Peaches and Scream

by Chelsea Thomas

  My eyes widened. The last time I had visited Salazar with Miss May, she’d forced me to do a psychic reading with him. It wasn’t an experience I was eager to repeat — I was having a hard enough time with the present, I didn’t need to worry about the future too. And my recent attempt at a tarot card reading had not turned out so hot.

  I spoke before Miss May had the chance to throw me under the proverbial bus yet again. “We’re actually not here for any readings. At least not personally. But, well, there was an incident at our orchard.”

  “I heard. So sad.”

  “It was sad,” I said. “We’re actually here to talk to you because this particular victim had a tarot card spread in front of her when she died.”

  Salazar turned his head to the side. “That’s curious.” He stroked his chin. “I’m not a suspect in this investigation, am I? Tarot cards are widely available for sale. You can buy them on the Internet, you can buy them in the city, I even think they sell them over at Big Jim’s magic supply store in town.”

  “You’re not a suspect,” said Miss May. “We were just hoping you could help us interpret the tarot cards that were left at the scene of the crime. We’re thinking that the cards might have been a message from the killer or there might be a hidden clue in their meaning.”

  “I would love to help,” said Salazar. “But tarot cards have many variations. I doubt you’ll be able to describe the cards you saw in enough detail for me to—”

  “Come on, Sal,” said Teeny. “The three of us are murder mystery solving machines. We aren’t about to rely only on our memories like we’re just out of the bloody academy. Who do you think we are? Mr. Flowers’ friends from the gardening club? Those guys could barely solve a murder if it happened right in front of them.”

  Salazar smiled. “You watch Jenna and Mr. Flowers?”

  “Of course,” said Teeny. “That’s one of my shows. So interesting. But we’re far better than some fake British TV detectives. We took a photo of the tarot card spread so you can analyze it with precision.”

  Miss May scooted to the edge of her chair and pulled her phone out of her purse. “I’ve got the picture right here. If you could take a look I think it might be helpful.”

  Miss May slid the phone toward Salazar but he held out his hand to stop her. “I’m sorry. I want to help. But I’m a freelancer, as you know. And it’s my moral obligation to myself and my business to make sure my services are valued.”

  Miss May looked over at me. I shrugged. She looked back to Salazar. “OK. How much for a tarot card reading?”

  Salazar handed Miss May a little brochure the detailed his prices and services.

  Miss May scanned the brochure with her pointer finger. “Seventy five dollars for a tarot card reading?”

  Salazar gave Miss May a tightlipped grin. She sighed. “Fine. We’ll pay it.”

  Over the next few minutes, Salazar struggled to process Miss May’s credit card with his newfangled card reader. Then, at last, he took the phone from Miss May and looked at the tarot card spread from the murder scene.

  Salazar double-tapped on the screen to zoom in on the cards. His eyes widened as he scrolled from one card to the next and he began to mutter. “Oh no. No. This…” Salazar started to hyperventilate. He stood up and dropped the phone to the floor with a loud shriek.

  “Salazar! Are you OK?” Miss May asked.

  Salazar pointed toward his front door. “Out. Get out.”

  Miss May, Teeny, and I stood.

  “What happened? What did you see?” Miss May stepped toward Salazar. Once again, he pointed toward the front door. “You have brought a horrible, dangerous energy into my home. Leave now or I will call the police.”

  I held up my hands to calm Salazar. “Alright. We’re going.” I looked over at Teeny and Miss May. “Right, ladies?”

  Teeny groaned. “I guess. But we did kind of pay for a tarot card reading. Now we’re being kicked out without any information.”

  Salazar stomped on the floor. The crystal vase on the end table rattled. “Leave now.”

  We exited and hurried back down the path through the woods. I looked back down at Salazar’s house before it vanished from view. I caught an angry glare in Salazar’s eyes before he closed his curtains in a flurry. I couldn’t help but wonder…

  What had Salazar seen in those tarot cards? And what did it mean for our investigation?

