Fool Me Once: A Tarot Mystery

by Steve Hockensmith

  “None for me?” I said.

  “Maybe later,” said Debbie.

  Cathy snorted. “Yeah. Later.”

  They gave each other a smirky look that told me there wouldn’t be any “later.” Not for me.

  Debbie reached out for her softball bat.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s get this party started.”

  I stayed quiet as the three of us walked around the side of the house. I didn’t want Cathy getting loud—especially not with the Glock shoved into the small of my back.

  I watched the neighboring houses out of the corners of my eyes but saw nothing. No light, no movement, no hope of a quick call to 911. Not that I necessarily wanted the cops showing up anyway. Given Debbie and Cathy’s condition, there was no telling how they might react.

  Thanks a million, Bartles and Jaymes.

  “I was the one who picked this the other day,” Debbie said proudly as we walked in the back door. “Seems like every time I sneak into the garage for a smoke, my three-year-old locks me out of the house. Speaking of which—you bring your American Spirits, Cathy?”

  “Stay focused, Deb,” Cathy said as she closed the door behind us and turned on the light in the kitchen. “We can stop at the 7-Eleven when we’re done here.”

  “Ooo, yeah!” said Debbie. “Buffalo chicken rollers!”

  She took a glugging, gulping pull on her bottled daiquiri that emptied half the bottle. Then she stretched out the softball bat and prodded me in the side with it.

  “All right—where is it?” she said.

  “Where is what?”

  The prod turned into a jab. A hard one.

  “I played ball in college, you know,” Debbie said. “My senior year I batted .366 and hit 13 home runs.”

  “Sun Devils!” Cathy whooped.

  “Sun Devils!” said Debbie.

  They reached out their bottles and clinked them.

  “I don’t know what you’re asking me to do,” I said.

  This time, Debbie used her bat to tap me on the top of the head.

  It hurt.

  “The backpack, biatch. We want it,” Debbie said. “We know you were Riggs’s girlfriend. That’s why you were sniffing around Oak—”

  “Wife’s girlfriend,” Cathy cut in.

  “What?”

  “Jack said she was Riggs’s wife’s girlfriend.”

  “Really? And all this time I thought you said ‘Riggs’s girlfriend.’”

  “Maybe I did,” Cathy said.

  She belched. It smelled like strawberry Kool-Aid and hot dogs.

  I decided not to breathe for a while.

  “So Jack called you from Oak Creek,” I said. “He told you what we talked about tonight.”

  “Our husbands called us,” Debbie snarled, “to tell us about their latest screw-up.”

  “Which is why, yet again, the wives have to step in and bat cleanup,” said Cathy.

  Debbie cackled. “Good one!”

  “They really don’t know what you did here, do they?” I said.

  “It’s going to be a surprise,” Cathy said.

  “We’re going to Cancun!” Debbie blurted out.

  “Cancun, baby!” Cathy said.

  They clinked bottles again.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You knew about the scam your husbands were pulling with Riggs—and you thought they should cut Riggs out.”

  “Wimps,” spat Cathy.

  “Pussies,” said Debbie.

  “So—maybe over a couple daiquiris—you decided to do it yourselves.”

  “Margaritas,” said Debbie.

  Cathy shook her head. “Whiskey sours.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Debbie.

  “Only you couldn’t find the money.”

  “We tried persuading Riggs to tell us,” Cathy said. “But Debbie doesn’t know her own strength.”

  “Thirteen home runs,” Debbie said. “I’ve still got it.”

  “Fortunately, I recognized you at the picnic today,” Cathy went on. “So we know where to go to get a second chance at that—”

  “Blah blah blah!” Debbie cried. She poked my shoulder with the bat. “Show me the money!”

  Cathy dug the gun into my back.

  “Right!” she said. “Show us the money!”

  Just my luck: I was about to die and everyone was doing their Cuba Gooding Jr. imitation.

