Onyx Webb 8

by Diandra Archer

  Definitely by eleven.

  Never past noon.

  Hey, it was her gallery. Her grandfather left it to her. If she wanted to be a few minutes late, she could.

  Tara opened her eyes and checked her cards for the third time. Which in and of itself was probably a tell. She had the nuts—a pair of aces—that matched two additional aces on the board. Four aces. A hand she could clean up with and then get the hell out of there with her winnings.

  The Mouse called Tara’s $500 bet—the schoolteacher’s biggest bet of the evening. Tara wasn’t concerned. She’d put the Mouse on a low straight draw since the other three cards on the board were a four, a five, and an eight. An eight-high straight was no match for Tara’s four of a kind.

  The question now was what would Mr. Beefy Fingers do?

  The beefy man smiled, grunted, and then tossed a brown $500 chip onto the table.

  Good, Tara thought. The more in the pot the better. She hadn’t had a big night in months. She was overdue for a bit of good luck.

  Then the beefy man pushed five stacks of white hundred-dollar chips into the center of the table. “And ‘cause I got a lot of kids to buy gifts for, I raise ten grand.”

  Steady, Tara thought, working hard to suppress a smile. Take easy, slow breaths. Relax your hands. Just look at your cards and pretend you’re concerned. Inhale. Stare blankly into space as if you’re thinking. Take your time. Count to five.

  “I got a full boat. You should fold,” Mr. Beefy Fingers said.

  Tara looked the man over. He was slumped in his chair, and his face was tight with concern. He was in trouble. He was bluffing.

  “I’ll call,” Tara said finally.

  Then the Mouse did the last thing either of them expected. “How much is in the pot?” she asked.

  The dealer counted the chips. “It’s ten thousand to you, Miss.”

  “Can I ask a question?” the Mouse said as Tara went about the task of restacking her chips.

  “Certainly, Miss,” the dealer said.

  “What do you call it when all the cards are in a row and they’re all from the same suit?”

  “That’s called a straight flush,” the dealer said.

  “Okay, that’s what I thought.”

  “And if I want to raise, I can do that still?” the Mouse asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the dealer said. “This is a no-limit table.”

  “Then that’s what I’d like to do,” the Mouse said.

  What? Tara thought as she watched the Mouse push her chips toward the center of the table.

  Then Tara looked at the community cards again.

  Ace of clubs.

  Ace of hearts.

  Four of spades.

  Five of spades.

  Eight of spades.

  Four, five, eight.

  Shit.

  All that time spent working Mr. Beefy Fingers, thinking he was the idiot at the table. While ignoring the Mouse. All that time worried about her tells, while the bigger issue was right there in front of her the entire time.

  The Mouse turned over her hold cards. She’d been sitting on the six and seven of spades the entire time.

  A straight flush.

  Tara slid behind the wheel of her BMW, pulled the door closed, and began pounding her fists on the steering wheel. Why had she come here again? She always lost.

  Well, not always.

  Tara was an excellent poker player, having learned how to play from her Grandpa Lucas when she was ten years old. And she’d won a lot of money over the years. The problem was that she simply couldn’t quit. No matter how far up she got, she couldn’t get up and leave.

  There was no escaping the truth—she was a compulsive gambler. The test she’d taken at her first Gamblers Anonymous meeting confirmed it.

  The test was called The Twenty Questions. Supposedly, if you answered yes to seven or more of the questions, you were a compulsive gambler. Tara had answered yes to seventeen of them, which immediately made her realize she needed to quit, so she did—she quit going to GA.

  If she had a dollar for every time someone told her she should go back to Gamblers Anonymous, she’d take the cash and go to the card tables to see if her luck had changed. It had to change eventually, didn’t it?

  Tara turned the key in the ignition, the BMW came to life, and for the briefest moment she thought about selling the car. Then she remembered the car was leased.

  Tara glanced at the clock on the dashboard.

  It was 7:40 a.m.

