Rituals (12 page)

Transparent and dimly lit images flashed around Dara, so quickly that Faye couldn't distinguish them all. Sometimes she saw colorful orbs very like the ones that had visited her during her session with Tilda. Once or twice, she thought she saw human shapes, tiny but fully formed.

Then the floodlights came up again, drowning out the flickering images. Dara was speaking. “Is James here?”

A voice answered her from the back.

Dara faced the direction of his voice, saying, “Your grandmother…or perhaps it is your mother…is aware that you have broken the truth. Go and make amends.”

Dara looked deep into the glass bowl, then she reached to the floor and picked up a discarded tarot card without looking at it.

“Someone here is seeking to repair a marriage.” She looked straight back into the darkened room, and two people sprang to their feet as if they had no choice in the matter.

“Justice,” she said, holding the card to the camera. “Can you both honorably say that you have shown the other justice? If not, then do so. If you have exhausted the limits of your own justice, then the court will wield it for you. Would you rather make your peace with each other and enter the future in justice and love? Or would you rather watch a judge divide your lives? Decide.”

And on it went. Dara called out to audience members, sometimes by name and sometimes by situation, saying “Speak up, Jennifer, and tell me why you're here,” or “Someone here is carrying a deep guilt.” Somebody was always willing to stand up and take the medicine Dara dished out, and Dara always had a tarot card ready to sweeten that medicine.

The Four of Pentacles proved that Jennifer was clutching at the past because of her need for security. The Nine of Wands showed the guilty person that he had behaved badly because he felt threatened, and that he shouldn't run away from the results of his actions. Faye found herself wishing that Dara would call on her, but the flamboyant psychic never said, “Stand up, unbeliever, and let me solve all your problems for you.” So Faye stayed in her seat.

On and on she went, and never once did Dara lose her theatrical presence. Just when Faye wondered how long the woman could do this, the floodlights dimmed again and she noticed something luminous swirling on the floor around Dara's feet. It was more than fog. Faye could see shapes coalesce in the light, then vanish. They were reflected in the lenses of the glasses perched on Dara's nose.

Dara picked up one more card from the floor and laid it on the table for the camera to see.

“This card is for us all—The Chariot. Events are rushing toward us, breaking over our heads like waves. If we are strong, we will take these things as they come. We will make each new difficulty our own and vanquish it. Only a fool lets life roll past, unheeded.”

The stage went black, the house lights came up, and the people in the audience were left to find their own way out. Willow was gone.

Faye looked Toni in the face and said, “Tell me what I just saw.”

“I will. Most of it. I haven't quite figured out the card trick yet. But we can't talk here. Look at all these people.” She gestured at the dazed people walking slowly out of the building. “You know how much you paid to get in the door. Multiply that number by a full house attending nine shows a week. Dara and Willow are raking in some serious money. They do not want me to explain to you how they do it.”

Chapter Fourteen

Toni's rental house was almost as old as the homes of the Armistead sisters, but it was smaller and less sumptuously furnished. Somehow, though, its old wood floors and white plaster walls managed to give the modest house a solid and prosperous feel. Its tiny kitchen proved perfectly adequate for brewing tea and opening a box of store-bought cookies. As Faye lifted her thousandth cup of tea of the week, she wondered whether the residents of Rosebower were trying to poison her with theophylline and tannins.

Amande could hardly wait for Toni to set down the teapot. As the retired schoolteacher leaned back comfortably in her chair, the girl demanded impatiently, “So how did they do it?”

“I presume that you use the word ‘they' out of politeness. Willow didn't actually do anything.”

Amande bristled.

“Yes, I know that he is a very pretty man. But did he tell poor Debbie anything that you couldn't have guessed?”

“Um…no.”

“Are you psychic?”

The words flooded out. “I wish I was! Their show was just so mysterious. And exciting!”

“You mother paid thirty dollars for the two of you to watch Willow play his guessing games. Now, I'll grant that Dara's part of the show may be entertaining to the tune of thirty dollars, but how many hours would you have worked to earn your fifteen-dollar ticket if your mother hadn't been so generous? Do you get minimum wage?”

Amande nodded.

“Less payroll taxes?”

She nodded again.

“Did Willow really do anything that was worth more than two hours of your time?”

After a pained moment, Amande said, “No.”

“You're a wise girl. So now let's look at Dara's performance.”

This was what Faye had been waiting for. “The floating orbs and the tiny transparent people. How did she do that?”

“Have you ever been to Disney World? Specifically, have you ever been to the Haunted Mansion?”

Faye nodded yes and Amande shook her head, saying, “No, but I've seen pictures.”

“Have you seen pictures of the dining room, where you can see through a bunch of waltzing green ghosts?”

“I always heard those were holograms,” Faye said.

“Did they have holograms, way back in the sixties when Disney World was built?” Amande asked.

