In the Cards: A Novel (Tricia Seaver Mystery Book 1)

by Amy Isaman

  “Good morning,” Amanda said cheerily. “Wasn’t the museum amazing?”

  “Good morning to you. And, yes, it was lovely. We enjoyed all of the art and the history. Where are you two off to today?”

  “Oh, I think we’re heading to the London Eye, that giant Ferris wheel. And then we’ll see. You?”

  “I’m actually not sure. Laurel’s in charge of our itinerary, so it’ll be a surprise. Enjoy your day.” I smiled at them and turned toward Darius’ table. He sat alone, reading the newspaper.

  “Good morning. Do you mind if I join you?” I rested one hand on the back of the chair across from him, the other gripped my coffee mug a bit too tightly. Oh, he made me feel something. It wasn’t unwelcome, more like an unexpected surprise, that I could still feel those feels.

  He smiled and folded his newspaper up. “Not at all. Please.” He stood like a perfect gentleman and gestured to the seat.

  Relieved, I sat and wrapped my hands around my coffee mug. The scent of blooming roses wafted around the garden, helping to settle my nerves.

  “I’m glad to see you survived your tarot reading intact.” He studied me and failed to suppress a small grin.

  “Barely,” I managed to get out from my tightening throat. Oh my. I took a gulp of coffee before continuing, happy to discover my voice had recovered and I didn’t sound like a choking frog. “I actually found it kind of fascinating. She nailed my personality with the cards, but I’m not sure how much of that was her own powers of observation or the cards.” I definitely wanted to keep this conversation on the cards and his story. That would be a good lead in for telling him about my find.

  “Probably a little bit of both,” he said.

  “Why do you say that?” Now, my voice came out higher than normal. I inwardly groaned. I felt like a prepubescent boy whose voice was changing. Now, I sounded like a flirt. A tarot reading yesterday. Finding a priceless treasure in a wardrobe last night. Flirting today. I’d apparently lost my mind.

  “I think that’s how a lot of readers work.”

  “Oh,” I remembered. “Our reader knew you.”

  “Ah, Tori read your cards? Yes, she’s an old friend, an old girl-friend actually,” he added. “But that was a long time ago.”

  “But you’ve never let her read your cards?” As soon as I asked, I wanted to grab the words back. If she was an old girlfriend, lord knows what she read in his cards. And, it was none of my business, but Darius just laughed.

  “No, she never read them, at least to my knowledge. As I said yesterday, my great-grandmother and mum raised me with the idea that if anyone should read my cards, death might be imminent. They were that afraid of the tarot.”

  “And why were they so afraid of the cards? I found the reading interesting, but not in any way threatening. It was relatively benign and didn’t scare me like I thought it would.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say I’m not interested in them, just that I’ve never had a reading. It’s family history. Apparently, my grandmother had a gift for reading the cards, but everyone else felt it was a curse that ultimately killed her.”

  “You mentioned that yesterday. I’d love to hear the story if you’ve got time.” And hopefully, I could tell him that I found a priceless card.

  “Oh, I’ve got some time. Do you?”

  I glanced at my watch. Laurel would be back in a half-hour or so, but then she’d need to shower and eat. “Well, I’ve got at least an hour.”

  Forty minutes later, Darius leaned back and placed his saucer tidily on the small tabletop. The garden had emptied of guests except for the Maxwell’s. I wondered what they heard of his most fascinating story.

  Sometime in the 1840s, he thought, his great-great-grandmother, a young Italian woman named Luisa, had met his great-great-grandfather, an Englishman. They had a brief, and somewhat scandalous, love affair which her parents attempted to end by sending their daughter off to a convent somewhere near Milan. She spent her days pining for her lost lover and refusing to leave her cell in the convent.

  Eventually, she escaped with her lover, and they fled Italy together. At this point, Darius grinned and explained that he’d heard probably ten different versions of her escape from the convent. His great-grandmother was a hopeless romantic who adored her parent’s love story, but there was also the possibility that Luisa herself was the romantic who’d woven so many tales. In any case, the lovers made it to Florence, wed, and took a ship to England.

