Under the Cheaters Table

by Etta Faire

  Flo practically fell into him, laughing like she was drunk. I tried to remember how much each person had to drink, and I didn’t think she could possibly have been anywhere close. Was she playing these men, or just one man? I couldn’t wrap my mind around any motive the woman would have had for killing Feldman, but I also didn’t dismiss the thought. She was the Donovan in the room. She was the one with the famous quote on her Wikipedia page that was almost exactly like the one in the horse.

  She shrugged. “Sure, I’m in. Why not?”

  “If I remember right,” Feldman said to me, interrupting my thoughts. “Flo cleaned up that night. But then, when you don’t have to worry about money in life, it makes you a better poker player. You can afford to take chances, distance yourself from the money part of the game.”

  “So she’s a skilled player with money. A threat,” I said, kicking myself for talking to the ghost after I swore to myself I wouldn’t.

  “Sure, if threats are ditzy and clueless.” He was almost mocking her. “She didn’t know the game. She got lucky because she’s rich.”

  I watched as Flo revealed her cards. A full house. She raked the chips over to her side of the table.

  “Looks like she knows the game to me,” I said then added. “Tell me about the affair you had with her.”

  “I’m pretty sure one of the people has to be married in order for it to be considered an affair.”

  “She was going out with Terry and you’d been going out with Drew for seven years. I consider it what it is. An affair.” I was in no mood to sugar coat things for this man. It wasn’t my job to make him feel better about cheating on his girlfriend.

  Terry called for another round and Feldman looked to Drew. “Honey,” he said, just short of snapping his fingers. “The guys are thirsty. Another beer for everyone?”

  She got up. “The guys are thirsty, but what about the lady? You seem to have forgotten the rule, ladies first. Flo, what would you like?”

  Flo held up her glass. “I’ll have another one of these. Gin and tonic. Thanks, sugar.”

  Feldman threw his girlfriend a look as she went behind the bar.

  And Feldman went back to explaining his non-affair to me. “Flo wasn’t anything special. She was a bored socialite who’d do anything for a kick. I was worried she was going to hurt my brother.”

  “So you slept with his girlfriend to protect him?”

  “I knew she was a whore and I proved it.”

  “My mother used to say ‘you can only prove your own character in life, not that of others.’”

  It was Doc’s deal. He passed out the cards as Feldman continued talking to me in his head. “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. She was slumming it with my brother and everybody but that poor slob knew it. Rich, beautiful women don’t go out with people like my brother.”

  I didn’t respond, so he went on. “Drew was working late at the dress shop. It was a few months back. And I was hanging out here with Terry and Flo, drinking. Terry got so drunk he puked then passed out, like usual. And I began telling Flo how worried I was about him.”

  “This is so touching.”

  While Feldman talked, the Drew in the channeling handed out drinks. We looked at our cards. Feldman had two pairs: twos and threes. He called the bet.

  “I told her about how Terry used to paint. How he was a good artist. Won a prize in the fair and everything. This was also the night when she told me she would help me find an art studio if I was serious about selling my part of the bar and buying the studio. She told me it was sweet how I wanted to help Terry. One thing led to another…”

  “So you pretended to be the nice guy, and even sold the bar so you could impress Flo with what a nice guy you were to your brother. Then, you slept with her and called her a whore.”

  Feldman didn’t say anything to me. I could tell he was pissed, but I hardly cared.

  The sounds of chatter, clanging chips, and glasses clinking against the table rang through the night. I listened in on the conversations around me because I was done with the one in my head.

  Blanche had a high, shrill voice that seemed to rise above the others. Plus, she was drunk. And there aren’t too many quiet drunks in life.

  “I don’t know how Flo does it,” she said.

  Flo looked over at her. “How I do what, darling?”

  Blanche’s face went red. Apparently, she hadn’t known her voice was loud enough that others could hear it. “I don’t know. Be so crazy. Dance on tables. Go with so many different men.”

