Frogskin and Muttonfat (A Thea Barlow Mystery, Book Two) Page 11

  “When the readings speak with urgency,” she said, “repeatedly showing the same cards over and over again, you better take notice. ‘Pay attention!’, they’re saying. Do something.” She shrugged. “But it doesn’t always make it any easier to know what’s going on.”

  “Yesterday,” she continued in her rather monotonous voice, “at the fairgrounds, the same cards showed up in your reading that I’ve been seeing over and over again in mine. It spooked me. I didn’t know if I was influencing the cards, or if you’re mixed up in whatever’s brewing around here. I still don’t know. That’s why I want to do another spread for you. Maybe we can figure it out.”

  “And the Queen of Swords in my room?”

  “I picked her to represent you. I wanted the card to absorb your surroundings, catch your vibes. Did you handle the card?”

  I nodded.

  She shrugged, one of her favorite expressions. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. Good old Dwayne’s put his spin on it; won’t do me any good.”

  “It would have made a difference?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Could have given the reading a better focus.”

  “But what about Phoebe? I saw a card in her room, too. Did you put it there?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t have any contact with her, but seeing as how she came to Racy Ladies same day as you, I thought I’d cover all bases. The Knight of Wands.”

  “Why that card?”

  “It suited her. Youth, energy, ambition. Impetuous, devious.”

  “Did you take her card? It’s not in her room anymore.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No,” I said, not at all impressed with her show of innocence; she was not good at dissembling. “No, it’s gone. It disappeared sometime after I found Phoebe’s body.” There could have been more windows of opportunity, but the most likely time for the card’s disappearance was in the few—very few—minutes between my finding the body and Rocky running back upstairs to check on my story.

  Had the same person who turned out the light in Phoebe’s room also taken the Tarot card? Had the killer done both of those things? I licked my lips nervously.

  Sheila gazed at me quizzically and cocked her head. “I didn’t kill Phoebe Zimmerman,” she said, as if she’d been reading my mind. “I couldn’t help her, either. And I can’t be responsible for you. All I can do is read the cards.” She gave a little snort. “Sometimes I don’t do that so hot. If the cards indicate you’re part of the forces swirling around me, then at least you’ll be warned. All I can do is read the cards. You gotta depend on your own insight.” She snapped through a final shuffle, and placed the deck in front of her. “And my knowledge.” She turned the top card over.

  Even I recognized the King of Swords. She ran her fingers over the face of the card, shaking her head in wonderment. “He’s appeared in every spread I’ve done for myself in the last three months. And in your reading yesterday. Sometimes upright, sometimes, like now, upside down. He’s a dark man, both hair and soul.” Her voice became soft and thready. “Strong, ambitious, and powerful. Ruthless. He’s jerking me around, forcing my fate. I don’t like it.”

  “You’re sure of all that?” I asked dubiously; it sounded like a bunch of rubbish to me.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she said with a sense of finality. “The King of Swords isn’t always a bad guy, but this time he is.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, still awash with skepticism.

  “By the company he keeps.” She flipped over the next two cards. “Death and Sorrow.” She indicated that I should turn over the next. I did. “Turmoil,” she intoned, tracing the pattern of the lightning bolt, the couple flailing through the air.

  She could have stacked the deck, I thought, staring at the cards in amazement. I didn’t want to believe, because these were the cards I’d seen before: the grinning skeleton of Death and the sundered Tower. The third card, in the middle position, I didn’t know, but it depicted a fallen body pierced by numerous swords.

  I thought of Phoebe and how I’d actually touched the knife that took her life. A gush of sorrow welled up from some hidden part of me I’d not been aware of before, engulfing me in a dark cloud of misery. My vision blurred. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t speak. Tears that should have been shed last night poured down my cheeks. My breath caught in sobs.

  Slowly, the flood began to recede. Sheila watched without expression. “That’s the card speaking to you,” she said.

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, wildly embarrassed by the unexpected outburst of emotion. “She was so young,” I said, offering the only excuse I could think of, “so full of life.”

