“Alan didn’t take the news well, I’m afraid. It makes me wonder if I do have my head on straight, at my age, to be on my own.”
“You have to do what’s right for you, Patrice,” Sophie commented, thinking age had little to do with it. Why be unhappy at any age? It sounded like Patrice had wasted enough years.
“Anyway, so I brought the necklaces to Noble’s to have them appraised and cleaned—oh, which reminds me,” Patrice said suddenly, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a slip of paper that she stuffed into her purse. “I almost forgot I put this here. I’m awful about putting things in my coat pockets and then forgetting. Anyway, anything you can tell me to help me think this all through would be most helpful.”
Sophie focused, absently rubbing her knee. Even though it didn’t hurt, she’d never broken the habit borne of years where the joint, before they’d finally settled on a full replacement, had always ached, night and day.
“Okay, the Two of Pentacles . . . well, that’s apt. You’re weighing the pros and cons. It signifies reflection on your decisions, thinking through why these items and not others? Maybe also the thought you put into whether you want to end your marriage or not. The sun rising in the background shows change is on the horizon.”
Patrice nodded, leaning in. The images on the cards blurred as Sophie wondered where Margaret was. The long afternoon without nourishment was catching up with her. Without preamble, Sophie laid out another card.
“Another Pentacle, the realm of money, worldly goods. This time, the Six—charity, giving and receiving. Being generous, but generosity has another side, as you have the power to pick and choose who should benefit.”
“I would donate the proceeds, so that makes sense. I also want to give away portions of my money, as well, to worthy causes. Alan wasn’t happy about that, either. He’ll have to fund the scholarships he likes to brag about with his own income now,” Patrice added somewhat caustically.
Sophie stepped delicately around commenting on Patrice’s marital discord. “Nothing too surprising so far. That’s a good thing, indicating support for your decisions.”
Patrice nodded again, watching as Sophie flipped the Seven of Swords, frowning.
“The Six directs the energy of the Two, but the Seven of Swords suggests some deception or selfishness. The contrasting elements, pentacles and swords, they represent air and earth, active and passive, and also suggest conflict or lack of compatibility. These two weaken each other. What astrological sign is Alan, by the way?”
“Taurus, Earth—oh, and I am Aquarius, air—my divorce, then,” Patrice added, making her own connections, which Sophie always encouraged people to do. “It’s true, we’re not very compatible. We never were. I guess even people who don’t get along all that well settle into familiarity after a while.”
“Possibly, yes. Alternately, if we focus on your question and the other cards, the seven suggests that could be deception around you. It’s something to consider when making big financial decisions.”
“I keep close account of my finances myself—my father taught me that—women should never trust anyone else to watch their money.”
“Well, there is clearly some conflict associated with your situation, but in the end, you have to follow your heart. Do what you believe is right, what will make you happy.”
“That’s the hard part.”
“It always is. The cards can offer some direction, but they can’t tell you what to do. You have to trust yourself for that.”
Patrice smiled. “You are wise for your age, dear.”
Sophie smiled, never thinking of herself as wise, certainly, and peeled off another card. She was happy to see The Star.
“Ah, see? This is your astrological card, and I think indicates universal support for your plans. The right decisions feel right, even when they’re difficult. If you have doubts, then take some time before acting. Trust your instincts,” Sophie said.
She stopped, losing her track of thought, the room seeming to spin a little. She heard the bell on the front door, and hoped it was Margaret, who had said she’d be coming back with some food.
“Sophie?” Patrice’s voice was faint, as if in the distance.
Sophie looked up as a man walked through the drapes, interrupting them. Tall and well-dressed, his suit was old-fashioned, vintage, as was his haircut. His face was thin, his frame somewhat bony, the most prominent feature his intense, dark eyes. He was handsome, though Sophie couldn’t tell his age. She thought he was maybe in his twenties, but there was an air of weariness in his eyes that made him seem much older.
She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a chill as his eyes met hers. “Sir, I’ll be able to help you in a moment, if you would wait out in the main area of the store.”
He didn’t respond, but stood at Patrice’s side, putting his free hand on the back of her chair. He looked down at the cards and then at Sophie.
“Sir,” Sophie said again, her voice sounding far away.
“Sophie, what’s going on? What man? There’s no one here,” Patrice said, apprehension thinning her voice, making it high, like a violin string drawn too tight.
Sophie tried to grab back on to reality, but failed.
“Who are you?” she finally gave in and asked him, oblivious to Patrice’s discomfort. Her hands moved more of their own accord than not, laying another card out. The mood in the room changed, turning to something heavier, darker. Colder.
“The Knight of Wands,” she said. “Impulsive and reckless. A bringer of messages.”
“Why are you here?” Sophie asked the man.
“Oh, Sophie. You’re. . .” Patrice said in a hushed whisper spent on a sucked-in breath, but Sophie closed out the rest of what she was saying, focusing only on the man in front of her. She drew another card.
“Five of Swords. Someone is being dishonest, dishonorable. There’s discord and danger.”
“Danger?” Patrice echoed vaguely.
Sophie put the Lovers and the Three of Hearts on the table, one crossing the other.
