by Lila Shaara
“Okay, then,” she said. “Look around all you want. But then leave us alone.” She shut the door on him, unplugged the phone, lay down on the couch, and closed her eyes, her heart pounding with fear.
31
THE HIGH PRIESTESS
The Seeker should keep her mouth shut
.
Harry spent the rest of the morning looking at whatever he could find under the name Emily Timms on the Internet. He ran a search of all the obituaries in newspaper archives in the greater Denver area for the last eight years. No mention of either Emily Ziegart or Emily Timms, but that meant nothing. He didn’t know that she’d died there, only that that was where her sister had lived. A general search found seven papers in various bibliographies and collections with her name as one of the authors. Two of them, as Cameron Jenner had said, had her name alone. All this, Harry thought, before she was twenty-two. The titles were meaningless to him, things like “Magnetic Field Calculation in Laser Doppler Vibrometry,” but he got the general idea. Hers was a mind on fire. He looked at his note to himself: “Talk to Josie.” He called the trailer but, as usual, got no answer.
Harry went to lunch at Crane’s. He arrived before one o’clock, not wanting to be thwarted at the cemetery. Shawntelle waited on him with a smirk, while Dottie gave him disapproving looks from across the restaurant. Harry wondered again what they thought of him, feeling old and embarrassed. But he lingered over his sandwich, waiting for her to emerge from the kitchen.
She came out on schedule, and he felt his stomach tighten as he waited for her to spot him. He couldn’t decide on an appropriate expression; he tried smiling but had a feeling that it wasn’t sitting right on his face, so he tried to make it blank, but that felt wrong as well. He wasn’t sure what his face was doing when she turned and saw him, her own looking mostly surprised. No one had alerted her that he was there; he had no idea what that meant. She said a brief something to Calvin Crane, then walked to his booth.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey yourself,” he said, smiling now for real, no longer caring what his face looked like. “Can you sit for a little while?”
“Sure.” She sat down.
“Do you ever actually eat here? The food’s pretty good. Can I treat you to lunch?”
“No thanks. I had something. I eat for free.”
“Oh. I was pretty much done, so it’s just as well. Not everyone likes to have people watch them eat anyway.” Get to the point, the judge said, so Harry went on, “I’m sorry, Maggie. About the beach house and everything.” Her face didn’t change, and he said, “She wasn’t supposed to be there. Are you angry? I can never tell with you.”
She smiled then, so sweetly that he felt his stomach loosen and his breath shorten. He could see the smudges under her eyes, darker than they’d been the last time he’d seen her. She wasn’t sleeping much either. “I’m not mad,” she said.
“Thank God,” he said and smiled back.
“I’m going for a walk,” she said. “If you want to come.”
· · ·
“I’ve been kind of a schmuck. I have more to apologize for than for the beach house,” he said.
“It’s okay,” she said, looking out from under the hat into the shadows under the live oaks.
“No, it’s not okay. I got to see ball lightning. Or I think I did. I didn’t behave very well after that, though.”
“It’s okay,” she repeated, stopping and squatting on the ground. She was examining a pile of red sand on her side of the trail. “Fire ants. They’re everywhere. People pour all sorts of chemicals on them to kill them. But they’re just trying to find a safe place to keep their eggs.”
Harry looked down at the top of her head, obscured by the broad hat. “Don’t they sting?”
The hat spoke. “Yes, but it’s not that bad. Little bumps that itch at lot. But they go away in a day or two.” She stood up. “I left my foot in an anthill once for about five minutes, just to see how bad it would be. I didn’t enjoy it, but it’s not like it did anything permanent. People expect the world to only feel good. They’ll burn anything up that discommodes them.” She walked forward even as she turned to look at him. “Just don’t kiss me unless you mean it,” she said and then continued on toward the bridge. Harry followed her.
“Tell me about the solar panels,” he said.
“What about them?”
“Don’t be coy. Someone around here knew Emily Ziegart.”
“I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Emily Timms, then.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Where did your cousin Dee die?”
