The Gathering

by Mary Bowers

  “Good. That makes it easier. He’ll strike tonight. ParaCon ends tomorrow, and he’ll probably be leaving town soon after that. When will you close the shop tonight?”

  “Six.”

  “Just as the sun sets. There’s going to be a full moon tonight. Even if we have to wait for dark, everyone will be able to see. Perfect. We’ll be here.”

  “We?” I asked, but I was afraid already knew the answer.

  “The two of us, of course.”

  “And don’t forget me,” Florence said. “You’re not leaving me out of this.”

  Wicked materialized. The shop cat had been sleeping on top of the entertainment center when I came in, and within the last few minutes I’d noticed him looking back and forth between us. Now he decided to join us, and he pounced down and strolled over to Purity with his tail in the air. Then he leapt onto an end table near her that had a clear space just big enough for him and regarded her intelligently.

  “Yes,” she said to the cat. “You may.”

  “Wicked is very brave,” Florence said. “He saved me from a burglar once. Used the guy’s face as a scratching post, and good enough for him, I say.”

  I turned to Florence. “You’re going to go home at six and leave me and Purity to stand guard. Wicked can stay if he likes. He’s a pretty good guard cat. I’ll drop him off at your house when we leave. Personally, I doubt Sparky will be running robots around town tonight anyway. After what happened at ParaCon yesterday he’ll have forgotten all about playing tricks on the local yokels.”

  “He’ll be here,” Purity said calmly. Then she gazed at me and added, “He won’t miss his last chance to have fun with his bot. He’s enjoying this. He will come to you, wherever you are.”

  “Oh, I don’t think he wants to face me directly. If he does anything, it’ll be to Girlfriend’s itself, not me,” I said. “Which is enough reason to be here: to protect the shop.”

  “Well, you’ll have to hogtie me and cart me home yourself if you want to get rid of me,” Florence said.

  “Oh, all right. But don’t blame me if it turns out to be actual aliens and you get abducted right along with us.”

  “It’s not aliens,” Purity said dreamily. She was still playing with the scarf, but she had walked over to the men’s ties and was poking around among them. She picked up two of them: one with a tropical pattern in pinks and turquoises, and another in shades of silver and black. “At least not the kind you mean. I’ll take these pretty things. They’re silk. And perhaps some nice little jackets. They like jackets.”

  She went into the children’s section and began picking through the rack.

  “That’s the same rack where I found the clothes on the floor,” Florence told me quietly.

  I gave her a wide-eyed look and said, “Of course. Look, I gotta go home,” and started fishing around in my purse for my car key.

  In a subdued voice, without even looking up, Purity said, “You’re going to ParaCon now.”

  “No, I’m . . . .”

  I came to a confused stop. ParaCon was ending tomorrow.

  I had checked Ed’s website that morning, and it said that the police, after due consideration, had decided to let the conference go on. Attendees were encouraged to come. I figured that while it was continuing, none of the suspects could reasonably try to leave town, which might have played a part in the police’s decision. The kitchen was off-limits, of course, but that wouldn’t be a problem; the conference hadn’t been using it anyway.

  If I wanted to find out more about the poisoning, the only people who could tell me anything were there, gathered together in one place. I’d spent the entire day before at the conference, looking interested, so nobody would think it was strange if I came again today and tomorrow. After that, the police could follow up with them wherever they went, but I couldn’t. I was running out of time.

  Because I was very much afraid that one particular person the police might suspect would still be right here in Tropical Breeze: Michael.

  “I’m going to ParaCon,” I said.

  Purity didn’t even bother to answer, but Florence looked amused.

  Chapter 13

  I don’t know what I expected at ParaCon, but somehow I was surprised at how normal it looked. I mean aside from Nostradamus and the witches and wizards. Things were carrying on pretty much the way they had the day before, except for the back of the room where the kitchen was. It was yellow-taped and off-limits. The forensics people must have worked through the night and left, because there were only a couple of uniformed local cops there, and they were observing ParaCon with a fair amount of amusement and not paying any particular attention to the kitchen.

