“Is Ira Smith in?” I asked.
She glanced up. “Oh, Mrs. Reinhart.” Her face turned bright red.
She should have been embarrassed. This was the woman my ex had slept with—the straw that broke the back of my marriage.
“Not Mrs. Reinhart, Mary Beth,” I said. “I haven’t been that for a long time, as you well know.”
She shuffled some pages in her file.
There was already one cat in the reception area—a large albino cat. It would be over-kill if I were to behave like one. To put a leash on the remark I wanted to make, I took a breath. “I’m no longer angry about you and Kevin,” I said. “I’ve realized he wasn’t much to lose.”
Under her breath, Mary Beth muttered, “You can say that again.”
I fought a smile. Apparently, my revenge spell had swept up this blond bimbo in its wake. “So, is Ira in?”
She pushed a button on her phone. “Mr. Smith, Mrs. Rein…uh, Emlyn…” She lifted her eyes to me.
I leaned over her desk. “Ira, it’s Emlyn Goode. Got a minute?”
In far less than a minute, one of the two inner doors opened.
“Emlyn, great to see you!” Ira Smith said even before he stepped out. The epitome of a salesman, an effervescent personality was his stock-in-trade. He sounded as though he was glad I stopped by. He was as slimy as Kevin and had made several passes at me while I was still Mrs. Reinhart. Maybe he thought I’d come to take him up on his offer.
He came through the door with his arms open and a wide smile plastered across his face. In his brown suit with wide white strips, he reminded me of a carnival barker. “How’ve you been?” Just short of embracing me, he stopped and stared at my crutches. “Good Lord, what happened?”
“You don’t want to know,” I said.
He glanced past me to where Rebecca was bent over the table, thumbing through a worn issue of National Geographic. Her long salt and pepper braid almost touched the floor.
“This is my friend—”
She stood up and turned to him.
“—Rebecca Nurse.”
The smarmy smile froze on his face.
“I know Ira.” She held out her hand. “He came to my shop a few times for tarot card readings last year.”
I wondered whether tarot readings were how this man handled risk management.
Ira glanced at his secretary through the corner of eyes almost as dark as the reception area’s decor. It appeared as though he didn’t want Mary Beth to know he believed in such things.
The blond buried her face in the file on her desk.
“Yes, I recall,” he said. “Uh, please come in.”
I felt a bit uneasy, learning of a connection, albeit indirect, between Rebecca and my ex. I shot her a look.
Focused on Ira instead of me, she held out the cat. “This is Elvira.”
Immediately, Ira’s eyes began to water. He stepped back, rubbing them. “Uh, Mary Beth, could you watch the cat for a few minutes?”
“Not a good idea,” I said. “Elvira doesn’t do well with strangers.”
The secretary didn’t look up from her file.
Ira considered the cat for a moment, before he waved us into his office and to the two chairs in front of his Ikea faux mahogany desk. When he followed us in, he edged along the wall so as to remain as far from Elvira as the close space permitted.
Behind the desk was a display of framed photographs of Ira standing alongside men in the uniforms of our local football, baseball, and hockey teams. In others, he shook hands with a former mayor and some town councilmen.
After hanging his suit jacket on the back of his leather executive chair, he asked, “What can I do for you?” He glanced at my crutches. “We ought to start by reviewing your coverage.”
In his early forties, Ira Smith had thick red hair and sideburns crawling down his long, narrow face.
“That’s not why I came by,” I said.
Elvira jumped from Rebecca’s arms and slithered under the desk.
Ira sneezed. He pulled a tissue from a drawer. “Sorry.” He sniffed. “I’m allergic to cats.”
Elvira crawled next to his chair and pawed his jacket pocket.
“Stop it! You’re not being nice,” Rebecca said to her. As she bent over to pick up the cat, she glanced at the pocket.
“We won’t stay long,” I said. “I’m trying to find Kevin. Do you know where he might be?”