  “Which of those parts bothers you?” Flo’s voice was the opposite of Blanche’s, low and confident.

  “None, I guess. It’s just so exciting and dangerous. I could never do it.”

  “Then I suggest you don’t.” Flo lit a cigarette, and puffed on it quickly until the end grew bright orange, blowing the smoke high above the heads of the men sitting at the table with her. She crossed her legs, her hemline inching up just enough to catch the attention of the others. “My parents made me see a shrink in Madison once. Supposedly, a good one because he was terribly expensive. After three sessions, including one where I paid the guy to bark like a dog just to see if he would, I came to the conclusion I’m one of those creative types who’s never sure if she cares too little for life, or too much for it. But danger definitely makes me feel something. And sometimes it’s even enough.”

  Blanche looked down at her drink. “Jeepers. Did he really bark like a dog?”

  “Even wore a leash and a collar. Everyone has a price.”

  “Did you… you know, get in trouble for it?”

  “I wish. Trouble’s glorious when you’re rich. It’s always accompanied by the best prescriptions. I have pills to die for.” She looked around the table. “Did everyone fold?” Once again, she raked the money over to herself, tossing her cards into the pile in the middle.

  Feldman picked them up, but before he shuffled them into the rest of the deck in his hand, he checked them. She’d been bluffing. I felt him mentally kicking himself for folding his two pairs.

  “I gotta take a leak,” he said to the group, getting up.

  “Fast forward,” I quickly added. “I don’t need to see this.”

  “Yes, actually, you do.”

  Feldman looked around the table as he got up, and I noted how everyone was doing. Richie’s chips were almost gone. Boyd probably had half his original stack left. Chance had bought in for more. And Feldman and Doc were pretty much breaking even, more or less.

  I closed my sight the whole time I heard Feldman doing his business in the bathroom (and it was a very long time), which made the Feldman in my mind laugh. “You’re a regular goody-two-shoes, huh?” he said.

  “If that means a person who doesn’t like seeing another person peeing, then yes. Both my shoes are goody.”

  Just as he was opening the door to go out, I saw why he didn’t want to fast forward. Blanche was swaying in the doorway, waiting for us.

  She took an unsteady step forward so her face was only an inch from Feldman’s. Her breath smelled a lot like gin and throw up. More like throw up. “Doc talks a lot… about you a lot,” she said, right next to Feldman’s nose. Up close I could tell she was probably in her early thirties, my age. Her makeup was thick, coats of mascara over false lashes. Powder that settled into her creases but made her face almost look like ivory.

  “Oh yeah? What does he say?” Feldman said.

  She ran an unsteady finger across his cheek and down his back. He did not discourage her by stepping away or mentioning Drew. She went on. “He says you are a very good businessman. He says you always gets what you wants.” She grabbed Feldman’s hands and placed them on her boobs. He gently squeezed them and pulled her in closer. “I wonder whats you wants now,” she said, as she bit her finger.

  I interjected. “I think you probably wants to fast forward this part if it goes any further,” I said. “Just sayin.’”

  She smiled and pressed her mouth over ours, simultan
eously skimming her hand along the back part of our thigh.

  At first Feldman didn’t kiss her back, but that didn’t last too long. He pulled her into the darkened bathroom with him, toward the toilet, kissing her long and hard as he ran his hands along the back of her head and down the small of her back.

  Then Feldman turned her around and went out the door, leaving her there. “I’ll tell Doc you wanna see him as soon as he’s done with the next hand,” he said.

  He shut the door and backed away.

  “That ended a lot differently than I thought it was going to,” I said as we headed back down the hall, the unfortunate taste of Blanche’s lipstick and throw-up sitting on our lips. “You’re still an ass, though.”

  Backing away, he tripped over something at his feet, making his already hurt ankle hurt even more. He fell to the floor, landing right on his rear this time. A quick scan of the area gave him the reason. The horse again. It was right by the opening to the bar, staring at him with those dead eyes like it was mocking him, laughing at him, already telling him what a loser he was.

