Seer in Starlight

by Amanda Hartford

  I carried my tray to the table in the back where Cody and I often sat. The spicy fumes of my carnitas burrito were like some magical elixir, wafting Jack’s smile into view like a genie hovering over his lamp.

  I was lost in the tastes and memories of my dinner, going over in my mind everything that had happened since the day Jack was murdered — since the day Vonda and Lindsay had killed Jack, I corrected myself. I’d stopped scrutinizing the crowd milling around the busy seating area, so it was a total shock when someone jostled a woman in a green coat who was standing next to my table, and she, in turn, fell onto me.

  It’s funny, when there’s a mishap like that, how everybody concerned apologizes. She’d fallen sideways, so she was facing away from me and all I saw was the back of her black hair. We were both apologizing like crazy as she gathered herself up. Before I could say anything, she’d regained her feet and was scurrying away.

  It was then I realized that my bicep was prickling as if I’d been stung by a bee. No: a needle. She’d stuck me with something.

  I whipped around and saw the woman walking quickly away, her black hair bobbing above the crowd. She was cutting in and out between family groups, making good speed near the escalators.

  I was suddenly weak all over. It was like going over the top of a roller coaster track: one moment, I was unwrapping the foil from my burrito; the next moment, the bottom dropped out and I slumped against the window wall, unable to hold up my head.

  The next few minutes are still just a series of fuzzy impressions to me, like the flickering images of a silent movie: the man at the table next to me shouting something; me on the ground, trying to focus on a sprinkler head in the ceiling above me; a wide circle of staring people standing over me; a man shouting orders in Spanish. I must’ve slipped away for a few minutes, because the next thing I remember was rolling into an elevator.

  I suspect that last one is as much deduction as memory. I have no memory of being put into the wheelchair, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't walking, and there was no sense that anybody was propping or holding me up. If I had to guess, I'd say that I was scooped up off the floor by security and wheeled off to get medical help.

  At least, that’s how it would’ve appeared to the bystanders in the food court. In truth, this was intricate choreography performed at high speed. Lindsay had shed her green coat — the cops found it and the black wig in a trashcan further down the concourse — to reveal a skycap uniform, and come right back to the food court, pushing one of the courtesy wheelchairs.

  If anyone stopped to think about it, they might have questioned why I was being hauled off by a skycap instead of EMTs. Lindsay didn’t allow time for that to happen. Spies are taught that, if you look like you know what you’re doing, no one will question you. Lindsay made it work. She swooped in and was out of there in minutes. I’m told that a couple of the men in the crowd even helped her load me in the wheelchair.

  People hate to use elevators in airports. Despite the signs prohibiting luggage or wheeled carts on the escalators, it happens all day long. Lindsay was almost guaranteed that the elevator up to the Sky Train level would be empty.

  This little drama of Lindsay’s played out in several acts. The first act had been back at the food court, and she had performed it to — quite literally — a standing ovation from the lookie-loos. The passengers who observed my abduction from the court weren’t likely to follow or ask questions. They saw a fellow traveler in distress, and they saw that traveler get assistance from someone in an airport uniform. Any other involvement they might have was just a passing curiosity.

  The second act took place on the Sky Train platform. Lindsay was counting on the tendency of people in airports to mind their own business. When you enter an airport, you become emotionally stateless: you’re not where you live, and you’re not where you’re going. You have no stake in what going on around you: you’re just passing through. To question the situation more than that would be to involve oneself — again, breaking the tacit agreement that it’s none of your business; in airports, you’re just passing through.

  Anyone who saw Lindsay push me out of the elevator, across the upper station and onto the Sky Train saw only a skycap assisting an incapacitated passenger. Nobody gave us a second glance.

  ♦

  I’m not sure how long I was out, but when I came to, my wheelchair prison was rolling through a terminal at high speed. I was slumped forward in the wheelchair, my cheek resting on my knees. Someone was pushing me in the wheelchair, and another person was walking along beside them.

  Vonda and Lindsay thought I was still out cold, and I intended to keep it that way. I could hear them talking behind me, Lindsay pushing the wheelchair and Vonda clicking alongside in her high heels.

  I opened my eyes to slits and tried to get my bearings. There were tailplane shapes on the floor that was flying past under the wheelchair. I was in the Sky Train terminal above the GPS lot.

  From here, my kidnappers could take me downstairs to a car waiting at the curb, or even summon a rideshare from the lot where my own SUV sat waiting for me.

  I realized with a jolt that they already had their own wheels, right down there in the GPS lot. The SUV I’d been driving was leased by Uncle Ethan’s company, so the paperwork was in Vonda’s name. Nobody would question it if she simply got in it and drove away.

  There are freeway entrances at both ends of the airport. In minutes, we’d be doing 70 miles an hour. In less than an hour, we’d be far out in the open desert.

  I was in serious trouble.

  Chapter Eleven

  Passengers may intentionally ignore each other in an airport, but that doesn’t mean that nobody is watching. When Lindsay did her needle bump in the food court, she forgot that cell phones are everywhere. Several people called 911, but when the bogus skycap picked me up, the paramedics were called off.