“Heartbreak, betrayal, pain. Terrible pain,” she said, and his expression became etched with wrenching sadness. He pulled his coat open, exposing the wound, the bloodstain on his shirt. Sophie gasped as the room rocked hard to the side.
“Who did that?” she asked as everything closed in around her. The picture was incomplete, and she laid out one more card.
“The Queen of Swords?” She stared at the card, confused.
When she looked up he was gone, as if he had never been there at all. Blackness filled in the void, and the next thing she knew she was being jerked awake by a scream.
Her eyes traveled to Patrice, across the table and she pushed back in her chair, hard, nearly toppling over in shock.
Patrice.
The older woman slumped down over the table, unmoving. Sophie quaked from head-to-toe as Margaret Dalton, her assistant manager, stepped into the room, clearly shocked.
“Ohmigod, ohmigod,” Sophie repeated until words left her all together. She rushed forward, shaking Patrice and then drawing back, her knees turning to water as she saw the prints left on Patrice’s blouse by her own hands, bloodied from where they’d rested on the table. The tarot cards laid out there floated in blood. Patrice’s blood.
“No, no, no. . .”
The slump of Patrice’s body told a story horrid and unthinkable. Sophie had to be dreaming, there was no way this was real.
“Patrice!” she shouted, sure she was trapped in a nightmare and hoping they would both wake up. This couldn’t be happening. Not Patrice, too.
Someone was shaking her hard, and Sophie became aware of Margaret’s voice, her friend’s firm hands shaking her, trying to pull her attention away from where Patrice refused to wake up.
“Sophie, what happened? Who did this?”
Margaret grabbed her face, making Sophie focus away from the body. A memory of a man’s face swam in her mind, and she could only shake her head as she sta
red at Margaret, her mind and body slipping back under the waves of icy shock.
Chapter Two
Glad to have been spared handcuffs, Sophie was even more relieved not to be taken out on a stretcher. Shepreferred the cuffs, if it came down to it. Roger had been her buffer for the last few hours, and soon he would be taking her to the station where she could be officially questioned and offer a statement. Not that she had much to say.
She did have to go upstairs with a policewoman and change her clothes, handing in what she had on for evidence. Being watched as she took everything off and then dressed again had been a minor humiliation stacked on top of the horror she was facing.
She watched Roger as he walked to the car instead of on images of Patrice that kept flashing in her mind. Somehow she kept moving, doing what was asked of her though she couldn’t feel anything. Even looking at the man she loved left her feeling nothing. Shock had wiped her emotional slate clean.
He slid in the driver’s side of the department issued sedan he used while on duty—a long shot from the flashy SUV that was his personal car—started the ignition and pulled away from the curb with efficient speed. The station wasn’t far, and she knew he’d want to talk.
“You doing okay, sweetheart?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“They’re going to have a lot of questions.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t see or hear anything?”
Sophie looked out the window, feeling like something was crawling under her skin. She didn’t want to tell Roger about the man. She didn’t want to deal with any of this.
Memories swam around her mind. Patrice helping her home from the hospital, her eyes warm and welcoming, but also so sad in the days after Aunt Doris and her father had been taken from them. Patrice sitting on her bed, talking to her for long hours, staying up with her at night, helping her with the doctors. And now Patrice was gone, too.
“Sophie? What did you see? You know you can tell me anything, right? We’ll get through this together.” His big hand came over and covered the one she had fisted in her lap, bringing her back to the present moment.
“I didn’t see anything. I mean, I saw something, but you don’t want to hear about it, believe me. I don’t know what happened to me, low blood sugar, or something .”
“Sophie, tell me what you saw.”
“You won’t want to hear it, Roger.”
“Try me anyway.”
Sophie said nothing.
“Do you think you could have killed her?” he asked baldly.
Sophie’s eyes flew open. “Of course not! How could you even say that?”
“I had to ask. They’ll ask. Well, then, what happened?”
“I can’t remember much.”
“Tell me what you do remember,” he said.
“She was talking about selling some of her personal items. She said she was thinking of divorcing her husband. We talked a little about Aunt Doris, that’s it.”
“So she’s-”
Roger didn’t get his sentence out. The man appeared out of nowhere, stepping in front of the car, and reflex had Sophie slamming her foot to the brake though she was on the passenger side, holding her hands up, bracing for the hit.
“Roger, watch out!” she yelled.
To her shock, they drove right though him—the same man she’d seen at the shop—a man that Roger didn’t see at all. Cold nausea passed through her as his form swept through hers, right through the passenger’s seat of Roger’s car. He pulled over quickly to the curb, having no idea what was wrong.
“Sophie, what happened? Jesus, you look like death,” he said, framing her face with his hands, inspecting closely as the world stopped spinning and she refocused.
“Didn’t you see him?”
“Who?”
“The man in front of the car—it was the same man I saw at the shop,” she said weakly. So much for not saying anything.
“There was someone else at the stop? Tonight?”
Common sense kicked in a moment too late. “I-I guess it was a hallucination. The same one I had earlier. . . .” she drifted off, not sure how to get out of this. Her mind wasn’t working right.
