Fool Me Once: A Tarot Mystery

by Steve Hockensmith

  “Carl, I’ve got him!” Schramm said. “Get up and cold cock the son of a bitch! Quick!”

  Victor started squirming, searching for a way to break Schramm’s hold, as Luchetti pushed himself to his feet. It looked like Victor had about five seconds to get away before Luchetti clocked him.

  I meant to clock Luchetti first. I bent down to pick up the long metal flashlight on the floor by the door, thinking I’d use it as a makeshift billy club. It looked a lot heftier than my plastic Spidey model.

  When I saw what was lying beside the flashlight, I changed my mind.

  Luchetti stepped toward Victor, balling his hand into a fist.

  “Don’t do it,” I said.

  Luchetti leaned back and brought his fist up for a haymaker.

  “I said don’t do it!”

  It was the little flicker of light that finally got his attention. His eyes darted my way—then went wide with terror.

  “Okay, okay! I’m not gonna hit him!” he said, stepping away from Victor.

  “Good,” I said.

  I didn’t lower the lighter, though, or put out its flame. Or move it away from the rags I was holding in my other hand.

  “Let go of him,” I told Schramm.

  “Or what?” he said. “You’re gonna burn your boyfriend alive—and probably yourself, too?”

  “What’s my alternative? Give in to you two and get burned alive anyway? Nah. I’d rather take you with us.”

  Victor gaped at me. He looked deeply unhappy with our options.

  “Listen, lady,” said Luchetti, his deeply tanned skin glistening with sweat. “I don’t want to burn anybody. I didn’t even want to burn a cat.”

  “I believe you. That must have been Bill Riggs’s idea.”

  Luchetti and Schramm shared a quick rattled look.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “How much does she know? Well, all you have to do to find out is let my friend go.”

  My arms were getting tired from holding up the rags and lighter, but I didn’t dare lower them or let them tremble.

  “Talk first,” Schramm said. “Then we’ll see.”

  “Okay, I will,” I said. “To start with, this beautiful home has been nothing but kindling from the get-go. The plan was to burn it down and blame it on a nonexistent Indian radical group. On paper it would look like a big loss for the development company, but you’ve been skimping on materials and labor. There’s a lot to be skimmed from even just one house; you could clear a couple hundred thousand easy. You’d just need to cover two bases: the construction crew and the head office. You two handled the construction end; Harry Kyle took care of the paperwork. How am I doing so far?”

  Schramm just glared at me over Victor’s shoulder.

  Luchetti gave me a shaky nod. “No one was gonna get hurt. We’d just transfer some money from the company’s pocket into ours. They’d never even miss it. Then you showed up this afternoon asking questions and spooking Kyle, and we figured we needed to speed up the schedule and torch the place tonight.”

  “Shut up, Carl,” Schramm snapped. “We don’t know who she is.”

  “Oh, lighten up, Jack,” I said. “Carl’s not telling me anything I haven’t already guessed. And I think I’ve got the next part worked out, too—the part with Bill Riggs.”

  Luchetti’s eyes went wide again.

  Schramm clenched his jaw. “Oh, yeah?” he grunted.

  “Yeah. Riggs got wind of the scam, so he knew Kyle had a bunch of off-the-books money lying around. When he got into legal trouble and Kyle fired him, he decided to kill two birds with one stone. He was going to get the money to hire the best defense attorney in Arizona and get his revenge on Kyle at the same time. All he had to do was convince you two to put the squeeze on Kyle with some phony Indian artifacts. You’d tell him you needed cash to—what’s the matter?”

  Luchetti had gone about as pale as a man can when he looks like he’s spent the last twenty-four hours napping on a tanning bed. He jabbed a finger at the rag in my hand.

  “Be careful!”

  As my arm tired, it had lowered the rags closer and closer to the lighter, until now they were less than inch from the tip of the flickering flame.

  I quickly raised the rags up again.

  “See why you should have let my friend go?” I said to Schramm. “We almost had our own private Burning Man—with three burning men and a burning woman.”

