A slim shadow in dark gray sweatpants and a matching hoodie detached itself from the wall. “Sit down,” the woman said, her voice clipped. She pulled the hood down further over her head, obscuring her face, and sank gracefully onto one of the low, square stools behind the table.
“Lauren, hand me my bag, will you?”
Lauren rolled to one corner of the room, bent and drew a black silk bag from a wicker basket. She tossed it to the woman in gray, who caught it wordlessly.
From the bag, the woman withdrew what looked like a brilliantly colored top with a cord tied to it. She turned the top upside down and began to spin it. A kaleidoscope of colors flashed and Riga realized that she was spinning wool.
Riga took a seat on one of the poufs opposite the woman, crossing her legs loosely before her. The spindle was a gorgeous thing, mesmerizing. She’d never seen one like it.
“Riga, I’d like you to meet Cleo,” Lauren said, rolling forward. “She worked for Aaron and I when we were together, and testified in the divorce.”
Riga’s shoulders twitched in surprise. She recognized the name. Cleo was the maid Aaron had had the affair with.
Cleo said nothing, continuing to spin, and Riga quelled her rising impatience at the overly dramatic scene.
Cleo put the spindle down, raised her hands to the hood and pushed it back from her face. An angry seam ran from her left eyelid, twisting it downward, and ended in her hairline above her ear. She looked steadily at Riga through clear amber-colored eyes, waiting for a reaction. She got none. Riga had seen much worse.
“Did Aaron do that to you?” Riga asked.
Cleo nodded, and replaced the hood. “He doesn’t like to lose.”
“How did it happen?”
“He tripped me, when I was near the fire. The fire screen wasn’t in place. He said it was because he’d just put a log in and hadn’t gotten around to putting it back. It was deliberate, but how could I prove it? And who would have listened? Lauren took me in afterward. We recovered together.”
From their injuries, or from Aaron? The women clearly hated him and Riga wondered how much of their story was real? She found herself wanting to believe them, to sympathize with these women who’d been so terribly damaged. But Riga never completely believed anyone.
“When you were with him, did you hear anything about an employee named Herman? Anything about a theft?”
Cleo took up the spindle again. It spun lightly in her hand as she fed wool into it. “There was one night – it was a day or two before my testimony. Aaron was angrier than I’d ever seen him. He ranted about something that had been taken from him. It was frightening.”
“Were you afraid he’d take it out on you?”
“No, not then. It wasn’t like that then. He was kind to me, understanding. But that night he was scared and that terrified me. What,” Cleo asked, “could frighten Aaron?”
“Did you ever find the answer?” Riga said.
Cleo didn’t answer. She reached into the bag of wool and withdrew a smaller, knit drawstring bag. It shimmered in the dim candlelight, and Riga recognized the yarn it had been knit with as the same stuff Lauren had been working with. Cleo closed her eyes and shook the bag rhythmically in her hand. Something rattled within, grating on Riga’s ears. Cleo’s body swayed lightly in time to the rhythm and Riga felt pressure building within her skull.
The noise went on. Riga realized she was clenching her jaw and tried to relax.
With a sudden movement, Cleo upended the bag and polished pieces of stone clattered upon the table. They had runes carved upon one side, Riga saw.
Cleo sat frozen, one hand still holding the overturned bag high in the air. Lauren wheeled closer and deftly picked out the runes that had landed face up, dropping them in her lap. Cleo’s eyelids fluttered, her body jerked spasmodically and she dropped the bag. Her hands moved in the air, a few inches above the table, as if pulled by an invisible force. They stopped over two of the runes which remained, face down, upon the table. “A journey. Dangerous. You are forced, but your action may change what the Fates have in store. May change,” she emphasized.
Her hands jerked forward, to hover over another rune. She drew a sharp breath inward. “An implacable force. Disaster. Death.”
Riga felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. She told herself it was just an effective show – and there was nothing wrong with that, the show was important – the shadowed face, the blank runes, the flickering candles, the incense. But her nerves hummed.
