Rituals (18 page)

“It wouldn't have been harmed by the fire. It wasn't glass. It was rock crystal, what scientists call quartz. You should have found it in the ashes. It was flawless, without a single internal fracture. You can't imagine its power. It's impossible to buy one like it these days. Our family has had it for generations. My ancestors' very souls are imprinted on its crystalline structure. I have to have it.”

Okay, so maybe Dara sounded a little flaky, what with ancestors' souls and crystals and such, but still. She sounded like someone who believed in those things, not like the unrepentant faker that Toni saw when she looked at this woman, the last of the Armisteads. Faye wished Avery had found Tilda's crystal ball, so that Dara could have it.

Avery listened intently to Dara, without rolling her eyes at her airy-fairy talk of crystalline power. All she said was, “I can't explain why I would have missed something of that size in the debris, even if it had been broken. I found hundreds of tiny shards of glass. Even if your mother was using a fake—“

Dara bristled.

“—I still should have found pieces of glass or a recognizable puddle of plastic.” Avery took a stick and poked the pile of junk she'd pulled out of the house. “There's nothing in this pile or in that house that could be your mother's crystal ball. If I'm wrong about that—and I'm not—I'll certainly let you know, but I can't tell you where it might have gone.”

“Thank you.” Dara twisted her hands in the gauzy skirt of her sundress. “I heard you talking about looking through the junk in this pile. I'll come back and see what you've found. Auntie will want to hear.”

Still wadding fabric in her clenched fists, she said, “Speaking of Auntie, I have to go. She wants me nearby all the time, these days. It scares her when she has trouble breathing. It scares me, too. I don't like it that Willow and I both have to leave her when we do our shows. I want more time with her. I lost so much time with my mother. I—” She turned her head to look back at Myrna's house. “I have to go.”

Dara walked away, her hennaed curls swinging far down her proud, straight back.

Faye waited until Dara was out of earshot before asking Avery, “You said last night that you'd been a paramedic?”

“I did.”

“When did you last talk to Myrna Armistead?”

“This morning. I've seen her every day this week, some days more than once.”

“What's your opinion of her condition?”

Avery touched her own jaw, as if to wipe off a drop of sweat, and her eyes focused on a spot somewhere behind Faye's left shoulder. Her body language said that she didn't want to tell Faye what she thought. Reading such gestures was the tool that Willow used to make people believe he could read minds and talk to spirits. Faye wasn't as good as Willow, because she was usually focused on the next thing on her to-do list, but she could read people when she tried.

Avery's hand still lingered on her jaw. “I haven't done an examination on Myrna, so I can only offer personal observations. That's no more than you could do.”

“But you have medical training and I don't.”

Avery inclined her head to acknowledge the truth of Faye's statement. She met Faye's eyes. Scholars of body language would say this signaled that she was preparing to tell the truth.

“As Miss Myrna's friend who just happens to have medical training, I can say that I don't like what I see. Her breathing is labored. She can hardly get up out of a chair. Her color's not good.” She stopped talking, as if to see whether she'd satisfied Faye's nosiness.

Faye kept the persistent gaze of the person who hasn't heard all she wants to hear, and she said nothing. After a couple of seconds, Avery took a breath and spoke again. Damn. Faye was impressing herself by how good she was at this body language stuff.

“Ms. Armistead looks like a cardiac patient to me. Fairly well advanced.”

“Can you make her family take her to a doctor? Can anybody?”

“There's no emergency, Faye, and she is an adult capable of making her own decisions. I can't chop her door down with an ax and haul her someplace she doesn't want to go. Nobody can. She has a right to decide about her treatment, and she has a right to put trust in her family.”

Yes, she did. Faye hated being wrong, so she flung one last provocative question. “Even when that family includes a slimy creature like Willow?”

“I've seen Willow with Myrna. He's gentle. Affectionate. He gives her candy and tells her silly jokes. You don't like him, but that doesn't mean he's not good to Myrna.”

“You don't like him, either.”

“I never said that.”

Faye saw that Avery was waiting for her to say, “But you don't!” So she didn't.

After a moment, Avery laughed and admitted the truth. “No, I don't like him, either. But Faye, people get old and, eventually, they die. If Myrna wants to do it at home, in the presence of her family, I'm not going to argue with her decision.”

One more provocative question came to Faye. “If I wanted to kill somebody old, I'd do it here, wouldn't you? Nobody pays much attention when an old person's body gives up and dies. I think that's why there's so little talk around town about Tilda's death. Nobody but you, me, Amande, and the killer knows that it wasn't an accident. Everybody else is secretly wondering if her death was for the best. They're probably thinking they'd rather go out quickly, like Tilda, than spend miserable years slowly fading away.”

