Death in the Cards (19 page)

  
1. What did Ginny hear from Skylar—and see in her crystal ball—that made her leave suddenly at six o'clock? Why did Ginny take her ball with her? Where's the ball?

  
2. What happened to the little case that Lenny carried in?

  
3. Why the corn maze? Privacy?

  
4. Who doesn't have an alibi for between 6:15 and 7:45? Dru? Other psychics? Who else?

  
5. How explain only Ginny's fingerprints on the gun?

  
6. Why had Ginny and Dru met in the first place?

I shook my head. How would I ever find out now what that meeting was all about?

“You ever answer yourself back?”

I startled, and looked up at Luke, who was smiling at me.

“You were mumbling to yourself,” he said.

“Oh.” I pulled the napkin—now covered with my scribbled questions—into my lap, and started folding it.

“Just got off the phone with Chief Worthy,” Luke said. His grin broadened. “I'm happy to say I now have one vacancy—for you, rent free.”

“That's good news.” No crab Rangoon B&B for me. “But I'm planning on paying you.”

I stood up, followed Luke toward the front office. “Now, Josie, I can't charge someone who's been evacuated . . .”

“Luke, come on, you have any number of customers who'd be glad to pay you for the room . . .”

We squabbled like that, all the way to Room 23.

14

Luke won out, of course. As he pulled the yellow
POLICE ONLY
tape off the front door of Room 23 and handed me the room key, he gave me a scowl, trying to look stern, and said, “I'm pretty sure your Aunt Clara and Uncle Horace taught you not to sass your elders.”

He had me there.

But I'd find a way to repay him, sooner or later. Maybe not charging for doing the linens for a few weeks. I could call it a frequent customer appreciation special. Tell Greta that. I always dealt with her about the weekly motel laundry.

I carried my one bag of luggage and my container of crab Rangoons, my green tomato relish and the other provisions I'd grabbed from my fridge, making several trips. The foodstuff I put in the minifridge. I put my clothes in the dresser, my grooming supplies in the tiny but clean bathroom.

Then I sat down on the end of the bed and looked around.

I'd never stayed in the Red Horse before, unlike several fellow Paradisites were rumored to do . . . and not with the partners they should be sharing motel rooms with.

This room was small but neat and tidy, the bedspread a pale blue chenille, the one picture in the room a painting of Tecumseh, the legendary Shawnee leader who defended his people and homeland in what would later become southern Ohio in the 1700s. (There's even an outdoor drama about his life—called
Tecumseh
—every summer at an amphitheatre, built just for the show, near Masonville.)

There was a dresser holding a TV and an ice bucket and a laminated card with local businesses and their phone numbers, mine included.

Now, I'm not a believer in ghosts, usually. But still. Here I was, in the room whose last guest was murdered. Maybe it was the effect—the karma?—of being at a psychic fair, but I found myself wondering, even though this was not my usual practical way of thinking, that even though Ginny had died elsewhere, maybe something of her spirit was still here.

After all, Ginny herself had somehow known about my dreams of Mrs. Oglevee—even though she hadn't named her by name—and even called Mrs. Oglevee my spiritual advisor.

Spiritual advisor? Hmmph. More like exactly what I'd always thought of her, both when she was living and now: a bad dream. But still, if it was possible that I could tap into some spiritual beyond while dreaming, why not while I was awake? It would sure be easier to just ask Ginny herself for the answers to all the questions I'd jotted down on the paper napkin.

Of course, my Aunt Clara believed that people who died terrible deaths lingered near the place of their deaths. Still, this had been the last place Ginny had slept before her death. Plus I was at a motel hosting a psychic fair, so it seemed reasonable to expect that the karma of the place might heighten my chances of tapping into Ginny, whatever part of her spirit might still be on this earth.

But how to go about tapping into the great beyond?

At Serpent Mound, the psychics had sat in a circle, legs crossed, and looked very peaceful. I wasn't really sure what else they had done; up in the observation tower, I'd been too far away to hear the specifics of their chanting. And I wasn't sure how sitting positions would enhance a person's ability to tap into anything beyond the here and now.