  If she drove like a bat out of hell and if it didn’t start snowing, she’d only be an hour late.

  MANHATTAN

  As Tara drove down Broadway toward the parking garage on West Forty-Sixth, she glanced down the street in the direction of the Schröder Gallery, which was several blocks further up on the left. With any luck, there would be an eager buyer waiting outside so she could get back some of the money she’d just lost.

  As it turned out, there were people waiting.

  Ten, to be precise.

  All of them dressed alike in blue windbreakers—with large yellow letters reading FBI on the back.

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  NOVEMBER 24, 2010

  Declan woke in severe pain and peered at the digits on the clock glowing in the darkness. He pulled the covers back and staggered to the bathroom.

  Blood again.

  As he expected.

  Declan flushed the toilet and turned back toward the bedroom. And then he saw the shadowy figure sitting in the chair in the corner of the room.

  “Who’s there?” Declan asked.

  “I think you know,” a familiar voice said. Declan hadn’t heard the voice in seventy years, yet he knew who it belonged to.

  It was Father Fanning.

  “Surprised to see me?” the dark form that was Fanning said.

  “Surprised?” Declan said. “No. I never assumed it was over between us, Fanning. What do you want? Are you here for me?”

  A deep, rumbling laugh emerged from the corner of the room. “You? The world revolves around you, doesn’t it? Actually, I’m here for the girl.”

  “The girl?” Declan asked. “What girl?”

  “You don’t know, do you?” Fanning said. “Her name is Juniper. In fact, you’ve got quite athe menagerie of the dead hanging around the mansion. Let’s see: There’s Juniper and the one in the bowler hat and the black man with the blind woman. That makes three right there. Oh, and now me—four. It’s almost as if you’re running a bed and breakfast for the deceased—a dead and breakfast, if you will.”

  “Why don’t you come out of the shadows and show yourself?”

  “Show myself?” Fanning laughed. “I am showing myself. Don’t you see that, Declan? This is what I am at my core—beneath the robes and the smile and the outstretched hand. This is what I’ve always been when the outer shell is stripped away. At least, it’s all that’s left of me now.”

  “Is that why you’re here? F for Juniper?” Declan asked.

  “Very good,” Fanning said. “Quite the ball of light that one is—young, innocent, full of energy. I’ve been looking for her for a very long time.”

  “Is she the girl my grandson has been seeing in the mirror?” Declan asked.

  Fanning shifted to the left, then the right, his motions jerky and uneven. “I don’t know. Is she?”

  Declan remained silent.

  “You know who killed her, don’t you?” Fanning said. “It was Stan Lee.”

  “Stan Lee?”

  “Yes. You remember Stan Lee, don’t you, Declan? Mary Ann’s boy—the one you abandoned at the Dunning Asylum when you picked up Bruce.”

  “You’re lying,” Declan snapped. “Stan Lee is dead. Besides, how would you know?”

  “You’d be surprised at what I know, but have it your Okay, have it your way,” Fanning said. “You know, I’d be glad to take your confession while I’m here.”

  “My confession?” Declan asked, fighting off the
urge to lunge at the shadow sitting in the chair. “Why would I—?”

  “Come on now, Declan. We go too far back to be playing games with one another,” Fanning said. “You’re sick. I can hear it in your breathing. I can smell it emanating from your every pore. I could take you now, if you’d like—end your suffering.”

  “I can take care of my own death, thank you,” Declan snapped.

  “Ah, just as I should have expected. Putting on the brave face—acting tough,” Fanning said. “Everyone thinks they’ll be strong in the final minutes, but then the final minutes come and that plan goes right out the window.”

  Declan said nothing.

  “You blame me for a lot of things, don’t you, Declan? My dalliances with the boys, for example. But the truth is we all sin. Big sins, small sins. I spent many a night standing in the darkness of the dormitory after lights out, watching your bedsheets moving up and down. Who were you thinking about, Declan? Let me guess, Sister Katherine? That’s every schoolboy’s fantasy, isn’t it? Having a nun drop to her knees for you?”