“What are you saying? Do you think someone is trying to kill Myrna? Do you have some evidence for that?”

“Not a scrap. It was just an idle observation. But if somebody wanted to get rid of an old lady, this would be an easy place to go about it, because the people in charge of their elders' care don't seem to be paying much attention.”

***

Shortly—too shortly—after Faye and Amande walked away, a young man appeared and introduced himself to Avery as Ennis, Sister Mama's great-nephew. Avery had heard about Ennis. After the scene in the diner between him and Amande and Faye, everybody within ten miles of Rosebower had heard of Ennis. She judged that he had been waiting for the archaeologist and her daughter to leave before he approached her. Perhaps he'd been exercising good manners and restraint in doing so, but something about Ennis put Avery on her guard. The notion of him watching her and waiting felt icky. She was no happier about the notion of him watching Faye and Amande.

He'd hardly said hello before he launched into a complaint that made no sense. She heard him saying that somebody had been stealing things from his garden. Then he backpedaled. It wasn't his garden. It was Sister Mama's.

“They're digging stuff up. They're going in the greenhouses. They're—”

“Are the greenhouses locked? Is there a gate on the garden?”

“We never needed one before, but—“

“Have you talked to the sheriff?”

Ennis looked confused. “He doesn't listen. But you're here…investigating things. Checking out Miss Tilda's fire. You're not who I should talk to?”

“I'm a fire inspector.”

“Aw, shit. I mean, excuse me.”

“All I can tell you to do is to lock up your valuables. If somebody might want to steal your great-aunt's herbs, you need to make it hard for them. Criminals are lazy. If you make their life hard, they'll go find somebody who doesn't. Whether your valuables are diamonds or plants, it's all the same. Lock 'em up.”

He nodded and walked away without saying goodbye.

Maybe Ennis was being straight with her. Maybe somebody had been digging roots out of Sister Mama's garden and he was worried about it. It was also possible, however, that he was trying to cover his tracks. If the tox screen said that opium, or something equally deadly, was on that scrap of orange kitchen sponge, then Ennis could be in a lot of trouble. It would be shrewd of him to spread the word beforehand that anybody in Rosebower might have been stealing from Sister Mama's garden.

Avery wished she knew what opium poppies looked like when they weren't blooming. She'd downloaded a book on the botany of medicinal plants and it would be her bedtime reading for the foreseeable future. It looked to be about as soporific as the poppies themselves.

Ennis was still in sight. He moved like a nervous man, and he also moved like a twenty-year-old who was not yet in total control of his body. As he cut a shaky path across a neighbor's grassy lawn, Avery wondered if he'd been sampling his great-aunt's wares.

Chapter Twenty-two

Five minutes before the council meeting, Faye settled herself into a seat that Toni had saved for her. She was glad Toni had gotten there early, because the council room was packed. Avery had wanted to stand in the back, maybe so she could keep an eye on various suspects.

The six surviving councilors sat at a table in the front of a room that had a church-like feel. Attendees were seated in long benches, much like pews, and the councilors' heavy wooden table reminded her of an altar. Three of the councilors were of Tilda's generation, one woman and two men. They spent most of the pre-meeting time with their heads together, muttering. The other three, a man and a woman in their fifties and a younger woman, were examining a stack of papers together, one page at a time. The room was full, and the town's cultural divide was as visible and obvious as the male and female seating areas at a Shaker meeting.

Instead of being segregated by sex, however, this room was segregated by age and, to an extent, by social class. Faye and Toni sat on the left. Faye had no idea whether or not Toni had intentionally chosen a seat that allied her with the defenders of traditional Rosebower. Myrna sat in the center of the left side of the room, flanked by ladies of her generation. There were a few younger people in the vicinity, but they were all wearing the conservative clothes of a flock of faithful churchgoers.

Across the aisle sat everybody else. The age range skewed much younger, and even those of retirement age were dressed casually. This group had embraced t-shirts and flip-flops and the soft filmy dresses Faye associated with New Age enthusiasts. Scattered among the more ethereal-looking attendees were the people who held down jobs in the service industry—Julie, Dwight, the owner of the inn where Avery was staying, the owner of one of the teahouses and his staff, the grocery-store owner and the man who sacked food for her. Faye was startled to see how many people in run-of-the-mill jobs were required to support the psychics and seers who were the stars of the Rosebower show.

The agenda said that the town would address its regular business, then nominate candidates for Tilda's empty seat and hold the election immediately. Faye could guess the number of nominees—two, one for the people on the right and one for the people on the left. She could almost count the votes by looking at the voters themselves. Women wearing pantyhose and men wearing ties would vote with Tilda's camp. Men wearing hiking boots and women wearing crystals around their necks would vote with the new guard. By Faye's count, the vote would be close.