  I went to Purity’s Crystals and Potions booth and sure enough, somebody Purity-like was there explaining the dangers of a potion called “The Grip of Obsession” to a woman who seemed to want it anyway. When the customer had purchased the tiny black bottle (for a special ParaCon price of $150!) the saleswoman turned to me and I said, “Are you Ariel?”

  “Yes. You’re Taylor Verone,” she told me. “I know all about you.”

  “Really? Listen, have you seen Edson Darby-Deaver?”

  “He’s in the dressing room with Orwell Quest and his people. He posted a message on the official website saying that the conference was continuing, but of course, most of us already knew that.”

  I knew better than to ask her how. I just nodded wisely, thanked her and headed for the dressing room. I knew where it was, but I hadn’t been in there before, and when I got there I found it jammed with people. Gavin and Pixie were there, Ed was fussing around at an old desk, and Sparky and his minions were clustered in a corner with Orwell, leaning toward him and listening intently.

  I knocked on the doorframe and everybody looked at me.

  Then Sparky looked back at Orwell and said, “Yeah, that’s do-able,” apparently wrapping up a conversation. “We’ll get on it right away and make sure everybody sees us doing it. That’ll make ‘em behave.”

  With barely a nod, he, Phineas and Ricky edged around me and left.

  “I’ve always liked that boy,” Orwell said contentedly. “I should’ve hired him the first time.”

  “I suppose you were put off by Vanessa’s interview with them,” Ed said. “She was not always objective. Or accurate. Hello, Taylor. I’m happy to see you.” He was, too, but he also seemed surprised.

  “I figured I’d swing by and see how you were all doing today.”

  Orwell smirked. “It is rather intriguing, isn’t it? Poor Vanessa. You’re known for unraveling murders, aren’t you? Perhaps I should hire you, too. You and your wonderful cat. We could use a sleuth just now.”

  “The police are handling it,” I said.

  “Ah, but you have inside information,” Orwell said.

  “Like what?”

  “You know us.”

  I almost pointed out that I’d just met them the day before, but I figured that would be rude. Pixie and Gavin were looking at me as if I’d just grown horns.

  Orwell turned to Gavin. “As for today, I will be working, and for my little reward afterward . . . you haven’t procured a cake?”

  “Good God no!” Gavin exploded. “In the first place, there hasn’t been time, and in the second place, I’m not sure you’ll ever want cake again.”

  “You may be right. It has always been purely symbolic, but somehow it’s gotten out of hand. Still, it’s become a habit. Perhaps cookies instead? Or a cinnamon roll? The one at Karma Café was exceptional, and extra frosting was no problem. They have frosting shooters. Genius! I think they must have read my book.”

  Ed turned a little green, and quietly asked if I’d like to grab a quick cup of coffee in the Activities Lounge café. I told him, sure.

  Before we left, he turned back to Orwell and said, “I want to thank you for offering to give the lecture on fish rain after all. It’s asking a bit much, after what has happened, but people have been clamoring, and . . . well, I think, if
you don’t mind, we should have it in the main hall. Let’s face it, nobody’s going to sit through a workshop on Colored Light Therapy while you’re giving a talk on fish rain.”

  “It is a much weightier subject, of course,” Orwell said.

  “Um, yes. Well, I’ll just go make the announcement and you relax here a while. I’ll come get you a little before 3:00. Please enter from the front of the room this time.”

  Orwell treated it as a joke, but I knew Ed wasn’t kidding.

  “I look forward to it,” the great man said, and Ed conducted me out of the room and shut the door behind him. Once outside, he nearly collapsed back against the door in exhaustion.

  “Ed, have you had any sleep since yesterday?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Anything to eat?”

  “Oh, food? I’m not sure. I think there’s some peanut butter in my satchel, wherever it is.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and make your announcement, and then we’re going out to the food truck and get you something to eat. Actually, I’m hungry too. It’ll be nice to get away for a little while, won’t it?”

