Death in the Cards (28 page)

I gasped, then recovered my wits and realized that the new cornhusk doll face had a little “oh” of a mouth, but thankfully, it was perfectly still.

I glared at Mrs. Oglevee. “Nice trick with ventriloquism.”

She grinned at me. “Thanks. I've been taking classes.”

There were classes in . . . wherever? “Summer school?” I asked. I couldn't resist.

“Don't be impertinent,” Mrs. Oglevee snapped. “You're the one who needs to go to summer school. Or maybe pick up the Cliffs Notes to
Detecting for Dummies.
I doubt you could handle the real book.”

Now, that was an uncalled for insult. Mrs. Oglevee knew perfectly well that I never used Cliffs Notes. I always read the whole book for all my assignments. I'd always loved reading.

“Look,” I said. “I'm worn out and I could use some peaceful sleep. I know the note you're talking about—”

“Recitation! What does the note say?”

I sighed. She'd just nag me until I quoted the note back to her, word for word.
“‘In case anything happens to me, know this: That there is a devil, there is no doubt. But is he trying to get in . . . or trying to get out? Mrs. O will help, If you start from the end, And go to the beginning, to find out.'

“And that's exactly what I've done. Winnie traced Ginny's background all the way back to when she was married to Dru Purcell—” I was a little disappointed that Mrs. Oglevee didn't look shocked by this news. She'd been known to go to Dru's tent revivals every August, pray and swoon and find Jesus all over again, and swear she'd be sweet and nice. That always lasted a few weeks, until the school year started.

But Mrs. Oglevee didn't look stunned at all. I guess there really are no secrets from those in the hereafter.

I went on. “And I've run down every lead I can find, working back from what had to have happened at the corn maze, to her surprise at her tarot reading and whatever she saw in her own crystal ball, to what happened when she first arrived and—”

“Didn't I teach you there's more than one way to see things?”

She passed her hand over the cornhusk doll, and the doll turned into a Farmer Barbie, in cute little overalls and a cute
little red bandanna, holding a cute little pitchfork. Another pass, and we were back to the cornhusk doll.

“Cute trick,” I said. “I guess you learned that in magic class in summer school. But what do these farm dolls have to do with starting at the end to get to the beginning?”

Mrs. Oglevee sighed and crushed the cornhusk doll, which turned to dust and fell away from her hand. “Fine. If that won't get my point across, maybe this will.”

She plucked a small, boxy case out of thin air—a makeup case, just like my Aunt Clara's, just like the one Lenny had described Ginny as having in her rental trunk. I gasped. I'd forgotten about that case, which seemed to have disappeared. At least, the Rhinegolds didn't recall seeing it when the police were examining Ginny's room and it wasn't in the trunk of her rental car . . .

BAM!

The crashing sound broke through my thoughts and suddenly I was awake, looking around the motel room. No Mrs. Oglevee.

Had the sound come from inside my dream or from the real world? For a second I was disoriented—but just for a second—until I realized the motel room's window had been shattered. A breeze and a gentle wind blew in through the broken windowpanes.

And on the floor lay Ginny's old hard-side suitcase.

I didn't open the suitcase myself. I immediately called 911 from the phone on the nightstand and told them a suitcase had been thrown through my window at the Red Horse Motel.

I explained that it was a suitcase I recognized, one that had in fact been stolen from my laundromat earlier in the day—well, the previous day, since it was now nearing one in the morning on Sunday—but my explanation didn't seem to

calm the dispatcher, who had a distinct and rising note of alarm in her voice as she told me to not touch the suitcase.

Which I didn't, but fifteen minutes later, I was in the passenger seat of a Mason County Sheriff cruiser, where at least I was warm while I waited for a deputy sheriff to come ask me questions. The warmth inside the cruiser made me feel guilty, though, as I stared out at all the other Red Horse Motel guests who were gathered at the far end of the motel parking lot, sleepy-eyed and grumbling and shivering in the October wind, which had gotten stiffer in the wee hours of the morning.