“Baton Rouge. Four years ago.”
Probably too recent, he thought, although the dates were unclear. He said, “She was an only child? No half sibs or anything like that?”
“No.”
“What was her middle name?”
“Dee wasn’t a scientist, Harry.” She sounded impatient. “She was never married to a scientist either.”
“What was her middle name?” he repeated.
“Jane. Delores Jane Dupree. From her birth to her death it was never anything else.”
“You said Miss Tokay gave everyone the solar panels.”
Maggie smiled. “Her first name is Edith. I don’t know her middle name.”
“She’s too old anyway. She has a niece, the one married to the objectionable developer. What’s her name?”
Maggie looked at him for a while, the smile blooming larger. “Gretchen.” She started laughing, and Harry found himself joining her.
“I know I sound obsessed,” he said. “I haven’t had a lot of sleep. But I know she had something to do with the solar panels. I bet Miss Tokay knew her. Maybe she was a follower.”
Maggie’s smile drifted away with the hot breeze that carried a red-tailed hawk high above them, its wide wings not moving. She watched it as she said, “Miss Tokay hasn’t had a follower in over twenty years.”
“She never had kids? No grandchildren tucked away anywhere?”
Maggie’s eyes shifted to his again. “Not that I know of.” “When did everyone get them? The panels, I mean.”
Maggie looked for the hawk again, thinking. “A little bit before Dee died. Maybe five years ago. At least, that’s when the first ones went up.”
“I’ll need to speak to Miss Tokay again.”
“You won’t find out anything. I told you, Harry, she’ll consider it terrible manners if you ask her if she spent a lot of money on her neighbors.”
“I don’t care. I’m in the grip of this thing. I feel like the only defender of Emily Ziegart. Emily Timms. I have an image in my head of her dying alone and bereft. I’ve dreamed about her.” He wished he hadn’t admitted the last part.
“ ‘You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed,’ ” Maggie said.
“What? Is that a quote?”
“Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t really fit anyway.” She turned away from him and walked toward the bridge. He followed her. Once on the bridge, they both stopped to look at the water. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, he asked her if she would go to Serge’s party. “There’ll be fireworks.”
She turned from her contemplation of the lily pads and said, “You know I’m not very good with new people. I . . . Thanks, Harry, but I don’t think it would go well.”
“Please.”
She looked at him for a long time, her eyes shielded by the brim of her hat.
“Please,” he repeated. Sweat was running freely down his back now. After a minute she finally said, “Okay.”
He drove behind her to the double-wide. He wanted to interrogate Josie, even though the idea obviously made Maggie unhappy. He walked with her into the trailer after their cars were parked in the oyster-shell driveway. Josie was asleep on the couch, her billowy dress in disarray around her, her mouth open. Her snores were regular and almost musical, and under other circumstances Harry would not have dr
eamed of waking her. Maggie stayed him with a movement of her hand, then gently shook her aunt’s shoulder.
Josie woke with a loud snort, sitting up so rapidly that she almost fell to the floor. She saw Harry first, standing at the foot of the couch, and she recoiled as though he had a weapon. Maggie said, “It’s all right, Josie. He just wants to talk to you. I’ll make you some tea.” The smell of rum hung in the air faintly, like flowers.
Maggie went to make tea, and Josie wiped her hand over her face as though there was a film on it. She said, “Do you want a reading, or what? I’m not in the mood. Even you need to make an appointment.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want a reading.”
He waited while Maggie got mugs and tea bags ready in the kitchen. Josie sat on the couch, not moving, breathing a little heavily, staring beyond Harry in a way that he was getting used to. After a moment, the kettle whistled and Maggie brought Josie a mug of tea thick with milk. Maggie nodded at Harry, and he said, “I know you knew Emily Ziegart, Emily Timms. I know that’s who put up the solar panels or at least who made them. I want you to tell me everything you know about her.”
“Who?” Josie said, but Harry could tell she was pretending. She tried to meet his eyes, but hers kept moving to the carpet, to the desk that held the big cards, to something outside the window.