  Feldman grabbed the horse and chucked it as hard as he could across the hall like a shot put. But it was metal and sturdy, not the breakable kind of piggy bank.

  It landed with a crash that rocked the entire hall, making a huge dent in the wall before landing unscathed on the floor in front of it. Doc rushed to the hallway, followed by the rest of the group. “What the hell was that? You okay? Where’s Blanche?”

  “In the bathroom,” she called.

  Doc’s face relaxed until he looked down the opposite end of the hall and saw the bank and the hole in the wall. “You’re fixing that,” he yelled as he pointed at Feldman. “And while we’re at it, there are other things I think we should discuss.”

  “What’s it to you if he fixes it or not,” Terry asked, pushing Doc against the wall of the hallway, causing his glasses to fall askew. “And there’s nothing to discuss. You’ve been getting on my nerves all night. This ain’t your bar. This ain’t your booze. And that ain’t your ugly horse bank neither. Tell ‘em, Feldman.”

  “Yeah,” Richie said. “Stop being a dick, Doc.”

  “Dick Dock. Dick Dock,” Blanche sang from the bathroom.

  Richie ignored her and went on. “Even when we were in high school, he was a dick. I’m sick of this dick.”

  “Who needs a drink?” Feldman said, pushing through the crowd in the doorway.

  “We playing cards or what?” Chance asked. He was behind the bar, helping himself to another beer. He was sure eager to play cards for a man who was losing.

  How had I missed someone bringing the horse into the hallway? I was going to be watching their every move now. Doc, Blanche, and Chance, especially. I tried to think back to the first time we saw the horse. Where were those three right before the horse had been discovered?

  Was it a coincidence that the two people who didn’t quite belong at the reunion poker game came there with Doc, the guy about to buy the bar? And one of those three had just cornered Feldman in the bathroom while the horse had been placed in the hall?

  “How were you cheating Doc in the deal?” I asked him as he sat back down at the poker table. “What did he want to discuss?”

  He didn’t talk to me.

  “And while we’re at it, I want to know everything there is to know about the man who couldn’t come, but lives in the same city the horse bank came from. You were right. This is an elaborate set up. Someone is taking the time to make you know it. Taunting you. I don’t think it’s Terry.”

  “It could be.”

  “Yes, it could be. But if Terry had been the one who murdered you, it would’ve been a crime of passion. Let’s say he found out you sold the Bear Bird and he wouldn’t be able to drink here anymore. Or he found out you slept with his girlfriend to prove to him just what a horrible person she was. He probably wouldn’t have had the foresight to buy a bank a while back and mail it here, then place it all over the bar to taunt you.”

  He still didn’t say anything.

  “And what about this guy Jeremy?” He didn’t answer, so I went on. “Could he be here, lurking?”

  “He’s not. Leave it alone.”

  “But I feel like I should investigate every angle. And you’re being evasive. If I’m going to help you…”

  “Your timer’s going off,” he said, and just like that, I heard it.

  How long had it been going off? And why wasn’t my boyfriend shaking my shoulders?

  Chapter 20

  Just a Dog and a Sparrow

  The relief I felt when I opened my eyes left as quickly as it came. My living room seemed different. The lamps were in their exact spots along the end tables, the dogwood rug was centered under my feet by the settee.

  But it was darker than usual, making me wonder how long I’d been channeling. And the thick, velvet curtains were closed, even though I’d left them open.

  I looked around. I didn’t see Justin or Rex. The smell of pipe smoke took over my senses and I coughed, outraged that Feldman was likely creating unwanted smells in my living room now. But something else seemed different too.

  I no longer heard the soft ticking of my wall clock.

  A door opened upstairs, and I rose from the settee to listen in on whoever was there. Was it Justin?

  Wait a sec. Hadn’t I been on the couch?

  And I was pretty sure I hadn’t willed my body to get up.

  I looked up the stairs in time to see the door to the secret room close. I’d only discovered a few months ago that the door across from the nursery on the second floor that only led to a wall now had actually been a real room at some point in the house’s history.

