The Cards of Life and Death (Modern Gothic Romance 2)

by Colleen Gleason

  And with that cryptic statement, he left the room. Diana stared at the card while he was gone, wondering what it signified. The woman—the priestess—seemed to be pushing a scroll under her cloak, as if to hide it. She sat in front of a backdrop of pomegranates and palm trees. Diana pressed two shaking fingers to her temple as she stared and stared at the card.

  Approaching footsteps drew her attention to Ethan, coming back down the hall. He had an old, tattered book in his hands—one that was in similar condition to the one at the bookshop—and he had already marked a page with a forefinger.

  With a brief smile, he took his seat, opened the book, and began to read. “‘The High Priestess, Number Two. She is meant to represent the Guardian of the Unconsciousness. Her throne rests between our conscious mind and the innermost thoughts and knowledge of our unconscious mind.’” Ethan looked up at Diana. “She’s telling you to look beyond the obvious, to allow your intuition and inner voice to guide you. Let your imagination and dreams abound, open your mind to the unknown, seek that which is concealed.”

  The nausea that had been lingering in the pit of her stomach lessened. “I don’t believe in this stuff,” she repeated, shaking her head. “It’s a bunch of bunk. You don’t believe it, do you?”

  “Believe what? Believe that Tarot cards can tell the future? No, no, I don’t believe that ….” He leaned forward, his eyes serious and his face sober. “But I know that there are people—many people—in this world who have abilities beyond our understanding … and I know that our unconscious minds have capabilities of which we’ve hardly scratched the surface. Your aunt was one of those people … and she believed you are too.”

  “What a load of crap.” Diana stood and folded her arms across her chest as if to hold in her fiercely pounding heart. “You’re talking nonsense. I know Aunt Belinda thought she had some crazy powers, and she liked to tell people’s fortunes using Tarot cards, but you’re talking about her as if you took her seriously. That’s ridiculous!”

  Ethan remained seated, tenting his fingers together, staring at them as if trying to decide what to say. “Your aunt had ESP—actually, to be more specific, she had precognitive capabilities. It’s a fact, Diana. She had a gift.” He looked up at her as if to gauge her reaction. “I know. I tested her.”

  “What do you mean, you tested her?” Diana shot back, ignoring the odd, sinking sensation that was tumbling in her middle. Who is this guy?

  “I’ve been working in the field of parapsychology for over ten years, and your aunt was one of my best, most conclusive examples of precognitive ESP.”

  “What do you mean—you’re a ghost buster?” Diana couldn’t hold back an incredulous laugh. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with a straight face. You actually study ghosts and UFOs and someone pays you to do it? Who would do that—some association for clairvoyants?”

  And then like the dawn, it all became clear to her—why Ethan should have befriended an old, wealthy woman like Belinda. And why he should be here now, with her. Fury lanced through her, replacing the shattering reality of their conversation, and she turned on him. “That’s what you were after, then, wasn’t it? Trying to fleece an old, gullible, loaded woman like my aunt!”

  He blanched as she pulled to her feet and stood nearly nose-to-nose with him. She forgot her bewilderment and confusion, pushed aside her timidity and insecurity with a guy who had everything she didn’t and channeled all of her suppressed emotions into the accusations. “How much did you get from her? How much did you con her into giving you?” Despite the harsh words, she didn’t lose control. Instead, she used the same firm, cool persona she engaged when cross-examining a witness—and forgot that he was a dangerously attractive man around whom she should be intimidated.

  Even when that heart-stopping face darkened with an anger that matched her own, Diana did not back down. He rose, too, forcing her to step back from his chair, eyes flashing. “How dare you accuse me—”

  “No,” she shot back, “how dare you come into this house uninvited—twice!—and how dare you pretend to be a great friend of my aunt’s when I suspect all you really were after is money. What was your plan now that she’s dead—to con her mousy, timid little niece into giving you more? By wooing and flirting and pretending to care?” That, she realized, was the worst of it—her old insecurities bubbling to the surface.

