The White Magic Five & Dime (A Tarot Mystery)

by Steve Hockensmith

  “That’s right. I heard some of the staff at the home whispering about her, and I thought they were laughing at me and it made so mad I walked right out and went to the sporting goods store and bought myself that pea shooter. They wouldn’t sell me the real thing. Said I was too agitated. Can you believe it? In America! In Arizona! Anyway, I got what I could and I came here. That was a lot of walking for an old man, let me tell you. But I just had to see Athena again. For…for…”

  Meldon squeezed his eyes shut and searched for the word he wanted.

  “Closure?” I suggested.

  The old man’s eyes popped open.

  “What the hell is that?” he said. “No, I just wanted your mother to do the right thing. Give me back my wife’s jewelry and admit she’d done me wrong.”

  “Well, I’m afraid it’s too late for an apology from her, but we’ll see about the jewelry. If I come across it, I’ll let you know.”

  “Oh, you will, huh? I should just crawl back into my little hole and wait for you to bring me what’s mine out of the goodness of your heart?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Come on. I’ll give you a lift. I have to pick up some burritos anyway.”

  Meldon glowered at me.

  “Or we could always just have the police drive you home,” I said. “I’m sure they’re looking for you by now.”

  “All right, all right.”

  The old man tried to push himself up off the couch. He didn’t make it.

  I took his hands and pulled him to his feet.

  A prime suspect he was not.

  He yanked his hands away and started shuffling toward the door.

  “Don’t you want that?” I asked.

  I pointed at the air gun he’d left on the coffee table.

  He didn’t even look back.

  “They’d just take it from me,” he said.

  Before I followed him out, I noticed two pairs of feet on the stairs at the back of the building. Clarice and Ceecee had been sitting on the steps, eavesdropping.

  I wondered how long they’d been there.

  I wondered if they’d seen the old man pointing a gun at me.

  I wondered if they’d been hoping he’d pull the trigger.

  It was a short drive to the Dry Creek Assisted Living Community. On the way, I thought again of Detective Logan’s list. There was only one person on it left to track down.

  “Does someone named Victor Castellanos live at Dry Creek?” I asked Meldon.

  “No.”

  Damn.

  A block went by.

  “There was a Mrs. Castellanos, though,” Meldon said. “She used to come to all of Athena’s talks, same as me.”

  “‘There was a Mrs. Castellanos’? Past tense? Meaning she’s passed on?”

  “You mean died? No. She moved out. Not long after Athena stopped coming around, too.”

  “Do you know her first name?”

  “What do I look like? A phone book?”

  Another block went by.

  “Lucia,” Meldon said.

  I didn’t pull into the Dry Creek parking lot. Instead, I stopped on the street just outside the entrance.

  “It’d probably be best if you didn’t tell anyone I brought you back,” I said. “We don’t want to answer a lot of questions about what you were up to and why, right?”

  “Yeah. I suppose so.”

  “Do you need help getting out of the car?”

  “No.”

  Meldon tugged on the door handle a few times. The door didn’t open.

  “Yes,” he said.

  In the time it took me to walk around to his side of the car and open the door, he’d started crying.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking about the Two of Cups, of all things. Athena used to say it was our card.”

  “I understand.”

  Or I meant to, anyway. Later.

  “Mad as I was at your mother, there was a crazy part of me that actually thought we might patch things up. Me and my wife used to fight all the time. Hurt each other in a million mean little ways. There was love there, though. I guess I hoped it might be the same with Athena. That makes me an old fool, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” I said. “Not at all.”

  Meldon wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, then let me help him to his feet.

  “All right, all right, I’m good now,” he said, steadying himself with the door.

  I let go.

  He gazed off at the Dry Creek Assisted Living Community—a long white building with only one story. It looked nice enough. To me, at least. Meldon seemed in no hurry to get back.

  “You say your mother was murdered?” he said.

  “That’s right. They still haven’t caught the killer.”

  The old man gave his head a weary shake.

  “Maybe she had another fiancé.”

  He started walking away. He was moving slowly, even by his standards. I was worried he might trip and fall in the parking lot, so I stayed and watched him until he’d gone inside.

  I had to wait a long, long time.

  Ceecee didn’t stick around for her carne asada. When I got back to Mom’s place, Clarice’s gothy friend had gone.

  “It’s a school night. She couldn’t hang out here forever,” Clarice said with a shrug. She took a bite of her vegetarian burrito. “So who was that banging on the door?”

  “You didn’t hear me talking to Mr. Meldon?”

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I took a bite of my own burrito. It was cold.

  “So what did Mr. What’s-His-Name want?” Clarice asked.

  “He was selling Girl Scout cookies. Hey, you know what? I’ve been wondering. I was going through my mother’s clothes—”

  “I noticed.” Clarice looked pointedly at the turtleneck and chinos I was wearing.

  “—and I see she was down to a size 2,” I went on. “My mom was never a 2. How’d she do it?”