Cleo’s body swung drunkenly to the right, her hands over another rune. “You are the servant of the trickster, an untrustworthy master. He has a role in this, but it’s unclear.”
Her hands passed over the final stone on the table, then dropped to her lap. Cleo’s head turned toward Lauren. “Yes, I see. She may succeed but she’ll need help.”
“She has help,” Lauren said.
Cleo just looked at her.
“Anna then?” Lauren asked.
Riga shifted, aware of the ache in her lower back. Her head throbbed.
Lauren nodded. “I’ll arrange it.”
“Who’s Anna?” Riga asked, feeling it was time she participated in this conversation.
“Aaron’s first wife,” Lauren said.
“Do you spin?” Cleo asked, abruptly, standing.
“What?” Riga was caught off-guard, thought of an exercise class she’d hated, but realized Cleo was asking about something else. “No. I’ve wanted to try – I do some knitting,” she fumbled. Perhaps the room’s atmosphere had gotten to her more than she’d thought. She felt logy.
Cleo bent at the waist and a cascade of mahogany-colored hair fell from the hood. When she straightened, she held the spindle in her hand. She extended it to Riga. “Take this.”
When Riga made no motion to move, Cleo continued, “It’s a gift.”
“Thanks.” Riga took the gift and placed the spindle in an empty section in her leather bag.
Lauren turned her chair and wheeled to the door. She looked over her shoulder at Riga. “It’s time for us to go.”
Riga nodded goodbye to Cleo, then followed her out the door.
As she walked back to the house beside Lauren, Riga said, “It’s strange how friendships work.”
“Who says we’re friends?” Lauren paused. “But we are linked together. I couldn’t have abandoned Cleo if I wanted to.”
“And Anna?”
Lauren looked up at Riga and smiled wryly. “Anna doesn’t need anyone’s help. She’s a force unto herself, the strongest of us all. If anything, we rely on her.”
Inside the house, Lauren wrote an address upon a pad of paper, tore it off, and handed it to Riga. “Be there before six,” she said. She went into the living room and returned with a skein of indigo wool sparkling with silver beads. “It’s called Milky Way, maybe it will inspire you.”
The yarn felt unbearably soft in Riga’s hands. “Thanks.”
Riga wouldn’t have much time if she was to get to the address Lauren had given her before six o’clock. It turned out to be a knitting store in a small town on the Peninsula. A circle of women sat on folding chairs inside the store, knitting and gossiping. They looked up when Riga entered.
A tall, sparse looking woman with graying hair in a loose braid that hung halfway down her back rose to greet her. “May I help you?” She wore a knitted red vest over a turtleneck and a skirt that reached nearly to her ankles.
“My name is Riga. I’m here to see Anna. She’s expecting me, I think.”
The woman nodded. “I’m Anna.” She looked to a matronly-looking woman in the knitting circle. “Can you manage things for a bit?”
The other woman nodded, looking pleased.
“Let’s get some coffee,” Anna said, inclining her head towards the door.
Riga followed her out and down the block, to an Austrian bakery that displayed a selection of pastries within gleaming glass and metal cabinets. Not one to resist, Riga ordered an espresso a
nd slice of chocolate marble cake, watching with respect as Anna doubled down with a slice of cheesecake.
They slid into a booth, Anna dispensing with the preliminaries as she raised her fork. “I hear you want to know about my ex? Why?”
“I’m looking into the death of my client, who was married to one of Aaron’s employees, Herman Baro – also deceased.”
“And you think Aaron is involved?”
“I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest that,” Riga said.
“I don’t know why I should help you.”
“Your friends seemed to think you’d be a good person for me to talk to.” It was strange, how the three women had come together, Riga thought. By rights they should have loathed each other.
“Give me your hands,” Anna said.
Another palm reader, Riga thought, reaching across the table in resignation. But Anna didn’t look at her hands. She merely gripped Riga’s wrists and gazed into her eyes, lightly shaking her arms at seemingly random moments.