  “Just finish,” Schramm said.

  “Fine. Where was I? Oh, yeah. You’d supposedly need money to hush up the crew. Kyle probably suspected it was bullshit, but calling you on it would be risky. He was already in too deep with you two. So a lot of cash changed hands—and Bill Riggs got the last part of his split from you, Jack. On Sunday. In a blue backpack.”

  The resentment on Schramm’s face told me how good my guesses had been. But even if I’d still had some doubts, Luchetti would have dispelled them.

  “Goddamn, Jack,” he said hoarsely. “She knows everything.”

  “Oh, no. Not everything. There’s still a big ol’ loose end to tie up,” I said. “Who killed Riggs?”

  I’d have thought Luchetti would have seen the question coming, yet it still seemed to catch him off guard.

  “Don’t ask us!” he squeaked, eyes bulging wide again. “We got no idea! I swear!”

  Schramm didn’t look so surprised. In fact, he seemed chagrined to be giving an answer he knew was going to sound like bullshit.

  “It’s true. We don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it was Kyle. He could’ve figured out that the scam with the Indian skull was Bill’s idea…somehow. Other than that…? Not a clue.”

  He shrugged miserably. He knew how it looked—and knew he’d only make it look worse if he tried to pull more suspects out of his butt.

  Which was part of the reason I believed him. That and the fact that if Luchetti was play-acting the role of panicky, hapless would-be criminal, the man was a bronze-colored Brando.

  I’d come so far and learned so much. Yet the one thing I really needed to know remained a complete and utter mystery.

  I thought I’d been zeroing in on the killer—and I’d been fooling myself.

  “Uhhh…Alanis?” Victor said.

  He was staring at my hand with a distressed expression on his face. I glanced down, expecting to see that I was letting the rags get too close to the flame again—perhaps even that they were already on fire. But that wasn’t the problem at all.

  There was no flame anymore.

  The lighter had finally run out of fluid.

  There you stand, watching for the fleet you launched, hoping to make your fortune. Remember how you prodded the ships away from shore with your long carrot sticks, already counting the money they’d bring back to you in your head? Well, you forgot to do one thing. Check. The. Weather. You were so overconfident, you sent your fleet out smack-dab in the middle of monsoon season…with no insurance! Let me tell you, it’s worth the extra eighty bucks a month. Now you know. Too bad it’s too late.

  Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing

  I looked at the dead lighter.

  I looked at Schramm.

  I looked at Luchetti.

  I looked at Victor.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “What?” said Victor.

  “It doesn’t matter that the lighter’s dead. I’m not a killer, and neither are they.” I looked at Schramm again. “So we can all stop pretending. Right, Jack?”

  Schramm looked at me.

  And looked at me.

  And looked at me.

  “Goddamn it,” he muttered.

  And he let Victor go.

  As Victor walked over to stand beside me, I finally lowered the lighter and rags.

  “Owwwwww,” I moaned. I began flapping my arms to get the blood flowing again. “You have no idea how much that hurt.”

  “Oh, what a shame,” Victor said. “And all this time you were suffering, I was having so much fun thinki
ng you were about to set me on fire.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Good times.”

  “Who are you people anyway?” Schramm asked us. “No way you’re cops.”

  I shook my head. “I’m a friend of Riggs’s wife, Marsha. She’s being charged with his murder. She didn’t do it.”

  Schramm narrowed his eyes. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Like I said: she’s my friend.”

  Schramm looked like he was this close to scoffing. I guess he didn’t think so highly of his friends.

  “So are we gonna cut some kinda deal?” Luchetti said. “You keep quiet about what we’ve been doing, and we…you know…we…um…”

  He turned to Schramm. Schramm just shrugged.

  I said the obvious out loud.

  “You two have nothing to bargain with, but that’s all right. We’ll make a deal with you anyway.”

  “We will?” Victor said under his breath.

