Death in the Cards

by Sharon Short

  And I couldn’t discount Damon and Sienna LeFever. Ginny had given them such a hard time, spreading rumors about their supposed incompetence. I shivered at the thought of the LeFevers, my neighbors and tenants, as killers.

  But all the psychics had been busy at the fair the previous night, I thought, as I went over to the ironing board behind my front counter to start on an order of shirts, fresh from the dryer, for Harvey Grieshop, who runs the Paradise branch of the Farmers and Merchants Bank. Ada Grieshop had brought them in that morning. The shirts reminded me I really ought to check under the counter for any orders from the previous day, but again I put it off. Ada had asked for a rush order on Harvey’s shirts.

  I started ironing the sleeve of a blue oxford. When would any of the psychics have had time to kill Ginny? Unless, of course, one of them left the fair, maybe to have a secret meeting with her, which could have gone badly . . .

  And speaking of secret meetings, I thought, what about Ginny’s meeting with Dru Purcell? I knew I’d seen them together, no matter what he said.

  People were talking about that, too. I’d stirred up some juicy gossip by dropping the news at Sandy’s that morning. Maybe, I thought, it’d force Dru to tell Chief Worthy about the meeting, and that would help Worthy figure out who killed Ginny . . .

  Or maybe my gossipmongering would just make me the next victim, I thought, as Missy Purcell stormed in the front door of my laundromat.

  Believe me, she wasn’t coming in with a laundry basket. Missy lives in town, where the water pressure’s fine, and has her own washer and dryer. And from the fury in her eyes, she wasn’t coming in to ask if she could leave off religious saveyour-soul-from-hell tracts, as she did from time to time. (My countertop’s always too crowded for those. Although there’s plenty of room for the Ranger Girls’–cookie-sale flyers.)

  She stopped in front of my counter, her strawberry-blond topknot quivering in the aftermath of her sudden stop right beside me. The smell of her hairspray was overpowering. I coughed. The sound seemed too loud in my laundromat, which had gotten suddenly quiet when Missy entered. Suddenly, no talking—just the hum of the washers and dryers, the low buzz of the TV at the front of the laundromat, by the kiddy picnic table, and the vending machines, the sound of my cough, and Missy’s hard breathing.

  I went back to ironing another of Harvey’s shirts—this one white with gray pinstripes. “Countertop’s still too crowded, Missy,” I said.

  “I know what you’ve done,” Missy said. She was speaking low, but I knew everyone in my laundromat could hear her. “Chief Worthy came out to question my husband about him meeting with that evil Ginny Proffitt woman.”

  I pressed my lips together to hold back a smile, then spritzed starch on the shirt collar. Missy coughed this time. Hmmm. Maybe the collar could use a bit more starch. Spritz, spritz.

  “Dru didn’t ever meet with that woman,” Missy said, after she finished a fit of coughing. “And he told Chief Worthy so.”

  I slammed the iron down, looked up at Missy. “You know, it might help Chief Worthy figure out who killed Ginny Proffitt if Pastor Purcell would be honest about meeting with her. She might have said something to him that would be an important clue. He might think it’s nothing, but something she said might fit with something the chief learned at the crime scene—”

  “You think you’re so smart, don’t you, Josie Toadfern?” Missy interrupted with a smirk. “Like I told Chief Worthy—and he believed me because of course I always tell the truth—Dru was home with me all morning!” With that, Missy turned for the door.

  “Oh, Missy, could you pass on something to Pastor Purcell for me?” I called sweetly.

  She looked back at me.

  “Tell him there’s one other besides me who saw him meet with Ginny Proffitt.”

  A look of fear flashed in her eyes, and I knew she knew Dru had met with Ginny. They could discount just one eyewitness, especially since everyone knew that Dru and I had come to harsh words in the last Chamber of Commerce meeting. Now, most folks wouldn’t think I was a liar, but they might be convinced I was clinging to my mistaken beliefs out of my dislike for Dru. But she and Dru couldn’t discount another witness.

  Hmmm. So there was something there between Dru and Ginny—something Dru and Missy wanted to keep hidden. Even to the point of lying to Chief Worthy.

