The Ambitious Card (An Eli Marks Mystery)

by Gaspard, John

“They go through a lot of Windex?”

  It took me a second to realize that she was joking with me, and then I recognized the humor in what she had said. I laughed and she joined me. Then I immediately realized that the laugh I had emitted might have been out of proportion to the quality of her joke.

  In fact, I was sure it was. So I throttled the laugh down and then it petered out awkwardly. We stood there quietly for a moment as people struggled to get past and around us.

  “Maybe we should find someplace else to talk,” Megan suggested. “Where we won’t be in the way.”

  Without waiting for a response, she turned and headed back toward the living room, but where everyone else was turning left, she veered right. The flow of traffic prevented me from following her immediately, and it was all I could do to not get pulled into the undertow that was sucking people back into the living room.

  As I struggled to follow Megan, I recognized Clive Albans across the room. He was surrounded by a group of young women and it looked like he was demonstrating Scotch and Soda for them. They laughed and applauded his efforts when he finished the trick. He spotted me and gave me a smile and a wink. I smiled back at him and continued to work at making my way through the throng.

  I finally broke through the pack and turned right down a short hallway. By the time I finally caught up with Megan, she was seated comfortably on one of the clear Plexiglas steps that led to the second floor. She patted the space next to her invitingly and I sat down.

  “So, how did your uncle like his reading?” she asked.

  “Oh,” I said, surprised by the question. “It was great. He loved it. Very informative.” I hope that my response sounded more truthful than it actually was.

  She sighed and visibly relaxed. “Oh, good,” she said. “I’m so new to this, and completely clueless as to whether or not my psychic gifts are in any way helping people. So, I’m glad he was happy with what I saw.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, trying desperately to come up with something positive he had said about the experience. Finally it came to me. “The dimes,” I said quickly. “The thing about Aunt Alice leaving him dimes as a symbol of their love. That was dead on. He was very impressed by that.”

  “Oh, good, good,” she said. “That was such a persistent image, stronger than any of the others. I’m glad it had meaning for him.”

  “Yeah, it really did,” I said honestly. “So, where’s Pete? Networking?”

  She smiled. “No, he went back to the car to get me some ibuprofen.”

  “You have a headache?”

  She shrugged. “Sort of.”

  We sat there for a few moments, listening to the music from the other room. “So, did you and Pete enjoy the memorial service?” I asked.

  She sat quietly for what seemed like a long time before speaking. “I don’t know. It’s weird. He wanted to come, to be supportive and all.”

  She shook her head and looked down at her feet. “We’re in such a funny, in-between place right now.” She looked up at me. Her eyes were amazing, blue and literally sparkling. “You’ve gone through a divorce, so you must know what it’s like.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m sure in some ways every divorce is different and in some ways they’re exactly the same.”

  “So, how did you make that final break, to not being a couple anymore?”

  I thought about this for a few moments.

  “Well,” I said, “it helped that my wife was sleeping with someone else. And then she moved in with him. Those two things really made it easier to call it quits.”

  She saw me smile and then she laughed and gave me another playful slap on the arm. “You’re very funny,” she said.

  “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she said quietly.

  Then the most amazing thing happened. She leaned against me. Not her full weight, but enough. Just the right amount, her shoulder against mine.

  I sat perfectly still and for a few moments she leaned against me and it was the nicest thing I had felt in a very long time. And, for at least that instant, I stopped feeling like I was a Mediocre Fred.

  She was separated, practically divorced; I had not come between them. I wouldn’t be breaking up anything that wasn’t already broken. And she was leaning against me.

  If you can live a lifetime in a moment, I did. And then I heard the following five, amazing words:

  “Can you take me home?”

  I was stunned for a moment, frozen, unable to respond. And then it began to dawn on me that Megan had somehow said those five words without moving her lips. Plus she had altered her voice. And made it sound like her voice was coming from in front of me. Then, much later than I should have, I realized that someone else had said it.

  We both looked up to see Nova standing in front of us. She had been crying. Running mascara had given her the look of a very attractive Goth raccoon.

  She stood there sniffling, her slight shoulders heaving up and down, and then she spoke again in one continuous run-on sob. “I want to go home and I shouldn’t drive because obviously I’ve had too much to drink and I’m not that stupid to drive myself and Boone won’t take me because he’s an ass and the booze is free and he wants to stay until Dr. Bitterman shuts down the bar and it’s been a long day, a long week, a long fucking year, and I shouldn’t drive and I want to go home, so will you drive me?”

  I looked from Megan to Nova and back to Megan, who was staring at the girl with a real sadness in her eyes.

  “Of course he will,” she said softly.

  “Of course I will,” I echoed immediately.

  “Eli will get you home safely,” Megan added.

  “Absolutely,” I concurred.

  “Thank you,” Nova said, using her sleeve to wipe her nose.

  I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and offered it to her and then stood up. I looked down at Megan, who was smiling at me.

  “Well...” I said, not sure how to bring this moment to a conclusion.

  “I’ll call you sometime,” she said.

  “That would be great,” I said.