Toni-the-physics-teacher shook her head. “Not moving ones. And not at theme parks. The notion that the Haunted Mansion uses holograms isn't a new one—it's all over the Internet—but the geniuses who built the Haunted Mansion didn't need cutting-edge technology. They used a magician's technique that goes back to the 1600s. It's called the Pepper's Ghost illusion. All it takes is a pane of glass and a hidden room with controllable lights.”

Faye closed her eyes and pictured the auditorium. “Dara was surrounded by panes of glass. Where was the hidden room? Under our seats? Or was it above the ceiling, hidden from us but in full view of the stage?”

“Yes and yes. Very good. I'm sure that you both noticed that the mysterious images were very small. They flickered on and off, and they didn't last long.”

Faye and Amande nodded.

“I think there are spaces below and above the stage. They're not tall enough to be called ‘rooms,' but they serve the purpose for the Pepper's Ghost illusion, if you're willing to settle for tiny images. The items she wants us to see are in those spaces. She's got miniature human figures and ‘floating' spheres, for sure. My guess is that the spheres are actually hanging from fine wires. A fog machine or two is probably enough to make those swirling colors at her feet. Those spaces above and below the audience must be fitted with lights that are set on timers synchronized with Dara's spinning cage. When she wants you to see a person or a sphere, the lights come up.”

“When that happens, the hidden object is reflected in the glass?”

Toni smiled at Amande and said, “Precisely. Have you taken physics?”

“Last year, I took high school physics. I'm taking an advanced placement course this year.”

Toni kept smiling. “Then you know more than enough optics to understand the Pepper's Ghost illusion. So tell me this: Why doesn't Dara use the technique throughout the show?”

Faye shrugged. “I have an answer, but it doesn't have anything to do with physics, just with common sense. If magicians have been doing this Pepper's Ghost thing for hundreds of years, then you're not the only person who knows about it. Given time, anybody with eyes will eventually notice that they're only seeing ghosts when they're looking through a glass pane. She doesn't want to give the audience a chance to figure it out.”

“Bingo. You can only misdirect an observant person for so long. Dara is shrewd. She baffles the crowd, then skedaddles before they figure out her secrets.”

“But the tarot cards.” There was a furrow between Amande's eyebrows. “How could she have known which cards Debbie drew? Then how could she have drawn the same three cards herself? That was amazing.”

“I'm still working on that trick, but I'm certain of one thing. Dara and Willow are not doing magic. Think about it. People do card tricks because they're easy to handle. They're flexible. You can palm them. You can stick them up your sleeve. But they only work for close-up magic. That's why Dara has a camera to show people her tricks. If she could do the same thing with…say…china teapots or books or flaming torches, then that's what she would do. Big, bulky objects would look way better onstage than a few cheap cards. Have you ever seen a book trick?”

Amande shook her head.

“Well, that's why. Books are too big to stick up your sleeve. Never believe a card trick. If the performer could really work magic, why waste it on something flimsy like cards?”

Faye had never questioned why magicians used cards. They just did. They also pulled rabbits out of hats. Why? Probably because a hat was an easy place to hide something the size of a rabbit. Accepting the status quo without question was generally the first step to being fooled.

“But you don't know how they're doing the card trick?” Faye asked, hoping she was wrong.

Toni shook her head. “No. But I can guess. First of all, Willow has to know which cards Debbie drew. Maybe he did something to force her to pick those three cards. Or they could be marked. More likely, he took a peek, maybe through sleight-of-hand or maybe with a mirror. Just because I didn't see him do it…again…doesn't mean it didn't happen. After that, all he has to do is let Dara know which cards his sucker drew.”

Faye had been trying to figure out why Toni signaled them to look at Willow at this point in the show. Amande must have had the same question, because she asked it. “He's telling Dara which cards to pull by using body language, isn't he? That's why you wanted us to watch him work that suit like a runway model.”

Toni laughed out loud. “The man does have style, I admit. Yes, I think he's using body signals, but I haven't cracked his code yet. There are four suits in a tarot deck, so he could easily signal one of those. For example, moving his right hand might be his way of saying, ‘Wands.' His left hand might say, ‘Cups,' his right foot could mean ‘Swords,' and his left foot might be ‘Pentacles.” Each suit has fourteen cards. That's a lot, but I'm sure there are ways to position your body to communicate the numbers.”

“All the numbers are two digits, and the first digit is going to be one or zero,” Faye pointed out. “It wouldn't be that hard to come up with a digital system.”

“No, it wouldn't, but I want
their
system, so I'm buying a lot of fifteen-dollar tickets trying to crack it. Remember, there are also twenty-two trump cards, and Willow would need an individual signal for each of them.”