  The intriguing part of the story was that she entered the convent with nothing, but when she escaped, she had some old, painted Tarot cards. According to the family legend, there were four of them.

  So, what I read in the letter was true. Anna Teresa hid four of the cards with some sort of cryptic map to find them, and I didn’t know if it was good luck or a damned curse that I was the one who managed to stumble on card number one.

  “I’ve looked into it,” Darius continued, interrupting my thoughts. “Today, they’d be worth a minor fortune.”

  “How old do you think they are?” I asked.

  “Well, I’ve done quite a bit of research, and they might be some of the first tarot cards. I believe they were hand-painted, not printed, which puts them very early, as in the Renaissance years.”

  “So, that would be from the 1400 or 1500s?” They’d be incredibly valuable. Darius said a minor fortune, I corrected him in my mind. They would be worth a major fortune, valuable historically and artistically.

  A knot of guilt settled in my stomach as I did the math in my head. If he was right, the card I found would be 600 years old? And I’d carelessly shoved it into a drawer. Now, my mind immediately turned to the details. The card would need to be authenticated. Perhaps the family legend was based on fraudulent pieces, but I had no idea. I’d never researched tarot cards.

  Darius nodded. “I’d love to find them, but I’ve become convinced that my great-grandmother destroyed them.”

  “What would make her destroy the cards?”

  He grinned. “Well, she thought they were cursed. My mum grew up with the idea that even speaking of the cards might cause lightning to strike and destroy everything.” He turned his head away from me, and I noted the curve of his jaw and his slight dark stubble, but quickly turned my thoughts back to the card. “It was hard to get anyone to talk about it. Kind of a taboo subject in my family since my mum and my great-grandma both believed that these old cards had something to do with my grandmother’s death. They’d talk about the love story between my great-great-grandparents, but only rarely did they speak of the cards.”

  He continued. “One of the most interesting parts of the story, to me, is that there’s no way tarot cards would have been allowed in a convent in the 1400s. They were called Trump cards, or Tarochi cards at that time, and the idea of divination or reading the cards would have been heresy, if using the cards for divination even existed at that time. They were originally used as a card game, but playing a game like that would not have been allowed in a convent. I’ve always wondered how they got there to begin with.”

  Like Darius, I had the same question. The letter I found might explain it, but if his family was in England for generations, maybe nobody could read Italian. We’d have to get it translated, which meant calling Collin or someone else. But I needed to tell Darius that I found it first. I took a deep breath and pictured the card that I stuffed into the writing desk. It showed lightning, destruction, and people crashing headfirst into the rocks below. It couldn’t foretell anything good happening.

  But death? Could it be a curse of death? Or maybe just loss of a fortune. Neither option appealed to me, not that I had any kind of monetary fortune, but I had my kids. They were my fortune, and I couldn’t, wouldn’t, lose them like I lost their father. And Darius didn’t have children that I knew of, but he had his art and his Inn.

  Darius continued with his story. At some point, the two lovers purchased a complete deck in France, and Luisa, his great-great-grandmother did readings for peo
ple with the cards with that deck. But when she pulled out the original cards, she always felt a strange foreboding. They made her nervous. Darius laughed at this point, commenting that he wasn’t sure he believed that and always thought the story had become more and more embellished through the years.

  In any case, she hid the cards away, believing that if she destroyed them or gave them away, they would truly harm somebody. His mother always said that her great-grandma Luisa, the one who found the cards in Italy, had the sight.

  “The sight?” I asked. Even I could hear the tone of disbelief in my voice. I didn’t want to offend him, but this was getting stranger and stranger. Now, these women sounded like the wizard Merlin.

  Darius nodded. “I know. It sounds crazy, but they believed it. All I know from there is that my grandmother, Rosie, found the cards as a young girl and her father, Edmund, used her and the cards somehow with his secret society.”