Ira swiveled in his chair to face the window. “What’s he done now?”
Rebecca’s brows crept up and she sucked in her lower lip.
“Nothing as far as I know,” I said. “I just need to speak with him.” This wasn’t really a lie. I didn’t know my ex had blackmailed or murdered anyone.
Ira blew his nose and glanced accusingly at Elvira. “Haven’t seen him in a couple of months,” was his curt reply. “Not since—” He averted his eyes.
I opened my bag, pushed my house keys to the side, and pushed my wallet to the other side. There wasn’t anything I needed in my purse. I pushed things around so my next question would sound casual.
“I always wondered what happened between you and Kevin, why you, um—” I took out my compact, checked my lipstick. “Why you fired him.”
Ira and Kevin had been high school friends. They’d run together on the relay team that went to the state finals in their senior year. They were still passing the baton back and forth, at least metaphorically, the last time I saw them together. It seemed to me whatever Kevin was involved in, Ira was probably right there with him.
He swiveled back to his desk. “I really shouldn’t say.”
“Come on, Ira, I lived with the man. Nothing you tell me would be a shock.”
He wiped his nose and tossed the tissue into the trash. “No, I really shouldn’t. Possible liability, my lawyer says.”
This was something of an answer, but not as much of one as I wanted.
Before I had a chance to press him further, Rebecca handed me the cat and leaned across the desk. In a stage whisper, she said, “That question you asked me the last time you came for a reading? I know the answer.”
His face turned so red, I could barely tell where his forehead ended and his hair began. He turned his head from Rebecca to me. “No, that’s okay. I found out what I wanted to know.”
She sat back with a satisfied smile.
I knew my friend had sent him a message. To double-team him, I now leaned forward. “Oh, Ira,” I crooned. “It’s just me. Who am I going to tell?”
His eyes went blank. He shook his head. His longish red hair didn’t move (did he use hairspray?).
“You’re good,” he finally said. “Okay, then, I let him go because he was selling cocaine to our clients. I didn’t find out about it until a cop showed up here.”
Ira slouched in his chair, watching, I supposed, for shock to spread across my face.
Instead of saying, Right, like you weren’t in that together, I remarked, “Yeah, I figured it might be something of the kind. Or maybe blackmail?”
He tried to hide the flush again rising to his cheeks by blowing his nose. “Not that I ever heard about.” His eyes turned up and to the left. A classic “tell.” I knew he lied.
“Who was he bleeding, Ira?”
His lips tight, he gripped the arms of his chair.
I realized Ira Smith wouldn’t tell me, no matter how much I flirted with him. I figured he held his silence because he still bled people he and Kevin sold the white powder to. I had researched the psychological effects of cocaine for a story I wrote. Like heroin, it’s an insidious drug with talons digging into your soul. But at the same time, you’ll do almost anything—pay almost anything—to keep from being labeled a junkie. Could Amy Woodward have been one of the people they blackmailed? Jimmy Osborn? They both had a lot to lose if anyone found out they snorted cocaine.
I dropped the compact into my purse. With a frown, I said. “That’s my ex-husband. Always looking for an easy buck. Well, thanks for yo
ur time, Ira. If you see Kevin, tell him I want to talk to him.”
Rebecca handed me my crutches and I hobbled down the stairs to my car. As she turned the key in the ignition, I latched onto her hand. I still had a bone to pick with her.
“You know Ira Smith?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I’d trusted her, thought she was a friend. Had she betrayed me? My mind flashed back to my earlier suspicion: could Rebecca be part of the killings and the drugs? Had she insinuated herself into my life to protect her secret? The crone in black I’d seen outside my French doors—I was certain she had been my ancestor—had come to warn me about a betrayal. Was it Rebecca Sarah’s gnarled finger pointed to?
“You didn’t say we were coming to see him,” she responded.
“But you knew he and Kevin worked together.”
“Actually, I didn’t. Ira never mentioned it during our sessions, and you didn’t tell me when we worked the vengeance spell.”
