Better Read Than Dead (20 page)

What he said next had a profound effect on me, mostly because it was the first metaphor I ever really got. In his husky voice he said, “Abigail, if you walk in the mud all the time, pretty soon people are going to think your shoes are dirty.”

I’d been on the straight and narrow ever since.

As I smeared peanut butter onto my bagel, I worried that I could be facing a broken leg or arm, or something my imagination had yet to conjure. I didn’t think Andros would resort to killing me—I’d leave town if I thought that. But someone had to be the first to say no. Someone had to stand up to this guy, and I guess today I was that someone.

As I trotted back into the living room, Eggy in tow, there was a soft knock on the door. Eggy immediately abandoned me and started barking at the closed door. I had no idea who could be dropping by so early, and I paused, wondering if Andros had dispatched Goon to come over and do me in.

After a moment I walked to the front door on tiptoe and peeked through the peephole, my jaw dropping at the sight of the visitor on my front porch. Quickly I undid the lock and yanked it open as my sister threw herself forward into my arms, “Oh, Abby!” she wailed.

I pulled her into the living room, visually checking her over for injuries, assuming by the sight of her so distraught that she must be in pain. “Cat! What’s happened? Why are you here? What’s wrong?” I said anxiously.

“It’s terrible!” she cried, covering her face with both hands. “I can never go back!
Never!
”

“Where? Who? What . . . ? Cat, for God’s sake,
talk
to me!”

At this point I’d sat Cat on the sofa and was squatting down about a foot away, still trying to figure out where she was injured. Cat continued to wail uncontrollably, and I eyed the phone anxiously as I debated calling 911. Finally she sniffled and said, “They
hate
me!”

“Who? Who hates you?” I said gently, stroking her hair and trying to coax the information out of her.

“Everyone!”
The announcement of this brought a fresh wave of tears as she buried her face into her hands again.

“Oh, honey,” I tried, taking a seat next to her and patting her gently on the back, “that just can’t be. Now take a deep breath, because I don’t understand. What are you doing here, and who,
specifically,
hates you?”

Cat moaned something incoherent, and waved a hand toward the purse she’d cast on the floor when she sat down on the couch. “What?” I asked, not understanding.

Cat pointed to the purse more vehemently this time, her voice a warbled, water-clogged sound. “In there!”

I reached down and picked up her purse; opening it, I looked inside. Nothing out of the ordinary struck me, except for a folded wad of papers. I looked a question mark at her and she pointed to them. Taking them out I unfolded them and began to read:

 

Catherine Cooper-Masters; Psychic Reading Survey

My eyes widened as I flipped to the next page and read another survey, but the second was even worse than the first. “Cat!” I gasped as I glanced through each successively horrible review. “What did you
say
to these people?”

Cat sobbed even harder at my question, and I got up to fetch the Kleenex. I offered her the box and she snatched several tissues as she sniffled and wiped her nose, then honked into a Kleenex and regarded me with slanted, puffy eyes. “I just read their fortunes! I can’t help it if the cards came up that way!”

“But, sweetie . . .” I said, glancing at another survey, “you told this woman she was going to
die
by this weekend!”

Cat nodded, looking distressed, “Yes, I remember that one . . . Nancy Cartwright. Awful thing, that. I’ll miss her when she’s gone.” She whimpered, squinting fresh tears into her Kleenex.

“And you told this woman her husband was leaving her for the nanny?”

“Marissa Carmichael.” Cat nodded. “She’s blaming
me
for telling her, when she should be calling her plastic surgeon for a fanny lift and firing the nanny.”

I read on and my jaw kept dropping. My sister had apparently read a dozen women, and all the readings were outlandishly horrible. The common themes were death, adultery, impoverishment and loss of mind, although the last one seemed more a reflection of my sister.

“Catherine Cooper-Masters,” I said as I read the last survey, adding a low whistle, truly amazed that she had caused such uproar.

“Actually, I’m changing my name back to just Catherine Cooper.” Cat sniffled, fresh tears sliding down her cheeks.