  “Oh, she went on some crazy diet about four months ago. Yogurt and cheese and fruit and nuts. I told her she looked fine already—she always did—but of course what I said didn’t matter. After a while, she got so skinny even I was saying, ‘Jesus, Athena. Get yourself a Big Mac.’”

  “How did it affect her mood? She put us both on the Atkins Diet when I was, like, twelve, and it turned her into a real zombie. She stumbled around glassy-eyed for months. Then one day she just said ‘screw it,’ drove to the nearest Pizza Hut, and that was that.”

  “Yeah, it was kind of like that again. She looked tired a lot. There were a few days she didn’t even open the shop at all, and that never used to happen no matter how sick she was. She’d rather give twenty people the flu than miss out on one day’s cash.”

  I nodded.

  I bought it. For once, Clarice wasn’t evading, dodging, or snowing me. She really had no idea Athena had been dying.

  “That sounds like Mom,” I said, smiling in a pseudo-wistful oh, that wacky lady kind of way.

  No sale for me. Clarice furrowed her brow, frowning, and I knew that she knew that I knew something she didn’t.

  She wasn’t going to ask me about it directly, though. She’d spent enough years with my mother not to do something as straightforward and sincere and boring and dumb as that.

  “She was really something, wasn’t she?” she said.

  “That she was.”

  “A real original.”

  “Yup.”

  “One of a kind.”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  Clarice gave me a full-on scowl now.

  “Why do you think she never talked about you?” she said. “Not one mention in all the years I knew her. It was like you didn’t exist.”

  I shrugged
. “We didn’t part on good terms.”

  “Why not?”

  “She wanted me with her. I had to change her mind.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I made things unpleasant.”

  “Why? You couldn’t just leave? Move out or run away or whatever?”

  “My mother wasn’t someone you could just run away from. So I made sure she wouldn’t want to find me.”

  “But then she did, supposedly. After all those years, suddenly she was thinking of you. And not long after that, she was dead and you got everything. Weird, huh?”

  “Utterly frakking unbelievable,” I said. “What about you?”

  “What about me what?”

  “Didn’t you ever want to get away from her? I know what she could be like. The kinds of things she could expect of someone.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Really? Then you can count yourself lucky. It sounds like you never really knew my mother at all.”

  “I knew her better than you! That’s why I can’t understand why she gave you the house and the car and whatever else. You keep calling her ‘mother’ and ‘mom,’ but until a few days ago you didn’t care if she was alive or dead.”

  “I care that somebody killed her.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I wish certain people wouldn’t act so cagey when I ask questions.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Because you’re so open and honest yourself. How crazy not to trust you.”

  That shut me up.

  I don’t mind when other people are right. I just don’t like it when they’re so right about me.

  Clarice glared at me. This much she wasn’t hiding: she hated me. It almost felt like she was daring me to throw her out.

  I was about to give her a touché when she picked up her plate and stood.

  “I’ve got homework to do. See you later.”

  She walked to her room and closed the door.

  I finished my dinner with Infinite Roads to Knowing for company. I had homework to do, too.

  It had been the Lovers and the Two of Cups that had convinced Ken Meldon he and my mother had a long, happy future ahead of them. The Lovers needed no explanation. The Two of Cups—aka the Two of Chalices—did.

  Then I saw it.

  Oh yeah. Josette Berg had turned it up when she’d read for me the day before. Her reaction (more or less): “Ooo la la!” It was easy to see why.

  The hovering bat-lion I still didn’t get, but the couple and their Big Gulps was obvious.

  A man and a woman face each other, offering what they have to share.

  This is a hook-up. Or “the beginning of a be-YOO-tiful friendship,” as Miss Chance put it in her book. According to her, the Two of Cups was all about “partnerships commenced” and “the nurturing of fruitful symbioses.” (For someone who threw in references to Bugs Bunny and Conan the Barbarian, the woman sure could be pretentious.)

  I could understand the appeal of the card, especially to someone like Meldon. The poor man had lost his two true loves: his wife and his guns. He was totally alone. What did he have to cling to if not some companionship and a (carefully cultivated) dream of new romance?

  Smooth one, Mom. For someone with no soul, you sure knew how to mess with other people’s.

  Of course, here I was thinking I was the soulful one—the human one—and I was more alone than my mother had been. After I’d made my escape, she’d picked up a replacement daughter, somehow or other. I don’t know how nurturing or fruitful it had been, but at least she and Clarice did seem to have some kind of symbiosis. Yet if Anthony Grandi suddenly popped in to take me out, nobody would miss me but my boss back at the call center—and that’d be because our sales team probably wouldn’t make its quota for the month. I didn’t even have any pets to leave starving when I didn’t come back. I was a cat lady without the cats.

  If I did have a soul, I guess I hadn’t figured out what to do with it yet.

  I studied the Two of Cups again. The more I looked at it, the more I thought the man looked kind of cranky.