A very slick brochure touting Gilbert Marlowe's development was being handed out. At first, Faye thought it was interesting that the resort would be contiguous to the auditorium where Dara and Willow worked, northeast of town. They would profit handsomely by the traffic. Was this good fortune due to Dara's family connections? Faye remembered seeing Willow in Marlowe's limousine, so maybe Willow was the one with connections.

After studying the map, she wasn't so sure that either of them had exercised any clout in the proposed location of Marlowe's development. There just wasn't any other place to put it. The lake would cut off access between the town and anything built to the east of it. A wide swath of land to the south and west was consumed by undeveloped woodlands designated as a national forest. The only piece of suitable property big enough for Marlowe's development lay on either side of the main road into town from Buffalo. Dara and Willow had gotten lucky.

After the meeting was called to order, the floor was opened for public input on issues to be decided by the council. The moderator seemed to be following an unstated rule: A comment stated by a citizen sitting on the left side of the room was followed by a comment coming from the right. Faye had spent most of her time in Rosebower with Myrna and the traditionalists who surrounded her, never hearing the complaints of their opponents. She had to admit that they weren't unjustified.

Dwight went first. He stepped up to a microphone near the councilor's table and said, “My son moved two hundred miles away, because there's no jobs here. What's wrong with progress? And let me tell you something else. My wife is as gifted a psychic as anyone in town, but the visitor's center hasn't ever referred a client to her. Not once. This council's in charge of referral policies. My Selma built a successful practice because she's talented and honest, but would it hurt you people so much to help somebody out, instead of sending tourists to the same people every day that rolls? Who's going to get all the new clients, now that you don't have Tilda Armistead to send 'em to? God rest her soul.” His time was up, so he stepped down.

The moderator called on a woman anxious to speak, because she worked at the visitor's center and she wanted to respond to Dwight. “We always recommend three licensed practitioners for new clients to choose from, and Selma's on the list. We can't control which practitioners they choose.”

Dwight got three words out before being shushed by the moderator. “There are ways…”

Faye agreed with Dwight. There were ways to sway customers toward one psychic or another. Put Selma's name last on a list of three, then gush about the talents of the first person on the list—Tilda Armistead, for instance—and people would take the hint.

The speaker continued to recite the visitors' center policy until her time was up. “We keep a list. When you get a recommendation, your name goes to the bottom of the list. The process is fair.”

If Dwight's wife had truly worked her entire career in this town without a single referral from the visitor's center, Faye sincerely doubted that the process was fair.

Next, the moderator called on a man seated on the right. He was in his late sixties, vigorous and with a body like a bear.

“We need to revisit licensure requirements.” He said it like an announcement, a fact, not merely a suggestion to be considered. Everyone on the right side of the room nodded vehemently. “You people,” he gestured at the councilors, “hold all the cards. Rosebower was my dream. I've come here every year since I was a kid. I attended services every time I came. I've paid for readings with you…and you… and you…and both of you, and you all predicted great things.” He pointed at several people on the left side of the room. One of them sat at the councilors' table. “You all said you ‘sensed great power in me,' and I paid you a lot of money to train me to use that power. Just like you do. I'm starting to think you tell that to everybody…well, everybody with deep enough pockets to pay for training.”

Mumbling rose from both sides of the room. People on the right mumbled about how they'd been cheated. People on the left mumbled that the people on the right were wrong.

The bear-like man still held the floor. “I trained for years so that I could come here and open a practice when I retired. I thought, ‘There aren't many places where it's okay to be old, but Rosebower's one of them.' Then I got here and you wouldn't give me a license. That's when I learned that being old isn't what counts. Wisdom isn't what counts. It's who you know that counts, and how long you've known them. I'm in favor of Marlowe's development. He'll need people like me to do readings for his hotel guests. If he doesn't, I'll rent some space nearby and hang up a shingle. I don't give up easy. You people control what happens in Rosebower, but you've got zero clout as soon as I cross those city limits.”

As the discussion dragged on, Faye saw that people like this man accounted for a surprising proportion of Rosebower's age-skewed demographics. There were many other retirees who had come first as tourists, and then been drawn back in retirement for the same reasons they'd vacationed here. The place was beautiful and they were fascinated by Spiritualism itself. Among them were people like the bear-ish speaker, who had retired here hoping
for licensure, only to be denied just in time to see their 401(k)s
evaporate when the housing bubble burst.

These people were hurting, financially and emotionally. They blamed Rosebower's council, and they blamed the long-term residents who ran the town as if the world hadn't changed and never would. No wonder they appeared to be ready to vote some new blood onto the council.