  Unfortunately for me, the other eyewitness wasn’t likely to come forth to testify, at least not on the streets of Paradise.

  Still, it gave me an amount of satisfaction to look right in Missy’s watery blue eyes and say, “The other witness was . . . God.”

  Missy snorted at that, whirled around, and practically knocked over Winnie Porter, who was coming in the front door of my laundromat as Missy was going out.

  But Winnie was too distraught to even react to Missy knocking into her, then continuing out the door without so much as a “sorry.”

  “Winnie, what’s the matter?” I asked, while hanging the gray pinstripe on the clothes rack on wheels behind me. I had three more of Harvey’s shirts to go, but they could wait for a good friend like Winnie.

  Winnie almost never gets distraught. She’s a fifty-something librarian who dresses like the 1960s hippie she wishes she’d been but never was, living up in Masonville as she has all of her life. South central Ohio was never exactly part of the flower-powered peace, love, ’n’ rock’n’ roll culture. Still, Winnie favors Birkenstock sandals (with socks, in October), and long, swirly peasant skirts and peasant blouses. She now wears her gray hair in a short-cropped do, the better to show off her dangly earrings and wide, engaging smile, always at its brightest when she’s recommending the just-right book to a bookmobile patron, or reading to a child.

  But today, her face was crumpled up in misery.

  Winnie leaned her forearms on the counter. She was shaking. “Oh, Josie,” she moaned.

  “Winnie—what’s the matter? Is it Martin?” When I’d seen Winnie on the bookmobile the previous Wednesday, she’d told me that her husband, Martin, had been having shortness of breath that worried her.

  “No, Martin is fine. The doctor says he just needs to work out. He’s up at the Big Sam’s in Masonville checking out treadmill prices today,” Winnie said. “I came by to tell you what happened at the library meeting yesterday afternoon.”

  The meeting, I recalled, that Winnie’d been attending while I was on the psychic tour to Serpent Mound. “Wasn’t it just a regular monthly staff meeting?” Winnie doesn’t like the monthly meetings of the library branch and department heads—she’d much rather be out on her beloved bookmobile—but as head of outreach services, she’s obliged to go. This, though, was beyond her usual complaining.

  “Oh, Josie, the director announced yesterday that we’re going to have to cut back services because of how much money we’ve lost in the state funding cuts,” Winnie said. “Fewer hours. Part-time staff cut back.” Winnie’s chin trembled. “And no more bookmobile.”

  I stared at her in disbelief. “No bookmobile?” Paradise relied on Winnie’s twice-weekly visits for books. Teachers at Paradise Local Elementary relied on Winnie’s visits, too, to supplement the offerings of the school library. My heart fell.

  “I suggested we cut back on something else temporarily—maybe periodicals and video purchases, or a few hours at the main library, but the director said that since most of the tax base for the library is up in Masonville, the bookmobile would have to go.”

  A solitary tear coursed down Winnie’s cheek. She sniffled, wiped it away.

  The bookmobile was Winnie’s life . . . and a lifeline to Paradise and many other small communities that dotted the outskirts of Masonville.

  I glanced at Harvey’s shirts. They’d just have to be late.

  “Winnie, we’re doing something about this.”

  She shook her head. “I already talked to the director. I don’t think anything can be done about the bookmobile unless we have a levy that passes next spring to get back some of the fundi
ng the state’s cut.”

  A whole winter without books coming to Paradise? I thought of Mrs. Beavy, who doesn’t drive and would have a hard time getting up to Masonville. A whole winter for her without her beloved romance and mystery novels? I thought about Hugh Crowley and how he was just learning to read and how he was looking forward to checking out a few books from the bookmobile’s children’s section to read to his grandnephew Ricky. I thought about my own need to read.

  I grabbed Winnie by the shoulders. “Winnie, Paradise isn’t taking this without a fight. We’ll petition to get the bookmobile back, and then we’ll petition to get a levy on the ballot next spring that everyone will vote for so none of the programs or hours have to be permanently cut!”

  And that’s how, again, I put off checking for orders from the previous day. Winnie and I spent the next hour getting everyone we could—and most people were very supportive—to sign our handwritten petition to get back the bookmobile.

