Herculeah Jones Tarot Says Beware (7 page)

“Her cloak was like the witch's too.”

“A cloak's a cloak—a piece of black cloth. Look, it's been nice talking with you, but I got another show in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks for your time,” Herculeah said.

Herculeah and Meat walked away from the theater, past the stalls and booths, and out into the open air. They started for home.

“That man,” Herculeah said, “knows something he's not telling.”

“You might as well finish your statement,” Meat said tiredly.

Herculeah looked at him, puzzled.

“‘That man knows something he's not telling ...”' Meat repeated, then he supplied the ending, “‘and I'm going to find out what.' ”

Herculeah smiled grimly.

Herculeah and Meat were sitting across from each other in Herculeah's kitchen. They both stared down at the papers in front of them on the table.

“You make up a list of suspects,” Herculeah had said to Meat, “and I will, too. Then we'll compare notes.”

Herculeah was eating a toasted peanut butter and carrot sandwich as she worked on her list.

So far she had:

Herculeah realized she couldn't show the list to Meat, because his mother was on it. She glanced at him across the table. He was nervously tapping the point of his pencil on the table.

So far, Meat had three items on his list:

He had been so ashamed after he wrote this that he was going to erase it, but Herculeah had given him a pencil without an eraser. Also there had been something about the mime's unreadable eyes that still troubled him.

He added:

Now he was even more ashamed of his list. However, he had always had a deep suspicion of anyone hiding in a clown suit.

“You're sure you don't want one of these?” Herculeah asked, indicating her sandwich. “This is the first time I've been able to eat anything since the—since yesterday.” She still liked to avoid the word murder.

“No, thanks,” he lied.

She put down her sandwich and crossed out Meat's mother's name.

“Who are you crossing out?” he asked, looking at her sharply.

“Nobody important.” She smiled. “That's why I'm crossing them out. You know who my best suspect is? I don't know if I told you this, but Madame Rosa came to talk to my mom.”

“ ‘Oh? Why didn't she just look in the future?”

“Meat, be serious. This could be important. Some woman came to Madame Rosa because her son had threatened her. She wanted Madame Rosa to tell her if the threat was real or not. Madame Rosa told her the same thing she told you about your dad. ‘You gotta bring me something belonging to the boy.' Now I'm imitating her.”

“What'd she bring?”

“She brought the knife.”

“The same knife she was stabbed with?”

“We don't know that. Anyway, Madame Rosa took the knife—like she did your father's ring—only the vibes were so terrible, so threatening that she fainted. When she came to, the woman and the knife were gone.” She smiled ruefully. “But I think the woman had her answer.”

“Who was the woman?”

“Madame Rosa didn't say.”

Meat was staring intently at Herculeah's sandwich. She noticed and said, “I'll put pickles on it.”

“On what?”

“The sandwich.”

“No, I better not. Even if I do get to be six feet four, it wouldn't take all that many peanut butter sandwiches to fill me out.”

“Dill pickles.”

“Oh, all right, I'll have a peanut butter and pickle sandwich, but hold the carrots. Then he added, ”Open face.“ He felt easier after this decision.

Herculeah put the sandwich on a paper towel and set it before Meat. Then she said, “Maybe I ought to try putting on my glasses.”

“What?”

“Those glasses that make me think better.”

“How would that help?”

“I don't know. There are a lot of things I don't understand. Anyway, it can't hurt. I need to fog out.”

Herculeah went into the living room and came back with her pair of granny glasses. She had bought these in a secondhand store on Antique Row because when she put them on they turned the world into a blur and allowed her to think better.

She unfolded the glasses and looked at them. “The trouble is that as far as I'm concerned, the whole world is already a blur.”

She hooked the thin metal hoops around her ears and stared into the thick glass.

Meat waited in silence as long as he could. “Nothing?” he asked finally.

“Well, I wouldn't call it nothing.”

“What?”

“I see that room.”

“The scene of the crime?”

“I see those pictures ...”

“What pictures?”

“Madame Rosa had family pictures lined up on this old chest. They were relatives—a dozen of them, she told me once. She also told me that they were all dead but one. Then she said two, because she forgot to count herself.”

Meat bent forward over his sandwich.

“There was a picture of Madame Rosa with a child—a boy,” Herculeah was saying thoughtfully, “but I did-n' t see it that afternoon—not when I came back downstairs. I wonder if the murderer took it.”

“She could have gotten rid of it herself.”

“I don't think so. Those pictures were always there—only that afternoon they had been disturbed. And when I was straightening them—waiting for my mom to answer the phone-I couldn't find that picture.”

“Maybe you overlooked it.”

Herculeah took off her glasses and looked directly into Meat's eyes. “I want to go back in that house and see if that picture is there.”

“You can't.”

“Why not?”

“You can't break in. Didn't you learn anything from breaking into Dead Oaks last month?”

“Yes, I learned that it's a lot easier when you have a key.”

“So where are you going to get a key?”

“From my mother's drawer upstairs.”

Meat stared at her with his mouth slightly open.

“But, of course,” she said, “we'll have to wait till dark.”

Meat sighed. “Of course.” He took the last bite of his sandwich.

“Beware! Beware!” a raucous voice screamed from upstairs.

Meat put his hand over his chest where his sandwich had lodged in a hard, painful knot. “What was that?” he gasped.