“What do you mean? Why are you dropping the ‘Masters’?”

“Well, I did a reading for Tommy, that lying, cheating, soon-to-be-
ex
bastard husband of mine! I’ve already called the attorney. I’m filing for divorce!”

I stood up and threw the surveys on the floor. “You
what
? Cat, are you
out of your mind
?”

“The cards don’t lie, Abby,” she said tightly, looking at me with a pained, convinced look.

I was speechless. I just stood above her for the longest time, my mouth agape and my hand cradling my forehead, willing my mind to process my sister’s ridiculous conclusions. Finally I collected myself and sat down next to her. I began to speak several times, but had a hard time deciding where to start. After three attempts I finally said, “Cat . . . listen to me. I do this stuff for a living, so believe me when I tell you, sometimes what you take for fact is actually just a metaphor.”

“What do you mean?”

I sighed heavily and tried again. “Well, let’s take this example, okay? This woman . . .” I said, showing her the survey of the doomed Nancy Cartwright. “Now what made you believe that Nancy here was going to die?”

“Well, I remember pulling the death card, and it landed smack-dab on the ‘present’ position.”

“Okay,” I probed, “so what was next after the death card?”

“The chariot—and according to my book on tarot, that means Nancy will be in a fatal car crash and die before the week is through,” Cat explained as if I were five.

“I see,” I said, turning my intuition on and focusing on the name Nancy Cartwright. “See, what I’m getting is that Nancy just got a brand-new car, and she traded in her old one for the new—do you know if that’s correct?”

Cat looked at me with a shocked expression and said, “Oh, my God, Abby, you’re right! She pulled up to my house in a brand-new Lexus, and we were all wondering how she could afford such an expensive new car now that her husband’s company is in the toilet.”

I smirked at my sister—Cat, so aptly nicknamed. “You see?” I said. “Sometimes taking the literal translation isn’t the way to go. You have to trust what your gut tells you when you do this kind of interpretation and allow that there are many possible interpretations for every card. You have to rely on your intuition to tell you which one is the most accurate. Like with the death card—I think it was really talking about the death of her old car—the chariot, and the bringing in of her new one, the Lexus.”

“So I was wrong about everyone?” she asked, her voice growing sensitive.

There was just no way to sugarcoat it. “Definitely,” I said. “
Most
definitely with Tommy. He’s not cheating on you, Cat—
that
I know. So will you please contact your attorney and call off this divorce nonsense?”

I was worried for my brother-in-law; he took such good care of my sister, and basically worshiped the ground she walked on. I was afraid she’d done some real damage to her marriage by accusing him of things I knew he hadn’t done.

Cat had started to tremble a little. Looking at her it was obvious she’d been up all night. “Oh, what have I done?” she wailed, and went back to burying her face in her hands.

“Nothing we can’t fix, sugar,” I said softly as I folded her into my arms and rocked her small frame while she cried. When her tears turned to hiccups I gently asked her, “So how did you get here?”

“I flew. Tommy and I got into this horrible fight last night, and I just left. The boys are at Disney with Tommy’s parents, so luckily they weren’t around to witness our shouting match. It was awful! I was so angry I just took myself to the airport and waited there for the first available flight, which wasn’t until six this morning. I was even forced to fly
coach
, if you can believe it!”

I smiled; my sister hadn’t known the discomfort of anything less than first class in at least a decade. “How did you get from the airport to here?”

“Cab.”

“I tried to call you last night, but no one answered, not even your housekeeper.”

“I had to let her go—her reading suggested she was a thief.”

I rolled my eyes. “Who else did you give a reading to?”

“Just the gardener.”

“And his fate?”

“He’s going to have an awful tractor accident. I’m considering letting him go; I mean, who wants
that
on their insurance?”

I sighed heavily, stifling the urge to laugh. Cat gave a huge yawn and sighed with me. The dark circles under her puffy eyes and her slumped shoulders all indicated she was fading fast.