But I was also a woman of faith. I went to the Methodist Church most Sundays, and didn't totally understand everything we said we believed. Who did? So that was a leap of faith.

Why not take a somewhat different leap of faith? After all, Mrs. Beavy had advised me to be open-minded.

I criss-crossed my legs and winced at the pull in the backs of my thighs. I really had to make good on that promise to myself to start working out. Stretching in the mornings, at least.

I rolled my shoulders a few times and tried to relax. Recalled a yoga class I took up at the Masonville YMCA about five years before. I never finished it because I kept falling asleep in the middle of the lotus position.

Still, maybe some of the techniques would be useful for tapping into spirits. I put my hands palms up on my knees. I inhaled slowly, then exhaled, while glancing around the room.

But there were no shadows other than the ones that should be there, no flickers of movement other than the hem of the curtain fluttering from the warm air huffing out of the heating unit. I didn't sense a thing as I looked around the room. The room was just . . . the room.

I closed my eyes, inhaled and exhaled slowly again. Maybe I could tap into some connection if I weren't distracted by mundane shadows and flutters. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.

The back of my left calf started to itch. Attending to the
physical wouldn't necessarily get in the way of tapping into the spiritual, would it? Especially if I kept my eyes closed and left my hands palms up.

I wiggled my left leg. My calf still itched. I wiggled again. Tried to refocus. Wiggled again. And again. And—

Thud. My butt jolted into my spine, my spine into my neck, my neck into my jaw. My eyes opened wide and I looked around.

Room was the same. The only difference was that now I was off the bed, on the floor, and hurting. And my calf still itched. I gave it a good long scratch.

Just before her sister in Florida died, my Aunt Clara had the chill bumps one hot night as we sat out on the front porch, she and Uncle Horace on the porch swing, Uncle Horace snoring softly as Aunt Clara rocked them back and forth and fanned herself with her Rothchild's Funeral Parlor fan in rhythm to the rocking. (The fan was free, and so fit nicely into her frugality plan.) I sat on the front porch steps, staring into the darkness of Plum Street.

All at once, Aunt Clara gave a shiver that was far more of a reaction than the funeral home fan could have generated.

“Lord-a-mercy,” she said. “The chill bumps. I've a mind to go call Jeanne. Something tells me that if I don't, I'll never have a chance to talk with her again. Leastways, in this life.”

“Well, what tells you that?” I asked impatiently.

Aunt Clara sighed. “You just don't have a lick of the sight, do you child?” Though Aunt Clara didn't care much for my daddy's family—ignoring me as they did—she still revered my Great-Aunt Cora Lee's gift of the sight, through her dreams. And she believed it ran in her own family, through sudden thoughts that seemed to come from nowhere.

I reckoned my efforts to tap into Ginny's spirit—which resulted only in my butt thumping to the motel room floor—
proved Aunt Clara's observation. Fine with me. Back to the practical.

First, I called Stillwater and talked briefly to Don Richmond, who assured me that Guy was doing just fine—he was back into his regular routine—and that the staff was watching him closely for any symptoms of stress. I felt only mildly reassured, though. It wasn't that I didn't trust the Stillwater staff. It was just that I was really worried about Guy.

My own voice hitched up as I relayed the fact that I was temporarily staying at the Red Horse, and why, and gave Don the Red Horse phone number and my room number.

Next, I called Winnie and was lucky enough to reach her at home. Before the water main broke, she told me, she'd been able to collect thirty-seven signatures on her bookmobile petition. Would I help circulate the petition when everything was back to normal on Main Street? Of course, I told her.

Then I asked her for a favor I knew she'd delight in fulfilling: researching Ginny Proffitt's background. I brought Winnie up to date on what all had happened since I'd last seen her that morning in my laundromat—she was worried about Guy, too, and said she'd pray for him—and I made arrangements to meet her and Martin at the Bar-None. They went there on Saturday nights for line dancing, anyway, and while taking breaks, Winnie could fill me in on what she'd learn about Ginny.