  And truth be told, I might not have thought to check at all if Chip Beavy hadn’t come in that morning.

  And Chip wouldn’t have come in if his grandmother hadn’t sent him in on account of the bookmobile petition, word of which had already spread through most of Paradise.

  Funny how things work like that, isn’t it? One thing leads to another until pretty soon a whole mess of things end up connecting in ways you’d never predict.

  Anyway, Chip did come in. “Josie, Mamaw sent me on over here. She wants me to sign that petition and to know if I can write her name in for her, too.”

  “Is she doing okay?” The Widow Beavy was a favorite customer of mine, but I didn’t see her quite as often now that she had her own washer and dryer, a good thing, since she’s eighty-something and doesn’t get around quite like she used to. She only lives a street over, on Plum Street, but it’s still too hard for her to tote over her clothes. I do her rugs and comforters for her at the laundromat, though, as her washer and dryer are too tiny to handle such things.

  “She’s fine—well, her hips bother her every now and again—but she’s just busy, what with sorting things out for the historical society.” The Paradise Historical Society had recently inherited a 1930s’ era estate house that was once in the Breitenstrater family, of Breitenstrater Pie Company fame, one of Paradise’s major employers. The house would be home to the historical society and its holdings. Mrs. Beavy was in charge of overseeing the new displays of items for the museum, which was supposed to have its grand opening at Christmas.

  I grinned, knowing Mrs. Beavy was joyous in her busyness.

  “Mrs. Rowentree came by the Breitenstrater house”— in the way of a small town, the building would be called that for decades, never mind that it was now owned by the Paradise Historical Society—“and told Mamaw all about the petition. She called me and told me to get in here and sign it for both of us. And to tell you she’s not so busy that she doesn’t still want you to drop by next Thursday afternoon for a visit.”

  Since Mrs. Beavy had started doing most of her laundry at home, I’d started dropping by for a cup of coffee and a slice of her famous secret-recipe buttermilk pie every other Thursday evening, after closing up the laundromat.

  I handed Chip the petition. “Tell her I’ll be there.”

  “Will do,” Chip said, signing his name carefully, then adding his grandmother’s name on the next line.

  Chip handed me back the petition and started for the door, then stopped. “Oh, Josie, I hope it’s okay I put the suitcase right behind the order bin. It wouldn’t fit.”

  I frowned, confused. “Suitcase?”

  “You didn’t see it yet? A customer—I think she was one of the psychics—left it off yesterday. Didn’t want to leave her name or any directions about what she wanted done. I’m assuming it’s filled with dirty laundry. She said you’d know who it was from and what to do.”

  My heart plunged. I swallowed hard. “Was she wearing a brightly colored warm-up suit?”

  Chip nodded. “And hot-pink high-top sneakers.”

  The suitcase—Ginny Proffitt’s, I knew, even though Chip hadn’t directly said that and the suitcase bore no name tag—was a lot like one my Aunt Clara had once had. Hard-sided, made of shiny rigid plastic in a tan tortoise-shell swirl. Metal latches. Empty, it weighed far more than the average person could easily carry. Last made long before the wheeled, soft-sided, pullout-handle variety, maybe back in the 1950s. On eBay, this would be a collectible.

  I studied the suitcase back in my office/storeroom, somehow feeling the need for a little bit of privacy.

  I remembered my Aunt Clara’s from the one and only trip she took—to Florida, for her sister’s funeral. She sat in the kitchen, crying at the table, while the cab—which Uncle Horace had hired to come all the way down to Paradise from Masonville, to take Aunt Clara to the airport over in Cincinnati—waited in front of our house on Maple Street. The neighbors watched from their front porches. A cab was an unusual sight in Paradise.

  Aunt Clara cried because she didn’t want to leave Guy, even knowing he was safe at Stillwater, for the four days the trip would take. While Uncle Horace told her it would be okay, he told me to carry her suitcase down to the cab. I was fourteen, but that suitcase was as heavy as if it were filled with the flat fossil-ridden stones from the bottom of Licking Creek. I tried to hoist it down the steps. The cabbie stomped out his cigarette right there in Aunt Clara’s bed of mums and came and got the suitcase for me.

