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

by Amy Isaman

Darius laughed and shook his head. “Uh, no.”

  “The Devil, though, that makes me think of the bible. When I think of the beginning, I think of Genesis and God creating the world. Maybe the card is in your family bible? Would she have hidden the card there or do you think she might have considered that sacrilegious?”

  Darius took a deep breath. “That’s a brilliant idea, but she was a devout Catholic. I doubt she’d put a cursed thing into a bible, but I suppose it’s worth a shot. Maybe she thought the bible could take the evil out of the card. And we do have a family bible.” He stood slowly. “But where the devil is it?” He grinned and strode across the room to a bookshelf, running his fingers along the spines as he surveyed the titles.

  I joined him but didn’t see a bible on the shelf.

  He stepped back, thinking.

  “You don’t take it to Mass with you every week?” I asked, smiling.

  “Uh, no.” His forehead deepened into furrowed lines as he thought. “Perhaps the storage room. It was actually my great-grandfather’s office. There might be something there. Maybe he was the devil, too? In fact, that’s the room the wardrobe was originally in. Do you think she would have hidden all of them in there with him? To mock him somehow?”

  “Well, from what you’ve said, she thought of him as a Devil. Like his activity somehow caused their daughter’s death. And I can’t imagine he would have been happy to have ‘lost’ his cards. Unless he passed before she hid them. When did he die?” I followed him up the stairs.

  Darius paused on the steps and re-read the letter. “She wrote this in 1924. That’s around the time when her daughter died, but I don’t think my great-grandfather died until later. In fact, I think it’s all in the bible. Wherever the bloody hell I put that.”

  “So, you’re familiar with the bible? But you didn’t see the tarot card?”

  “No, but she could have hidden it under the endpaper, somehow gotten it in the binding or the cover, perhaps. I’ve never investigated it that closely.”

  “Would it be possible to catalog and go through every piece of furniture or item that might be original to the house? What if she hid everything in furniture or books?”

  Darius groaned. “What if I’ve given them away?” We reached the top of the stairs and he grabbed a lovely Louis XV style chair and flipped it over, studying the bottom of the seat.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for the card. This chair has always been in the house.” He flipped the chair back over and set it down. “I’m going to go crazy looking for fake panels and hidden drawers in furniture. It’ll take weeks to catalog the Inn’s contents. We don’t have weeks.”

  “Well, I don’t, but there’s no rush for you is there?”

  “Yes. You’re leaving.” His eyes locked with mine. Did he want me here because he thought I could help him find the cards, or did he want me here because of me? I hoped it was because of me.

  I laughed, nervously. “I think you can do this without me.”

  “I think not,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me up the stairs behind him.

  ♦♦♦

  A tall narrow building, the Inn had three stories above the ground floor. Darius’ great-grandfather’s study was at the top of the first flight of stairs. Darius unlocked it and pulled the door open. Unlike the rest of the Inn, this room hadn’t seen Darius’ touch.

  Dust motes floated in the stuffy space, backlit by the small window which overlooked the rear garden. Dark bookshelves covered one wall, but boxes were stacked in front of the shelves, hiding the books. A faded flowered red wool rug covered the floor, and the walls were covered with some sort of gold and green paisley printed wallpaper. Clearly, this space hadn’t always served as Darius’ storage room. Pictures, framed portraits, and art leaned against every other surface. It felt as if I stepped right into the Victorian era, and I momentarily wished I’d seen the Inn as it originally looked. I loved Darius’ art, but this room had a feeling like no other room in the house. Not that I’d been in many other rooms, but it even smelled different, that warm, musty, dusty smell intrinsic to old places. I loved it. I felt ill at ease, off-center everywhere else in the Inn but not this room. I wondered for a moment what that meant.

  I rubbed at my eyes. It didn’t mean anything. I found the first card because I needed to rest after trying to rescue my earring. If we found the other cards, it wasn’t going to be because I had a cozy feeling when I entered the space. We’d find them because we figured out Noni’s riddle.