  11

  Tarot Troubles

  Miss May and I slid into our favorite booth at Teeny’s restaurant, Grandma’s, ready to discuss the investigation. And OK, maybe ready to eat some delicious food too.

  “I always forget how stressful it is now with Salazar,” I said. “That was so unsettling. One second he’s calm and still, then he snaps. It’s very strange to witness. Plus, we have no new information. What are we supposed to do next?”

  Miss May opened her mouth to reply but Teeny cut her off. “No. We’re not talking about the investigation right now.”

  “We need to make a plan,” said Miss May. “The killer could be anywhere.”

  “I don’t care.” Teeny crossed her arms. “I have a new recipe I want you both to try it. Once we get some food in us we’ll be more clearheaded. Then we can talk.”

  “I’m not going to argue with that,” I said. “What’s on the menu?”

  Teeny turned back toward the kitchen and whistled. Well, she tried to whistle. All that came out was a sloppy, wet hissing sound. I laughed. Teeny glared at me. “Don’t laugh. I can whistle.”

  Teeny put her pointer, middle finger and thumb in her mouth and blew. More spit. No sound of whistling. I laughed again.

  Teeny held in a smile. “Quit laughing. Do you want your hushpuppies or not?”

  I perked up in my seat. “The secret food is hushpuppies?”

  Teeny hit her thigh with her palm. “Now it’s not a surprise.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and called out for the kitchen. “Order of puppies please!”

  A pimply-faced teenage waiter approached with a covered silver platter. The teenager wore thick glasses and his voice cracked when he talked. “Puppies, as requested. The recipe is top-secret. Copyright and patent pending, in the United States and worldwide. Prepare your taste buds for a violent but gleeful assault. These hushpuppies cannot be trifled with. They come with a side of honey butter that will make your mouth water like the Hudson River. Once you eat one of Teeny’s world-famous puppies you will never stop talking about them.”

  I giggled. The waiter had style. No doubt he had been trained by Teeny and was following a script but I liked him.

  He placed the tray on the table with a flourish and remove the silver lid. There before me were two dozen of the best looking hushpuppies I had ever seen. Deep-fried, delicious cornmeal morsels rested beside a little bowl of whipped honey butter. The smell was sweet and savory at the same time and I could just tell they were crispy on the outside and moist on the inside.

  “Don’t just look at them,” said Teeny. “Try one.”

  I grabbed a puppy, dipped it in the honey butter, and put the whole thing in my mouth. I suddenly felt as though I were receiving a full body massage. My bones relaxed. My stomach warmed. My eyes closed. “Oh my.” I spoke slowly, like I was in the middle of falling asleep. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

  Teeny smiled her giant smile and clapped her tiny, rapid golf claps. “I knew you would like them. I spent weeks on the recipe. They’ve got buttermilk and cornmeal. Some flour, and a little bit of sugar. Baking soda. Obviously, salt. Oh! And onions and green onions too. What do you think, May?”

  Teeny and I looked over at Miss May. Like me, she looked like she was falling asleep, having a beautiful half-dream. She chewed in silence. Teeny nudged her. “May. Tell me you love my pups.”

  Miss May opened her eyes. “I love your hushpuppies.”

  “Great. Scoot over. I want some.” Teeny slid into the booth beside Miss May and popped a hush puppy in her mouth. She turned to t
he waiter who still stood awkwardly beside the table. “You can go now, Samuel. Good job.”

  Samuel give us a small, polite bow and exited with a strange, peppy little walk. “Weird kid,” said Teeny. “But I’m impressed. He remembered all his lines.”

  “I’m going to eat one more hush puppy or five then we should talk about what happened at Salazar’s,” said Miss May.

  I plunked a few hushpuppies on my plate and nodded. “I can eat and talk at the same time. But I don’t have that much more to say. The whole experience freaked me out.”

  Teeny nodded. “That guy is sketched out. That’s the expression, right Chelsea?”

  “He’s sketchy.”

  “It all seemed fake to me,” said Teeny. “I don’t know if I even believe he has any special abilities. I think he plays up the theatrics to get people talking because he knows that any publicity is good publicity, especially in a small town like Pine Grove.”