  I didn’t have any choice. I was going to have to show them the money.

  The most amazing thing about these two, I realized, was that their plan, such as it was, was actually going to work.

  “All right. I do know where the backpack is,” I said. “If I show you, you’ll let me go?”

  I had to ask, right?

  “Of course,” said Cathy.

  “Absolutely,” said Debbie.

  They looked at each other and all but winked.

  “This way,” I said.

  I led them into the living room, then up the hall to the closet.

  “We looked in there,” Cathy snapped as I opened the door.

  “Not good enough,” I said.

  I bent down and lifted up the carpet, uncovering the trapdoor in the floor.

  “Cool!” said Cathy.

  “Open it,” Debbie ordered me.

  I didn’t like kneeling anywhere near her while she had that bat in her hands, but I didn’t think arguing would get me anywhere. And I could picture myself opening the trapdoor, then diving through it and hightailing it to the busted air vent I’d squirmed through a few days before.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I unlatched the trapdoor and pulled it up.

  The second it was open all the way, Debbie used her bat to shove me back out into the hallway.

  She leaned forward and peeked down into the crawl space.

  “It’s too dark,” she said. “I can’t see anything.”

  “It’s there,” I said—and as soon as the words left my lips, I realized they might not be true.

  Fletcher said he had returned the backpack. What kind of fool had I been to believe him?

  Cathy walked over to the trapdoor and took a quick—very quick—look down. She might have a few four-packs of B&J in her, but that damn gun stayed steady as steel.

  “Told you we should bring a flashlight,” she said.

  “No, you didn’t,” said Debbie.

  Cathy thought about it a moment.

  “Well, I meant to,” she said.

  “One of us is going to have to go down there,” Debbie said.

  Cathy jerked her head at me. “I need to guard her.”

  “I could guard her.”

  “With a bat?”

  “You could give me the gun.”

  “It’s my husband’s gun.”

  “So?”

  Cathy took yet another drink.

  “I don’t like cellars,” she said.

  “I don’t like cellars,” said Debbie.

  “I could go,” I offered.

  Both women snorted.

  “Fine. I’ll go,” Debbie said sourly. “But you owe me.”

  She lowered herself so she was sitting with her meaty legs dangling into the darkness. Then she reached down as far as she could with the bat.

  There was a dull thud. She’d found the ground beneath her—which gave her the courage to drop down to it.

  She disappeared into the black square of the trapdoor.

  I got set to scramble to my feet and bolt for the back door. But Cathy was still watching me even as she called into the abyss.

  “You okay, Deb?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just that—ahhh!”

  “What?”

  Debbie let out a nervous laugh.

  “I think that dumb skull must be down here,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’m touching it right now.”

  Cathy smiled. “That means that is Riggs’s hiding place down there.”

  “Hey, you’re right! So it’s just a matter of—”

  Debbie sud
denly fell silent.

  “What is it?” Cathy said.

  There was another moment of silence. Then, more quietly than before, voice trembling, Debbie said, “There’s something down here with me.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Really, Cathy. I heard something move.”

  “The dark’s got you spooked, that’s all. Don’t freak out.”

  “Don’t tell me not to freak out!” Debbie shouted. “I’m not freaking out! I’m—ahhhh! Ohhhhh! Eeeeeeee!”

  Debbie was freaking out. Which gave me the chance I’d been waiting for.

  “Debbie, what’s happening?” Cathy called down into the crawl space. “Debbie!”

  At last she was distracted.

  I launched myself at her and managed to get a grip on her wrist before she saw me coming. I pushed her gun hand up, and she squeezed off three rounds into the ceiling. Plaster rained down onto us as we struggled for control of the gun; Cathy was so intent on ripping her hand free from me, she finally dropped her daiquiri.

  Even as Cathy and I struggled in the hallway, I could hear another fight down below in the crawl space. There were screams, curses, and the sounds of scuffling and body blows with blunt objects.