Thanks to the suitcase, we'd been evacuated. It could contain, an emergency worker told us, a bomb. These days, anything like a suitcase or backpack or sack was considered a possible threat. It didn't matter that there was no reason for anyone to bomb the Red Horse Motel in Paradise, Ohio. Or that I kept trying to explain to someone—anyone—that the suitcase had been Ginny's, that she'd left it for me, that it had been stolen from my laundromat, that I was more than pretty sure it was meant as some kind of warning to me.

Despite these facts, the situation warranted serious attention, Deputy Rankle had told me as he escorted me to his cruiser. You just never know, these days, he added darkly.

I wished I'd just opened the damned suitcase myself. Then I'd have known it hadn't been turned into a bomb. A HazMat team from the sheriff's department wouldn't be examining the suitcase. All the Red Horse Motel guests would still be sound asleep and the poor Rhinegolds wouldn't be worried that the motel—which represented their lives as well as their livelihood—was about to blow up.

Unless, of course, the suitcase really had been turned into some sort of bomb. Could someone have wanted me to stop asking questions about Ginny so badly that he—or she—would have made a bomb to silence me? Making such a thing wouldn't be that hard, after all, with fertilizer and other items for crude bomb-making someone could find on a farm.

Still, someone creating a home-made bomb to silence me seemed unbelievable. But then, the whole weekend had turned into one crisis after another.

The driver's side opened and Deputy Rankle got in the cruiser. He was a lanky man who looked like the almost-as-handsome brother of Mr. Azure Eyes. He said the HazMat team would know what we were dealing with in a while. Meanwhile, Deputy Rankle had questions. Had I touched or moved anything?

No, I told him, other than to tiptoe around the glass to get to my jacket, which was on the chair by the window. I'd had to shake some glass off the jacket, but then put it on as I left. (As panicked as the suitcase-through-the-window was making me, it was October in Ohio. Plus I didn't relish the idea of being interviewed while in just my Tweety Bird/kitten print PJ ensemble. I didn't tell Deputy Rankle that, though.) And of course I'd touched the door while leaving the motel room.

Had I heard anything? he also wanted to know.

Just the glass shattering, which woke me up. I didn't tell him about Mrs. Oglevee, either.

I wasn't going to tell him much more than that. After all, I'd already talked to the Paradise Police Department several times about everything—well, most everything—I'd learned about Ginny and the events surrounding her murder.

But then Deputy Rankle got a crackling call over his radio. “Situation clear. But you'll want to show your witness the contents of the suitcase.”

Follow me, Deputy Rankle said, and I got out of the cruiser and did so, while emergency workers assured the Red Horse guests that the bomb scare was over and that they could go back to their rooms.

Back in my room, the suitcase now lay open on the glass-covered floor. I was still in sock feet and didn't step into the room, but peered in through the open door as Detective Rankle went in and talked to some more workers. As far as I could see, the suitcase was completely empty.

I frowned at that. Why would someone throw Ginny's old empty suitcase through my motel window?

“The suitcase was empty?” I asked Deputy Rankle as he came back out of the motel room. I hadn't told him about the stained overalls or handkerchief that had been in the suitcase—after all, I'd tried several times to be taken seriously at the Paradise Police Department about the stolen bag and its contents, and had been fluffed off.

“Not entirely,” he said. And then I saw that he had donned latex gloves and was holding a note—just a plain piece of notebook paper on which had been written in large block letters:

“Stop asking about Ginny Proffitt or Guy will be hurt!”

I gasped, started shaking.

Someone—one of the emergency workers—led me to one of the benches on the walkway in front of the motel and wrapped a blanket around me. I reckon the worker was afraid I was about to go into shock.

I demanded that I be given a phone to call Stillwater, and then, seeing that the worker didn't understand, I asked for Deputy Rankle.

A few minutes later, he came back, this time without latex gloves, and sat by me on the bench while I told him everything.

I told him Guy was my cousin and a resident of Stillwater and that I was very worried. He told the emergency worker to call Stillwater to check on Guy for me.

Then I told Deputy Rankle about the first time I'd seen the suitcase, and what it contained, and how it had been stolen from my laundromat sometime after the water main break in
Paradise, and how I'd figured out there was blood on the overalls and handkerchief, and how I'd finally turned in the handkerchief to the Paradise Police Department.