  I’d heard of secret societies, but I couldn’t remember details, other than there were some famous writers and artists involved in them.

  “So, what did that have to do with your grandmother? Her father took her to secret society meetings?”

  “Again, I don’t know many of the details, just that they were big in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Lots of people were in them and some of them were quite into the occult, spiritualism, that sort of thing. My grandmother died in childbirth while delivering my mum. My great-grandmother, Noni, raised both my mum and my aunt. And Noni believed that the evil in the tarot cards somehow killed my grandmother. I believe Noni destroyed the cards, but my aunt doesn’t think so. I actually spent some time with Tori looking for them. She got a little obsessive about the story when I shared it with her, but we never made any progress. She believes they’re hidden somewhere, but I think that’s wishful thinking.”

  Aunt Irene and Tori were right. They did still exist. Darius’ Noni hadn’t destroyed the cards. “What makes your aunt think they still exist? Does she have the ‘sight,’ too?” I inwardly grimaced even asking the question. The sight. Had that really come out of my mouth?

  Darius leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest. “My aunt says that my grandma, the woman with the sight, made Noni swear that she wouldn’t destroy the cards. But my grandmother died in 1923 and nobody has seen the cards since.”

  “So, you have no idea where they are?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you even know what cards they are? I mean, what the images are on them?” Even that little bit of information would verify what I found.

  “No. Nobody knows.” He gestured toward the back of his Inn. “This house has been in the family for well over a hundred and twenty years, but I’ve redone most of it. They’re not here.”

  “I know this might sound weird, but are the pictures on the stairwell outside our rooms your grandmother and great-grandmother?” I had stopped at one photograph of a stern-looking woman on virtually every trip up and down the stairs. She must be Anna Teresa. The Déjà vu. The weird dreams. And now I found the card. I felt like she was stalking me from the grave.

  He looked surprised at the question. “Why yes, they are. The picture closest to your door, that’s my great-grandmother, my Noni, who either hid or destroyed the cards,” he said, laughing. “It’s a terrifyingly stern photograph. The stories I grew up hearing about her are quite different than her image, but it’s the only one that I’ve got.”

  “What was her name?” I asked. “I find her photograph oddly compelling.” I didn’t know how else to put it.

  “Her name was Anna Teresa, but everyone I ever knew called her Noni.”

  I shut my eyes for a brief moment, feeling a pit opening up in my stomach. I needed to tell him now. If I didn’t, I’d be officially lying. It was a lie of omission, but still a lie. Or, I could have the letter translated and give him that gift. The card and both letters. No. I needed to tell him. Anna Teresa would want me to. Why I thought that I had no idea, but I did. I cleared my throat and leaned forward. “So, last night when we got back—”

  “Mom, there you are.” Laurel strode into the garden, her backpack thrown over her shoulder. She held her phone in her hand, which she waved in my direction, as if I could see or read whatever was on the small screen. “We’ve got to go. Our tour at The Tower starts in thirty minutes. Are you ready?”

  The tour. I’d completely forgotten about it.

  A surprising feeling of regret filled me as I set my coffee cup on the table. I hadn’t enjoyed a talk with a man like this, well, in years. Darius was attractive, well-spoken, and present. He listened. And here I was, leaving with a giant lie between us, though he didn’t know it.

  I glanced up at Laurel, “Well, any chance we can do one this afternoon?”

  Laurel raised her eyebrows at me. “Actually, probably not. I made this reservation awhile ago.”

  I stood. “Okay then, I’m ready.” Laurel came first, and I could tell Darius about it this afternoon, perhaps.

  Darius stood with me. “I so enjoyed our chat.”

  I smiled. “Me too. Can we continue it later?” I needed to tell him about the card as soon as I could.

  Chapter 9

  THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE TOUR of the Tower of London, I could think of nothing but the tarot card I so carelessly shoved into the writing desk. I hoped housekeeping wouldn’t look in the drawer. That hadn’t occurred to me earlier, but as soon as it did, I panicked about that too.