I closed my eyes.
She touched my shoulder. “Emlyn, I am your friend. I’d never lie to you.”
“If that’s true, tell me what question Ira Smith wanted answered.”
“Not now,” she said. “He’s watching us.”
I turned my face up to the second floor and saw Ira at his window, looking down.
As we pulled from the curb, she said, “You know he had coke in his jacket pocket.”
Did she think this would distract me? Learning of the line from Rebecca to Ira Smith, and through him to Kevin and the two murders, made her a mystery inside an enigma. I felt as though my survival depended on unravelling this tangled thread. Immediately.
***
I told Rebecca to make a right at the corner. Two blocks up, I had her make another right then pull over halfway down the block. If she told me what she knew about Ira Smith—if I could believe her—I might begin to understand what was going on: why Jimmy Osborn and Amy Woodward had been killed; why the killer intended to do the same to me. I especially wanted to know why she suddenly appeared at Main Street Books. I didn’t dare wait until we got back to my house.
“Okay, Ira’s not watching now,” I said as soon as she parked.
She slid the bench seat back, unfastened her seatbelt, and turned to me. “The last time he came for a reading, he seemed rather nervous. A friend of his had dragged him into something, he said, and now unsavory people had gotten involved. He was afraid of those people, wanted the cards to tell him how to get free of them. He wouldn’t tell me who the friend was or what he was doing.”
“What did the cards say?”
“Tarot cards only read the future of the path you’re on. You know that. They don’t tell you how to get off that path.”
“But, you told Ira you had an answer. In his office, you said so.”
She stroked her braid. “We needed a lie. If he didn’t think I knew something, he wouldn’t have told us the little he did.”
“And the rest of it—the part about his being involved with dangerous people?—didn’t you think it was important to tell Roger about that? Shouldn’t you have told me? Those dangerous people could be the ones who’ve tried to kill me.” Was Rebecca one of those dangerous people? Tears sprang up in my eyes.
She took Elvira from my arms. “I didn’t see the connection before.”
My stomach quivered. She still held something back. “When you used the oil you brewed on my leg, you said you brought it because you thought it would be needed.”
Staring out the window, she stroked Elvira.
“Rebecca, why did you have it with you?”
She sighed. “Yesterday morning when I did a reading for myself, I saw…” her voice faded into the hum of the car’s engine.
“What?” The quivering climbed from my stomach to my chest.
She seemed ready to cry. “The cards told me I might lose a friend.”
“Lose?” Now the quivering was in my voice.
“I saw a…a funeral.”
I gasped. “Mine?”
She took my hand, held it tight. “We can change the future. We have to. That’s why I came to your book signing.”
Elvira mewed. It was as if she said my friend spoke the truth.
Panicked now, I shouted, “We have to tell Roger!” I didn’t stop to wonder why I equated him with safety.
“You’re right.” She handed me the cat and slid the Valiant into gear.
As we swung from the curb, Elvira jumped onto Rebecca’s lap and clawed the window.
Not for the first time that day, I said to her, “Hey, you’re gonna get us killed.”
She growled and continued to scratch the glass.
“What is it?” Rebecca asked.
Elvira hissed and smacked the window with her paw. She seemed to be saying, It isn’t me who’s gonna get us killed!
I leaned over to see what she tried to attack.
Behind the ramshackle house on the other side of the street I noticed a narrow lane. In the center of the lane I saw a weathered wooden barn with shrunken slats through which I could almost see the buildings beyond. The barn appeared to be so old it might have stood there since before the city became a city, since the long ago time when Niagara County was nothing but woods and farmland. In all the years I’d lived in the area, all the times I’d spent in Niagara Falls, walked along these streets, I’d never noticed it. Now as I did, I felt something unsettling about the sight. The barn and the boarded up houses surrounding it looked familiar.
“What?” Rebecca asked.