  “I couldn’t help her,” Sheila said, reaching behind her to hand me a box of tissue. I blew my nose and got up to throw the tissue in the wastebasket. My toe kicked something that went rattling across the floor.

  Sheila half-rose from her chair. “What is it?”

  “A pebble,” I said, picking up a small piece of gravel. “It must have been stuck in my shoe.” I started to throw it away with the tissue, but she said she wanted to see it. I handed it to her.

  She turned it over in her palm. “Rocks and stones. Everywhere I go, inside or out, I’m kicking up rocks and stones. I’ve never done that before. And now you’re doing it.” She shook her head and put the pebble at the end of a row of stones that lined the windowsill. She motioned me back into the chair. “I want you to handle the cards now. Cleanse the deck first.”

  I followed her directions, then gathered the cards, shuffled, and cut the deck in three stacks. Sheila picked them up.

  “You are a strong woman,” she said, as she began to lay out the spread, “but you rule from compassion. That’s why I chose the Queen of Swords for you. Your heart is as big as your sword.”

  “I don’t have a sword,” I said, attempting a bit of levity.

  “Then get one. You will need a sword.”

  Fourteen

  Sheila Rides Horse studied the spread of cards silently, elbows on the table, head propped in her hands. I’d witnessed the constant cleansing of the deck, the repeated shuffling by both Sheila and myself, yet in a layout of fourteen cards from a pack of seventy-eight, there they all were again. A preponderance of the suit of swords: struggle and animosity. Swords everywhere, in fact. And, of course, the King. This time the Queen of Swords was next to him.

  “See,” Sheila said, shaking her finger. “He means you harm, but you are strong. Just be careful.”

  Yeah, and get a sword, I thought.

  The others were there as well, the Tower, the Hanged Man, and the awful sword-pierced body of the Ten of Swords. And no matter how she tried to soften the Death card by calling it transition, I saw it for what it was, and it chilled me.

  “Did you see Phoebe’s death in the cards?”

  “I saw someone’s death. I thought it would be mine,” she said, much more calmly than I could have managed. “I can’t burden you with this,” she said, dismissing the layout. “It’s too dark, and just a warning, anyway. I can read for myself, but I don’t want to put things in your head that might not happen. You’re never bound by the cards, you know, there is always free will.”

  “But—”

  “There are other things here that I will tell you.” She brushed her fingers across a few of the more innocuous cards. “You have a lot of unresolved issues in your life involving relationships and you’re fighting the solutions.” She spoke quickly and lightly. “The answers are there. Why are you afraid of them? And again I see a new career, or at least a new venture, involving people and houses. Maybe you like to cook, too?”

  “I like to eat,” I said, with a little laugh, much relieved by this lighter mood. “Where did you learn to cook?”

  “The orphanage. Sister Fortunata.”

  “Here in Rawhide?”

  “No, South Dakota. Got dumped there as a newborn. Sister Fortunata took me under her wing. She was a bit of a rebel herself.” Sheila stretched and rested against th
e back of her chair. She too seemed relieved by the respite, a brief escape from the doom-saying cards. “She taught me Tarot, and how to escape into books. I found an old Escoffier Cookbook when I was around twelve. She let me experiment in the kitchen. Always encouraged me. Been cooking ever since.” She gazed out the window a moment, lost in her reverie. “She was like a mother to me. A best friend. She died two years ago. A part of me went with her.” It was the longest speech I’d heard from her. “Tell me about your grandfather,” she said, with an expression on her face that made me think she really wanted to hear what I had to say.

  “How do you know about my grandfather?” I said, startled. “You mentioned him yesterday, too.”

  She gave another of those expressive shrugs. “The Tarot opens all kinds of windows. I see lots of things. I don’t always know where they come from.”

