samuel. I’ve told him everything I know about Tilda’s murder. He can stand guard.”
Avery considered it. “Okay. Joe, if you see anything…anything…unusual, your first priority isn�
�t to chase the bad guy or take him down. If you see anything strange, your Priority One is to open the door to the séance room and let us out. If Tilda had been in hers like the arsonist thought she was, she wouldn’t have even had the slender chance she did have. She wouldn’t have been able to get in her car and drive to you for help. She’d have burned alive.”
***
Joe sat in the doorway to Myrna’s broad porch. Her front door was open behind him, giving him a good view of the door to the séance room. He could see every corner of the parlor and the dining room, he could see out all the windows of both rooms, and he could see the hallway to the kitchen. Anyone coming in the back door and planning to nail seven people into a tiny room would have to navigate that hallway first.
From this vantage point, he could see a goodly stretch of Walnut Street in front of the house, as well as two blocks of Main Street. The hulk of Tilda’s dead house dominated one corner of the intersection of Rosebower’s two busiest streets. The house, the street, the town were all as quiet as death.
Few people were out of their houses so early on a Saturday morning. Silence enveloped Rosebower. There was nothing to keep Joe and his hunter’s ears from picking up on unusual noises. The thin leather of his moccasins left him open to the house’s vibrations beneath his feet. If he’d been standing on the ground, the whole world would have vibrated against his soles. Joe felt good about his ability to keep those people safe.
At such times, when the world was quiet and he needed his senses sharp, Joe liked to tap into his own spiritual practices. There were talismans in the leather bag hanging from his belt that he couldn’t have explained to anybody else, but they helped him commune with things that cannot be seen. Turning those talismans over in his relaxed hand helped him modulate his breathing and seek focus. All these things sharpened his senses, and seven people were depending on those senses right now.
He was also making use of the spiritual tool Faye hated most. Tobacco. Was it his fault that white men had turned tobacco into a deadly indulgence?
Joe smoked on rare occasions, but this was not one of them. People were in pain because fire had claimed Tilda Armistead. This was no time to use fire to gain clarity. Instead, he had tucked finely ground tobacco into his lip, and he held a favorite spit cup in his hand. If he was lucky, Faye would limit his punishment for this transgression to an hour of the silent treatment. He knew she’d missed him, and also she liked to talk, so his sentence would probably be light.
He spat in the cup and thought of Tilda Armistead. He invited her to come, if she was lonely. He invited her to fly away, if that would bring her peace. Then he did nothing but sit and spit and watch and breathe.
***
Willow closed the door to the séance room. The tiny candle in front of Dara was the only relief from utter darkness. It occurred to no one—not Willow or Dara or Myrna or Avery or Sister Mama or Amande or even Faye—that, by leaving Joe on the front porch, they might be shutting out the only person among them who truly had the ability to commune with the spirit world.
***
“Cramped” was not the right word for the overcrowded séance room. Faye thought that “claustrophobic” might not have been going too far. Any of the six people sitting at the table could have leaned her head back and felt it hit a wooden wall.
A small candle in the center of the table cast a feeble light on their faces. Near it, directly in front of Dara, sat a large crystal bowl. It was not the fine, handblown type of crystal that Faye’s grandmother had loved, wafer-thin. It was heavy and thick and its surface was ornate with deeply cut patterns. Willow stepped forward and poured two decanters of clear fluid into the bowl. Based on the way they separated into two phases that each glowed differently in the lamplight, Faye guessed that the decanters held oil and water.
He opened a small jar and scattered green leaves over the liquid. Sister Mama leaned forward and breathed deeply, as if she knew them by their smell. Probably she did.
And then Willow drew a knife.
Faye, Amande, and Avery all jerked backward. Faye could hear the other two scrabbling with their feet as they tried to push back from the table, away from the knife. Their struggles were stilled by the sight of Willow dragging the blade across his own palm. He let several drops of blood drip into the crystal bowl, then he wrapped his hand in a handkerchief and withdrew to his spot under the staircase.
