Herculeah Jones Tarot Says Beware (3 page)

She saw the bloodstains that spread out on either side of the body like wings, darkening the pale Persian carpet. She choked on the thick scent of blood that suddenly filled her nostrils.

Herculeah began to tremble violently. She, knew she shouldn't touch anything, but she had to make sure Madame Rosa was dead. She might still be alive. It was possible.

Herculeah reached for Madame Rosa's outstretched hand. She touched her fingers to the thin wrist. She waited, and the brief moment of hope faded.

There was no pulse at all. The skin was cool. The living warmth had drained from her body.

Herculeah's mind seemed to move so slowly toward the fact of Madame Rosa's death that she wondered if it would ever catch up with her emotions. Would this slow mind ever allow her to get up, to act?

Slowly, unsteadily, she got to her feet. She rested against the table for a moment, glancing down at the closed book on the table.

Then, with tears filling her eyes, Herculeah went again to the phone.

“Police Department, Zone Three. This is Captain Morrison. Can I help you?”

“Is Chico J-Jones there?” Herculeah said. Her teeth chattered with nervousness. “It's important. I'm Herculeah, his daughter, but I'm calling on official police business.”

“Hold on.”

The shock of finding Madame Rosa's body rolled over her again, like the aftershock of an earthquake. She waited tensely for her father to come on the line. The phone trembled in her hand.

The smell of the blood that had seeped onto the pale carpet still choked her. She wondered that she hadn't noticed the smell when she first came in. Now it seemed overpowering.

She felt as if she was going to gag, and she pulled her hair across her face and inhaled the clean, familiar scent of lemon verbena shampoo.

“Hello, Chico Jones here.”

“Dad?”

“Hey, how's my favorite daughter?”

“Not too good.”

“Oh? Something wrong at school?”

“No. ”

“Your mom?”

“Mom's fine.”

“Then what? Don't let's play games. I'm a busy man.”

“This is no game.” She swallowed. “Dad, I just found a body.”

There was a silence.

“Another one?” her father asked.

“This is d-different. This is not like Dead Oaks. This is somebody I know, somebody I like. Dad, I really need help.”

“Where is this body?” There was a different tone to his voice now. He was official. She could imagine him picking up a pencil, pulling that yellow legal pad toward him.

“Dad, do you remember that house down the street from Mom and me? It's a big old house with a s-sign out in front shaped like a hand? Madame Rosa—Palmist—Walk-ins Welcome. I'm sure I've told you about her. I take care of her parrot.”

“Is that where you found the body? At the palmist's house?”

“Yes.”

“And the body?”

“It's hers, Dad. Madame Rosa's.”

She choked back a sob and took a few steps away from the room where the body lay. Again, she took a whiff of her hair.

“Where are you now?”

“I'm there. At her house. I'm in the living room. I can see her foot sticking out from under the—”

“I'm on my way,” her father interrupted.

Herculeah could hear him push back his chair and get to his feet. She should feel relief, she thought, but she glanced around uneasily.

“I'm going to wait for you out on the porch. I don't feel safe at all.”

“All right, but don't touch anything.”

“I already have.” She kept talking because suddenly she couldn't bear to let her father go. “I straightened pictures and the parrot stand and Madame Rosa's chair and a candlestick and I turned on the lamp and turned off the stove and—”

“Is there anything you didn't touch?” her father interrupted dryly.

“Yes,” Herculeah said. “The knife in Madame Rosa's chest.”

Herculeah shook her head back and forth. “I'm sorry!” she told Meat. “I can't talk about it! I just can't talk about it!”

Meat and Herculeah were in Herculeah's living room. Herculeah was on the sofa, slumped forward. Her father had sent her home, saying, “I'll be over to get you when we're through here.” “Through here,” Herculeah knew, meant when the body was removed.

“Just tell me if it's Madame Rosa who's dead. I don't even know that much.”

“Yes, it's Madame Rosa!”

“Well, you don't have to yell at me. I didn't do it.”

Meat turned back to the window and watched the scene across the street. There were three police cars and an ambulance parked at the curb in front of Madame Rosa's. All the vehicles had their roof lights flashing, but there was no action that he could see, so he filled in the silence by saying, “I once consulted her.”

Herculeah didn't answer, so he cleared his throat and said, “Did you hear what I said? I once consulted Madame Rosa.”

This time he got Herculeah's attention. “You?”

He nodded.

“About what?”

“Something personal.”

She waited.

Meat shrugged. “Well, I guess nobody ever consults a palmist about something impersonal.”

“No,” Herculeah agreed.

“I was going to tell you about it one time, but when I brought up Madame Rosa's name, you started making fun of people who go to have their palms read, and I stopped.”

“I didn't make fun.”

“Yes you did. You said that fortune-tellers don't really look at your hands, they watch your face for reactions. Like if the palmist says, ‘I see a dark-haired man in your life,' and you frown, then the palmist quickly adds, ‘but a fair-haired man will be the love of your life.' You acted it out. I remember it perfectly.”

“Well, I didn't mean anything by it.” Herculeah's gray eyes suddenly seemed to focus on Meat for the first time. “So why did you consult her?”

“About my dad.”

“You wanted her to help find your dad?”

He nodded. “Well, actually, I just wanted any information I could get. I don't know where my dad is, what he does, anything. It's terrible not to know who your father is. He could be anybody—a criminal, that homeless guy that directs traffic, that mime who's all the time bothering me. I saw him today. I had to cross the street.”

“Your dad is not the mime. The mime is closer to our age.”

“He could be somebody just as bad.”

“What did Madame Rosa tell you?”