And I had every bit of faith that between the Internet and a few phone calls, she'd learn a lot. Winnie is like a coonhound on a scent when it comes to research questions. She won't rest until she's explored every possibility. I'd learn way more than I needed to know about Ginny, but somewhere in all the facts Winnie would uncover, would be something that would help me solve Ginny's murder.

The Bar-None would also be the best place to go over the
details, away from the other psychics, who along with Dru were my top suspects (Dru being my favorite). Of course, Dru wouldn't haunt the Bar-None's door. He and his followers counted drinking and dancing as sins. If he hadn't been so preoccupied these past few months with trying to run the LeFevers out of business, to put a stop to the psychic fair, and to protest Halloween celebrations, he'd probably be arranging a protest demonstration at the Bar-None.

After I finished with Winnie, I tried Owen's number again. Still busy. It was time to go see for myself that he was okay.

“Now, take a look at this one, Josie. Doesn't he look great in his uniform?”

I looked at the picture of the twelve-year-old boy on Owen's computer screen.

The boy had Owen's offbeat but somehow charming good looks: the slight bend to the nose, the roguish grin, the wide-eyed expression, as if in amazement or anticipation.

The boy's face also carried other qualities that I reckoned came from his mama: clear green eyes, a firmness to the chin, a spattering of sandy freckles.

The boy's hair I couldn't judge. He wore a red baseball cap and his hair was cropped so short that only a fine burr of light brown showed above his ears. The cap matched his red and blue baseball uniform, which boasted his high school team name: PANTHERS. Eagerness showed in how he held the bat, poised as if about to swing.

“He's a pitcher. I was a pretty decent pitcher in my day,” Owen said. “Had a mean slider I liked to throw, you know.”

No, I thought, I hadn't known that. I hadn't even known that Owen played baseball in high school. Or that he had an athletic bone in his body. The past summer, when we'd gone riding on the bike trail that winds just past Paradise (one of the
many bike and hike trails created from the old railroad lines and canal towpaths in Ohio), Owen kept losing his balance.

We'd played putt-putt golf, one of my favorite summer to-do's, and he scored 202 to my 88 (two strokes under par.)

We'd gone to the park and played sand volleyball—I was an ace volleyball player in high school—and Owen kept serving the ball into the net.

So no, I had no idea he was in any way athletic. He'd never mentioned it.

But then, until the previous July, he'd never mentioned key elements of his past to me. Like the fact he'd been married. Fathered a child. Divorced. And on a trip to his troubled home for his brother's funeral, gone into a bar, gotten into a fight with an old high school enemy, and in self-defense had knocked his knife-wielding foe to the floor, accidentally causing the other man to hit his head hard enough on a table corner that he died. Owen had then served time in prison for involuntary manslaughter and, upon his release, moved to Paradise, buying a house out in the countryside and taking a teaching position at Masonville Community College.

I'd learned all this only because I'd caught Owen in a lie about where he'd grown up. Then the truth came out. I'd often wondered whether Owen would have avoided telling me about his real past forever, if possible.

He'd added little to the story since then, except that Tori, his ex-wife, had gained total custody, including control of visiting rights, after Owen went to prison. And she'd denied him any contact with their son, Zachariah.

Until, it seemed, this past September. For the past month and a half, Owen had been corresponding with Tori through e-mail, he told me after I got to his house.

And just that morning, he said, after I'd left to go to work at my laundromat, he'd checked his e-mail and found a message
from Tori. Their son had been asking more and more about his father. And after talking with her counselor, she'd decided to allow Owen to come visit them in Kansas City. He'd been on the Internet all day, shopping for the best air fare prices, or on the phone, arranging for other instructors to substitute in his classes, getting permission from his dean to take off. He didn't want to risk waiting until Christmas break to go to Kansas City. What if by then Tori had changed her mind?

He hadn't left his house all day, hadn't communicated with anyone other than Tori and his community college colleagues.

Which meant he hadn't heard about Guy being in the hospital. I wanted to tell him about Guy, to seek comfort from him, but a coldness welled up within me, tightening my throat, and instead I found myself asking, “When were you going to tell me about all this, Owen?”