Fool Me Once: A Tarot Mystery

by Steve Hockensmith

  I didn’t let the compliment go to my head. Lucia wore glasses so thick the lenses practically looked like ice cubes. I could’ve been a Wookiee and she still would’ve called me beautiful. I was a single female going out to dinner with her unmarried pushing-forty son. For women like Lucia, that’s about as beautiful as it gets.

  “Do you guys like El Zorro Azul?” I asked.

  “Not really,” said Victor.

  “We love it,” said Lucia.

  “But Mom—the last time I took you there, you said the salsa made you—”

  “You’re thinking of someplace else,” Lucia declared firmly. “If gorgeous here wants to go to El Zorro Azul, we’ll go to El Zorro Azul.”

  So we went to El Zorro Azul, where Lucia refused to touch so much as a single tortilla chip, let alone the salsa. She even seemed wary of the water. When it came time to order, she refused to pick anything out for herself, saying she’d “just nibble off Vic’s plate.”

  “Has Vic told you he was the third-ranked wrestler in the state his senior year?” Lucia asked me.

  “Thirteenth, Mom,” Victor said. “And that was twenty years ago.”

  “Has Vic told you he was the highest-scoring player on the Berdache basketball team?” Lucia asked a little later.

  “Second-highest, Mom,” Victor said. “And I’m sure Alanis doesn’t care.”

  “Has Vic told you he was the captain of the debate team when they won the state championships two years in a row?” Lucia asked a little later.

  “Co-captain, Mom,” Victor said. “And we came in second both—”

  “Victor,” I cut in. “Your mother’s proud of you. You don’t have to nitpick the details.”

  Victor blushed.

  Lucia beamed.

  The food arrived.

  Lucia never even picked up a fork.

  “Has Vic told you he made the dean’s list three times at Arizona State?” she said.

  She’s too young, Biddle had said from time to time when my mother was cooking up some new scheme that involved me.

  She can handle it, Barbra would say.

  That was the highest praise I ever got from her.

  So a mother making her son miserable by reciting every halfway impressive thing he’d ever accomplished, including learning to tie his shoes when he was four? I thought it was goddamn heartwarming.

  And my heart needed some warming just then. It was the only way to ignore the cold dread growing in my gut.

  Victor insisted on dropping me off before taking his mother home. It would be more convenient, he said.

  And I knew it was true—both because the White Magic Five and Dime was just a few blocks away and dumping me there first meant we wouldn’t be spending any more time alone together.

  Lucia thwarted that plan.

  “You’re going to escort her to the door, aren’t you?” she said to Victor as I started to step from the car.

  “Well, I…”

  I couldn’t see the look Lucia gave her son, but it must have been a doozy.

  “Of course I am,” Victor said.

  He hopped out and joined me for the eleven steps to the White Magic Five and Dime.

  I unlocked the front door and stepped inside, then turned to face Victor.

  “Thank you for a lovely evening,” I said.

  I wasn’t being sarcastic, yet still he winced. Subjecting someone to ninety minutes of nonstop maternal bragging hardly constitutes “a lovely evening,” and he knew it.

  “Thank you for making my mother happy,” he said. “She really likes you.”

  We both stole a look back at Victor’s car.

  Lucia was watching us expectantly from the back seat. (Both Victor and I had tried to get her to sit in the front passenger seat, but she’d insisted that “the view was better” from behind us.)

  “And what about you, Victor?” I said. “Why do I make you so nervous?”

  “You don’t make me nervous,” Victor protested nervously.

  “Yes, I do. Is it because my mom was a con artist? Or are you just intimidated by strong women?”

  “I’m not intimidated by strong women!”

  “Oh? Good.”

  I grabbed him by the lapels of his blue blazer and pulled him in for a kiss.

  “Mmf mmf!” Victor said.

  I let him go.

  “That was for taking your mother out for a night on the town and letting her embarrass you in front of a stranger,” I said. “You’re a nice man.”

  I turned to look at Lucia again.

  “Good night!” I called to her.

  She gave me a thumbs up and a wink.

  I stepped back and started to close the door.

  “Alanis!” Victor blurted out.

  I froze.

  “Yes?”

  Victor’s angular, olive-toned face had a strained yet determined look on it.

  I am not intimidated by strong women, I could practically hear him thinking. I am not intimidated by strong women. I am not, I am not, I am not.

  “Maybe we could go out again sometime,” Victor said. “Just you and me, I mean.”

  “I’d like that. Good night.”

  As I closed the door on him, I could see the look on his face change.

  First came satisfaction. He was not intimidated by strong women.

  Then came a wave of “why did I do that?” dismay.

  I didn’t really know how he felt about strong women. But he obviously was still intimidated by me.

  I went upstairs. I called Marsha. She didn’t answer. I went to bed.

  Eventually, I fell asleep.

  The Knock woke me up the next morning.

  Three firm raps: not too slow, not too quick.

  My eyes instantly opened wide, and I sat up and looked around for the back window my mother would already be scrambling through, Biddle lingering just a little behind her, beckoning to me silently.

  Come on come on come on come on come on!

  Cops!