  “Let go!” Cathy shrieked at me, giving me another sickening whiff of artificial strawberry and Oscar Meyer. “Get your hands off me, bitch!”

  Then she was suddenly flying backward and hitting the floor with a thud.

  She’d slipped on the Bartles and Jaymes bottle.

  Before she could get her bearings, I kicked her in the face—

  fortunately for me I’d decided to wear boots instead of sandals that afternoon—and her head snapped back and the Glock dropped from her hand.

  I bent down and snatched up the gun just as someone clambered up through the trapdoor, softball bat in hand.

  I whirled around and aimed.

  “Whoa whoa whoa! I hope you’re not still that mad at me!”

  I stared in shock—but lowered the gun.

  “Jesus,” I said. “Fletcher.”

  He grinned at me.

  “I keep telling you, Alanis,” he said. “My friends call me GW.”

  Here it is again: the magic cucumber, aka the Ace of Wands. Once upon a time, it helped launch you on a bold quest—but now the situation is reversed. Is the hand of Fate snatching it back or telling you, “Hey, dummy! You’ve been using this thing upside down”? Either way, you’ve come to an ending, which is just another way of saying a new beginning.

  Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing

  “So…what now?” Fletcher asked me.

  It took me a moment to process that.

  We’d just finished a fight for our lives. I hadn’t even caught my breath yet, and my ears were still ringing from the gunshots. What did Fletcher expect me to say? “Let’s bake cookies”? He should have known what was next.

  I listened for the sirens.

  I didn’t hear them yet.

  “It’ll be a few minutes before the cops get here,” Fletcher said.

  “Yeah?”

  “So how about…?” Fletcher nodded at the darkened pit he’d just crawled from. “You know.”

  “What? The backpack? That’s evidence. It’s what these two killed Bill Riggs for.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Oh my god! Is that why you’re here? You’re still angling for the money?”

  “No! I was worried about you! I knew I blew it with that Fixer thing, and I didn’t want you poking around on your own.”

  The conversation woke Debbie up. She tried to lift her head, failed, and settled for staring into the carpet, groaning.

  “How’s the one down there?” I asked Fletcher.

  I got an answer before he spoke.

  Down in the crawl space, Cathy was throwing up.

  “She’ll live,” Fletcher said.

  “So were you watching this place or my place?”

  “Your place.”

  Fletcher cocked his head, listening again for distant sirens.

  “You know, the police won’t need all that cash to wrap this up,” he said.

  “No.”

  “A few g’s should be enough.”

  “No.”

  “Who knows? The cops might take a taste themselves. It happens all the time. So why shouldn’t we—?”

  “Goddammit, Fletcher, don’t make me say no again.”

  I looked from him to my right hand and back again. A little reminder for him: he was talking to a pissed-off woman holding a gun.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “I could’ve taken the whole thing, you know. And I do believe I just saved your life. So a little gratitude would be appropriate.”

  “You’re right. Thank you, Fletcher.”

  “Oh, come on, Alanis. You can do better than that.”

  “What do you want? Flowers?”

  “I was thinking more like…” Fletcher rubbed his chin, then flashed me a grin. “Dinner.”

  His smile didn’t last long.

  We finally heard what we’d been waiting for.

  Sirens.

  The cops weren’t Fletcher’s favorite people, and he wasn’t one of theirs. Yet he stayed there on the floor by the trapdoor, waiting for what was to come next, sticking by me when he could just grab the backpack and run.

  He’d already fooled me not once but twice. But who was keeping score? Well, other than me?

  GW Fletcher had just proved he wasn’t all bad. Just 50 percent. Maybe even 49. And that was enough.

  “You like Mexican?” I said.

  Fletcher and I were split up. We were thrown in separate police cars, then separate cells. Detective Burby showed up, and I was yelled at and threatened. I could only assume Fletcher was yelled at and threatened, too. But eventually someone—Debbie or Cathy or one of their husbands—cracked, and the evidence backed us up anyway.