  And then Nova blew her nose loudly into my handkerchief, effectively killing any romance that might have been building in the moment.

  Five minutes later, we were in my car and pulling away from the house. Nova’s crying had turned to sniffling and she looked very small in the passenger seat.

  I gave the bizarre glass home one last look as we headed away down the street. The lights were on in every room and you could see people moving about, like little ants in a multi-million dollar ant farm.

  Within the crowd, I recognized one lone, still figure. Boone was standing on the glass porch, another beer in his hand.

  He appeared to be watching my car with great intensity as we drove away.

  Chapter 10

  “It’s that house over there. The one on the right. No, left. It’s on the corner.” Nova pointed a long, thin finger as I drove, and I noticed that not only were her fingernails painted black, but also that tiny, sparkling stars were visible in that blackness. She saw me glancing at her nails and smiled proudly. “It’s a special nail polish, I made it myself. I call it Infinite Universe. The stars actually glow in the dark. Cool, huh?”

  “You should market that,” I said, as I pulled the car into a parking space across the street from the unlit house that her incessant, if imprecise, stream of verbal directions had led us to.

  “I will, someday, when I get around to it. But who has the time?” She opened the passenger door and stepped out, turning back to me as she did. “Will you come in until I get the lights on? I don’t like going in without the lights on.”

  She didn’t wait for a response, but closed the car door and was across the street, and halfway up the front steps, before I had even gotten myself unleashed from my seatbelt.

  I got out of the car and looked around, not entirely certain where we were. I knew we were somewhere in the Prospect Park neighborhood in Sou
theast Minneapolis, a tangle of curved streets that encircle Tower Hill Park and border our sister city of St. Paul. Standing by the car I looked up and I could see the small light atop The Witch’s Tower, a water tower at the top of the park. The peak of the tower, which really did resemble a witch’s hat, was visible from just about anywhere in the Prospect Park neighborhood, but it wasn’t a particularly helpful directional landmark, because you couldn’t tell by looking at it which side of the park you were near.

  It had been an informative, if a bit tiring, twenty-minute drive from Dr. Bitterman’s house across town.

  I don’t know if it was due to the alcohol, but Nova talked nearly nonstop. I learned all about her living situation—currently without a permanent address, she was something of a professional house-sitter, moving from assignment to assignment; her boyfriend troubles—the most current being Boone, with Grey right behind that, and someone named Dewey before that; the quality of sex with said beaus—just okay with Boone, boring with Grey, transcendental with Dewey; and finally her deeply-held beliefs about her own, unique psychic gifts—a natural intuitive, she was best at communicating with animals and could also commune with fairies when the stars were properly aligned.

  When all that information was jumbled in with her inexact driving directions—“Go left here…no wait, not here. Where are we?”—suddenly the low-grade headache I was experiencing made perfect sense.

  Plus, on top of that, I realized after we left the reception that I had not actually ever gotten anything to eat.

  It was just that kind of night.

  By the time I reached the top of the steps, Nova had unlocked the front door and was standing back from it, apparently waiting for me to step into the darkness and search for the light switch.

  “I probably should have left some lights on, but the sun was still out when I left.”

  “And yet, here it is, nighttime and it’s dark. Tough thing to plan for.” I looked at her and saw that my sarcasm was completely wasted. She was peering into the house, squinting.

  “I think the light switch is on the left. No, the right. No, left.”

  I stepped into the house, placed my right hand on the right wall just inside the door and found the light switch—in the same spot you might find it in perhaps ninety-nine percent of the homes in America. I flipped the switch and the lights popped on, which produced a slight “Ooh” from Nova, as if we were witnessing a small and sadly unimpressive fireworks display.

  “There you go,” I said, standing back from my handiwork. “You’re all set.”

  “Can you come in and help me check the house?” She waited for me to go in ahead of her.

  “Check the house for what?”

  “Strangers.”

  “Do you often get strangers?”

  “I don’t like to stay in an unfamiliar house at night until I’ve checked to make sure that no strangers have gotten in.” Her tone was emphatic. I stepped into the house and she followed me, shutting and locking the front door behind us.

  It was a pleasant, homey living room in what appeared to be a pleasant, homey house. The neighborhood was favored by professors at the nearby University of Minnesota campus, and this definitely felt like an educator’s home. Two walls of the living room were lined with bookcases, while another held a large tapestry of Mexican origin. The hardwood floors were covered by worn but clean oriental rugs. A staircase just inside the foyer ran up to the second floor and a hall straight ahead of me appeared to lead into the kitchen. The far end of the living room was open, probably leading to a standard dining room. No strangers were in sight.

  “Where would you like to start?”

  “First we check this floor.”

  I shrugged and made my way through the living room, into the predicted dining room. I turned on the lights without requiring directions on light switch placement, and then made my way through the dining room into the adjoining kitchen. Nova followed noiselessly, three paces behind me. I switched on the light in the kitchen, glanced down the hall back toward the living room and foyer and then turned to Nova.

  “So far, so good. Now what?”

  “Make sure the back door is locked.”