“Just Tarot,” Herculeah said. “Didn't I. tell you? My dad agreed I could keep him until they find Madame Rosa's relative.”

“You could have warned me.”

Herculeah grinned. “Beware, beware.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Your father would definitely not approve of this,” Meat said sternly.

It was night. Herculeah and Meat were slowly walking up the sidewalk to Madame Rosa's house.

Herculeah didn't answer. In her pocket, her fingers curled around the key to the front door. In her other hand was a flashlight.

“And my mother wouldn't approve, either,” Meat added. He was talking out of nervousness. “Though half the reason I'm doing this is because I'm mad at my mom.”

Herculeah paused at the walkway. The sign was still there. Herculeah clicked on the flashlight and shone it on the sign. “See, Meat, it says ‘Walk-ins Welcome.”'

“That makes me feel so much better,” Meat said.

Herculeah glanced up and down the street. No cars or people were in sight.

“Quick,” she said, “before somebody comes.”

She opened the gate and pulled Meat in behind her. Meat was always amazed at Herculeah's strength. Then almost before he knew what was happening, she had closed the gate and the two of them were pressed against the thick shrubbery.

“A car's coming!”

Herculeah slipped into the shrubbery as easily as if she were a cat. Meat, trying to follow, crashed forward like a hippo.

The car went by slowly. “That looked like a cop car,” Herculeah said.

“I wouldn't know,” Meat said. He was still facedown in the shrubbery. “Could it have been your dad?”

“No, he doesn't drive a black-and-white. I think that's the same police car that's been driving by every hour. I told my dad about seeing the light in the house last night. That's probably why they're still checking. Anyway the car's gone now.”

Meat started backing out of the bushes, but Herculeah held him. “Sometimes they go around the block and come right back.”

“Oh.” Meat settled in for a wait. “So who were the people on your list of suspects? You never told me.”

“Nobody important. You?”

“Same.”

“Though I did put down that it could be Madame Rosa's last living relative, but I just did that because my dad says most murders are committed by someone the victim knows.”

She broke off as car lights passed, lighting up the fence. “See, aren't you glad we're not up on the porch unlocking the door?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Meat said firmly. That was, it seemed to him, the only thing he had to be glad about in this terrible evening.

When the police car disappeared for the second time, Herculeah said the words Meat had been dreading, “Let's go inside.”

They climbed out of the shrubbery. Keeping to the shadows, they moved up the steps.

“You wait there out of sight”—she indicated a chair—“while I unlock the door. The lock's old. Sometimes I have to work to get the door open.”

Meat stood behind the chair. “Remember the last time you broke into a house?”

“This isn't breaking—I have the key.”

“I wonder if there's anything in there about my dad. Did she keep files?”

“I never saw any.”

“I sure would like to see the file on my dad, if there is one.” He watched Herculeah's efforts with the key. “Maybe somebody else might want the same thing—their file. That could be the reason somebody's returning to the house.”

“You could be right, Meat. You really could.”

Meat felt a moment of pleasure, heightened by the fact that the lock wasn't turning.

“There's something I've been meaning to ask you. What does your mom do when she wants to find a missing person?”

“Well, right now, she's looking for a missing dog—” She broke off, turned abruptly, and faced him. “You know what you could do? I read about this in ‘Dear Abby'. When you want to locate a missing parent—you can't do it for a missing boyfriend or something like that, it has to be a parent or a child. Anyway, you write to—I think it's the Salvation Army, give them the information, and they help you.” She turned the key again.

“But that's wonderful news. You should have told me sooner.”

“Ah, more good news.”

“What?”

“The door's open. We can go inside now.”

“I'm going to make sure the curtains are closed all the way, because the other night I saw a sliver of light in the window—at least I think I did,” Herculeah said. “I wouldn't want that to happen to us.”

Herculeah crossed the living room and gave the draperies a tug. “There,” she said.

From the doorway Meat said weakly, “I could never be a burglar.”

“What brought that on?”

“Being in strange houses makes me feel faint.”

“Well, this will only take a minute. Sit out in the hall, why don't you? There's a straight-backed chair right by the door.”

“I probably should sit down. Then if I do faint, I won't have far to fall.”

Meat sank down into the chair. Moonlight came in through the hall windows, and Meat could see Madame Rosa's cloak hanging on the coatrack.

“Hurry up,” he said in the empty hallway.

“Anyway, we're not burglars. We're not stealing anything.”

As Herculeah spoke, she moved to the old buffet and clicked on the flashlight. She shone the beam over the dusty surface, then on the pictures, one by one.

“The picture of Madame Rosa and the boy isn't here,” she called triumphantly. “I knew it wouldn't be.”

“Why does that make you happy?”

“Because it proves my suspicion that there's something important about that missing picture—some connection with Madame Rosa's murder. That boy in the photograph was probably her last remaining relative, though he would be a man by now.”

“So, can we go?” Meat asked from the hallway, glancing uneasily at the empty cloak.

“I just want to check one more thing.”

Meat thought she sounded like his dentist. He slumped forward in misery.

“So what is this one thing?” he asked. “I bet it's going to be one thing, then one more thing. We'll probably be here till dawn.” His voice cracked with despair.

“I want to have a look at that book on Madame Rosa's table.”

Herculeah's voice grew fainter as she moved into the parlor. “The book was open when I first got here, and then somebody closed it. I want to know why.”

“I don't really care,” Meat admitted.