  Ethan’s lips were drawn together so tightly they nearly disappeared and the tic of a muscle wavered slowly, deliberately in his jaw. “You are a fool, Ms. Iverson, and don’t deserve the least bit of the pride and affection your aunt showed you—not to mention the money. Good day.”

  He spun and walked heavily, angrily out of the house.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ethan’s anger toward Diana Iverson still simmered a day later, that Saturday evening. He replayed their conversation over and over—wondering what it was that had caused her to go from a confused and bewildered woman he was consoling to a harpy, firing unfounded accusations at him. He’d never been so insulted in his life.

  Tamping back a renewed sense of irritation, he pushed open the door of the Green Oaks Grille and ambled across its worn, warped hardwood floor. He gave the proprietress a smile as he slid onto one of the barstools at the end of the long, thickly shellacked bar.

  “What can I get for you tonight, honey?” asked Mirabella.

  “How about a tall Blue Moon?” He settled into his seat as she bustled over to three levers that dispensed the beers of choice at the Green Oaks. “I like that new shade of red on your hair, Bella,” he called down to her. “You look like Flo from that old TV show Alice.”

  “Why thank you, honey,” she patted the bouffant hairdo that sparkled like a ruby even in the dim light. The amount of hairspray she used to hold each swirl and curl in place was approximately as thick as the shellac on her bar. “My Tommy likes it too—even better than that Dusty Gold color I was wearing a few months back.” She placed a tall glass of beer in front of him. “You eatin’ here tonight, too, honey? Tommy made a good soup today—chicken barley—and we got a special with broiled cod and rice. There’s always a hamburg or fried clams, if you’re wantin’, and I got some potato salad and co’ slaw if you want that too.”

  He sipped his beer. “How about a Reuben, with some cole slaw on the side,” he suggested. “And a cup of that soup.” Ethan craned his head around, looking out over the half-filled restaurant. “The girls coming in for their regular Saturday night meeting?”

  Mirabella shrugged as she wiped off the counter. “I don’t know for sure. Everyone’s been pretty upset since Bee passed.”

  There was a holler from the back room and Bella rolled her eyes, making her penciled brows jump. “That Tommy. I wonder what he needs now. I’ll be right back with your soup.”

  Despite the peremptory yell, Mirabella took her time making her way back into the kitchen. Her lime green dress splashed with daisies and thick white lapels hugged Rubenesque curves and the generous bottom that had the same saucy wiggle that ‘her’ Tommy had fallen in love with twenty years ago … or so she’d boasted to Ethan many times.

  He smiled, thinking how great it was that those two had lived and worked and run this restaurant together for more than twenty years … and she still loved Tommy as much as she did from the first. She’d do anything for him, or so she’d told Ethan and anyone else who’d listen, time and again.

  Ethan’s amusement faded. The desire for single-minded devotion and commitment had been yanked right out of his life at about the same time he signed his name to the divorce papers.

  It was pretty much not gonna happen—opening himself up to trusting a woman, or even casual dating—now that he’d been well and thoroughly screwed by Meghan, his ex-wife. Not to mention Lexie, one of his female students who’d wanted to get in his pants badly enough to lie about it. Oh, and Bruce—one of his friends who, as it turned out, had been boinking his wife for more than a year. It had been hell, that whole mess—and it was Bel
inda who’d listened to him blather about it over more than one six-pack. An unlikely pair they’d made, the two of them—along with Cady—sitting on the porch, talking for hours. Sometimes coherently, sometimes not so coherently.

  Using one long forefinger, Ethan systematically wiped the condensation off his glass, his lips flattening with disgust. Women were either conniving, sneaky bitches like Meghan and Lexie, or cold, haughty ones like Belinda’s niece, and he figured he was safest staying far away from any of them except for a good, hard lay when the urge struck. And even then … he’d had a moratorium on that for well over two years now.

  He just hadn’t been interested. In anyone.