  But there was no back window, no Barbra, no Biddle.

  It had been a dream.

  Except the Knock came again—as it always did after a short pause.

  Rap. Rap. Rap.

  Open. The. Door.

  I’m. The. Law.

  Not a dream. Maybe a nightmare. I rushed out of my bedroom in the T-shirt and shorts I sleep in.

  Clarice poked her head out of her room as I headed for the stairs.

  “Wha izzit?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I told her.

  Though I did.

  It was 5:44 on a Tuesday morning. The police were at our door. They had news.

  Bad news.

  About Marsha.

  I hurried down the stairs and up the hall to the front of the store. When I opened the door, I found a reedy young man standing there. He looked just barely old enough to shave—if his parents would even trust him with a razor. But his Men’s Warehouse suit and scuffed shoes and dour expression all confirmed what the Knock had already told me.

  “Yes, Officer?” I said, though I wanted to get right to the heart of it and ask “Is she in a hospital or the morgue?”—that’s what I needed to know.

  The young man blinked at me in surprise for a moment, thrown that I’d known what he was before he’d even spoken.

  “Alanis McLachlan?” he said once he had his grim, stony Cop Face firmly in place again.

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “I’m Detective Burby of the Berdache Police Department. I’m here to ask you a few questions about William Riggs.”

  My stomach felt as though it was plummeting like an elevator with a snapped cable.

  Here it comes, I thought.

  “What has he done?” I asked, already knowing the answer—or so I thought.

  “Done?” said Detective Burby. “Had his brains bashed out by a baseball bat, that’s what. William Riggs has been murdered.”

  We’re all members of Fight Club, so we may as well talk about it. Li
ke it or not, we’re going to face battles large and small each and every day. “Why don’t you ever cook dinner?” “What do I have to do to get that raise?” “Hey—that biatch is about to take the last doughnut!” Of course, some of us relish the conflict more than others. And some—like the wannabe warriors on the Five of Wands—just want to wave their big sticks around (paging Dr. Freud!) while striking poses. Learn to spot the difference between a real threat and wand waggling, and you might save yourself the extra energy you need to snag that last doughnut.

  Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing

  I let myself panic the way Biddle had taught me.

  Quietly.

  You can think “ohhh, shit!” Biddle would tell me. But you never say it—unless it’s the right thing to say.

  So my ohhh, shit! echoed silently in my skull while I stared into Detective Burby’s young, smooth, deadpan face.

  He stared back at me. Hard.

  He wanted to see how I’d react. That was why he was throwing Bill Riggs’s death at me like a slap.

  I gave him the appropriate response.

  I took the dampers off—just a bit. Enough to let my shock show through.

  My jaw went slack, my eyes wide. I let my left hand go to my throat, and a quick gasp escaped my lips. I started to slump into the door jamb.

  I stopped myself.

  (Don’t overdo it, kid, I could hear Biddle say. You wanna Meryl Streep it, not go Joan Crawford.)

  “Ohhh, shit,” I whispered.

  Because sometimes it is the right thing to say. And the one thing I didn’t want Burby saying just then was “why don’t you seem surprised?”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Burby held a hand out toward the store behind me. “Mind if I come in? I’d rather not have this conversation on your front step.”

  “Oh. Of course. I’m sorry. Come in, Detective.”

  I moved back, and Burby gave me a brusque nod as he stepped inside.

  His gaze swept over the shop, taking in the hodgepodge of totems and talismans my mother had thrown together—Buddhas beside dreamcatchers by crucifixes next to pentagrams. He snorted to let me know what he thought of it all.

  The kid looked like he’d gone to the Police Academy straight from a Boy Scout Jamboree, yet he felt comfortable showing his disdain for me ten seconds after telling me someone I knew was dead.

  Classy.

  Then again, the last Berdache PD detective I’d welcomed into the five and dime would soon be on trial for the murder of my mother—and I was the star witness against him. So what could I expect, a hug and a plate of fresh-baked cookies?

  “Can I offer you something?” I said. “Coffee? Tea?”

  Burby shook his head and pulled out a notebook and pen.

  “I’m good,” he said.

  He looked like he believed it, too. He thought he was good. Very good.

  I actually hoped he was right. Because if he wasn’t good—if he was dim-witted or corrupt or lazy—I knew who he’d try to pin Bill Riggs’s murder on. He had a prime suspect gift-wrapped under the Christmas tree: the victim’s wife.

  A chilling thought popped into my head.

  Bashing Bill’s brains out with a baseball bat didn’t seem like Marsha’s style, but sometimes people will do surprising things when they’re being pushed around by a violent a-hole.

  What if she actually did it?

  Ohhh, shit indeed.

  I used some of this new panic in my performance. It’s what Meryl Streep would have done.

  “My god…I can’t believe it,” I said, voice trembling. “Bill Riggs murdered. I’m just glad Marsha wasn’t around him anymore. If she’d been there, she might have been killed, too.”

  Burby’s eyes narrowed.

  “If she’d been where?”

  I shrugged. “Wherever Bill was killed.”

  “How do you know she wasn’t there?”