“I…this…it…it looks like…” Had I been able to finish the sentence, I would have told her this might be the place Amy Woodward was killed in my vision. At last I was able to get a few more words out. “Circle the block. I have to see this alley from its end.”
Elvira’s head seemed to twist nearly a hundred and eighty degrees. She looked at me with wild eyes.
I ignored her.
Following my directions through the maze of one-way streets, Rebecca brought us to alley’s entrance. When we got there, I rolled down my window and leaned out.
As my eyes panned along the row of run-down houses, a black SUV, its windows tinted almost the same black, backed out of the barn. Half-hidden behind a chain link fence and scant leafless trees, a figure dressed in black with what appeared to be a ski mask over his face, climbed from the passenger seat. He reached back inside and pulled out what appeared to be a rifle of some kind, maybe an Uzi. Another figure, similarly clad, came around the front of the SUV. He stopped by the first man and leaned close as if speaking to him. Then they both turned in our direction. One pointed at us, the other leaned on the fence.
Weeraaaah! Elvira screeched.
A third man emerged from the barn. He joined the other two near the SUV. The first man raised his rifle, rested it on the fence, bent, and peered through the sight.
“We have to get out of here!” I shouted.
I didn’t need to tell Rebecca twice. She gunned the engine and we shot down the street.
Chapter Nineteen
Home but Not Safe
We were being followed. I’d seen the three men jump into the black vehicle as we sped down the street. Fear crept up my spine on tarantula legs. I felt the damn spider bite my neck. Felt its venom seep into the marrow of my bones.
“Go, go, go!” I hollered.
Rebecca spun the steering wheel to the left, to the right then left again. My brown Valiant squealed around corners. If my right foot and leg were once again on fire, I wouldn’t have noticed. Fear is the greatest anesthetic. I twisted my body to look out the rear window. My eyes flicked as I searched for the SUV with tinted windows I was certain would soon nip at our tailpipe. I was also certain an Uzi would be aimed at us from one of the SUV’s windows.
A car pulled out of a driveway, slammed on its brakes. We barreled past doing far more than the thirty-mile-an-hour legal speed limit on the city streets. The driver opened his door and leaned out. His middle finger raised, he
yelled at us.
“Turn here!” I shouted.
We swerved around another corner.
Her claws out, Elvira clung to my coat.
We were on Independence Avenue, a wide street with one lane in each direction separated by a raised median. Hyde Park Road loomed ten blocks ahead. A long time ago, boats sailing the Niagara River had been unloaded, and the goods carted overland to Lake Ontario along what was then called the Salt Road. The endless Ontario wasn’t our goal. We needed to avoid being blasted into an endless sleep. Once on Hyde Park Road, we’d make a right turn and my car would be pointed at the police precinct, at safety.
Just ahead, a large black vehicle ran the stop sign. It shot across the intersection.
I pointed. Rebecca turned right, then right again. We were headed back where we’d come from. The alley off Nineteenth Street was the last place we wanted to be.
“Turn here!”
Halfway through the intersection, my Valiant fishtailed. The tires scraped against the curb, bounced off. Steering into the skid, Rebecca knocked over two garbage cans. Trash flew across the street behind us. The tires gripped the road just before we sideswiped a parked Cadillac. A woman jumped from the driver’s door, and shook her fist at us. We weren’t making any friends today.
I unsnapped my seatbelt and climbed onto my knees so I could peer through the rear window. A black SUV turned onto the street. Maybe it was dark gray. Maybe it wasn’t the one we’d seen outside the barn. I had no desire to find out.
“Faster!” I yelled, as I dropped back down and refastened my seatbelt.
Rebecca hit the gas. The rear tires spun on a patch of black ice. The SUV drew closer. Now it was only a half block behind. Yes, the SUV was black.
Traction at last. We barreled toward the red light on Pine Avenue.
“Run it!”
Rebecca shook her head and tapped the brakes.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t wanna get a ticket.”
The Magic of Murder Page 17
