Celestial Bodies (13 page)

As he had predicted, Nick didn’t return to the House of Ishtar that night. Diana slept wrapped in the memory of his touch, and she bounded out of bed with bright eagerness the following morning, rising early to teach a yoga class before the shop opened.

Felix arrived shortly before ten o’clock, barely in time for his first consultation.

“Why are you late?” Diana asked when he came through the front door. “I was getting worried.”

“Jora wouldn’t let me leave any sooner. She said there was going to be a road accident, and she waited until it was over before she let me go.”

“Oh.”

“Where’s Nick?”

“He had some kind of emergency last night. He’ll be here later.” Felix’s silent stare made Diana ask, “Why? Is something wrong?”

“There are many conflicting impulses in the House of Ishtar, Diana.”

“What does that have to do with Nick?” she asked uneasily, wondering how much Felix and Jora Lemon knew about last night.

“Jora believes Nick is the source of these conflicts.”

“She knows about Nick?” Diana asked, surprised at the psychic’s insight, despite similar experiences in the past.

“She said that there is a stranger among us, a man who has gained our trust and friendship, but he is not what he seems. It is he who disturbs the aura of our home. He misdirects our concentration and pulls a veil across cosmic truth. He has lied even to the stars!”

Diana recognized Jora’s rhetorical style. “She said all that?”

Felix nodded. “He’s deceiving us. And yet he is in turmoil, too. And his conflicting impulses have reached out to engulf us.”

Diana felt a sense of dread begin to swell inside her. She took a steadying breath. This was absurd. She was
not
going to go to pieces over the ominous predictions of a psychic who challenged the integrity of the man she was falling in love with.

She said, “He... I’m aware that he keeps secrets, Felix, but he’s a good man, and I’m sure he means us no harm.”

“Perhaps not him. But
someone
means us harm.”

“Felix!” Her father’s gloomy tone stunned her.

“I’ve known it for days.” He shook his head and added, “You’ll have to cancel my first appointment.”

“What? I can’t. It’s too late.”

“Then you’ll have to offer my apologies and a refund.”

“What’s going on?” she asked. Her father had never made a last-minute cancellation before.

“I’ve asked Mrs. Bouvier to come right over. She mentioned to me yesterday that she thought she knew Nick from somewhere. Today I’m going to find out for sure.”

“Why don’t you just ask Nick?”

Felix gave her the first impatient glance she had received from him in years. “I think that should be obvious.”

“Felix, are you sure Jora knew what she was talking about? Are you sure this distress you feel originates from Nick?”

“I’m sure.” Without another word, he went into his study to meditate and await Mrs. Bouvier.

The woman arrived a few minutes later. Diana showed her into the study and immediately realized from Felix’s preparations that he intended to hypnotize Mrs. Bouvier.

Diana left them alone, apologized profusely to the person whose appointment Felix had just canceled, and spent the morning alternately waiting on customers and pacing back and forth outside the door of Felix’s study.

Last night she’d felt confidence, trust, and affection where Nick was concerned. Was she going to let her father’s mumbo jumbo overturn all that? Didn’t Nick deserve a little more faith from her?

Diana ran her fingers through her tumbled hair again and again, muttering to herself as she stalked in and out of the building, through the courtyard and into the street, looking up and down, wishing Nick would return.

Whatever secrets he was keeping, Nick would have to come clean in order to put Felix’s worries to rest, even though the matter might be very private or painful. Things had suddenly gotten out of hand. Diana didn’t like her father thinking that her lover was obscuring cosmic truth.

She groaned aloud and stomped back inside the shop. It was disturbing to realize how much she believed, after all. If Felix and Jora both thought something was wrong, Diana couldn’t shrug it off. She had seen and heard too many strange things in a lifetime of being Felix’s daughter, and his portentous comments split her loyalties between her lover and her father, between rationalism and the world of shadowy mysteries that Felix inhabited.

Maybe if her father weren’t so uncannily accurate most of the time, she would find these silly superstitions easier to shake off. Her sister Sheila had always been a confirmed skeptic, but Diana had just enough of Felix in her to be vulnerable to his influence.

The ringing of the phone nearly made her heart jump out of her chest. Thinking that she really had to calm down, she answered it—praying it would be Nick. Where
was
he?

“Diana, it’s Sheila.”

“Sheila! I was just thinking about you!”

“Don’t even start that nonsense,” Sheila ordered. “I assure you, I received no cosmic messages urging me to call. I have a perfectly good reason for phoning.”

“What?”

“Why are you expanding the business? I thought you were—”

“Expanding the business?” Diana repeated. “Oh, come on, all I’ve done is hire one guy to help out in the shop.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

Sheila asked, “What about Felix? Is
he
expanding the business?”

“No, of course not. He hasn’t given a single thought to business since I came down here. You know that.”

“Then why is a backer inquiring into your business affairs?”

“
What?”
Diana blurted.

“I happened to contact Felix’s lawyer about the inheritance... Why you can’t convince him to hire someone more reputable is beyond me—”

“Never mind that. What did the lawyer say?”