  I walked over to the door and gave it a cursory check. It was, in fact, locked and bolted. “Ground floor is secure, ma’am,” I said.

  She smiled nervously. “Now the basement.”

  “Of course,” I said. “The basement. A favored hiding spot for serial killers and lunatics.”

  “Don’t make jokes,” she said seriously, sounding more sober than she had in the last hour. “Check the basement.”

  The door to the basement was down the hall, between the kitchen and the front foyer. I stopped at the door. Nova stopped three steps behind me. I opened the door and turned to her.

  “So even though movies have cautioned us for the last forty years to not go into the basement,” I said with mock seriousness, “you’re asking me to ignore all those warnings and go down there?”

  She didn’t even pause to think this over. “Yes,” she said quickly. “And check the entire basement, including under the stairs and that creepy room in the back. And there’s a trunk down there. Look in the trunk.”

  “Any job worth doing is worth doing well,” I mumbled as I flipped on the light to the basement and headed down the stairs into the murk and beyond.

  Once I reached the bottom, I looked up to see Nova, silhouetted in the doorway. I considered doing the old reach-your-own-arm-from-around-behind gag and drag myself further into the basement, screaming, but I realized that such an action would probably have put the poor thing into cardiac arrest. So I simply turned and continued into the basement.

  The lighting was dim, even by basement standards, but I could see all four corners from where I stood and I saw no other creatures, humanoid or otherwise.

  The footprint of a large, octopus-style furnace system was still visible on the floor, but it had been replaced with a slimmer, more modern version, which was tucked neatly in one corner.

  A door hung halfway open across the room. I crossed to it and opened it completely, revealing a small pantry that once held pickled and stewed food supplies, but which now sat dusty and empty.

  A quick check under the stairs revealed a pair of his and hers bicycles that had not seen sunlight for quite a while and three folded lawn chairs that has also seen better days.

  I gave one last look around the basement and was about to head back upstairs when I remembered that Nova had mentioned a trunk. I turned and scanned the room again, finally spotting it on the other side of the furnace. Upon closer inspection, it hardly qualified as a trunk, and if someone were hiding in it, they couldn’t be much more than three feet tall. But my mission included opening the trunk, so I stepped forward and flipped the two rusty latches, half expecting a demented jack-in-the-box to spring out. Sadly, nothing that exciting emerged. Instead all I found was a stack of musty Life magazines, along with the obligatory pile of National Geographics.

  My mission accomplished, I returned to the stairs and headed back up to the first floor. “All clear. Now, onto the second floor?” I suggested as I turned off the basement light and shut the door.

  “First check the back door.”

  “I did that already.”

  “We need to check it again.”

  I looked at the door and then looked at her. “Did you unlock it while I was downstairs?”

  She shook her head categorically.

  “Did you touch it in any way?”

  Another head shake.

  “Did anyone else come in here and touch it while I was in the basement?”

  Head shake.

  “But you still want me to check it again?”

  She nodded. I sighed.

  “Let’s check the back door,” I said cheerfully.

  I walked the eight steps to the door. It was, in fact, still completely secured and locked. I jiggled the door handle for verisimilitude.

  I looked to her and she
turned and gestured down the hall toward the front door. I passed her and headed down there wordlessly. Without being asked, I double-checked the front door, which was also still locked. Nova had followed me. She gave me a smile of thanks and then looked up the stairs.

  “Have you ever considered that house-sitting might not be the ideal occupation for you?”

  “I love it during the day.”

  Unable to refute that train of logic, I headed up the stairs, with Nova three steps behind me.

  The second floor consisted of a single hall with two doors on the left side, one door on the right, and one door at the far end. All the rooms were dark. “Which one shall we check first?” I asked as I turned to Nova, who stood motionless three steps below me on the staircase.

  “First my room, then go clockwise.”

  “Clockwise.”

  “It works best that way.”

  I took a deep breath. “Which one is your room?”

  “The first door. On the —”

  She gave up trying to discern right from left and pointed to the first door on the right. I stepped in and found the light switch. I flipped the switch, which turned on a lamp on the bedside table.

  This was clearly the master bedroom, with a large queen bed taking up most of the room. Without requiring direction, I inspected the closet and under the bed, and then stopped at the mirror over the dresser. I leaned forward and peered into it.

  “What are you doing?” Nova asked from her position in the doorway.

  “Checking the other side of the mirror.”

  “The other side?”

  “Yeah. To make sure no one is there, on the other side.”

  Nova stepped forward tentatively and joined me. We both peered into the glass. I glanced over at her to see her earnestly staring into her reflection, and for a second I felt like a real ass.

  “I think we’re good,” I said. “Keep an eye on it while I check the other rooms.” She continued to stare into the mirror while I made my way out of the room and into the hall, shutting the door behind me.

  Obediently moving clockwise, I checked the other two bedrooms, both of which were blissfully devoid of strangers. One was a home office—the other was a guest room that was now overrun with unwanted items from the rest of the house. I checked the small bathroom as well, including pulling back the shower curtain, and then headed back down the hall to the master bedroom.