  Maybe he didn’t like what was in his cup. Maybe he was pissed because his gal pal was reaching out to take it. Maybe he’d had a rough childhood.

  Yet there he was anyway. Commencing a partnership. Nurturing a symbiosis. Hooking up. Connecting.

  If he could do it, so could I.

  Maybe.

  Lucky guy. Really. Usually when you get hanged it’s by your neck, and that’s not known for its health benefits. The Hanged Man is dangling by his ankle, though, which is an inconvenience for him, yes, but one that’s paid off. He’s been forced to stop and look at things from a whole new perspective, and that’s given him insight into how the world really works. His frown hasn’t necessarily been turned upside down, but his outlook on life sure has been.

  Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing

  I woke up. I unlocked and unbarricaded the bedroom door. I got coffee. I pulled out Detective Logan’s list. Two of the names were crossed off.

  I got to work on the third.

  “Red Rock Elder Care Center. How can I help you?”

  “Hi! I haven’t been in Berdache since I was a kid, but now I’m passing through on business and I thought I’d look up an old family friend. I can’t seem to find her, though, and I was wondering if maybe she lived there now.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Lucia Castellanos.”

  “I’m sorry. There’s no one here by that name.”

  “Awww, too bad. Thanks anyway.”

  “You’re welcome. Good luck.”

  “Oak Creek Canyon Residential Living. How can I help you?”

  “Hi! I haven’t been in Sedona since I was a kid, but now I’m passing through on business and I thought I’d look up an old family friend. I can’t seem to find her, though, and I was wondering if maybe she lived there now.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Lucia Castellanos.”

  “I’m sorry. There’s no one here by that name.”

  “Awww, too bad. Thanks anyway.”

  “You’re welcome. Good luck.”

  “Verde River Vista Senior Residences. How can I help you?”

  “Hi! I haven’t been in Cottonwood since I was a kid, but now I’m passing through on business and I thought I’d look up an old family friend. I can’t seem to find her, though, and I was wondering if maybe she lived there now.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Lucia Castellanos.”

  “Oh yeah—she’s here. Something, isn’t she?”

  “A real pistol. Does Victor ever come by to see her?”

  “That’s her son, right?”

  “Right.”

  “He’s in here pretty regularly.”

  “Great.”

  “Will you be coming by, too?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Wonderful! I’ll tell Lucia. She’ll be thrilled. What’s your name?”

  “Mallory Keaton.”

  “Mallory Keaton? Really? Wasn’t that what’s-her-name’s character on Family Ties?”

  “I said Valerie Keaton.”

  “I’m sorry. I must have misheard you.”

  “Big Family Ties fan, are you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Me neither.”

  Verde River Vista Senior Residences was big and white and sterile. Lucia Castellanos was little and brown and wrinkled. A woman guided her into the Social Center (aka the Overlit Room with a Lonely-Looking Bumper Pool Table and a TV with a Screen Big Enough for a Drive-In Blasting Fox News at an Old Man Dozing in a Wheelchair) where I’d been waiting.

  “Is that her?” Lucia said, stabbing a gnarled finger my way. She was somewhere b
etween 80 and 4,000 years old.

  “That’s her,” the woman said. “You two have a nice visit now.”

  She handed Lucia off to me like a football, smiled, and left.

  “Well, how about a hug?” Lucia said.

  I bent down (and down and down—she was teeny), put my arms around her hunched back, and patted. It was like trying to burp a fire hydrant.

  “All right, that’s good,” Lucia said. “Now help me sit down.”

  A minute later, she was on a couch. It hadn’t been easy to arrange. She seemed to have lost the ability to bend her knees, so the act of sitting was a sort of semi-controlled backwards fall. It was a good thing she was small and the couch was soft.

  It was going to take ropes and pulleys to get her on her feet again.

  “So,” she said, “tell me what you’ve been up to, Valerie. Goodness, it feels like it’s been forever!”

  “I think there’s been a mix-up, Mrs. Castellanos. My name’s not Valerie.”

  “But they said a Valerie was here to see me. An old friend.”

  “Well, I guess that was good timing for me. I’m not sure they’d have let me see you otherwise.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “A nice place like this—they’re not going to let just anybody waltz in and start talking to residents. Not like at Dry Creek. That’s where you lived before, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  I would say the woman squinted at me, but she was always squinting at everything. Still, she seemed to squint even harder.

  “So you’re not Valerie?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I hope she’s still coming. I want to find out who the heck she is. I don’t remember any Valerie. But they could’ve told me Adolf Hitler was here to see me and I’d have sprayed on some perfume and come out to say hello.”

  I nodded, smiling. That’s what I’d been counting on.

  “My name’s Alanis. I think you knew my mother. Athena Passalis.”

  “Yes, of course! How is she?”

  “I’m afraid she’s passed away.”

  Lucia reached out toward me. After a little groping, she found a hand and patted it.