  “Yes. We will,” I said. “All we care about is who killed Riggs. If it turns out his death had nothing to do with what’s been going on out here, we’ll have no reason to talk to the cops about it. So we won’t. All we ask is that you clean up your mess and don’t draw any attention to yourselves. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. So no smoke. You understand me?”

  Luchetti nodded tentatively—so tentatively that the nod turned into a shake of the head. “Not really.”

  “She means don’t burn the house down,” Schramm explained.

  “Oh,” Luchetti said. “Right.”

  “So, do we have a deal?” I asked.

  Luchetti nodded with a lot more confidence this time. “Yes. Absolutely. Thank you.”

  I looked at Schramm.

  “Deal,” he said.

  “Good. Let’s go, Victor.”

  I spun on my heel and started walking quickly—but not too quickly—toward the back door. Victor fell in beside me. When we were still half a dozen steps from the door, I noticed him shifting his weight, turning his head.

  “Don’t look back,” I whispered.

  “What if they change their minds and jump us?” Victor whispered back.

  “Exactly. I don’t want to give them ideas.”

  We kept our gazes pointed straight ahead at the darkness outside as I slid the back door open. Then we were outside in the cool desert night, marching robotically away from the house.

  “Can I look back now?” Victor said.

  “No. But you can run if you want.”

  He wanted to. So I did, too.

  “That,” Victor said as I hit the gas and gunned us away from the house, “was the worst experience of my life.”

  “The night is young,” I said.

  Victor shot me a glare that said not for me; this night is over.

  And it was for me, too, I had to admit. Where was there to go? What was there to do?

  We’d solved the wrong crime—and used up all our leads in the process. My day was done. And so was my crusade.

  I’d set out to help Marsha Riggs, and now there was a good chance she’d be going to prison.

  I’d told myself I could be a do-gooder, yet I’d done bad bad bad.

  I drove Victor to his apartment building on the west side of Berdache.

  “What will you do next?” he asked as we sat out front in the Cadillac.

  “For now, sleep. Tomorrow…we’ll see. That man I told you about—my mother’s boyfriend Biddle—he used to have an expression: ‘It’s not just the bees you have to watch out for when you knock down their nest. It’s the bears that come for the honey.’”

  Victor blinked at me blankly for a moment.

  “I think that might be a little too folksy for me after the day I just had,” he eventually said. “What does it mean?”

  “That you can’t know what you’re gonna get when you start stirring things up. Biddle meant it as a warning. But right now it’s about the only hope I have to cling to.”

  “Your hope is…bears?”

  I nodded.

  Victor sighed.

  “I still don’t get it,” he said.

  He started to get out of the car.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He stopped to look back at me.

  “Thank you for your help, Victor.”

  “My pl—”

  Victor stopped himself. He’d started to say “my pleasure,” but even as exhausted as he was, he’d realized how untrue that would have been.

  “You’re welcome, Alanis,” he said instead. “Let’s talk tomorrow.”

  “Sure. Good night.”

  Victor nodded and got out of the car. I sat and watched him trudge slowly away.

  He never looked back. I got the feeling he never would.

  I’m a woman. I’ve been around a while. I know what “let’s talk” means.

  I put the car in gear and drove home alone.

  I parked in the little lot behind the White Magic Five and Dime and cracked all the windows before getting out of the car. My dress still reeked of gasoline, and if the Cadillac didn’t air out it was going to smell like a Texaco station for the next three weeks.

  I stood in the lot a moment, gazing up at the stars and appreciating the fresh air and trying—and failing—not to think about the mess I’d made of things.

  As has been the case so often in my life, it was the thinking that got me in trouble.

  If I hadn’t been lost in thought, I might have noticed movement in the shadows by the building. Might have sensed that I was being watched. Might have turned and run instead of simply standing there awaiting my fate. Might not have been surprised when someone stepped out of the darkness holding a gun.

  Might have remembered, in other words, to be ready for the bears.