  Darius ran his hand through his dark hair as his gaze moved throughout the room. “Shall we empty the whole space out? I’m going to have to put the whole bloody mess in my apartment downstairs.”

  “No. I don’t think we’ll need to do that.” I couldn’t imagine this pile of boxes in Darius’ pristine apartment. The leather couches, the art. He’d done his space in a contemporary ‘man’ style. I couldn’t think of what else to call it, but I liked it. “Let’s see what we can find in here first. Aren’t we looking for a bible? Why do you need to empty the entire thing to find a book?”

  “Yes, we are looking for the bible, but what if she stuck the card behind the baseboard where he sat or under the floorboards or something? We’ll never find it with all of this stacked up.” He waved his arm, encompassing the mess.

  “Then, I suppose we might need to empty the room, but first, let’s look for the bible. I feel like if we get all haphazard about this, we’ll just get more confused.” And I might have an anxiety attack if we just dove in without a plan. But I didn’t tell him that. Methodical. That was how I worked. If I was going to walk down this road, I at least needed to know the next step I was going to be taking, or I’d never make it. Laurel was right. I’d become an anxiety-ridden, control freak. No fun. How had I gotten like this? I looked up, as if I could see Bret, and glared at him. It was his fault for leaving me. No. It wasn’t his fault. This was all about me. I closed my eyes and took a breath to shake off my self-analysis session. When I opened them, I focussed on Darius who knelt down and was pulling books from a large box. He moved slowly, reading the title of each book he pulled and riffling through the pages. There was no sense of urgency with Darius, a trait I found surprisingly compelling.

  I pulled a box over and sat on it next to him and began to pull books, journals, and family ephemera from another box. “Look at this.” I pulled out a photo of a much younger Darius, leaning on the railing of a bridge somewhere.

  Darius turned and began laughing. “Ah, you’ve found a memory box of mine from my teen years. Other than some good laughs, there’s not much in there.” He shoved another box of books toward me. “Look in here.”

  A half an hour later and four boxes in, Darius broke our comfortable silence. “Tricia, I’ve found it.” He pulled a large, leather tome from the box of books he’d been digging through. He handed it to me and pulled the quilts from the wooden chair in the corner, waving at me to sit. He perched on a box next to me and opened the bible.

  Darius opened to Genesis, riffled the pages of the bible and The Devil tarot card failed to reveal itself to us. Darius then studied the front and back covers for a false cover that she might have made. Nothing. “Bugger. I thought you solved it, Tricia.” He shut the bible and tapped his fingers on it, thinking.

  “The beginning. What did she mean by that?”

  Darius shrugged. “The beginning of what? These cards are hundreds of years old, so there are a lot of possible beginnings.”

  “Too many possibilities.” I glanced around the space. “What are all these paintings from?” Where there weren’t boxes, piles of frames leaned against each other like dominoes that weren’t able to fall all the way down.

  “Ah, my collection as well as my great-grandfather’s paintings. He was an artist and a doctor. He painted after hours and was actually quite good.”

  I pulled one from the end of the longest leaning pile and flipped it over. It was a pencil sketch of a woman holding the hand
les of a plow while another figure behind her worked another field. A flock of birds flew in the background. I wondered about it. As far as I knew, Darius’ great-grandfather was a city man. A man who belonged to a secret society of some sort, but this drawing was earthy and even peaceful. The look on the woman’s face seemed intent but not unhappy.

  I reached for several more. The final one was a close-up portrait of a man. “Who’s this?”

  Darius shrugged. “No idea. I’ve got a stack of portraits like that. I would’ve thought he’d have given them to the subjects but apparently not. Maybe these were practice pieces?”

  “Wait.” I held my hand up and studied the graven image of the gentleman I held. I flipped the portrait around, so Darius could see it. “Could this be a Knight or a Devil? Would she have hidden the card in a portrait of a man who maybe started the whole tarot thing or who was a Knight?” I was thinking out loud. “Could she have put a card in a frame? Maybe between the stretcher and the canvas itself?”