“You know who. What’s the big secret? She wasn’t a criminal, was she? Why hide the fact that you knew her?” He took a breath and waited.
Josie sagged a little then, sinking farther into the couch, as though she were going to fall into the springs. She said, “She was so sad, it broke your heart to look at her. She came to get a reading from me, only once. Just the one time. Emily.” She moved on the couch, wiped her face again, drank some tea. Her hands were shaking. “Saddest girl you ever saw,” she repeated. “I didn’t know her. I never knew her.” She started crying. “Those damn panels. Brought us nothing but trouble. An ill wind. But blew no good at all.” She started crying harder. “Leave me alone. She’s dead. Dead, dead, dead.” Maggie was at her side, an arm around Josie’s soft shoulders. Josie turned bloodshot eyes to her and said, “I’m so sorry I’m drunk, honey. I promise I’ll stop, I promise. I’ll promise you anything if you make him go away.” Maggie continued to soothe her, a ritual that Harry thought was probably a familiar one to both of them.
Maggie put Josie to bed. When she returned to the living room, her face was so pale he was afraid she was going to faint. She said, “I’ve never heard any of that before. I don’t know where it came from.”
“Did Emily have something to do with Miss Tokay? She must have.”
“Not that I know of.”
“I’m going to talk to her, Maggie.”
She nodded, then said, “I’ve got to stay here. I’m not going with you this time.”
32
THE HANGED MAN
Taking time to think things through. A sage, a prophecy
Frank Milford had introduced Jonathan Ziegart to the sheriff over the phone. “He’s the son of a famous scientist. He was hoping you could give him a tour.” Milford’s wife was the sheriff’s wife’s gynecologist. The sheriff agreed, although without much enthusiasm.
Now Jonathan had come to collect on the promise. The sheriff showed him the holding cells and the desks of his deputies. The receptionist, a pretty woman of about thirty named Serena, offered to take over when the sheriff was called away to the demands of his office phone. Jonathan joked with her about the possibility of them “accidentally” being locked in a cell together for a few hours, making her blush and giggle annoyingly until he was rescued by the sheriff’s lieutenant deputy. He was a man only a few years older than Jonathan himself named Faber, with sandy hair and a regulation mustache.
As Faber led him through the labs and evidence room, Jonathan told him that he was studying to be a forensic anthropologist. Faber said, “There’s a fellow over to the college that we use when a hunter stumbles on some bones in the woods. Happened once a few years ago. There were only a few of ’em, and no one could tell if they were human or somethin’ else.”
“What else would they be?”
Faber shrugged. “Only had a few ribs and some bits. Turned out they were deer bones.”
“Ah,” Jonathan said.
“Once, over to the hospital, they found a baby in the laundry. Dried up. Parts missing. Couldn’t tell that one either.”
“The parents must have been upset.”
“Well, no. Turned out to be a monkey. Some doctor had one pickled in a jar. The cleaning crew broke it and dint tell nobody. It was in the papers for weeks.” Faber scratched his head. “The doctor was pretty bent out of shape, though.” Faber regarded his fingernails and the detritus from his own scalp. “But bits of people are always found in the sinks.”
“The what?”
Faber described sinkholes to Jonathan. “People are always dump-in’ stuff in ’em. Car batteries, old tires, even appliances sometimes. Great place to dump a body. They’re real deep. Most sinks are in the middle of nowhere. Bodies don’t show up for years. And sometimes the corpses travel through the underground caves. Creepy as all hell.”
“Interesting,” Jonathan said. “It sounds like there’s more of my kind of work here than I would have expected. You folks ever think about hiring one on full-time?”
“No, not enough call for that, I imagine. But the guy who we use, he’s pretty old. You thinking of relocatin’ down here?”