Then I gave him some more background: how my boyfriend and I had found Ginny's body and how I was sure she'd been murdered, and how since then I'd learned about the predictions that had made her leave the psychic fair, and how she was ill and seeking alternate treatment, and how I'd learned she'd once been married to Dru Purcell and about their business, and about seeing her with Dru at the Serpent Mound, and about Max Whitstone seeing her argue with an older woman.

All I left out was the dreams about Mrs. Oglevee.

And unlike Chief Worthy would have done, Deputy Rankle took me seriously, listening, nodding, taking notes, asking for clarification. He told me my statement would be shared with the Paradise Police Department and the suitcase and note would be examined for fingerprints, and that he'd let me know if they found out who had thrown the luggage through the window, and I should let him know if I thought of anything new.

The emergency worker came over, then, and said she'd just talked to Don Richmond at Stillwater, and Guy was fine. There'd been no disturbance at Stillwater at all.

That's when I finally broke down and started weeping.

22

“Now, you know you can spend the night with us,” Greta said.

I sat in her and Luke's kitchen, sipping hot tea with lemon and honey, happy to be warm and taken care of.

I smiled at Greta. “Thank you for the tea. And the shoes.” She'd loaned me a pair of navy Keds, a half size too small, but it was better than traipsing around barefoot. I'd been allowed to take my purse and van keys from the room, and that was it. The room was a crime scene—again. “And thanks for not blaming me for upsetting all your guests.”

Greta waved a hand at me. “Pshaw. You did the right thing. You'd have been a foolish girl to open that suitcase up. Now, how about it. Let me make up the couch for you.”

I knew turning down her hospitality would hurt her feelings, but I also saw how tired Greta looked. The weekend had been exciting for her, but it had also really worn her out. And poor Luke was snoozing in his chair, his own hot tea untouched.

“Greta, thanks, but I'm going to go over to my cousin
Sally's,” I said. Sure enough, she looked disappointed. I stood up, took my mug to the sink, rinsed it out.

“You sure?” Greta stood, wincing at a catch in her hip, smiling quickly to hide it.

“I'm sure,” I said.

We hugged. I went out to my van, got in, and just sat for a moment, not even putting my key to the ignition, but staring around at the now quiet Red Horse parking lot. I could see my—and Ginny's—room, the yellow police tape again across its door glinting in the room's exterior light.

Okay, I told myself. Guy is okay. You told the sheriff's deputy everything you know. Just go to Sally's.

I'd called her from Greta's. She and Cherry were still awake, as it turned out, and Sally whispered into the phone she'd welcome a break from Cherry's weeping and wailing about the general misery of her love life.

I started my van, turned out onto the dark country road, and drove toward the Happy Trails Motor Home Court, which was on the northern outskirt of Paradise.

I meant to focus on my driving. I wasn't tired—the threat to Guy had taken care of that—but still, winding dark country roads can quickly slip your mind into slumber, even when you think you're wide-awake.

But still my thoughts wandered to the question: who had thrown that suitcase through my window? Someone who didn't want me to investigate Ginny's murder. Someone who thought I might be on to something. That could be any of the psychics I suspected, as well as Dru and Missy.

But the note had threatened Guy. Who knew who Guy was, how important he was to me? That would be most anyone in Paradise. Which eliminated the psychics. Who would both know of my devotion to Guy, how deeply the threat would scare me, and would also want me to back off from investigating Ginny's background and murder?

Dru and Missy Purcell.

The answers all kept coming back to them.

And yet, the answers still didn't feel right.

I turned onto Sweet Potato Ridge Road. My mind turned to another question: what had Mrs. Oglevee been telling me before my sleep was shattered by the suitcase through the window?

That I needed to look at the message from Ginny, to start at the end and work to the beginning, in more than one way. And Mrs. Oglevee had kept producing dolls dressed in a farm motif—even a cornhusk doll. And she'd been about to pick up the small makeup case that matched the suitcase, the small case I'd only heard Ginny had, that had gone missing . . .