Spellcasting in Silk: A Witchcraft Mystery (12 page)

“They’re the reason I tried not to judge Nicky, even though I couldn’t support what she was doing. I’d do anything for these little monkeys. Anything.”

“And . . . I know this is probably hard to talk about, but what can you tell me about your mother?”

He settled back against the bench. “Ah, yes, Betty.” The joy left his eyes. I could smell the turn of his mood: a slightly metallic, chalky scent, like gunpowder.

“How can I describe Betty?” His eyes were still on his children, who were now heading outside, carrying orange plastic cups with exaggerated caution. Halfway to the door the boy stopped to take a large gulp of lemonade, and his little sister mimicked him. Then they passed
through the sliding glass door and closed it after themselves. “Betty was glamorous. Beautiful. Classy, I guess you would say.”

“I saw the portraits of her. She was lovely.”

He laughed wryly. “I suppose you mean the topless pictures? Fred’s a trip.”

“They’re not all topless, though,” I said with a smile. “Fred seems to have a knack for portraiture—there are some beautiful renderings.”

“I suppose,” he said with a little sigh, sipping his tea.

“I’m surprised you don’t want any of them.”

“I just . . . I don’t really want Fred’s juju hanging on my walls. It was tough enough dealing with my mother—now, the
memory
of my mother—without having to think of her . . . that way.”

I have a difficult relationship with my mother as well, and since I hadn’t been around her as an adult, I’d never really had to deal with the idea of her as a sexual being. I supposed she and my father had experienced passion; after all, she had been a beautiful young woman. And little else besides sheer animal attraction would explain how two such different personalities as she and my worldly, ambitious father had managed to get together. But the very thought of their sex life was enough to send the likes of me into a tizzy.

“Was Betty in the military also?” I was trying to put this family portrait together in my mind; somehow the pieces just didn’t fit.

“No, never, not at all. They didn’t see eye to eye on that, or on anything else. In fact, they never even married. The way I heard it, Betty and my dad got together only long enough to conceive us. As far as I know, that was about the extent of their interaction as a couple. When we were very young, hadn’t even started school
yet, Dad came and packed our bags; and from then on we were living in military housing. I hardly ever saw Betty after that—maybe once or twice a year, tops.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think she was the maternal type. As an adult I can understand it: She was chic, sophisticated, a giver of cocktail parties. A couple of snotty, demanding kids didn’t really fit her image. She had us relatively late in life for the time—in her late thirties. Maybe she thought she wanted to change her life, but when the reality set in . . .”

I nodded. “Reality can be a pail of cold water.”

“That it can. I didn’t start having kids until I was a little older, myself, and while it was a good decision to wait, all things considered, I sure could use a little of the energy of youth.” He laughed, and I followed his gaze out the window, where the kids were running around and shrieking as they engaged in a pretend sword fight with long reeds from an overgrown water garden.

“Do you know anything about Betty being interested in anything occult?”

He shook his head. “No, nothing beyond tea. She was a fanatic for tea, so she used to get herbal concoctions from all over. But once Nicky said Betty told her not to go to
El Pajarito
for help
,
if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Did she say why Betty warned her away?”

“Not in particular—I think she just wanted her to stick to proven medical methods. But once Nicky became obsessed with the whole natural motherhood thing, she was willing to try anything, and seemed to lose interest in anything else. I wish . . . I just wish I had known, that I’d been closer to her when it happened. Maybe I could have intervened, somehow.”

I reached across the table and covered his hand with
mine. His vibrations were brittle, humming at a high pitch at odds to his calm countenance. Parents were often like this, I’d found: outwardly serene, but inside on high alert, watching their kids and planning for dinner and worrying about paying the bills, all at the same time. A juggling act. But could there be something else there? Guilt?

He squeezed my hand and smiled, then drew it away.

“You don’t know anything about the girl named Selena, do you? She was a classmate of your niece, Emma.”

He shook his head. “I’ve been making a point to spend time with Emma ever since what happened. But they live in the city, so I don’t really know her school friends. You’d have to ask Gary about that. Or, better yet, Emma herself.”

“Speaking of Gary, what do you think of him?”

“Gary? He’s . . . he’s a great guy. Really.”

I tilted my head. “The way you say it makes me wonder if you really mean it.”

Knox laughed, though I heard little humor in it. He kept scratching the back of his hand absentmindedly while he looked out at the yard, watching his little bundles of energy jumping and running through the tall grass.

He opened his mouth but hesitated another moment before speaking. “I knew Gary before he and Nicky married. Heck, I was the one who introduced them. He and I worked at a movie theater in college. He really is a great guy. But . . .” He blew out a long breath, and ran a hand through his hair. “I feel disloyal no matter which side of this I come down on. Here’s the truth: Gary had an affair. There’s no excuse for it, I know that. And I was furious with him on behalf of my sister. It’s just that . . . Nicky really was acting nuts for the last year or so. What
can I say? Maybe it’s different for men than for women, I don’t know. I love my children so much, I can’t imagine life without them. If I didn’t have them, perhaps I’d be as crazy as Nicky got in the pursuit of motherhood. So this isn’t an excuse, but I guess part of me understands why Gary would turn to someone else.”