  “It makes sense if the knight is watched over by one of his own. I wonder if he ever painted a Knight? Possibly framed with a wider decorative frame? Lord knows there wasn’t ever one in the family.” Darius picked up another portrait. And studied the back, but the stretcher bars were far too thin to hide a tarot card, and none of the portraits had paper backing on them.

  I turned the portrait that I held over and studied it. There was a torn paper backing on this one, though I hadn’t seen any others with a paper backing.

  “Let’s look.” I felt like Charlie in Charlie in the Chocolate Factory looking for the Golden Ticket. It actually wasn’t that different. If the other cards maintained their quality as The Tower had, we’d see the same glimmer of gold peeping through the paper backing. I found myself holding my breath as I peeled back the paper. But all we found was the plain canvas, dark with age. No priceless golden ticket. Or tarot card.

  Darius knelt on the ground and begun flipping the frames over and studying them.

  They had to be here.

  They weren’t.

  Two hours later and stacks of paintings and books piled around the room, we’d found nothing. So much for my methodical methods. The room was a disaster. I collapsed onto a box and dropped my head in my hands.

  “Dammit,” Darius said, rocking back on his heels. “I think we’ve got a smashing idea, then nothing.”

  “I’m afraid we need more information.”

  Darius looked around the space. “This is bloody overwhelming. Would you care for some tea? I’m ready for a break.”

  “I’d love some.” A dark smear of dust ran across his forehead, and I fought the urge to wipe it off. I studied one of the portraits as I spoke, to distract me from reaching for Darius and doing something other than merely wiping a smudge from his face. In the hours we spent together, I found myself thinking of much more than the tarot cards. “I think we need to know what the tarot cards even symbolize. I mean, we’re assuming that the Knight represents an actual knight and that the Devil means that we’re looking for somebody evil. But what if they mean something else?”

  He sighed. “We need to talk to Tori. But first, we need some tea. With some whiskey in it, perhaps.”

  I wanted to remind him again not to tell anyone, but I bit back my words. There was that damn trepidation again that had been haunting me this whole trip. I ignored it. That’s what this was about. An adventure. Finally having some fun. When had I become such a curmudgeon, driven by worry and fear?

  “Let’s tidy this up a bit first. Maybe stack what we’ve gone through in that corner.”

  Darius stood and began moving boxes and paintings to clear a path to the door.

  Chapter 11

  LAUREL KNELT ON THE ground, holding her camera at a variety of angles to capture the light filtering through the arches and buildings above her. She and her mom were visiting all of the traditional tourist attractions, so this afternoon, she decided to see if she could capture some shots that were a little out of the norm and might capture the city’s energy in a way that she hadn’t been able to do yet.

  Her dad gave her her first camera when she turned twelve, and they spent hours together taking photos and studying angles and light. It was their thing, and she found herself missing him as she wandered the city. He would have loved this trip. Well, the healthy dad that she remembered would have loved it. Not the shaken, withdrawn version that he became before he died. She wondered what he would think of the fully photoshopped and reimagined versions of her photos that she created. It was her favorite way to create.

  Laurel stood and stretched, her quads aching from the squat she held herself in for the last few shots. Glancing at her watch, she realized that she better head back to the inn.

  Thirty minutes later, she bounced up the stairwell toward her room to find a door that she never noticed standing open on the first landing. Laurel peeked her head in to find the two of them stacking boxes and paintings as they talked in hushed tones.

  Her mom looked filthy but content, relaxed, in a way that she hadn’t looked in a long time. Laurel grabbed her camera and snuck a quick shot. They both missed her Dad terribly, but Laurel also knew that it was time for her mom to start living again, and she hoped that maybe Darius could encourage her to do that.

  “Hey, I’m back. Did you find anything?” Laurel asked, grinning.

  “Not a thing,” Darius said, shrugging his shoulders. “But, we did learn that by ‘the beginning’ Noni didn’t mean Genesis, the first book in the bible.”