“I knew I shouldn’t have let you push off the emergency exam. . .you need to see a doctor.”
“No, no. . .I. . .I don’t know. I saw someone, but I don’t know why, or if he’s real.” She pulled back, out of his hold. “Why would I see him twice?”
Sophie could almost feel Roger’s physical efforts to control his response, as if patience was controlled by muscle alone. His words, when they came, were measured.
“Things have been hard lately, babe. You’ve been sick, busy with school, selling the store, and tonight you lost a friend in the worst way possible—it’s only natural that your mind would try to cope with the trauma someway, maybe fooling you into thinking you’ve seen ghosts or whatever-”
A ghost, she thought, feeling ill again. Funny, how that hadn’t even occurred to her. “A ghost,” she echoed, fitting her mind around the idea.
“Sophie, I’m sorry, I—listen, trust me, I know this is bad timing, but you have to talk to Pereski, and if you tell them you’re having hallucinations or seeing ghosts, it won’t go well.”
“I know how this sounds Roger, but I can’t change it even if I can’t explain it,” she said, feeling stubborn now that the cat was out of the bag. “I did see a man. I can even describe him.”
“Maybe you saw someone real—maybe it was the killer, and this is how your mind is coping with the reality of it. There are no ghosts, Sophie.”
Could that be true? Didn’t that mean she was really off her rocker, so traumatized she didn’t know reality from what her mind conjured?
“We should put the interview off. You need medical care, and then we can deal with the questions,” Roger said, grabbing his phone. “I know you were close to Patrice, and losing her is bound to throw you for a loop.”
She put a hand out, stopping him. “No, no. I want to do this now. Get it over with. I’m okay, really,” she said, the nausea passing, her mind clearing somewhat.
Roger turned into the parking lot, and they got out, walking toward to station. He kept her tucked protectively under his arm as the rain came down a little harder. She felt small next to him, delicate in the way that she didn’t experience often.
“Listen, all I’m saying is that there is usually a logical explanation for everything. I’ve seen some insane, horrible things in the world, unexplainable things, and it always makes sense, eventually. Your mind is simply compensating for the shock,” he said reasonably.
“A fancy way of saying I’m losing it,” she said under her breath.
“No. I think you’re traumatized and dealing with this the best you can.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
Roger said, “Listen, Margaret’s timeline checks out. She was at the restaurant waiting for soup at the likely time of death. So, now they have to hear from you. Just give them the facts. They’ll find who did this, I promise.”
“Mags could never have done such a thing, either.”
“I know, but they have to check it all out.”
“So I’m really a suspect?” she said, the idea really taking root.
“Technically you are a person of interest—obviously, there’s no evidence against you, you’re just the last person to be with her, so you’re the primary person they need to interview. Pereski is leading the case. He can be an ass, but at the end of the day, he’s a good cop. Tell him what happened as best you can, but if you tell him you’re hallucinating or seeing people who aren’t there, then you’ll be handing him your ass on a platter,” Roger said. “And your ass is mine,” he added, trying for some kind of levity, but failing miserably.
“I don’t understand what happened, let alone try to explain it.”
Ghosts? She wrapped her arms around herself. Could she have really seen a ghost? Regardless of what Roger thought, she knew what she
had seen was real, but that didn’t mean it was human. If nothing else, she’d learned to have an open mind over the years. It was a source of contention between them. She’d learned early on, trying to get him to share in her world, taking him to psychic fairs and showing him what she did at the shop, that it was useless. He was a straight line, and she’d learned it was necessary to zig-zag to deal with life. Still, they loved each other, which was what mattered. She wasn’t crazy about the cop business, either.
“People have weird reactions to violent crime. It’s understandable, considering what you’ve been through before this.”
“I guess it gives me a good insanity defense, huh?”
Roger bought her water and a candy bar at the vending machine. “Stop that. You want me in there? A lawyer?”
“Didn’t you tell me people only ask for lawyers when they’re guilty? I’m not. I’ll be fine.”
Roger pulled her in, and she let him, wrapping her own arms around his middle.
“I’m going to call a friend of mine, a lawyer, just in case. Don’t worry,” he said, looking at her face. “Just to let him know what’s what, in case you need him. You probably won’t. I’ll wait in my office.” He framed her face, and looked in her eyes. “I love you. This will all work out.”
She wished she was as sure as he was.
* * *
Margaret was on her way out of questioning as Sophie arrived at the police station. The two friends passed in the hall, but weren’t allowed to exchange more than a few words about the store, officers lurking close by. Make sure no one could line up stories, trade alibis. Hollow-eyed and pale, Margaret had been crying, and started again when she saw Sophie, but Sophie could only send a sympathetic look.
The interrogation room was cold, and Sophie pulled her sweater more tightly around her, staring at the mirror and wondering if anyone was staring back. On TV, there was always someone standing on the other side of the mirror.
“Hey. Here’s a cup of lousy coffee, but it’s better than nothin’,” Matt Pereski said as he came in and closed the door behind him. What was it about doors on certain kinds of rooms that shut with that awful sense of finality?
Past Tense Page 2