Anna’s hazel eyes lost their focus. “You’ve known betrayal as well. Not like us, a different kind of treachery there… That’s not why they wanted me to meet you though. You’re not right either – an affliction. You read cards – you should be telling me my fortune.”
Riga snatched her hands back. It might have been a simple trick, vague pronouncements confirmed or denied by the tension in her wrists. But she felt exposed.
Anna shot her a look of amusement and picked up her fork. She stabbed the cheesecake, took a bite. “I don’t think I’ll be able to help you much. Aaron and I haven’t kept in touch since the divorce.”
“Was it amicable?”
Anna shrugged. “He divorced me and I didn’t fight it. We’d drifted apart – not so unusual for high school sweethearts. He was the golden boy, the high school quarterback and I, believe it or not, a cheerleader. It seemed a match made in heaven at the time. But of course we changed. At least it wasn’t a gradual thing that takes years before you notice it. It happened quite suddenly. I think the shock of it all made it easier.”
“That seems unusual. What happened?”
“He grew up, or maybe it would be better to say he grew into himself.”
Riga said nothing, hoping she would elaborate.
Anna took another sip of coffee. “Aaron was the guy with potential, filled with dreams that went nowhere. None of it was practical. He was always hanging on the fringes of some crazy deal – a video game starring a pop star, sales of old Russian MIGs. Even a telephone sex service – you know, where guys pay ten dollars a minute to talk dirty to a woman who’s probably old enough to be their grandmother but talks like a teen slut? That should have worked. How can you fail with something like that? But Aaron’s partner had a heart attack and that fell apart too. Aaron was all dreams, no action. Thank God I had a job or we would have been out on the street.”
She should have sounded frustrated, Riga thought, but Anna’s tone was wistful.
“He’s successful now,” Riga said.
“Somehow, he got it together. His actions grew into his dreams. He transformed himself – lost the pudge that came on after he quit playing football, got new clothes, even new diction.”
“And a new wife?”
She nodded, rueful. “That too. We had nothing at the time. I didn’t even bother with alimony and was half afraid he’d try for palimony. He didn’t.” She turned her coffee cup in her hands. “I guess I can’t begrudge him his success. Maybe I was holding him back?”
Riga doubted that. “What caused the change, do you think?”
“No idea. It was out of left field, as far as I can see.”
“Was Aaron interested in magic or the occult at all?”
Anna’s hand froze on her coffee cup. She laughed, a brittle sound. “How did you know?” When Riga didn’t answer, she continued, “It started after we got married. He began buying up books, turned the garage into a – a temple I think he called it. I wasn’t allowed in. It would have messed up the energies.” She put the last word in air quotes. It was a strange attitude after her earlier performance, which Riga began to find more and more cynical. She wasn’t sure if Anna was mocking Lauren and Cleo, or Riga.
“Do you know if he was working with anyone?” Riga asked. “Did he have any teachers, or was he involved in a group or organization?”
Anna shook her head, no.
“Did his temperament change during this time?”
Anna looked deep into her coffee cup. “I know what the others have told you. He never hurt me. Oh, he had a jealous streak – not just of me, but of anything that was his. But it never got beyond sulks and petulance. Maybe that changed about him, too, but I can’t say.” Anna took a gulp of coffee. “Did you bring your cards with you?”
Riga nodded.
“May I have a reading?”
Riga took the Tarot deck in its velvet pouch from her purse. She had many – art decks, decks friends had made, magical decks – but she considered the Visconti deck the classic. Her reproduction of this 15th century deck was the first she’d learned on, the cards now soft with use and age.
“Tell me my future.” Anna’s tone was gently mocking.
Riga shuffled, drew the first card. The Six of Swords.
“Passage, a journey,” Anna said. “But where am I going?”
Clearly Anna knew her Tarot and Riga was quite willing to let her do her own reading. She drew another from a random point in the deck. The Devil.