  And now, someone was coming out of it. Somehow, I was still in Feldman’s memories, channeling.

  “What would you have me do?” the woman’s voice said from upstairs. I recognized it at once. Mrs. Harpton, my housekeeper.

  “I have no idea if we should do anything, Theona,” another woman said. The voice sounded remarkably like my own. Eliza, maybe. “It’s his choice to be drunk, which is no way to start the treaty session. I’ve instructed the children,” she lowered her voice, “to remain quiet and in their altered states until further instruction. We can’t have anyone know they’re here. And if Henry Bowman is as drunk as I suspect, then he might just give everything away, the old fool.”

  “He’s been smoking like a chimney too, whole house reeks of it. I don’t know if there’s any tobacco left in the house.”

  “He’s nervous, and drunk. Mostly drunk.”

  “I’ll make some coffee,” the woman who sounded like my housekeeper replied, scurrying down the stairs. It was Mrs. Harpton, all right. She looked younger, but that might’ve been because her face wasn’t in its usual wrinkly scowl. She also wasn’t nearly as fast as the last time I saw her.

  She seemed to almost lumber down the stairs, slowly lifting the skirt of her stiff, black dress so she could take the steps one at a time. She looked over at me, staring directly in my eyes for a moment longer than I’d expected. “They’ll be down in a minute, Mr. Winehouse. Would you like some coffee?”

  My gaze went to my shoes, and I saw my tattered suit, felt its scratchiness along my long, man arms.

  Just like I thought, I was still channeling.

  “Feldman,” I yelled in my head.

  He didn’t answer and Jackson’s warning bounced off every cell in my brain. Just don’t forget you’re in control.

  Problem was, I had no idea what that meant or how to gain control again. Instead of taking me home, Feldman must’ve taken me to the day of the photo in the first scrapbook, the one where Eliza was dancing naked on Henry Bowman’s desk in 1904.

  Although this was exactly the memory he promised to take me to, and I should have been happy he was being true to his word, I was also channeling much longer than I should have been.

  And I had no control over anything.

  The curly-haired blonde in the knee-le
ngth black dress sitting on the couch next to Henry Bowman wasn’t me. I knew this. I wasn’t around in the early 1900s. But still, she was my “spitting image,” as my grandmother would say. And it was very strange to watch myself from someone else’s perspective.

  Shortly after Mrs. Harpton started the coffee, two other men had arrived, one by one. A short, balding man I knew as James Hind (the suffragette’s father) and the other man in the photo, making five of us sitting around the living room. I studied the unknown man’s face. His beady eyes and sunken cheeks. The cruel way he laughed.

  It hit me. Richard Mulch, twenty years younger than he was in Feldman’s memories of the speakeasy in 1923, and 50 years younger than his awful demise when he was split in two in 1954.

  He was a thin man with bad teeth and a nervous laugh who kept looking over at the suffragette’s father and curling his lip at him. James Hind glared back.

  “This is very delicious coffee,” Feldman said, his hand so unsteady his coffee almost spilled.

  “Thank you,” Henry replied, leaning over, his words slurred. “It’s better with whiskey.” He winked.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Feldman held his cup out so fast it splashed a little along his hand, stinging our skin.

  “Theona,” Henry yelled and she hurried into the room from the kitchen, standing like a soldier at the side of his chair.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Please make sure our guests are kept well hydrated.” He motioned toward the whiskey bottle sitting on the coffee table next to a stack of papers.

  “But Henry, it’s barely afternoon and we have business to conduct,” Eliza gently reminded him. She and Mrs. Harpton exchanged knowing glances.

  “My dear lady, if you haven’t figured out by now that business is always better when everyone is properly hydrated, then God help us all.”

  Mrs. Harpton poured a little whiskey into each of the men’s coffee cups. Richard and Feldman sat together on the couch. Henry and James both sat in the living room’s only chairs, and Eliza was on the settee.