  The next morning, Burby had to let us go.

  “I’m gonna be keeping my eye on you,” he warned me the last time we were in the interview room together.

  “You aren’t going to be seeing much,” I told him.

  He scowled, probably thinking I was gloating, telling him I was too slick to get up to anything he could catch me at. But that wasn’t what I’d meant at all.

  I was ready for some peace and quiet.

  I wasn’t just a retired criminal now. I was a retired crime fighter.

  Eugene and Clarice and Ceecee were waiting for me when I walked out into the little lobby.

  The girls pressed in on either side and wrapped their arms around me.

  Eugene just stood there and smiled, which was the equivalent of a bear hug from him.

  “Oh my god! I’ve been so worried!” Clarice said. “I can’t believe someone tried to kill you again!”

  “Is this going to happen all the time?” Ceecee asked me.

  “No,” I told her. “That’s done.”

  The door behind me opened again, and Fletcher came out into the lobby. He walked around us, keeping his distance, moving fast.

  Group hugs were definitely not his thing.

  “I’ll see you later for that Mexican,” he said to me with a wink.

  Then he was out the door and gone.

  “Ooo,” Ceecee said. “You hooked up with a hottie in jail?”

  Clarice shook her head at me. “Some role model you are.”

  “I’m going to get better. I promise.” I turned to Eugene. “Is everything set over at the county jail?”

  He nodded and gave me another smile.

  “Excellent,” I said. “Come on, girls. I’ll tell you the whole story on the way.”

  I remembered the role model thing as we headed toward the door.

  “Well,” I said, “maybe not the whole story…”

  Marsha was crying when they let her out of the county lockup— the good kind of crying. They were tears of joy, relief, gratitude.

  Clarice and Ceecee didn’t know Marsha well, but they joined in the s
econd they saw her.

  Me, though—I’m a hard-bitten, world-weary cynic. It took me two seconds.

  Eugene just stood to the side with a strained smile on his face. There was weeping and hugging and lots and lots of emotion, so he looked like he should be wearing one of those corny old bumper stickers.

  i’d rather be golfing.

  Still, he put up with all the blubbering as he drove us back to Berdache.

  Marsha finally started wiping away the tears as we pulled up in front of the White Magic Five and Dime. I’d already told her she was welcome to stay there as long as she wanted.

  “Is it really over, then?” she asked me. “It’s all done?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s all done.”

  But that wasn’t entirely true.

  There was one more loose end to tie up.

  Victor and I walked around the charred ruins of the house we’d almost gone up in smoke in the night before.

  “We had a deal,” Victor said. “I can’t believe they burned it down anyway.”

  “I can. Their wives probably told them to—to cover their tracks on the building scam.” I shrugged. “Or they just decided it was too much of a pain in the ass to mop up all that gasoline.”

  “Oh, well. It was a piece-of-junk house anyway. Hopefully they’ll build something better here now. A real home.”

  “Yeah. Maybe sometimes a little fire does the world a favor. Come on.”

  I headed toward the next lot over. It was empty except for a few low, spiky cactuses and a large, thick patch of dull green bushes.

  “How are you holding up, Alanis?” Victor asked as he tagged along. “I’m surprised you’re out here after everything that happened last night.”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Ready for a break from the trouble business, though.”

  “I’d say you’ve earned it.”

  We reached the bushes, and I squatted down and peered into the dark tangle of overlapping branches.

  “So…last night you said we should talk. Was there something you wanted to say to me?”

  “That can wait till later.”

  “I think I’d rather hear it now,” I said, without looking up at Victor. “As long as we’re taking care of unfinished business.”

  “All right.”

  Victor crouched down beside me. He kept his eyes on the bushes, too.

  “You know I’ve had doubts about you, Alanis. I didn’t think you were someone my mother and I could trust. And, well…you do tend to lie a lot.”