Toni reached in a drawer behind her and pulled out a tarot deck. She turned them face up and fanned them across the table. “In case you haven't done the math, Debbie—or Willow—pulled two trump cards and an ace. No boring little twos or fives for the Reigning Couple of Showmanship. The odds against that special combination are high. Not astronomical, but high. So how did he tell her what those unlikely cards were? I didn't see him slash his finger across his throat to signal the Death card, so their code is something more subtle.”

Amande reached out and used her left hand to sweep half the cards into her right hand. “There. I just divided the number of signals by two. We don't know that he was holding a full Tarot deck. Maybe he was holding two identical half-decks. Two Death cards. Two Aces of Swords.”

Toni considered the idea. “He'd have to be able to control his victim's draws. Otherwise, somebody would pull Death twice.”

“And then they'd drop dead of fright.” Faye looked at the other two women, both sitting silent. “That wasn't even funny, was it?”

Amande shook her head in her mother's direction and went back to studying the cards. “So maybe he's got a limited deck and maybe he doesn't. Unless he's forcing the person to draw three specific cards, he has to signal the actual cards to Dara, and then she's gotta pull them out of a face-down deck. Her cards
have
to be marked. His probably are, too.”

Faye started to laugh. “Of course, they're marked, and I think we have proof. How old is Dara? Mid-forties?”

Toni joined her in laughing, while Amande looked blank. Faye reached in her purse for her brand-new reading glasses. “Was Dara wearing glasses when we met her?”

The girl shook her head.

“And she wasn't wearing glasses on any of the other times I've seen her perform,” Toni said, triumph in her voice. “She has just now reached the age when she can't see the markings on the back of her cards. I remember when that happened to me.”

“The camera…” Amande said.

Faye nodded. “If she makes the markings on the cards bigger, the camera will pick them up. Dara is too vain to wear those glasses unless she really needs them, and she probably doesn't need them yet at any other time—only when she's cheating at cards. Look at these.” She waved a tarot card in the air that was bigger than her hand. “Even without my glasses, I can see that this is the Two of Cups. Dara doesn't need glasses if she's doing an honest trick.”

Amande yanked the Two of Cups from her mother's hand and studied it, back and front. “You're right. Dara's cards have to be marked. The glasses prove it. Now you just need to decode Willow's part of the trick, Toni, and you've got the whole thing.”

Toni said nothing, but she had a victorious air as she shuffled the oversized tarot cards. Deftly cutting the deck, she flipped a card in front of Faye.

“The Queen of Swords. She is independent, resilient, and calm in times of trouble. When a decision must be made, she makes it as surely and quickly as a falling sword.” Toni cocked her head in Faye's direction and asked, “She is you. True?”

Faye couldn't argue.

“For you,” she said, squinting through her bifocals at Amande as she flipped another card. Above a floating, unearthly being was a caption that read “The World.” “Of course. There could be no other card for someone of your youth and abilities.”

Then she handed the deck to Amande, who seemed far more interested in the filigreed designs on the backs of the cards than in the phantasmagoric art on their faces. Setting three of them side-by-side and studying the designs for differences, she said, “Those two cards were too perfect. They suit my mother and me too well. Are these marked?”

All Toni would say was, “I'm not talking,” but she shoved her glasses absent-mindedly up her nose with her middle finger. Faye wondered if Toni's subconscious was saying, “I need these stupid things to read my marked cards.” Maybe magicians weren't always able to squelch the unintended signals of a subconscious that knew all their secrets. Or maybe Toni touched her glasses on purpose, to help Amande figure out the cards' secrets all by herself.

Toni let Amande study the cards for a moment, reaching into the bag of cookies and handing Faye two more. Faye was glad to see that they were heavily studded with pecans and chocolate chips. Toni might not make her own cookies, but she bought the good stuff.

Leaving Amande with the cards, Toni came to sit beside Faye. “Is there any chance of talking my way back into that museum, or do I have to wait until you and Amande finish your work? I'm quiet, and I clean up after myself.”

“I'm sure that's true, but…” Faye paused, hesitant to say no to someone who was in the act of showing her some gracious hospitality. “I just can't. I still haven't unpacked everything. I keep finding new stashes of old junk. It wouldn't be professional to let someone else come in and stir up the very artifacts and files I'm trying to organize. It just wouldn't work.”

Faye could tell that Toni wasn't happy about this, but the woman had far more than minimal social skills. Her only gracious option was to say that she understood Faye's position, so that's what she did.

After disappointing Toni, Faye moved away from the dining table, sitting in a comfy armchair to watch Toni entertain Amande by teaching her to palm cards and do false shuffles. Her daughter was frighteningly adept at sleight-of-hand. While they shuffled and dealt and giggled, Faye amused herself by wondering why the former physics teacher cared about the history of this little town so much. She also wondered why the chicanery of Dara and her husband made Toni mad enough to buy a stack of fifteen-dollar tickets that was already tall and was still growing.