  He looked like he was going to cry. “You’re such a good friend, Taylor.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  I waited until he made his announcement and the cheering died down, then I took him by the arm and dragged him out of the old church.

  * * * * *

  It was chilly outside and a January wind was coming off the ocean, so we ate in my car. Left to himself, Ed eats almost nothing but peanut butter, with or without bread, which his in-depth analysis has proved to be nutritionally complete. I hate to think about what his gallbladder is going to look like by the time he’s an old man. Other than that, he doesn’t care what he eats, so I ordered something healthy for us: sweet potato burritos with hummus, black beans and locally-grown veggies. It came with a sour cream sauce that I could have eaten with a spoon. I enjoyed my food. Ed just ate his. He showed no signs of noticing what he was eating, but he did seem less frazzled once he had some food inside him.

  While we were eating, I asked him about the workshop on Colored Light Therapy.

  He rolled his eyes. “It’s the theory that bathing the patient in a flood of light of a precise color for extended periods of time will cure disease. Green for influenza, yellow for the – um – bowels, indigo for conditions of the eye –“

  “You have got to be kidding.”

  “No, I assure you. It has something to do with the varying wavelengths of the colors. People believe. Personally, I’m skeptical.”

  We’d finished the burritos, and I gathered up the wrapping papers and got out of the car to throw them away. While I was at it, I went back to the food truck and got two cups of hot spiced cider. As we sipped them in the car, I finally brought the subject around to the poisoning.

  “The cake was definitely tampered with after it left The Bakery,” I told him. “The police believe it, too, because they told the twins they could reopen.”

  “That’s a relief. I feel rather guilty. After all, I recommended The Bakery to Gavin in the first place. The twins haven’t been running the business for that long, and I’d hate to see them fail over something I did.”

  “They won’t fail. Tropical Breeze is a close-knit town. No Breezer is going to blame the twins for this. They’ll see it as a bunch of outsiders bringing their troubles here. Got nothing to do with us, that’s what they’ll think. But really, Ed, who do you think would want to kill Orwell Quest? Or do you think Vanessa was the intended target?”

  “Oh, Orwell, definitely. Famous people are targeted by lunatics all the time, but nobody in the paranormal community knows anything about Vanessa.”

  “Well, if somebody wanted to murder Orwell Quest, ParaCon was the perfect place for it. Plenty of suspects, all with an interest in the paranormal, and all very aware of Orwell. But, if this was a lunatic looking for fame, he’d want everybody to know he was the one who killed the great man, wouldn’t he?”

  Ed and I looked at one another. I decided not to pursue the line of reasoning to its obvious conclusion: that it wasn’t a crazed fan. And by allowing the conference to go on, the police had pretty much trapped Orwell Quest so that the killer could have another crack at him.

  “We’d better keep a close eye on your guest of honor,” I said.

  Ed was nodding. “We’ve already thought of that. That’s what Sparky was talking to Orwell about just now. He’s setting up security cameras throughout the hall and making sure everybody is aware of it. We’re hoping that’ll be a deterrent, and the police have offered to protect him at the conference. It might irk him to have them following him around, but he’s just going to have to put up with it.”

  “He’ll love it. Being surrounded by a squad of cops will just bring out the little boy in him. And if Orwell wants a cinnamon roll after he’s been a good boy and made another speech, I think we’d better be the ones to supply it, instead of having him traipse off virtually alone, or worse, with a parade of squad cars following him.”

  “Let Gavin take care of that. It’s his job.”

  “It looked to me like Gavin thought Orwell should give up the cake habit altogether. And I think I already know Orwell well enough to predict what’s going to happen if he doesn’t get his treat. He’ll pitch a fit.”

  “You’re right. I’ll tell Gavin to make sure he takes care of it.”

  “Gavin’s the one that supplied the poisoned cake,” I reminded him. “Besides, Gavin didn’t give any indication he was going to get anything at all for Orwell. He’s your guest of honor. Let’s take care of him ourselves.”

  “All right. Thank you, Taylor. That’s very good of you.”