“Maybe. I had an internship with the FBI when I was an undergraduate, but government work is a little too political for me. A nice small town would suit me fine. I’m from one, so I understand the people.” He offered to buy Faber dinner after work, knowing he was probably disappointing Serena. “I hope you’ll tell me all about Stoweville,” Jonathan said with a broad smile. “Where I’m from, there are any number of interesting eccentrics. How about here? Any local crazies?”
As Harry approached the purple door, he wondered how compos mentis Miss Tokay actually was and how many of her recollections could be trusted. He prepared himself for another lecture about the Sky People and lifted his hand to knock. Before his hand made contact, he was startled by a voice behind him. Miss Baby was coming out of the woods behind the house. “What you doin’ here?” she said loudly, panting and imposing in cream-colored muslin, wide pants and a top that looked like a collection of pale scarves loosely sewn together.
“Wow. You look great,” he said.
“Pooh,” she said, coming up the steps, her long legs allowing her to take two at a time with no apparent effort. “You gettin’ skinnier,” she said. “You’re not so ugly now.”
“I’m here to see Miss Tokay.” As soon as he said it, he braced himself for Miss Baby’s scorn at being told the obvious. He wasn’t disappointed.
“Well now, is that a fac’?” Her drawl had returned, and Harry realized that much of her broad accent had been exaggerated for his benefit. He thought, what a dumb-ass they must think I am. He turned to knock again, but Miss Baby stopped him with a “Leave her be, Harry.” It was the first time she’d used his name. “Miss Tokay’s been a little ill lately. Excuse me, I mean ‘pohly.’ ” She smiled. “I came over to look in on her.” She edged him aside and moved between him and the door. “What you doin’ here anyway?”
“I just wanted to ask Miss Tokay about Emily Timms. She knew her. I want to find out how.”
“Why?” She put her hand on the knob and appeared to consider something. “You know,” she said, “you’ve never asked me anything. Evidently you’re not as enlightened as you think you are. You figured I’m just an old black country woman. Why talk to me about anything big and important that you’d be interested in, right?”
Harry felt his surprise as a cold tickle across his shoulder blades. Then he got angry. “I didn’t think to talk to Miss Tokay either until Maggie told me that she gave everybody solar panels.”
Miss Baby regarded him for a moment, a smaller smile now
resting on her magnificent mouth. “I’ll let you off the hook for bein’ a bigot this one time,” she said. “Let’s go in together.”
Miss Baby made tea, a strange replay of the last time Harry was in the living room of the Tokay house. The Purple Lady was in her place on the sofa, but the light was softer, the sun going down off to the left of the tall, thin windows, sending peach rays across a purple sky. Fitting, Harry thought. “Why purple?” he said. “I keep forgetting to ask.”
Miss Tokay thanked Miss Baby as the latter handed her a cup and smiled at Harry’s question. “The Sky People send purple light to the ascended ones. It’s the light of wisdom, the light of healing. Of love, of protection. The ascended ones send it on down to us in an attenuated form. The color itself has all these qualities, just to a lesser degree.”
Harry said. “Miss Tokay, how well did you know Emily Timms?”
“Who?” Harry repeated the name. “Oh.” She sent a look to Miss Baby. Both their expressions were cryptic. “Emily. A sweet girl. Very sad, though. She ascended some time ago. I hear from her often.”
“How did you know her?”
Her smile was sweet, gentle and misty. She looked at him for so long that he thought she’d gone elsewhere in her mind, but finally she said, “I’m not sure how she came to be here. She was a visionary. She understood about the purple light of Kwan Yin.”
Harry said, “Kwan Yin is a Buddhist deity. Chinese. A bodhisattva.”
Miss Tokay beamed even more broadly. “I’m so impressed, Harry. Is it all right if I use your first name? Maggie refers to you by it. I was hoping we could be friends by extension.”
“I’d be delighted, ma’am.”
She nodded, still smiling. “The Sky People don’t mark petty ideological boundaries the way we do, Harry.” She might be crazy, he thought, but she wasn’t simple. “Kwan Yin, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, they’re all ascended and holy and sources of inspiration and protection for those of us who have yet to ascend. Once we do so, of course, we join them.”