  “Shut up,” Declan said.

  “Very well, let’s leave masturbation off your list of sins and go straight to the big stuff. How many men have you murdered so far, Declan? Two? Three? Five? It’s okay if you don’t know the exact number. I’m sure God knows.”

  “Get the hell out of my house,” Declan said.

  A deep laugh rumbled from the dark form in the chair. “Until the next time then.”

  “There won’t be a next time,” Declan said.

  “Yes, there will,” Fanning said, his black form lifting itself out of the chair. “You’ll see.”

  Declan watched as it made its way across the room and climbed into the mirror above his dresser.

  CRIMSON COVE, OREGON

  MARCH 14, 2008

  I reviewed the list of items you wish to sell,” Onyx said from her position above Noah on the spiral metal staircase.

  “And?” Noah asked.

  “I have no qualms with letting go of most of it, but I still find it hard to believe any of this will bring much money,” Onyx said.

  “I remember you saying the same thing about the Singer sewing machine,” Noah said. “Do you remember what that sold for?”

  “Yes, Noah, I remember. It sold for $1,500.”

  “Yes. And what about the white dinner jacket?”

  “I only wanted to keep it for the nostalgia,” Onyx said. “I was here when it arrived from Bullock’s department store in Los Angeles. Ulrich put it on to model it for me, and I laughed at his foolishness.”

  “Like ordering thirty-six pairs of Levi’s?” Noah asked.

  “At least Ulrich could wear the Levi’s,” Onyx said. “But the dinner jacket? What was he going to use a dinner jacket for out here in the middle of nowhere—to trim the hedges?”

  “Yeah, well it sold for $700,” Noah said.

  “Yes, yes, you’re right,” Onyx said. “It seems that if a person lives long enough everything they own becomes a collector’s item.”

  “So, it’s okay for me to sell what’s on the list?”

  “I suppose,” Onyx said. “Except for the Victrola, that is. That should stay, as it is not mine to sell. It belonged to the caretaker who lived here prior to us.”

  “The one who Ulrich murdered to buy the place, you mean?” Noah asked.

  “It was never established that Ulrich did the deed, but I have always believed it to be so,” Onyx said. “As did Hell Daniels.”

  “The sheriff.”

  “My, my, you really have been studying up,” Onyx said.

  “He was a big part of the film festival,” Noah said. “He’s also mentioned a lot in my grandfather’s notes.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he is,” Onyx replied, wishing she’d had the good sense to keep her mouth shut.

  “So, the Victrola?”

  “I said it stays.”

  Noah grunted and crossed the Victrola record player off the list, knowing the machine would have brought a minimum of $2,500.

  Since discovering the Levi jeans seven months earlier, Noah had helped Onyx sell $18,000 worth of unused and unwanted items collecting dust in the caretaker’s house—allowing him to keep 25 percent of the proceeds for doing the work.

  Eventually they’d run out of items to sell, of course.

  And then?

  “Well, I’m off,” Noah said. “I want to get back to Portland before dark. Don’t forget your salad.”

  “Yes, Noah, I’ll come get it in a bit,” Onyx said. “You know you’re always welcome to stay in the caretaker’s house, should you wish.”

  “Well, maybe when the place is emptied out and we can get Orkin in there,” Noah said.

  “Orkin?”

  “The exterminators, Onyx—you know, to professionally fumigate the place,” Noah said. “The last time I stayed I got eaten by bedbugs or something. I itched for a week.”

  “That’s not possible,” Onyx said. “I’ve never had any such experience.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “I shall change the sheets the minute you leave, but I’m fairly certain your bites were obtained elsewhere.”

  Onyx waited for darkness to fall before opening the lighthouse door to discover Poe sitting like a sentry on the landing, its eyes trained on some invisible object in the darkness.