Dara looked eerily like her mother, gazing into the bowl the way Tilda had searched her crystal ball. Faye almost thought Dara hadn’t noticed her husband and his knife until she said, “Blood draws spirits.” Her tone was abstracted, distracted. Absent.
Faye supposed they left the bloody part of the ritual out of their public act because it was too intense for the masses. Then Willow cut the lights and they were left in a darkness too black for the public. Any reasonable fire code would have denied them the right to put an audience into darkness so deep. It wasn’t safe to hide an emergency exit so well.
Faye turned her head back and forth, looking for a single sparkle of light. There was none. She was sitting in a room built for this very purpose. Solid construction and copious caulk were capable of blocking all light. She sat with six invisible people in utter blackness.
Dara instructed them to join hands. Even in this small space, it took a few moments for them to find each other.
“Place your hands flat on the table, touching only at the pinky and thumb.”
Again, there was awkwardness and confusion, but they managed it. She could hear Avery and Amande helping Sister Mama and Myrna get their hands where they needed to be.
There was nothing in Faye’s sensory world but the chair beneath her, the table where she rested her hands, the tips of Amande’s and Dara’s pinky fingers, and Dara’s voice saying, “Let us begin.”
This time, Faye saw no glowing orbs. She heard no warm and loving words. Thumps and raps sounded in all directions. People were moaning, but she was almost certain that Amande wasn’t one of them.
Dara’s voice repeated the word “Mother,” time and again. The word came at irregular intervals and it was different every time. A whisper, a groan, a hiss, a shout, and then another whisper. If Tilda was answering, Faye couldn’t hear her.
A cool breeze kissed Faye’s face. A moment passed, punctuated by a wordless hum from Dara, and then a distinct odor of roses wafted through the room. Faye wasn’t exactly afraid, but she wanted very much to be somewhere else.
After an unknowable period of time, the table rocked and jumped beneath her flattened hands. It felt alive. Faye almost wished they could all raise their hands and let it fly, if that’s what it wanted to do. Then a huge crash sounded behind her. It was so loud that Faye thought maybe the table had escaped and flown into the wall, but no. She could still feel its oak surface beneath her palms.
A tinkling bell sounded once, twice, and again, then the overhead light came on. It was bright, blinding, almost painful, but she could see Willow. He stood with his hand on the light switch. There were thick, sharp fragments of glass littering the floor around him. A few were caught in his flaxen hair.
“What did you do?” Dara was on her feet, shrieking. “She was here. My mother was here.”
Willow pointed to the thick chunks of glass at his feet. “If that had hit six inches lower, it would have cracked my skull. She tried to kill me.”
Dara wouldn’t look at the broken glass. She would only look at her husband. She crowded Avery aside so that she could get in his face.
“But why did you ring the bell? It drove her away. The bell shouldn’t ring till morning. You know that. A lingering spirit can come to the dreams of those who sleep in the house. I might have…would have…dreamed about her tonight.”
Faye was thinking, “And this is more important than your husband’s safety?” Nobody had asked her opinion, or anybody else’s, but her sympathies were with Willow.
Willow said, “It would be madness to have her spirit walk this house for another s
econd. Look at this.” He gestured at the sharp bits of glass, then he was willing to say no more.
The door burst open and Joe’s big frame filled it. “What’s happening in here?”
His eyes flicked around the room. When they lighted on Faye and Amande, both safe, his body relaxed slightly. He grabbed them each by a wrist and tugged them toward the door, but there were too many people in the way, so he changed his strategy.
Avery, sitting nearest the door, helped him get Myrna out and into her easy chair. Joe brought Sister Mama’s wheelchair as far into the room as it would fit, helped her into it, then parked her next to Myrna. Only then could he reach his wife, who had been penned into the far side of the room too efficiently to allow her to help with the people standing between her and the way out.
Rituals: A Faye Longchamp Mystery (Faye Longchamp Series) Page 22