“Well, first she said she needed something that had belonged to him. So I went home and I looked and looked. I didn't know what I was looking for until finally, way down in my mom's stocking drawer, I found one stocking with some things tied in the toe. Can you believe that my mom would hide things in the toe of a stocking?”

“Like what?”

“Jewelry and stuff, some old coins. The main item was a man's wedding ring, and inside was the date May 17, 1975, which is the day they got married.

“I went back to Madame Rosa and gave her the ring. She held the ring in her hands like this.” Meat made a gesture as if he were washing his hands. He closed his eyes.

“She said, ‘This is a wedding ring.' I thought, Well sure. That is real brilliant. I don't need a fortune-teller to tell me that, bur I kept my mouth shut, which was not easy, because this was going to cost me ten dollars.

“Then she said, ‘Your father wore this ring,' only she said, ‘Yo fadda wore dis ring.' You know how she talks—talked.”

Tears filled Herculeah's eyes, and she blotted them on the sleeve of her shirt.

“I better stop telling you this,” Meat said. “I only brought it up to take your mind off the—off what happened, and now I've made you cry.”

“No, I want you to go on. I'm interested.”

“Oh, all right.” Meat gave one quick glance out the window to make sure nothing was happening at Madame Rosa's before he continued. “Madame Rosa was still doing her hands like this”—more washing movements—“and then she got very still and said, ‘I hear music.' I was thrilled. I suddenly got this great image of my father as Leonard Bernstein, hair falling all over everywhere, like a god, commanding music from everyday mortals.”

Herculeah tried to smile.

“ ‘A conductor,' I said. It wasn't a question. It was a fact. It was the realest thing I ever saw in my life. I was ready to run out and start going to concerts so I could find him.”

“And you were right?”

Meat's animation drained away. “Of course not. Madame Rosa shook her head. ‘No conductor.'

“I said, ‘He played in an orchestra?' That was the next best thing I could think of. ‘Violin?' I could live with that. Again she shook her head. Her eyes were closed, and then she opened them and looked at me so hard I thought she could see into my brain. She said, ‘I see shoes.' ”

“Shoes?” Herculeah asked.

“That's what, I said. ‘Shoes? My father sold shoes?' I thought of that awful old man in the shoe department at Belk's. But she shook her head again. And then she said the most surprising thing of all. ‘Your fadda danced.' ”

“Danced? Your father danced?”

“That's what she said.”

“I can't imagine you with a father who danced.”

Meat looked at her to see if this was an insult, but Herculeah looked back with her clear gray eyes, and he was satisfied.

“To be honest, I can't either.”

“What else did she say?”

“Nothing. That was all. Another customer came, and I had been a walk-in. I pulled out my ten dollars, but she wouldn't take it. She said, ‘You come back. I work on this some more.'

“I went home. I was very upset. My mother was talking on the telephone. I said, ‘Madame Rosa says my father was a dancer.' My mother slammed down the phone. I don't even know who she had been talking to. She looked up at me. Her eyes got very little. She stood up. She went out the door. I followed. I said, ‘Where are you going?' She said, ‘To tell that witch to mind her own business. I could kill that woman.' ”

Meat broke off his narrative and pressed his face against the window. “Oh, the paramedics are getting the stretcher out of the ambulance. They're going up the steps. They're in the house.... Nothing's happening.... Oh, they're coming out. There's a body on the stretcher. They're sliding it in the ambulance. They're closing the doors. They're getting in.”

There was a silence and then Meat said, “There's your dad. He's got on that jacket that doesn't match his pants and that tie that doesn't match anything. Now the ambulance is driving away.”

He turned away from the window. “You know what I found out? You know how on TV they're always putting plastic bags on the victim's hands—to keep the clues in? Well, in real life, they use paper bags. Ask your dad if you don't believe me. So right now, Madame Rosa's hands—”

“My dad's probably coming to get me,” Herculeah said abruptly, as if to shut him up. She got to her feet. “He wants me to go through the house.”

“I'll go with you.”

“No.”

“I'll wait for you.”

“Just go home.”

“Your dad might want to ask me some questions. I might have seen something that would help. I did pass Madame Rosa's house on my way home today.”

“You didn't even see me in the upstairs window, rapping on the glass.”

Meat had turned back to the window and didn't answer. “Oh, your dad's going back in the house.”

Herculeah walked quickly to the front door. Meat followed anxiously. “Didn't your dad tell you to wait here?”

“Yes.”

Herculeah pulled on her sweater.

“Well, shouldn't you do what he says? He is in charge, you know.”

“Not of me.”

“Well, of the investigation. You should do what he says.”

Herculeah swirled out the door. Her hair brushed Meat's arm as she passed.

“Well, wait for me,” he said. “I'm coming, too.”

Herculeah drew near the crowd. She moved hesitantly, almost shyly, anxious to blend in with the onlookers.

She was afraid she might be recognized as the person who had discovered the body, and she did not want the attention that would bring. She glanced around. The people in the crowd were all strangers. She imagined that neighbors were watching from their windows.

Herculeah stopped beside a woman with a baby on her hip. The woman leaned around her baby and said to Herculeah, “They just brought the body out. You missed it. I couldn't see who it was, though.”

Behind Herculeah a man's voice said, “Madame Rosa, I heard.”

“She must have been murdered or there wouldn't be so many cops, don't you think? There's three car-loads.”

“Knifed, I heard.”

“Maybe somebody didn't like their fortune.”

There was nervous laughter from people who knew they shouldn't be laughing. Herculeah shivered. She had not felt warm since she had found Madame Rosa. The radios in the police cars droned on, though not even the policemen were paying attention.

A reporter was standing in front of the police barricade, getting ready to be filmed for a segment on the eleven o'clock news.