  You thought and thought and thought about making a change; you agonized about stepping out into the world on a new adventure. For too long you hid behind the wall, gazing into your beloved bowling ball, but then you finally made the change—and your world flipped on its head. The walls crumbled down around you, and the bowling ball broke your nose. Looks like you forgot that “adventure” means “danger.” No doubt you’ll keep that in mind next time…if there is a next time.

  Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing

  The woman had a Glock in one hand—pointed at me.

  In her other hand was a bottle—pointed at her lips. She was throwing down a long swallow of Bartles and Jaymes strawberry daiquiri.

  “Betcha didn’t see this coming, Joan Dixon,” she said to me when she was through.

  “Who’s Joan Dixon?” someone else said.

  Another woman—a stocky blond—lurched from the shadows by the White Magic Five and Dime. She was also holding a Bartles and Jaymes bottle.

  No gun for her, though. She’d brought a softball bat.

  “Some psychic,” the first woman said, slurring the words into thumb thigh-kick. “Used to see her in the tabloids at the grocery store when I was a kid.”

  “Never heard of her,” the blond said.

  So these were my bears—Debbie Luchetti and Cathy Schramm. They were still dressed for a company picnic, in khaki shorts and colorful, loose-fitting blouses and sandals. Cathy should have had a Frisbee in her hand, not a semi-automatic pistol.

  Which was still pointed at me. Cathy was swaying slightly, unsteady, yet her aim never wavered. Not that it mattered that much.

  She was less than twenty yards away. With a Glock, even a drunk would get off enough shots to hit me if I tried to run. My only consolation: she hadn’t started shooting yet, which meant they weren’t just there to cover their husbands’ tracks.

  I looked beyond them at the back door of the building. It was closed, and there were no lights on upstairs.

  I had to hope that Clarice was safe. And I had to make sure she stayed that way.

  “You want me for something?” I said. “Whatever it is, I’ll give it to you.”

  “Cool!” Cathy said with a lopsided grin. She jerked the gun to the sid
e. “Let’s go, then! That way!”

  I started walking out of the lot.

  “Girls’ night out!” Debbie hooted, jabbing at the air with her bat.

  As she and Cathy fell in behind me, I remembered how Bill Riggs had died. Brains bashed out with a baseball bat, Burby had said.

  That was one more thing the twerp had got wrong.

  I knew now it had been a softball bat.

  They led me to a minivan parked on a darkened street around the corner. Cathy got in the back with me, her gun still levelled at my gut.

  I had to sweep popcorn and cookie crumbs and a couple beaten Betty and Veronica comics off my seat before I could sit.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Cathy said. “Kids!”

  Debbie climbed in behind the wheel. She put her Bartles and Jaymes in a cup holder. Her bat got the passenger seat. When she turned on the engine, the radio began blasting “Highway to Hell.”

  “KISS!” Debbie roared. “Yeah!”

  She looked back at us, stuck out her tongue Gene Simmons–style, and made the sign of the horns with both hands.

  Cathy gave her a “woo-hoo!” and started singing along with the song.

  I didn’t bother saying that the band was AC/DC and the psychic was Jeane Dixon. They wouldn’t have heard me anyway.

  Cathy and Debbie were rocking out. And they kept rocking out all the way across town.

  Within half a mile, I knew where we were going. Cathy told Debbie to turn the radio off two blocks before we got there.

  “Aww,” Debbie groaned. “I love the Rolling Stones.”

  The song had been “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by the Who.

  Cathy shushed her.

  “Sneaky time,” she said.

  Half a minute later, Debbie was parking the minivan in front of 1703 O’Hara Drive. The Riggs residence. I guess not pulling into the driveway qualified as being “sneaky.”

  “Be quiet,” Cathy told me. She waggled the Glock. “Or I’ll be loud.”

  “Good one! Bang!” Debbie giggled. “Ooo, speaking of which…gotta reload before we go.”

  She bent down and fiddled with something on the floor by her feet. When she straightened up again, she was holding two more bottles of Bartles and Jaymes. She handed one to Cathy, then took a long pull from the other.