  But the lookie-loos weren’t the only ones watching. The commotion had drawn the attention of airport security, who saw the whole thing on the terminal cameras. They contacted the city police station, just in case.

  It turns out, that call was unnecessary. Unbeknownst to me, Cody had been sitting at the station, watching the security cameras as I came and went. He knew how mad I’d be if I found out that he’d been video-stalking me all day, so he hadn’t told me. When he realized that it was me in that wheelchair, he called out the cavalry.

  ♦

  Vonda stepped aside as we approached the elevator to allow Lindsay to push the wheelchair in and turn it around to face the open door. I heard somebody push buttons, the elevator door whooshed closed, and the car started to move down.

  I was listening to the sound of the elevator, trying to decipher how far down we were going. The Sky Train station is up on Level Three. Level Two puts you on the elevated walkway that eventually connects with the city light rail system. I was hoping to hear — what? Maybe a difference in the sound as we passed the Level Two doors? If there was, I didn’t catch it.

  I'd have to figure it out by the floor pattern. I knew that the floor on Level II was a wild terrazzo Persian rug with big flowers and gold leaves. If they stopped there, I'd have multiple avenues of escape: up or down the escalators, or along the elevated walkway — screaming my head off, of course, as I ran.

  I moved my toes a little, trying to be sure my feet still worked. I couldn’t really tell without giving myself away.

  I’ll try to explain what happened next in sequence, but, in truth, everything happened at once. As the elevator settled at the bottom of the shaft, Vonda said something to Lindsay about bringing the car around front. She stepped forward to hold the door as it opened.

  A dozen police officers stood in the doorway, guns pointed at her chest.

  Vonda dropped down and slammed the Door Close button. The elevator door began to move again.

  I was still groggy from whatever poison Lindsay had shot into my arm, but I was able to understand that, if that door closed, I’d be trapped inside with Vo
nda and Lindsay. This wasn’t going to end well.

  People say that their limbs go to sleep, but the terrible pins and needles that shot through my legs and feet as I stood on the wheelchair's footrests brought me vividly awake. I thrust myself up and out of the chair and launched my body through the closing elevator door. I hit on my stomach and slid across the slick unpatterned floor. I ended up at Cody's feet.

  People with guns swirled around over my head, swarming the elevator and blocking the door. I kept my head down and covered it with my arms. Blue lights seem to be coming from everywhere, so I closed my eyes and rolled into a fetal position. There was a lot of shouting going on.

  I stayed there like that for a long time — at least it felt that way, to me. It was probably only minutes before I heard the chaos moving away. I took a chance and opened my eyes.

  I nearly curled up again: a World War I biplane was soaring past, only a few feet above my head. It took a beat to realize that I was seeing the restored Spad that hangs from the ceiling in the ground floor lobby; my vertigo was the only thing giving it flight. The blue light was coming from an art installation in the ceiling of the courtyard beyond, augmented by the strobing light bars of the dozen police cars outside the glass walls.

  “It’s over,” Cody whispered in my ear.

  Chapter Twelve

  The police had been on the platform, hidden behind pillars and outside the glass walls at track level, as they watched Vonda and Lindsay wheel me off the Sky Train. There had been officers around every corner and in front of the elevator doors on the lower two levels. There was no way the cops were going to allow my captors to take me out of the airport, Cody said later.

  Lindsay started talking as soon as the cops pulled her out of the elevator, and by the time they reached the police station, she had thrown Vonda under the bus.

  It had been Vonda’s idea to kill Jack, Lindsay said. She claimed to have been brainwashed, dragged into Vonda’s web with promises and lies.

  Which sounded pretty good — until Cody and the detectives retrieved Jack’s teak table and my telescope from the condo garage. The murder weapon was inside my telescope bag, and the fingerprints on it matched Lindsay’s.

  Cody was right: it was all over, and it all had been for nothing.

  If Vonda had waited just one more day, she would’ve learned that Jack had taken another job. He didn’t want Uncle Ethan’s money or his company. He just wanted to live his life, and she took that from him.

  I couldn’t decide which I wanted more: cry, sleep, or throw up. I decided to do all three, not necessarily in that order.

  ♦

  It was nearly dawn when I stumbled out the front door of the police station. I’d told my story at least five times to five different detectives; my answers never wavered.

  The SUV was over in the rideshare lot, but I couldn’t face the idea of walking through the quiet airport and riding the train to go pick it up. I ought to call an Uber, I thought, the irony not lost on me.

  I heard a large vehicle roll up behind me.

  “Need a ride?” Cody asked through the open driver’s window of his SUV.

  The whole thing hit me at once, and I felt my knees go weak.

  “Woah!” Cody yelled, throwing his car in park and leaping out to catch me before I hit the pavement.

  “Rough night,” I mumbled.

  He held me until I stopped trembling. “You’re safe now,” he kept whispering.

  “I don’t understand,” I said into his shoulder. “They could have killed me right there in the food court. They could have put poison in that needle. Why didn’t they?”

  “They needed to know what you know, who you’ve told.”

  “And then...”