  He got out of my car, and I started it up and headed down the road for Karma Café. It meant missing perhaps my only chance to hear Orwell Quest give a lecture on fish rain, but I was more than willing to take a pass.

  * * * * *

  When I got back to ParaCon, I delivered the cinnamon roll to Ed for safekeeping (a cop took a peek inside the box and made a note of the fact that I’d been the one to bring it). With the three frosting shooters, my purchase wouldn’t fit into a clear plastic clamshell box, like they usually give you, so they had to give me a small cardboard cake box.

  Once I’d made the hand-off, I headed for the Ladies’ Room. This all happened in relative quiet, because Orwell was at the podium reeling off dates and places and the names of assorted sea life to an audience that was busily taking notes. Since Orwell was up there casting his spell, I was surprised to see Pixie in the Ladies’ Room. She was washing her hands at one of the sinks when I came in, and when I came out of the stall and started washing my own hands, she was still there, idly powdering her nose. Since she wore almost no make-up, I didn’t think she needed so much time to work on it.

  “Aren’t you interested in hearing Orwell’s lecture?” I said.

  She made an impatient little shrug and said, “I’ve heard it all before.”

  I stared at her for a moment. Then I decided that my own make-up, such as it was, needed extensive repairs. I set my purse on the counter, got a lipstick out and rolled it up, then held it in my hand while I talked to Pixie, occasionally making little dabs at my lips. She didn’t seem to notice or care. She talked to me while looking into her own eyes in the mirror the whole time. She was wearing another clingy shift, only this one was in a dark, berry red that played up her cool complexion. It was a perfect color for her, and it made her seem brighter, more alive. It was an odd color for mourning, but I gave her a pass: she was traveling, there would be no time to shop, and she could only wear what she had with her.

  “It’s awful about Vanessa,” I said. “I mean, aside from the tragedy of it all, you must be scrambling to keep Orwell’s business matters in hand now. As I understand it, Vanessa took care of all of that.”

  And – we were off!

  “You’re kidding, right?” she said in a much more full-bodied voice than I’
d heard her using the day before. “That woman could screw up a one-car parade. She was always shoving her nose in where it didn’t belong, making a lot of reservations and putting down deposits that I’d have to cancel, and get on the phone for hours trying to get our money back. Gavin has been at his wit’s end, not that this wasn’t his own damn fault!”

  “How so?”

  “He’s the one who got her next to Orwell in the first place. She contacted him, wanting an interview for some documentary, and Gavin decided it would be good for Orwell’s image. It’s always murder trying to get Orwell to make a public appearance, and when it comes to recorded interviews with cameras and everything . . . .”

  “Ah, yes,” I said with deep sympathy. “His aversion to electronics and invisible stuff and . . . you know, having his image stolen by cameras or whatever. It’s a good thing Sparky and his friends are around to take care of that stuff for him now.”

  She took the bait.

  “Those knuckleheads! We’ll see how long that lasts.”

  “Oh, you think Gavin will find a way to get rid of them?”

  She shrugged. “He doesn’t like them, for some reason. But there’s no way they’re going to use Orwell to get their reality show back, or whatever it is they’re after.”

  “Maybe they’re just fans of his, like everybody else. Maybe they genuinely want to help.”

  “Maybe they genuinely want to help themselves.”

  I nodded wisely. “Like Vanessa. I wondered about her. She just didn’t seem to be Orwell’s type, you know? The people he gathers around himself – they’re all dedicated to him. Vanessa never thought about anybody but herself, and at that point in her life, she was all about resuscitating her career. I couldn’t understand how she got next to him, but if she managed to manipulate Gavin into getting her in, that explains it.”

  “Right. Gavin got her in the door, but as soon as she walked in the room she owned it. You know?”

  “Oh, I know. I’ve had lunch with her.”

  She nodded, as if I had said it all. “He should’ve known what would happen. He’s been playing second fiddle ever since. That bitch was even talking about shutting down The Questian Society – Gavin’s baby. She said it was soooo Twentieth Century.”