  How adorable. The kid was trying to trip me up already. This was probably his first murder investigation without training wheels, and he was eager to show off, the little prick.

  I decided to show him what can happen when you get too cute with people too fast.

  “Are you saying Marsha was there?” I cried. “Oh, no! Is she all right? Oh god! Who could possibly do a thing like that to such a sweet, harmless woman?”

  I began sobbing.

  I’d been able to turn the waterworks on at will since I was three. It was a move I owed my mom. There always seemed to be tears waiting for me whenever I needed them.

  Burby’s stony Cop Face quickly cracked.

  “What? No—you’ve got the wrong idea. Just calm down, would you?” he spluttered, looking horrified by what he’d wrought. “Your friend wasn’t there, all right? At least, we don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so? So she’s missing?”

  “Well…we can’t find her.”

  I began sobbing again.

  Burby stretched out a gangly arm and gave me an awkward pat on the shoulder.

  “Please…there’s no need for that. We don’t have any reason to believe Mrs. Riggs has been harmed. Yes, we haven’t found her, but we haven’t been looking long. That’s why I’m here, actually.”

  I looked at Burby, stopped my sobs, and nodded as I wiped away my tears.

  Of course, I’d known Marsha hadn’t been with Bill when he was killed—not as another victim, anyway. Burby wouldn’t have been acting so coy if she had. I was just teaching the kid a little lesson about jerking around people in shock.

  “Maybe you’d better tell me what happened, Detective,” I said.

  “Yeah. Right. Maybe I’d better.”

  Burby took in a deep breath before going on. He looked relieved not to have a hysterical woman on his hands anymore—so relieved that he put his Cop Face right back on and went back to eyeing me like he half suspected I was Jane the Ripper.

  “William Riggs’s body was found early this morning by a former co-worker. The former co-worker said he’d called Riggs a few times to check on him after he got out of jail. Riggs had a rough time in there, and he was…agitated when he got out. Riggs wasn’t answering his phone, so the former co-worker decided—”

  “Does this former co-worker have a name?” I asked.

  “Of course,” said Burby. “So as I was saying: the former co-worker decided to drop by Riggs’s house. Riggs’s car was in the driveway, but he didn’t come to the door when the former co-worker knocked. The door was unlocked, so the former co-worker opened it. William Riggs was lying in the living room, just a few steps inside the house.”

  “‘Brains bashed out by a baseball bat,’” I said.

  Burby almost managed not to wince at his own words. Almost, but not quite. Maybe there was some hope for the kid.

  “Well,” he mumbled, “brains bashed out by something. A baseball bat’s just our best guess at the moment.”

  “It’s horrible. Horrible,” I said, shaking my head. “But I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, you said Bill had a rough time in jail, and the last time I saw him he did look a little beat up. He must’ve made some enemies when he was locked up.”

  I paused to give Burby a chance to fill in the facts.

  He didn’t take it.

  “And Bill had gotten mixed up with a bad crowd recently, hadn’t he?” I eventually continued. “His death must have something to do with the drugs and gun the state police found in his car.”

  I paused again.

  “We’re exploring all possibilities,” Burby said blandly.

  I nodded as if that actually told me something.

  “I bet the killer was looking for more drugs,” I said. “Was there any sign the house had been searched?”

  “Do you have any idea what someone might have been looking for other than drugs?” Burby asked instead of answering—though his question told me what I wanted to know anyway.r />
  Yes, the place had been searched.

  I shrugged. “Bill and Marsha weren’t rich, and they kept things in their house really simple. They didn’t own anything fancy or valuable that I know of.”

  “What did you think of William Riggs? Did he seem like a meth head to you?”

  “Well, he did seem angry all the time. Is that a meth head thing?”

  “How about his wife?”

  “Does she seem like a meth head?”

  “No. What do you think of her?”

  “I think she’s sweet and harmless, like I said a minute ago. Bill wasn’t much of a husband—wasn’t much of a human being, from what I could tell—but this is still going to be a huge shock to her.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

  “Yesterday morning.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. In the shop.”

  “What was she doing here?”

  “Waking up.”

  Burby cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “I live upstairs, and Marsha stayed with me Sunday night,” I explained.

  Burby’s eyebrow went up another half an inch.

  I suppressed a roll of the eyes.

  “She slept on the couch,” I said.

  Burby tried to hide his disappointment.

  “Could she have left in the night without you noticing?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I slept right there in the hallway, near the bottom of the stairs.”

  Burby’s eyebrow went up higher than ever. It was really getting a workout.

  “Bill’s friend. The former co-worker,” I said. “He must have told you Marsha had left Bill—and Bill wasn’t taking it well.”

  “Yes. He told me.”

  “Well, Marsha was scared,” I said. “And so was I. Bill knew she was here. He came in and made a scene that day, so I wasn’t taking any chances.”

  “Whose idea was it for her to spend the night?”

  “Mine.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Of course I am,” I said. Though I wasn’t.

  Marsha had hung around so long and so late I had to ask her to stay. She hadn’t given me any real choice.

  But why would that matter to Burby, unless…?

  Ohhh, shit. Again.

  “How long had Bill been dead when TFCW found him?” I asked.