  Miss May dipped a hush puppy in honey butter. “Cynical.”

  Teeny shrugged. “Practical. Think about it… He didn’t provide any information about the tarot cards in the photo. He just got all panicked and made us leave.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” I said. “Salazar didn’t help us decipher the tarot cards at all. But that doesn’t mean we should stop pursuing the meaning of the cards.”

  “I agree,” said Miss May. “I have an important question… Do you think Beth was providing a reading to the person who killed her? Or do we think Beth was receiving a reading from another tarot card reader before she was killed?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea. The cards were in the middle of the table. I hadn’t even thought of that. It could go either way. I researched tarot cards on my phone earlier but there’s so much to learn. I didn’t read anything that helps much.”

  Miss May nodded. “We need to find another expert to help us translate those cards. But I have a hunch we can wait to pursue that further.”

  “OK,” I said. “What do you think we should do instead?”

  “Beth lived two towns over. So we hardly know anything about her, right?”

  Teeny nodded. “The three of us know what everyone in town knows. She was a little wacky. She had a funky smell. And she came to Pine Grove pretty regularly to drink coffee and walk around babbling.”

  “Like I said,” Miss May reiterated. “We don’t know much about her. So I think we should go by her place tomorrow and see what we can find out.”

  I dipped my pointer finger in the honey butter than licked the butter off. “You think we’re going to have to break in?”

  Miss May moved her eyes. “It’s not like we’ve never done it before.”

  12

  Two Towns Over

  Miss May guided her big yellow Volkswagen bus over toward Beth’s house with confidence. Although Beth lived in Blue Mountain, about a fifteen minute drive from the center of Pine Grove, Miss May seemed to know the route by heart.

  “How do you know where Beth lives again?” I asked.

  “A few years ago she broke her leg in a bicycle accident. Remember that, Teeny?”

  Teeny nodded. “I had totally forgotten until you just mentioned it. Oh boy. She was riding through Pine Grove. Had her head in the clouds and drove her bicycle right into the sewer.”

  My eyes widened and I tried not to laugh. “How did she manage that?”

  “Mayor Delgado was on her big sewer improvement kick. She had all the manholes opened in town for days. Most of us residents, we knew to avoid them,” Miss May said. “Blue Mountain people… Not so much.”

  Teeny tittered. “It’s not funny. I know it’s not funny. But I still remember the sound of Beth yelling from inside that sewer.”

  Miss May chuckled. “Oh, me too. ‘Help! I’ve fallen into the sewer. Someone help me out of the sewer.’”

  Teeny shook her head. “It took half the fire department to figure out how to pull her out of that hole. I think they ended up using a horse harness or something like that.”

  “They did not use a horse harness, Teeny.” Miss May looked in the rearview mirror and smiled. “They dropped a ladder down.”

  Teeny held up a pointer finger. “That’s right. They dropped the ladder down but Beth was too afraid to climb up so they had to send a couple firemen down there to talk her into it.”

  “That’s a bizarre story. But I still don’t understand how that bicycle injury helped you figure out where she lives in Blue Mountain,” I said.

  “Right. I knew we were talking about something,” said Miss May. “I felt bad for the poor girl after she fell in that sewer, so I volunteered to bring food over to her a few times a week. Blue Mountain is such a small town. They don’t have the same community resources as Pine Grove. I wanted her to know that our town was sorry for trapping her in the sewer.”

  “But I thought you barely knew Beth.”

  “That’s true,” said Miss May. “I brought food over there maybe a dozen times. But she never opened the door and there was never a light on in the house. There was always a note on the front door that said ‘please leave food here,’ and that’s it.”

  Teeny shuddered. “That girl always gave me the creepy-deepies.”

  “I think you mean heebie-jeebies,” I said.

  “I said it how I meant it,” said Teeny. “The British way.”

  Miss May pointed out the windshield. “That’s it. That’s her house right there.”