  A burst of raucous laughter erupted as a group of ladies swarmed through the front door. Five of them, varying in age from thirty to eighty, and in size from four to sixteen, flowed toward a large, circular table in the far corner of the room. They were chattering and laughing, carrying handbags of all assorted shapes and sizes.

  “Well, I guess that answers your question, there, honey.” Mirabella set a steaming bowl of soup in front of Ethan, jerking her head toward the quilting ladies. “Eat up, and let me know if you want more.”

  When he finished his dinner, Ethan pushed back from the bar and slid off his seat. “Good evening, ladies,” he said as he strolled over to them.

  “Ethan!” crowed a blue-haired, bespectacled lady. “Why, I didn’t see you sitting over there.”

  “You can’t see nothing past your own old nose, Martha,” grumbled Helen Galliday, who wasn’t far behind her in age but still possessed eagle eyes and super-bionic hearing. “He’s been sittin’ over at the bar, eatin’ his dinner the whole time we been here. Have a seat, young man.” She pointed a wrinkled, hook-like finger to an empty chair next to her. “And tell us how you’re doin’. You missin’ Bee like the rest of us?”

  He sat. “I sure am,” he admitted. “I didn’t know what happened until Wednesday, when I stopped by her house and ran into her niece.”

  “Pity, pity,” Martha of the blue hair shook her head. “And she was so young to just go like that. She wadn’t no more than sixty-seven.”

  “And she had the best doctor in town,” added a younger member of the group. Rose Bettinger, who was somewhere over fifty, had had the distinction of being the most junior member of the quilters until Betsy Farr, aged thirty-three, joined last year.

  “If Doctor Reardon couldn’t get her healthy, then, well, you know, I don’t think anyone could.” Betsy had a dreamy look in her eyes.

  Ethan sat silently, watching the ladies in amusement as the banter jumped across and around the table with alacrity. “How’s your Crazy Quilt coming?” he asked when there was a pause in the conversation.

  “We might be finished by next year if Pauline and Martha would get their blocks done,” grumbled Helen as she bit into a piece of bread, showering crumbs in her lap. She brushed them onto the floor with impatience and sour humor. “But Pauline’s so blamed worried that she’ll miss seein’ Doug Horner one time she won’t sit at the meetin’ long enough to piece one block, ain’t that right, Pauline? And Martha—her eyesight ain’t much good no more anyway so that we have to do all the sashin’ for her blocks. Good thing we got a system worked out for the ones we actually sell, or we’d be in more trouble’n a puffball in a tornado.” She snapped another bite of bread with teeth that were too perfectly straight and white to be real ones.

  “Helen, don’t you be yammering about my personal life to this young man here,” Pauline admonished, pointing a coral-tipped fingernail at her friend. “And I can’t say you’ve been exactly timely with your last two blocks either.” She plumped heavily in her seat—a daring move for a woman whose generous size threatened the stability of the chair—as her perfectly manicured nails fluttered with indignation. “The only one of us who’s been on schedule has been Bee, and she isn’t gonna be here to see it completed.”

  Pauline’s point seemed to sober the group, and even Helen had nothing to add.

  “I’ve seen your other work at the craft shows,” Ethan said after a moment, “and I’d certainly like to see this Crazy Quilt of yours someday.”

  “Well, you know we ain’t plannin’ on selling it, young man,” Helen snapped. “It’s just a way for us to use up some old cloths we had layin’ around. Truth to tell, I don’t know it’ll ever get done, ’cause we keep addin’ to it, you see.” Her eyes took on a special gleam. “But if you’re lookin’ for somethin’ for your own place, why we have a real nice double wedding ring quilt pieced in dark blue and burgundy and sashed with cream that would fit real nice in your house.”

  Ethan hid a smile. Helen was most definitely both the brains and the brawn of the group when it came to the business end of retailing their work. She’d never even seen his cedar-sided cabin, much less have a clue how it was decorated. Not that you could call what he’d done to it ‘decorated,’ he thought ruefully.