  While the cabby’s back was turned—even he grunted, loading the suitcase in the trunk—I fished the cigarette butt out of the bed and put it in my pocket, knowing Aunt Clara would really pitch a fit if she saw a cigarette among her mums. We’d probably never have gotten her off to her Florida sister’s funeral. Then I ran back in and fetched the little square makeup case that matched the suitcase. The makeup case was much lighter, holding as it did only Aunt Clara’s comb and bobby pins, for securing her long braid up in a knot, and her Pond’s Cold Cream—her only concession to vanity.

  That night, I went out in the backyard and tore off the filter and tried to smoke the cigarette, but it set me to coughing so hard, Uncle Horace heard me and came out and found me. He asked me if I’d gotten the cigarette from my no-good cousin Sally Toadfern, who even then smoked unfiltered cigarettes, and I told him no. I’ve always been grateful that he believed me, just sent me off to bed early with no questions, and never mentioned it to Aunt Clara.

  Aunt Clara’s suitcase was smooth and unmarred. The only time I saw her use it was on that trip to Florida. But Ginny’s version was beaten and dented and scratched from years of hard use. Aunt Clara’d had no chances for travel, as Ginny seemed to have. I smoothed my hand over the suitcase’s surface. I thought it said something about Ginny that she carried such an old, out-of-style suitcase—but what? That she was cheap?

  Or had the suitcase belonged to Ginny’s mother or some other relative, so that Ginny’d kept the suitcase all these years out of sentimentality? She hadn’t seemed at all the sentimental type. But then, I’d only met her in the parking lot, when she’d foisted that reading on me, and then seen her once with Dru, at Serpent Mound.

  I was spending all this time thinking about the outside of the suitcase, I knew, because I was fearful of opening it and seeing what was inside.

  I shook my head to clear it. In the parking lot, Ginny had said she hadn’t had time to launder her clothes before coming out here and she’d bring them by the laundromat. That’s all the suitcase would contain, I told myself.

  I started to open the metal latches on the top of the suitcase, then stopped. The suitcase might just contain dirty laundry, but it was the dirty laundry of a woman Owen and I had found dead. It was possible that something could be in there that would shed some light on her death or prove that it wasn’t suicide, as Chief Worthy apparently believed. I should turn it over to him.

  But it couldn’t hurt to take a look first, I reasoned. Then I’d turn it over to the police.

&nb
sp; I unlatched the luggage and opened it up. For a second, I closed my eyes, wincing at the sickening smell that immediately filled my storeroom: mustiness. Filth. Body odor.

  I opened my eyes and looked in the suitcase, which held only one item of clothing: extra-large bibbed overalls that had once been white, but were streaked with many different colors of paint and dirt. On top of the bibbed overalls was a plain white handkerchief that was also paint- and dirt-splattered.

  Ginny had written on the handkerchief with a black felt-tip pen:

  Josie—

  In case anything happens to me, know this:

  That there is a devil, there is no doubt.

  But is he trying to get in . . . or trying to get out?

  Mrs. O will help if you start from the end

  And go to the beginning to find out.

  Peace,

  Ginny.

  For a long moment, all around me seemed to fall away and I knew only the nasty smell of the dirt-ridden overalls and the words of Ginny’s note, ringing in my head.

  Then, as if from a great distance, I heard the ringing of something else . . . a telephone . . . but I seemed to be in a trance, unable to react to it.

  How did Ginny Proffitt know my aunt’s old saying? It wasn’t a common saying. And yet, she’d known it. . . just as she’d known about my dreams of Mrs. Oglevee. And she had used this saying in a message that, judging from the phrasing she used, she’d written right before her death . . . in case anything happens to me.

  I grabbed up the handkerchief. It seemed an odd thing to go with the overalls. The handkerchief was an ordinary men’s handkerchief, plain other than the white-on-white striped border, no monogrammed initials or other detailing. But it seemed an oddly delicate, almost feminine, companion to the old painter’s overalls, which were men’s size.