  Beth’s home was an old colonial. It had two stories and it was covered in peeling, white paint. The front yard was dotted with buckets and rusty, forgotten tools. A broken window had been repaired with a square of plywood.

  “Not really charming, is it?” said Teeny.

  Miss May parked and we hopped out of the car. “It never was.”

  Miss May trudged through tall grasses around the back of the house. Teeny and I followed. I called ahead to Miss May as we walked. “You don’t even want to try the front door?”

  Miss May called back to me over her shoulder. “I don’t think it would help if we rang the bell, Chelsea. Pretty sure Beth isn’t home.”

  I looked down. Oh yeah. We were visiting the home of a murder victim.

  “Besides, she never used the front door. She had me bring food around back, and I think she entered and exited that way as well.”

  We turned the corner to the back of the house to find a large sunroom. The screen door that led into the sunroom was ajar. Miss May held it open and stepped aside for me and Teeny to enter. “After you.”

  The sunroom, like the front yard, was cluttered with rusty old tools and dozens of random planters and flowerpots. Miss May looked around inside. “I don’t think a single item has moved since I last came here three years ago.”

  “Can I help you?” A gruff voice rang out from nearby. The door that went from the sunroom into the house opened and a tall, skinny man stepped out. He had a neat beard and an (understandably) angry look in his eye.

  Miss May stammered. “Hi. I’m so sorry. I know this must seem like an awkward intrusion. But I was a friend of Beth’s.”

  Teeny stepped forward. “Me too. We used to bring her food after she fell into that sewer in Pine Grove?”

  “That’s right,” said Miss May. “And I was so distraught to hear what happened to her. I wanted to come by and visit this place one last time to pay my respects.”

  The tall man crossed his arms. “This isn’t a memorial. It’s my home.”

  “Right. My apologies,” Miss May said. “I’m so sorry. And you are…”

  “I’m Beth’s brother, Michael.”

  Miss May nodded. “Of course. Michael. Beth told me all about you. After the sewer accident we got close. She told me she had a wonderful brother.”

  “Who are you people?” A chubby bald man approached from the backyard carrying two black suits, fresh from the dry cleaners.

  I swallowed a gasp of surprise. The chubby bald man was the same person we had seen arguing with Salazar.
I looked over at Miss May. I could tell she also noticed, but she kept her cool.

  Michael opened the door for the little bald man and took the dry cleaning. “These women were friends of Beth’s.”

  The little bald man frowned. “Beth didn’t have any friends other than us. And she only liked us some of the time. I can’t believe she’s never coming back to this house.”

  Michael looked down. “Me too.” He held out the dry cleaning at arm’s length to get a better look at it. “But at least we’ll look good for the funeral. Thanks for picking this up.”

  “Those are beautiful suits,” said Teeny. “I can tell from here. Well-made. And they look like they’re going to fit you both perfectly.”

  “We should go,” said Miss May. “I’m late for my reading with Salazar. Please accept our condolences.”

  Miss May took a step toward the back door. The chubby man blocked her path. “Hold on a second. You seriously believe that hack Salazar has some sort of special powers? He’s a liar and a cheat.”

  Michael put a hand on his brother’s arm. “Jonathan. It’s OK. Let them go.”

  Jonathan shook Michael off. “No. I can’t send people off to that clown in good conscience. Do you know what he did to my sister?”

  Miss May stammered. “Not… Not exactly, no.”

  “She worked for him at that little mushroom palace for years. She did readings, palm work, everything. But he owed her hundreds of dollars and he never paid up. Thousands, even. Who knows how much? It’s ridiculous. Now she’s dead and I know he’ll never pay the money.”

  The chubby man’s face reddened. Michael stayed calm. “It’s OK, Jonathan.”

  “It is not OK. We need that cash to pay for this funeral. Someone dies you at least want to give them a good funeral.” Jonathan dabbed a tear from his eye. “I’m sorry. I have to go inside.”

  Jonathan stormed into the house and closed the door with a slam. Michael took a few moments to steady himself then turned back to us. “It’s a hard time. Forgive me. Will we be seeing you at the funeral?”