The moderator rang a little brass bell and declared the public comment period to be over. She called Gilbert Marlowe to the podium.

A hum arose as people on both sides of the room resumed their muttering. This was the first big event of the evening. The election of Tilda's replacement would be the next.

Marlowe's presentation was slick, and his video fly-through of the proposed buildings was way more entertaining than the usual seven-screens-and-done PowerPoint presentation. He emphasized that Rosebower itself would be unchanged by his development.

Faye disagreed. She shared Myrna's feeling that the project would change Rosebower forever. She realized that, even if she accomplished nothing else with her work at the museum, she would be preserving the memory of an evocative place that was slipping away. Whether it succumbed to Gilbert Marlowe or to the demands of new residents or to time, Rosebower could not remain as it was for much longer.

To distract herself from Marlowe's seductive promises, she studied the brochure in her hands. It bothered her, and not just because she wished Gilbert Marlowe would go away and leave Rosebower alone. Something about the lovely diagram, with its blue sweep of lake and its green computer-generated trees cradling the town and resort, didn't work. The area to be developed, crammed tight with the hotel and its associated buildings, looked small compared to all that nature. Faye couldn't decide what was wrong with it, but it bothered her. Folding the brochure into a small square, she slid it into the pocket of her jeans to examine later.

“This lovely town, a lasting symbol of simpler times, will remain as a time capsule from the earliest days of Spiritualism. The town council will retain control of everything within the city limits, especially the licensure of practitioners. I have no influence on the government of this town. I own no property within the city limits. Therefore, I can't vote.”

Faye hoped everyone here saw this empty promise for what it was. Power and money could do more to influence the people on the council than one measly vote. And surely they all realized that Marlowe's project would neutralize the competitive power of any license issued to practice as a psychic within Rosebower's boundaries. Anyone could throw up a shack outside the city limits and start charging money for reading tea leaves. Essentially, that's what Dara and Willow had done. Increased tourist traffic to the resort would make it possible for others to join them.

Suddenly, Faye did a mental backpedal. Marlowe had said, “I own no property within the city limits,” and this was true. The brochure in her hands told her that the entire project would be outside Rosebower proper. So why was Marlowe here?

Why was he riding around in a limousine with Willow? And why had he been bothering Myrna? What, really, did Marlowe need from these people? He could use their goodwill, but he could do without it.

Was this what had bothered her about the brochure map? Maybe. But something was still not right. Marlowe's behavior told Faye that she was missing something.

He was saying, “The most conservative projections say that my development will quadruple tourist traffic.”

If this was true, Marlowe's resort would soon be surrounded by businesses set up by the people who had been rejected for licensure by the town. There would be no governing body to ensure that they conducted their business with respect for the religion underlying it. Faye had a vision of a tiny Las Vegas Strip leading into Rosebower, with flashing lights and tacky billboards touting bargain-basement spiritual readings. Myrna's horror at the tawdriness of Marlowe's plans may have been dead-on.

Marlowe's voice gained strength and presence as he built to a concluding pitch that would close this sale.

“This development will be built outside the town, so I am not here to ask permission. I am here to propose partnership. I am willing to establish a position on my management team in Pittsburgh to be held by one of Rosebower's own. This job will be compensated at standard industry rates for such a responsible position. In return, I'd like the town to consider electing me for the open seat on this council. I want us—all of us—to embrace the twenty-first century together.”

After a second of silence, the room erupted as people reacted to this proposal. After a moment of people-watching, Faye reassessed her judgment. All of Rosebower didn't react. Only Myrna's half of the room did. Now she saw what Marlowe was planning. He didn't need Rosebower's voters to make his project a success, but the combined drawing power of the museum-like town and his cushy resort was far more than either could generate on its own. Marlowe aimed to be in charge of both tourist draws. She finally understood what he'd been doing in town the past few days. He'd been building a power base with Rosebower's progressives. Counting heads, Faye wasn't sure whether his base was big enough to carry the election.

And now the lifelong businessman drove his pitch home.

“My proposal makes economic good sense, but it promises more than money. Rosebower has a gift for the world. Think of the spiritual power you could wield by showing so many people how to live in peace with themselves, with those around them, and with those who have crossed to the other side. Your principles are based on wisdom and kindness. Is it kind to leave so much of the world in the dark?”

Myrna's friends were plucking at her sleeve, trying to keep her in her seat, but she was an Armistead. It was impossible to tell her what to do. She was wheezing when she reached the front of the room, but she got there under her own power.

“You will
not
sit in my sister's seat, Gilbert. Maybe we can't stop you from destroying our way of life, but that doesn't mean we have to help you.”