  Cody stroked my hair. “You’re going to be all right,” he whispered in my ear. “We’ll get your car out of impound in a few weeks, and I’ll see if they’ll release your telescope from the evidence locker …”

  “It’s all just stuff.” I waved them away. “ I can get more stuff.” I snuffled into his shoulder. “You saved my life.”

  Cody held me tight. “If you hadn’t gone for that bellyflop, we’d have had a hostage situation. You listened to your mojo. You saved your own life.”

  ♦

  We rode in silence as Cody drove us across the airport. I dropped my head back against the headrest and let my mind drift. Cody let me be. I closed my eyes and barely noticed when he pulled in next to my car. Vonda’s car. I wondered what would happen to it — and my job — now.

  The answer came sooner than I’d expected. A text hit my phone just as Cody came around to open his passenger door for me.

  Schneider wasted neither sentimentality nor punctuation: pick me up private air 6 PM.

  “I guess I’m still employed,” I said to Cody, showing him the text.

  “Actually, the detectives will pick him up when he lands. We need to have a long conversation with your Mr. Schneider. He’ll be the primary witness for the prosecution.”

  Cody looked thoughtful. “Stella, you did great tonight. When I realized that it was you in that wheelchair, I thought… I was afraid that…” He looked away.

  I shook my head and put my fingers to his lips. “There’ll be time to talk later. We both need to get some sleep, and I need some time to process this whole thing.”

  He looked hurt, as if I was pushing him away. “It’s going to be okay,” I reassured him. “We’re going to be okay.” I pecked him on the cheek. “See you soon,” I said.

  He wrapped his arm around my waist and held me close. The kiss he gave me was absolutely not a peck on the cheek.

  “See you soon,” he whispered.

  — The End —

  Your next read

  The Sea Turtle Spell is the prequel to Amanda Hartford’s Pentacle Pawn paranormal cozy mystery series. Pentacle Pawn books are available on Amazon.com. Here’s a sneak peek:

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  John

  I was the one who found my husband's body. I almost tripped over him.

  I’d Ubered back to my family home on Royal Street a little after ten, after a few casual drinks at an oyster bar on the other side of the Quarter, catching up with a former colleague. There are no clubs or restaurants in our block, only retail shops that close by nine, so the foot traffic around our building gets lighter as the evening wears on. Our neighborhood is generally safe after dark and heavily patrolled – nobody wants to jeopardize all those tourist dollars. Even so, I'm always aware of my perimeter when I step out onto the sidewalk.

  As far as I knew, John was upstairs. He had planned to spend the evening with a Guinness and a book in the family library. I remember that I was smiling as I emerged from my rideshare. My mind was on getting upstairs and distracting John from that book.

  I didn't see my husband lying across the threshold until I stepped into the alcove. The police said later that the LED bulb above the front door was unscrewed, but I didn't notice it. John was facing the door with his knees pulled up to his chest. His hands were laced together over his head, his elbows pulled tight together to protect his face. It was a defensive position, as if someone had been kicking him.

  I heard my cousin Aaron pounding down the staircase from the apartments above.

  "Oh my God!" he gasped, bending over John. "What happened?"

  I was sobbing. All I could do was shake my head. "I don't know, I don't know. Help him!"

  Aaron had already dialed 911.

  "Is he breathing?" I shrieked. "Oh my God! Is he breathing?"

  Aaron wouldn't answer, and he wouldn't look at me.

  Sirens were coming.

  ♦

  John Spencer was not supposed to be dead. He was only 42. He worked out, he watched what he ate, he slept his full seven hours every night. He was always the grown-up. John was a sportswriter, a brilliant wordsmith who traveled with professional franchises and covered big-dollar college teams. His stories read like music, but that meant that his days and most evenin
gs were very structured. John lived a simple life in a world of statistics and deadlines.

  Me? Not so much. I resolved a long time ago to live every minute of every day. I loved that man dearly, but it irked me that, whenever we went out to supper, he could just sit there and watch me plow through my Bananas Foster and never even ask for a bite. I mean, Laissez les bons temps rouler, right?

  My life is all about magic. After all, I'm a witch.

  I'm Marguerite Flournoy, but everybody calls me Maggie. My family operates Pentacle Pawn here in New Orleans, in a shop at the back of this house where my family has lived for generations. I'm a physicist by training and a skeptic by nature. Having one foot in the scientific world and the other in magic gives me a unique perspective on things. So, in the few minutes before the paramedics arrived, and before the shock of John's death could close me down, I forced myself to take a close look at his body.

  It’s funny what you think about at times like this. What stood out for me was that John was wearing a single red rose in his lapel. Odd, I thought: John never wore boutonnieres.

  I didn't want to disturb the scene, but I touched his cheek and found that he was already growing cold. Despite his defensive posture, I saw no blood or bruises. I felt a vaguely electric tingle, the residue of a potent spell. This was not your usual mugging. John had been killed with magic.

  But who would've wanted to hurt John? He wasn't a threat to anybody. He had no talent for the craft, and everybody in this house loved him. Right?

  As the paramedics pulled up to the sidewalk, the terror on John's face burned itself into my memory. If this death had been done by magic, then I needed to absorb the fact that someone inside my safe haven had a hand in it.