  What if it was gone when we got back? It should be locked up, safe, in a controlled environment.

  I imagined the card, the picture of the stone tower with the two figures falling, headfirst. I stopped walking as the coincidence set in. Anna Teresa felt like these cards caused chaos and disaster, and here I was, with my daughter, at an actual tower. I eyed the tall stone buildings. Would we go up to the top? There was a large green space with a huge tower in the middle, the White Tower if memory served.

  I blocked the sun from my eyes with my hand and studied the parapets which flanked its top edge. If we went to the top, Laurel would definitely want to look over the side, but thankfully, I didn’t see any heads peering through the gaps.

  Thank God. If we went up there, I wasn’t sure I could explain my sudden irrational fear of the tower’s edge. That, combined with the reading yesterday, had my heart clenched in anxiety. I tried to recall either of our future cards but couldn’t. I walked to the corner and peered up the building’s other side.

  Laurel followed behind me. “Mom, what are you doing?”

  “Nothing, just studying the tower and thinking about that reading yesterday.” I shook off my uneasiness and pulled up the photo of my tarot reading. I handed her my phone, pointing to the card that had the sticks flying through the air. To me, it looked like some sort of attack. “What did she say that card was? The one in the near future?”

  Laurel raised an eyebrow at me in curiosity, but she didn’t say a word. Instead, she studied the picture, a small grin teasing at the corners of her mouth. “I think she said it meant that things in your life were going to start speeding up, or something like that. Why are you asking? I thought you didn’t believe in any of that stuff. Did your reading get to you more than you’d like to admit?”

  “Um, yeah. Actually, it did.” Though I still didn’t understand the reading, I knew that the dream and Darius’ family history were all tied to the card in my room and to Anna Teresa and her picture as she watched me climb the stairs each day. And if I was honest with myself, that’s where I wanted to go, straight back to my room, to get the card and give it to Darius, so I wouldn’t have to worry about its curses or doomsday predictions any longer. Darius’ story this morning served only to confirm the superstitions that were gnawing at me. I’d never done any kind of appraisal or investigative work on anything this old and “new.”

  “Mom, hello? I feel like you’re not even here with me. What’s going on?”

  I lifted my gaze from my phone, taking in the park-like settin
g within the walls. The White Tower in the center had four rounded turrets on each corner, exactly like the tarot card. I shuddered.

  “I’m sorry.” I flicked my phone off and shoved it deep into my bag. I hated it when my kids had their phones out and paid more attention to the damn screen than anything that was actually happening, and here I was, doing the exact same thing. I was having a heck of a time trying to get my brain into the present moment.

  “Let’s go check out the ravens and the tower where Anne Boleyn got beheaded.” Laurel reached for my hand and squeezed it before pulling out her pamphlet about the history of this morbid place.

  I grimaced as she read out loud, all about the murders and the Ravens. Apparently, the Tower will fall if the six resident ravens leave. Another creepy superstition bedeviling me, which sent my brain straight into multi-task mode, one of its favorite settings, and right out of tourist mode.

  It seemed that the past was reaching forward and tapping me on the shoulder, trying to grab my attention. Every time that thought crossed my mind, I tried to banish it, but I hadn’t been so successful. It kept coming back. Out of the hundreds, if not thousands, of guests the Inn harbored over the years, why me?

  That was the question that kept teasing at the back of my mind. Why me? Why now?

  I needed to put this behind me. I’d fulfill whatever weird role I was playing in Anna Teresa’s drama and get back to being a tourist and enjoying this time with my daughter.

  I tried yet again to shake the thoughts from my mind.

  As Laurel read, I counted ravens. Five. There were only five. I sighed.

  “We need to head back to the Inn,” I interrupted her. I wasn’t sure how she’d take me taking control of our plans again. I felt helpless not being in charge of the schedule like I always was. At first, I thought it would be freeing, but I was finding it frustrating. I was supposed to take care of her and our plans, not the other way around.

  Laurel paused in her reading. “Why? I’ve got the whole day planned.”