  Laurel looked at them, somewhat befuddled. “Okay then. I guess that’s good?”

  “Well, it’s good if knowing where one card isn’t is good. Did you have a good day?”

  Laurel nodded. “I had a great day. I’ll show you some of the shots I got over dinner.” She wondered what her mom would say if she said she might stay in London and Europe a little longer. She’d have to broach it carefully, appeal to her mom’s long-lost-adventurous side, but she’d been making progress letting go. Laurel had been shocked that her mom let her plan this trip.

  “So,” Laurel stepped into the small space and pulled out her camera, quickly capturing her mom’s relaxed demeanor. “What’s next for the search?”

  Darius sighed deeply. “Well, we’ve either got to tear my home apart from top to bottom or try to figure out these bloody clues.”

  “No worries about your house. My mom is great at clues. She loves crosswords.”

  Her mom laughed. “How on earth does that have anything to do with Noni’s clues for the tarot?”

  Laurel shrugged. “I don’t know. You like that stuff, solving puzzles. You’ll figure it out.” She paused and smiled, “Mom, you’re not the best at giving up.”

  A wide smile covered Darius’ face. “Good to know,” he said as the bells on the Inn’s main entrance jingled. He glanced at his watch. “Ah, check in time. Can you ladies close this room up for me?”

  “Of course,” her mom said, as Darius wiped his hands on his jeans and headed downstairs to greet the new guests.

  “So, how was it?” Laurel asked, dying to know, not only about the cards but about Darius. She wondered if her mother would tell her anything about him, though.

  “It was fun, actually. The history in this Inn is amazing. He’s got some great stories, but we didn’t find anything. We pretty much managed to figure out that we don’t have a clue about the clues she left. I mean, neither of us has any idea what the cards mean. Or, if she hid them in the house here or in objects that might be long gone.”

  “You don’t have any ideas? At all?”

  “Well, apparently Darius’ great-grandfather was a portrait painter in addition to being a doctor. We think maybe she hid one or more of the cards in the back of the frames of portraits. But apparently, he’s given a lot of the paintings to family members, and he even sold some, so those might be long gone. We went through the ones stacked in there but didn’t find a thing.”

  Laurel looked over her mo
m’s shoulder into the small space. Boxes and pictures were stacked haphazardly throughout it. “Can I take a peek?” she asked.

  Tricia stepped back and Laurel entered the small space. She crouched down and began poking through the boxes and paintings while her mother quietly watched her. The canvasses that leaned against the boxes were covered in dust and definitely needed a good cleaning. “You said he sold some of these. They’re not half bad. Why would he sell them? I thought he was a collector.”

  Tricia laughed. “I asked him the same question. But I guess the room I’m staying in was great-grandpa’s original studio, and it was stacked with canvasses by the time he passed. He was never a famous painter, so they weren’t worth much, if anything. Darius kept the ones of family or people he knew, which are all of these, and sold the rest. I think we decided that the next step is to figure out what the cards mean and if the meanings have changed through the years. If Noni knew their meanings, then that might have directed where she hid the cards. I’ve got no other ideas. Do you?”

  Laurel shook her head. She’d thought about the cards and the search all day. She’d even gone back to the tarot exhibit at the V & A Museum. Her heart flipped over in her chest when she saw the cards ensconced in the case. And now, her mother found a missing card, and just that morning, she’d seen it. The whole thing thrilled her.

  She’d grown up hearing about her mother’s adventurous side–traipsing around Europe as a young woman with a backpack, barely any money, and no itinerary; leaving her home in a small town in Idaho and moving to San Francisco to study art. Since Laurel’s teen years, and her dad’s death, she felt like she’d never get to know that adventurous woman. Maybe now she would.

  “Trust me when I tell you they’re not here. We’ve looked through everything, more than once. I’m filthy.”

  Laurel stood when she heard footsteps coming down the hall and left the small room. Her hands were coated in a fine film of dust from her short time in the storage room. “Yeah. It doesn’t take long to get dirty in here, does it?”