  “Now, Mrs. Galliday, you’re making me nervous here with talk of wedding rings. You know I don’t go in for that stuff.” He allowed his grin to show now as he leaned over to pat her wrinkly, veined hand. “But my sister Fiona is getting married, and maybe I should get one for her. She’d like something bright and fun, I think.”

  Betsy Farr tittered at his comment, peering shyly at him from behind her coffee cup. She was young and single and just about as mousy as they came—and she’d never even said ‘boo!’ to him in the year he’d known her. “We have other patterns too, like a shoo fly and a couple monkey wrench ones. You could get one for your sister and one for you,” she offered boldly, then hid behind her mug again.

  He nodded. “If that’s so, I certainly will stop by for a look. It gets mighty cold up there by the lake some nights.”

  “Doctor Reardon just bought a bright yellow and blue and green churn dash to display in his office,” offered Rose Bettinger, reaching for a dinner roll. “We’ve sold several to tourists who stopped in his office since then. It’s been a great bit of free advertising.”

  The door to the restaurant opened just then and Ethan looked up. “Well, speak of the devil,” he muttered, recognizing the trio who’d just entered: Marc Reardon, along with Diana Iverson. Their companion, he suspected, was the man she’d been talking to on the phone yesterday, assuring him he had nothing to worry about with Ethan at her house.

  Anger roiled inside him at the memory of her subsequent nasty accusations, and he figured he’d better split before Helen called them over. Then, he reconsidered. There was no reason for that narrow-minded, arrogant lawyer to make him feel uncomfortable. He’d done nothing wrong, and hadn’t he already learned the lesson with Lexie? Avoidance wasn’t the way to go when one was falsely accused.

  “There he is!” whispered Betsy, staring over her shoulder. “I wonder who’s that lady with him?”

  “That’s Diana,” Helen snapped, peering through narrowed eyes. “Don’t you remember her from the funeral? And that must be her young man with her. Jonathan Whose-its. He’s a big shot doctor down to Boston.”

  “Oh, right.” Betsy seemed relieved and turned back around to sip her coffee.

  Helen stood and waved her arm vigorously, its loose skin flapping with the effort. “Diana! Doctor! Over here!” Her greeting was more of a command than a hello, and they responded to her hail.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Galliday.” Marc Reardon’s smile oozed gentility as he offered an abbreviated bow. “Ladies,” his gaze swept the group as his smiled warmed them. “And Dr. Tannock.”

  “Reardon.” Ethan’s response was drowned by the enthusiastic greetings of the quilters. “Hello again, Diana,” he added coolly as she noticed him for the first time. Somehow she managed to look down her nose at him, even though he’d stood and now towered over her, and then she turned away to greet the quilting group with hardly an acknowledgment to him.

  Suppressing irritation at her rudeness, he swept her figure with a chill gaze, deciding instantly—reluctantly—that purple was a grea
t color for her. It made her thick, curling hair look almost black and her grayish eyes a deep blue. The cut of the dress didn’t hurt either, he thought, allowing his attention to wander over her curves while she was involved in greeting the ladies. Why deny himself the pleasure of looking just because he wasn’t interested in jumping into the deep end?

  When he finished his leisurely perusal and turned his gaze to her companion, his eyes locked with those of Diana’s boyfriend. Oops. Caught with the hand in the cookie jar. He smiled as if he didn’t see the glare in the man’s eyes and, offering his hand, returned to his seat. “I’m Ethan Tannock. Glad to meet you.”

  “Doctor Jonathan Wertinger,” the man replied coolly, shaking his hand with a firm grip.

  Ethan stopped a wider smile that would have turned deprecating. Wertinger was even more formally and expensively dressed than Reardon, and bristling from some stick up his ass. Ethan wondered if he got more out of Diana than the icy, suppressed anger she’d unleashed on him yesterday. From the looks of the man, the answer would be no.

  Wertinger had sharp, intelligent eyes, however, and enough bravado to eye Ethan with the same cool interest he was showing.