  Now it was my turn to gaze out the window, thinking about Gramps. “I can’t let him go,” I said, finally. “He was my beacon. He brought adventure to my life. The world and everything in it held glorious promise whenever he was around. He gave me years of advice, wise counsel, unquestioning love. My parents were hard-working, busy people. He was the core of our family, kept us all vital and strong. I can’t bear to see him dwindling away.”

  “And now he is?”

  “The cranky old shell of the man he used to be. Feeble and bedridden by choice, resigned, waiting to die. I want to shake him, I want him to rise up and fight, to regain the brilliance he shed so generously on us. I want him to cherish every minute that’s left to him.” I paused a moment, trying to sort out my feelings. “Most of all, I’m afraid my light will diminish and die when he’s gone.”

  For some reason, we both looked back down at the spread of cards. Perhaps we’d had enough of self-revelation.

  “You have the answers,” she said. “Remember the Hanged Man, strangled by life patterns he won’t give up. Tear them away. Run toward the new and what is waiting for you. And as for this,” she said, indicating the cards. “We are in it together. I am here, and here.” She pointed to two different cards. The tenor of her voice dropped and became nearly toneless. Her eyes focused on something I couldn’t see. “We must be fearless, but careful.”

  With a shudder of her heavy shoulders she rose to her feet. She was nowhere near them, but the collection of stones on the windowsill clattered to the floor, bouncing and rolling around our feet. I jumped out of my chair, knocking it over. The hair on the back of my neck bristled with alarm.

  “Help me find the dark-haired man,” Sheila said, stretching a hand out to me. “Fly with me.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Fly…We’ll find the King.”

  She dropped back into the chair, her glazed eyes fluttering shut.

  I was out of the room like a shot, skin crawling, breath coming in frightened little gusts. I hurried through the maze of hallways toward the front of the house. Way too weird for me. I desperately needed some good strong caffeine.

  I found coffee, juice and breakfast rolls on the sideboard in the dining room. Rocky stood behind the registration desk, sorting out keys.

  “Hi,” he said, as I shakily poured myself a cup of coffee. “Did you sleep all right?”

  “Yeah, like the dead.” I grimaced at my word, took my coffee and stood by the desk watching him, sorely needing company.

  “How about you?” I asked. “I bet you had a long night of it.”

  “You’re not kidding.” He looked at me sharply. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “No, I’m fine. I just needed some coffee,” I said with a pathetic little laugh. “I’ve been talking to Sheila Rides Horse.”

  “Oh, yeah? She’s quite a character.” He pawed through the pile of keys, reading tags, looking for matches. “But let me tell you, if she was as psychic as she thinks she is, she could have saved us a bunch of trouble last night.”

  “Psychic?”

  “Yeah. Reads fortunes, too. Florie says she has visions. She’s a strange one all right. I don’t believe in any of that crap, myself.”

  I couldn’t argue with his opinion of Sheila. Still, there was something about her. Stolid and rather lumpish, yet intelligence fairly leapt from her eyes, and her fey sense of humor continually took me by surprise. I found myself liking her, at least now that I wasn’t in the same room with her, regardless of my suspicions, which never quite disappeared.

  “She’s the best damn cook I’ve ever known. She’s put us on the map, let me tell ya.” He snagged another key, put it with two others and hung them on a hook.

  I asked, “Have the police found anything out yet about Phoebe?”

  “You mean who killed her?”

  I nodded.

  “No. At least not that they’ve told me. The cops didn’t leave ‘til early this morning, but I guess they’ll be in and out all day.”

  “What do you think, Rocky? Do you have any ideas?”

  “About what?” he asked nervously.

  “About Phoebe, who could have killed her.” I couldn’t believe he hadn’t done some speculating. “I mean, what was going on down here at the time? Did you notice anything unusual? Did you hear anything upstairs at all?”

  “No. Not a damn thing.”

  “I know Garland Caldwell and Buster Brocheck were having after-dinner drinks. Had they been here all evening?”