Sheila said, “He mentioned that you were apparently expanding your business to a considerable degree, because a financier approached him with numerous questions about your professional reputability and financial viability. The financier was also apparently very interested in what happened when Mom died and how Felix had spent the money.”

“I ... I...” Diana plopped gracelessly onto a stool. “It’s a hoax.”

“I’m relieved to know that our father hasn’t convinced you to do anything foolish. But I’d like to know why someone is asking so many questions about the two of you.”

“So would I,” Diana said, her thoughts whirling. “Look, Sheila, I’ve got to go now.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to phone a few of my clients and colleagues and find out if anyone’s been questioning them about us.”

“Good idea. This sounds fishy. Get back to me if you need any help, Diana.”

“Thanks.”

By the time Mrs. Bouvier came out of Felix’s study, Diana had confirmed that someone had indeed, discreetly but thoroughly, gathered a great deal of information about Felix and herself. And she knew with a terrible certainty that it all had something to do with Nick.

As soon as she had shown Mrs. Bouvier out of the shop, Diana went into Felix’s study to talk to him. “Well? Did you find out where she’s seen Nick before?”

Felix nodded. A frown creased his brow. “It’s most peculiar. The last time she saw him, he was the young heir to somebody’s Texas oil fortune.”

“
Nick?”
she said incredulously.

“Spoke with a drawl and everything. He was hanging around some high society weekend at the Montreaux family’s country estate.” Felix rubbed a hand across his chin. “Evidently someone tried to steal the family jewels that weekend. Mrs. Bouvier was a little vague about that.”

“A jewel thief? But Felix, what would a jewel thief want with
us?”
Diana started pacing around the room. “I can’t believe I’m even talking this way.” She paused and looked at her father. “There’s something else you should know. Someone’s been asking around about us.” She told him about her conversation with Sheila and her subsequent discoveries.

“What
could
such a man want from us?” Felix mused.

“I don’t like talking about him like this,” Diana said uncomfortably. “Let’s wait until he gets back, and then—”

They both jumped when they heard the door chimes sound.

“It’s Nick,” Felix said with certainty.

Nick approached the House of Ishtar wearily, but with a sweet sense of anticipation. It had been a horrible night. Claude Bouvier had been pompous, unreasonable, rude, and vicious.

No matter how many times he and Peter had repeated their findings, no matter how many ways they’d tried to reassure Bouvier that his mother wasn’t being victimized, the man had not been willing to listen to sense or reason.

He’d accused them of carelessness, incompetence, dishonesty,
 
and laziness. He’d accused them of being in collusion with Felix, and he’d even gone so far as to suggest that they, too, had fallen under the astrologer’s evil spell.

He’d threatened to go to another agency. They had told him he could, pointing out that any other agency would report the same findings. Felix and Diana Stewart were honest and reputable, and as long as they remained that way, no equally honest and reputable private investigator would be able to report otherwise.

At that point Bouvier had thrown the LeCoz affair into their faces as evidence of their own lack of such virtues. He’d ended the whole long, ugly encounter by promising to give evidence of their dishonesty, incompetence, and lack of professionalism when the LeCoz hearing was called.

Peter and Nick had done the only thing they could think of. They had opened a bottle of bourbon and spent the rest of the night wondering how they could save the agency.

The only good thing that had happened to Nick lately, the only thing he felt optimistic about at the moment, was meeting Diana Stewart. He needed her like he needed food and air. He needed her comfort and affection, her support and understanding. He needed something only Diana could give him.

He paused in momentary surprise when he entered the shop. It appeared to be empty. Even Ishtar was missing.

“Hello?” he called. The door to Felix’s study opened. Diana stood there, as bright and vibrant as morning sunrise. He smiled and approached her. “Why are you...”

He stopped speaking in mid-sentence. She was looking at him with such mingled anxiety and suspicion that he went cold inside. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You’d better come in,” she croaked. She backed slowly into the room, holding his eyes, as if she were afraid to turn her back on him.
 

Nick followed her into the study, then he saw Felix. The astrologer returned his gaze unblinkingly. The lack of friendly greeting was so unexpected, the piercing stare so unlike Felix’s usual serenely abstract gaze, that Nick realized his cover must have been blown. And just when he was about to confess, damn it! Why were the stars so against him lately?

Ishtar sat on a stool near Felix. The cat regarded Nick with her usual frosty disapproval.

“Please sit down, Nick,” Felix said.

With one more glance at Diana, who lowered her eyes and turned away, Nick seated himself at the round wooden table that Felix used for his readings. His eyes widened when Felix picked up the tarot deck.

“What are you doing?” Nick asked.

“I’m going to find out who you really are,” Felix said calmly.

“Why don’t I just tell you?” Nick suggested.

“These won’t lie to me.” With a significant glance at Nick, Felix added, “Men often do.”

Diana had been standing near the window, still as a statue. She suddenly burst into a flurry of movement and headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Felix asked.

“I... I can’t stay for this,” she said, choking out the words between quick gasps of air.

Felix looked up at her. It was the first time Nick could remember him looking at his daughter with such fatherly concern. His sympathetic but firm expression clearly requested that she remain.