Anna smiled unpleasantly. “Hmm… I’m not sure I like the look of that. But Lauren’s been telling me for years I’ve been going to the Devil. And what will I do when I get there?”
Riga drew the third card and lay it upon the table. Death.
“Interesting,” Anna said. “Usually one dies first before heading in that direction. But things have been topsy turvy of late.” She placed her hands on the deck. “Your turn. Let’s see what’s in your future.”
Riga returned the three cards to the deck and shuffled seven times. She only had two Tarot rituals, and seven shuffles was one of them. Riga drew the first card. The Six of Swords. She frowned.
Anna raised one eyebrow. “Perhaps we’re going to the Devil together?”
Riga pulled a second card from the center of the deck. The Devil.
“Strange how we seem to be leading parallel lives. I hope yours has a happier ending.” Anna’s eyes gleamed maliciously.
Riga fanned the deck upon the table, closed her eyes, and picked one. Death.
“It seems we do have something in common after all, Ms. Hayworth.”
And who’s behind this? Riga thought. She drew one more card and placed it above the three, then turned it over. The Magician.
With one finger, Riga flipped the fanned deck over. The cards were as they should be – no extra Death, Devil or Six of Swords cards had been planted. She began calculating the odds of choosing the same three cards in the same order from a seventy eight card deck, and figured it as roughly one out of 450,000 but Riga had never been good at math.
Anna’s cheesecake was gone. She slid from the booth. “I need to get back to my shop.”
Riga watched Anna leave, walking slowly, as if an older woman inhabited her body.
Chapter 18: Saving Liz
Riga crept along the freeway, grinding her teeth in frustration at the traffic jam. By the time she got home, darkness had fallen, and the alternate guard was on duty. He barely looked up when she entered the lobby, her shoulders and neck tense from the drive. She rolled her head as she ascended in the elevator, trying to release the pain.
She walked down her hall, catching the driving beat of music from her neighbor’s condo –indie rock. It pounded in her brain. She jammed her key into her lock. The scent of oil paint hung in the air, seeping from beneath Liz’s door. Riga paused, her hand on the knob, the hair prickling at the back of her neck.
Something was wrong.
She looked around the hallway. It seemed normal �
� the same Japanese peace lily in the corner pot, no notes for her upon the doorstep, no doors ajar. The lights in the chandelier above winked at her. She pocketed her key, and crossed to her neighbor’s door. Riga knocked, waited a minute, then banged on the door more forcefully. “Liz?” she called out.
There was no answer. Maybe Liz couldn’t hear her over the music, or maybe she was in the bathroom, or maybe she was just moving more slowly than usual. Riga pounded on the door, her sense of unease growing. She called Liz’s cell. It went to voice mail. Riga hung up, and dialed again.
The sense of wrongness was choking now. Riga returned to her own condo and strode to the balcony outside the guest bedroom. Liz’s condo mirrored her own – their guest bedrooms were back to back and each had a balcony. “Brigitte!” she called.
Brigitte crawled around the corner of the building, her claws scrabbling on the stone. “You wish to speak to me?”
“It’s Liz. Something’s wrong. Can you check her windows?”
The gargoyle’s brows scraped together. “Liz is an independent spirit. It does not seem right to invade her privacy.”
“She could be hurt.”
The gargoyle threw her chest out. “Then I shall look. We ladies must stick together.” With a bound, she crossed the gap between the two balconies and peered through the glass door. She looked back at Riga. “I do not see her. I will check ze other windows.” Brigitte moved along the building, then turned the corner out of sight.
Moments later, she returned. “The brave Liz is lying upon ze floor! We must help her!”
“Right.” Riga swung one leg over the banister and reached across to Liz’s balcony, careful not to look at the street five floors below. She hauled herself across, stumbling over a squat cast-iron barbeque that lay on Liz’s balcony, and scraping her left ankle.
The Metaphysical Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery) Page 9