  “Oh, you know, they kind of come and go. Buster left after dinner for a while and then came back. Caldwell and his wife left; he must have taken her back to the motel because he came by here later, alone, and he and Buster sat over drinks. They were having brandies. Caldwell’s a good spender. There were four or five other people here, too. I gave all their names to the police.”

  “And none of them were moving around the house, going to the restroom?”

  “I don’t remember anything like that.”

  And what about Rocky? Had he been tending bar all that time? I sighed and sipped my coffee. “It just seems so unbelievable that people could be sitting and talking so normally downstairs when something so horrible is happening upstairs.”

  “Yeah, it gives you the creeps.” He had the door of the small hanging key closet open, putting matched sets of keys on hooks as he found them. “I just wish the Sheriff was in town. He knows what he’s doing.”

  “Is, uh, Dwayne all that bad?” Only in Wyoming would I be calling a police officer—who was diligently trying to pin a murder on me—by his first name.

  Rocky shrugged. “He’s all right, I guess. We went through school together. Never seemed like he had a brain in his head, is all.”

  But I needed to know something else.

  “Last night, Rocky, while we were waiting for the police, you went upstairs to stay with the…the body. Did you wait in Phoebe’s room or in the hall?”

  “In the hall. Why? What do you want to know for?” He frowned, instantly prickly.

  “I’m just wondering who took the Tarot card out of Phoebe’s room, and when they could have done it.” Actually, I was quite positive who had taken the card—Sheila Rides Horse. But when was the crucial question.

  “Oh, that,” Rocky said, losing interest and going back to his keys. “I wasn’t about to wait in there where she was so I stayed in the hall.”

  It wasn’t conclusive, I thought. I supposed it was possible that Sheila could have slipped upstairs while the police were working in my room and whisked the card away then, and not in those few moments that were only available to the killer. Why was I finding it so hard to believe that she might have wielded the weapon? The knife had probably come from her Racy Ladies kitchen. Maybe she was a crazed killer; she was certainly spooky enough. Still, I couldn’t convince myself. It didn’t track for some reason.

  “Do you have your key to Mavis?” Rocky asked, hanging two others on a hook labeled with that name.

  “Yes, it should be in my room upstairs. I’ll bring it down. I don’t plan on ever going in there again.” I looked the keys over wi
th some interest. “I guess I should get a key to Madame Juju. How many keys to each room?”

  “Should be three for each guest room. We keep two on the hook and a spare in the drawer. One of the Hard-Nosed Lu keys is missing,” Rocky added casually. “Don’t know what happened to it.”

  “You have two?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then the other one is in Phoebe’s purse. It’s her purse that’s lost.” I made a mental note to remind Dwayne about that. “The two keys hanging on Lu’s hook are the spare that you gave me last night. I’m assuming the police found it in her room where I left it and gave it back to you?”

  He nodded.

  “Then the other key hanging there must be the one that was missing last night. Whoever took it must have returned it.”

  “Are you saying that someone stole the key and used it to get into Phoebe’s room?”

  “All I’m saying is it wasn’t there last night when you were looking for it. Now it’s here.”

  “I don’t like your—”

  “Oh, come off it, Rocky. That’s a great-looking key cupboard, but face it, anyone could take anything out of it any time they wanted, and return it, as well. You don’t even keep the silly thing locked.”

  He gave a weary sigh and ran his hands over his hair and then his face. The dark smudges under his eyes were more pronounced than ever.

  “You’re right, I know it. That’s why I’m trying to sort this mess out,” he said, dejected. Then with a burst of anger, “We’ve never had to worry about this stuff before.” He slammed the door of the little cabinet. It whapped in place, then slowly bounced back open. “Now I’ve got to come up with some other system.” He began picking through the keys again, matching and hanging.

  I got a refill of coffee and brought him back a cup, too.

  “Thanks,” he said, with an apologetic smile. “I’m pretty frustrated at this point. And look, Thea, I’m sorry that Florie sounded off at you last night. She was really upset.”

  Weren’t we all, I thought dryly.

  “We never did think you had anything to do with Phoebe’s death.”