“All right, how about this?” I offered. “Why don’t you go upstairs and take a nap in my bed? You look like you haven’t slept in a couple of days. Later on we can go out for some lunch, okay?”

“And shopping?” she asked, perking up a teeny bit.

I chuckled. “Of course. I’ll call Tommy and let him know where you are. He’s probably worried sick.”

Cat nodded against my shoulder. “Will you tell him I’m sorry?” she whispered.

“Of course, honey. Now come on; let’s get you to bed.” I pulled my sister up from the couch and walked her up the stairs to my bedroom. She was swaying on her feet from exhaustion, and I quickly set out a clean nightshirt for her and closed all the blinds, making the room nice and dark. Cat gave me a shy smile as I closed the door, then headed back downstairs to call Tommy.

“Hello?” he answered immediately.

“Hey, there, brother-in-law,” I said easily.

“Abby? Oh, my God, I was just about to call you! Your sister’s missing, and I can’t find her anywhere. . . . Have you heard from her?” Tommy’s voice had the mounting panic of someone truly worried. I was quick to set him at ease.

“She showed up on my doorstep this morning. She’s here, safe and sound. How about I keep her for a day or two, then send her back to you?”

“Does she even
want
to come back?”

Oh, yeah, the argument. “She told me about your reading,” I said.

“Abby, I swear to you, I have never—”

“Relax, Tommy. I’d know if you were cheating. I set Cat straight, and I think she feels like an idiot, but you know how proud she is.”

“Those stupid tarot cards. I knew they were trouble the minute she showed up from New York with them. . . . What the hell was she thinking?”

“That’s Cat for you. She’s got to try everything once; you know how she is.”

Tommy chuckled, probably for the first time in two days. “Let’s just hope she leaves all this psychic stuff to the expert in the family from now on, huh?”

“That’d be my preference. Listen, I’ll have her give you a call as soon as she wakes up. You going to be home?”

“Yeah, I canceled my tournament this morning because I had no idea where she’d gone, so now I’m stuck here for the next two weeks.” Tommy was a golf pro.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I’ll have her call you as soon as she wakes up.”

“Thanks, Abby,” he said, and we disconnected.

After hanging up with Tommy I headed downstairs to the basement to see about some laundry—I hadn’t done any in a while. I loaded the darks and headed back upstairs, where I did housework and paid some slightly overdue bills until a little before noon.

Next I got dressed in my now-clean clothes and, after leaving Cat a note, headed out to pick up some groceries. I hadn’t checked my messages from work yet, or gotten the mail, so I headed over to my office to take care of business. On the way I passed the post office, which sat just catercorner to my office building, and I voluntarily shivered. To think that some poor, unsuspecting woman had been murdered there gave me the willies. She had been someone simply out running an errand, some innocuous thing, and it had led her to her death. The injustice of it pissed me the hell off, and I made up my mind to give Milo a call later and get back to work on the case.

After checking messages and getting the office mail, I headed back toward home, but thinking of something I made a quick detour and pulled up in front of a familiar Cape house. I sat inside my car for a minute or two, looking up at Dutch’s tidy lawn and well-manicured shrubs and sighed heavily. Even though I was still a little angry at him, I missed him terribly.

Unbuckling my seat belt I got out of the car and moseyed around back to the flowerpot that hid his house key. I found it right away and let myself in, punching in his birthday into the alarm and flipping on some lights while I called, “Virgil!” into the silence of the house. I was rewarded a few moments later by the appearance of Dutch’s silver-gray tomcat as he rounded the corner with an excited meow. I bent low and scratched his ears as he rubbed against my legs and hand, his purr vibrating loudly from his throat. I then got up and went to check on his food dish, water bowl and kitty-litter box. All were being well maintained by Dutch’s neighbor.

Feeling melancholy, I walked into the living room and looked around, remembering fonder moments of Dutch and me curled on his sofa watching a ball game. I smiled in spite of myself, and felt a tug of regret as I thought about how our last conversation had ended. I was about to leave when something caught my eye from across the living room, and being the curious type I walked over for a better look.