  “What are you staring at?” Onyx said. “Go inside and get warm.”

  The cat ignored Onyx and remained on duty.

  Though the cat arrived at the lighthouse after Alistar’s death six years earlier, Onyx didn’t name the animal until recently because she feared she’d become too attached to it. Then one day, as she climbed the lighthouse stairs, she spied Tthe Bblack Ccat among the thousands of books she’d borrowed from the Crimson Cove Public Library.

  In the story by Edgar Allen Poe, a man owns a beautiful black cat named Pluto, which he kills one night in a drunken rage. When the man’s house is destroyed in a fire, he becomes convinced it’s the cat’s doing. Eventually the man kills his wife and conceals her body behind a brick wall in the basement. When the police arrive, the man believes he is safe—until the sound of the cat screeching behind the bricks gives him away.

  Shortly after rereading the book, Onyx began calling the cat Poe.

  “Very well, Poe, have it your way,” Onyx said.

  Onyx walked through the darkness to the caretaker’s house. Once inside, she located a set of clean sheets and took them to the master bedroom where Noah claimed to have been bitten by bedbugs, which—despite her protestations—he very well may have been.

  Ghosts do not sleep. As such, Onyx had never slept in the bed to know. And even if she had, she would have no way of knowing if a bug had bitten her.

  Onyx went to the base of the bed and grabbed the sheets, but, before she could pull them off, she heard Poe begin to wail and screech outside. What was that cat up to now? Onyx wondered.

  . But when the screeching abruptly stopped, Onyx knew something was wrong.

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  NOVEMBER 24, 2010

  Getting an outside table at Poogan’s Porch was not easy, but Stan Lee wasn’t some local yokel—he was The Southern Gentleman, a Charleston tourist attraction in his own right—especially when he dressed in his white suit, black Panama hat, and Colonel Sanders necktie.

  The outside porch was just one of the many things he loved about Poogan’s Porch, a restaurant that specialized in Southern food in an unassuming Victorian townhouse on Queen Street.

  It was cold outside on the porch, though.

  Stan Lee liked the cold, but this was colder than what was comfortable, even for him. He took a sip of his coffee to warm himself. If he’d been thinking, he’d have insisted Koda take him to lunch rather than breakfast.

  The waiter braced himself against the biting cold and pushed through the door and went out on the porch to see if the man was ready to order. To the waiter’s surprise, the man asked to be moved to a table inside t
he restaurant.

  The waiter was more than happy to oblige. The goofy Colonel Sanders lookalike was the only idiot out there.

  Stan Lee glanced at his watch and saw he still had a few minutes before Koda was set to arrive, so he opened his copy of USA Today.

  Seconds later, Stan Lee found himself starring into the eyes of a person he hadn’t seen or heard from in several years—Special Agent Newt Drystad of the FBI.

  The article was titled:

  What Ever Happened to Spider Boy?

  Good question, Stan Lee thought.

  The answer, it turned out, was a nervous breakdown—the result of “an internal issue” a spokesperson for the FBI said. There was no additional information available, and none would be forthcoming.

  Standard FBI bullshit, Stan Lee thought.

  However, an independent journalist had tracked Spider Boy to the Commonwealth Hotel in Lynchburg, Virginia, where the young ex-agent had been living since leaving the bureau in 2007.

  Lynchburg, Virginia. Lynchburg was not all that far from Charleston, Stan Lee thought.

  Interesting.

  “Good morning,” a man said. Stan Lee looked up and saw Koda standing there.

  “Well, if it isn’t young Mr. Mulvaney,” Stan Lee said as he folded the paper and laid it on the table. He motioned for Koda to take a seat.

  Koda lowered himself into the chair opposite Stan Lee. “So, why am I here?”

  “Breakfast, of course,” Stan Lee said. “Like I said on the phone, I thought it would be nice for you and me to sit and chat over a short stack of buttermilk pancakes before I confirmed that I am was indeed available on the evening of December 20.”