I followed his lead and watched the children play for a few minutes, wondering whether Carlos knew about Gary’s affair. The inspector was the one who always told me, after all, that the husband is the first suspect in any suspicious death. It was enough to make even a romantic soul cynical about relationships of the heart.

Gary had an alibi, but alibis were sometimes fabricated.

“If you want to know the truth,” Knox continued, “I think Gary’s guilt over the affair is part of the reason he’s been having such a hard time dealing with Nicky’s death. In fact, knowing Gary, I doubt he will ever forgive himself for it.”

“Is he still seeing the other woman?” I knew the minute I said it my question was too nosy. But Knox seemed to be in the zone, that mood some people get into when they start talking and don’t stop. It might have had to do with me—as a witch I seem able to cast a spell of comfort and trust that encourages people to speak. Or maybe as a househusband he was simply starved for grown-up company.

Knox looked surprised. “
No
, no. It wasn’t really even an affair, really, more like something that got out of control. You know how it is: You’ve been drinking, you’re coping with heightened emotions, you’re with someone attractive and . . . boom.”

I
didn’t
know how it was. My relationship with Sailor was my longest romantic attachment, by far. I wondered
what it would be like to be married for many years, long enough for the passion to wear off, the initial attraction replaced by a deeper love, with luck. But if that love was tested . . . Under the circumstances, perhaps Knox was right, perhaps anyone would be tempted.

“Did you have any indication Nicky was suicidal?”

“Not at all. She wanted to get pregnant, so I imagine she was distraught when she lost the baby.”

“She lost a baby?”

“That’s what she told me. A miscarriage, early on.”

The sort of thing that can be caused by the wrong dose of the wrong sorts of herbs, I thought to myself. Maybe the police were aware of this and were using it to build their case against Ursula.

I glanced at the clock over the refrigerator, a cheap reproduction of a Parisian bistro clock, with big hands made of metal scrollwork.

“Could I ask you one more thing? Are you the one handling Betty’s estate sale? Have you been going over to the house at all?”

He shook his head. “There’s a professional estate liquidator taking care of all of that. Frankly, I don’t want to deal with it. Like I said, I wasn’t close with my mother. Barely knew her, actually. And as you can see, I’ve got my hands full here.”

“So, you didn’t arrange to have a
limpia
done on the place?”

“A
limpia
? Is that . . . you don’t mean Filipino spring rolls, do you?”

I smiled, “No, that’s
lumpia
, I think. A
limpia
is a sort of spiritual cleansing of a house.”

He shook his head, a frown of incomprehension on his brow. “Should I have? No offense, but I’m not really into that sort of thing.”

“No, I just wondered. Okay, well, thank you for your time and for sharing so much with me, Knox. I should let you get back to your kids, and I’ll get back to work.”

As we were getting up, we heard someone come in through the front door. A moment later Gary walked into the kitchen with a young teenager.

“Gary, Emma,” Knox said. “We were just talking about you.”

Gary did not look pleased to see me. Emma, for her part, looked curious but blank. She was tall and pretty, wearing makeup and a short skirt, her feet shod in platform sandals. She looked awkward in the too-mature getup. I couldn’t help but think of a little girl playing dress-up in her mama’s closet.

“Hello, Gary,” I said. “And, Emma, nice to meet you. My name’s Lily.”

She mumbled a hello and looked at her pink nails.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Gary.

“She’s just . . .” Knox looked at me, a question in his eyes, as though he had only at this moment realized it was odd that I was here, asking about their family.

“I’m trying to find Selena,” I said. “No one seems to know where she is; we’re worried about her.”

“You mean that charlatan’s granddaughter? She’s an aberration, that one.”

“Gary,”
Knox admonished. “She’s a child.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, one hand reaching up to rub the back of his neck as he blew out a long breath. He glanced at Emma. “I know she’s just a girl, but she was the one who told Nicky about
El Pajarito
in the first place. And that girl seems to know things she shouldn’t.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged. “She and her sweet little old grandma were geniuses at cold reading. You know what that is? Fortune-tellers use it to scam people, make them think they’re reading their minds. I wish . . . I just wish we had never met Ursula
or
Selena.”

“Emma, do you have any idea where Selena might be?”

She shook her head. I sensed she had more to say, and wished I could think of an excuse to speak to her alone. But looking into the angry, grief-stricken, and possibly—given what Knox had told me—guilty countenance of her father, I doubted he would permit it.

I studied Gary for a moment. It didn’t take a witch to sense the anger that emanated from his well-padded frame. But was there more going on here? Was I picking up on guilt that went beyond that of a man who’d had an affair and whose distraught wife had killed herself?

Knox escorted me to the back door, and I waved good-bye to the kids. They seem overjoyed to see their cousin Emma, whose attempt at teenage nonchalance fell away as she kicked off her heels and ran to join them.

As I was making my way around the side of the house to the street, I heard a burst of clapping and yelling.

I turned around to see the kids egging their father onto a small trampoline.

Gary stood to one side, unsmiling, watching me leave.

*   *   *

As I drove back across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, I couldn’t stop thinking about Selena.

Aidan mentioned Patience Blix was skilled in reading
the crystal ball and might be able to envision Selena’s whereabouts. Would she do it? Was it worth a shot?

If only I had something that belonged to the girl. I should have thought to take something when I was in
El Pajarito
 . . . clothes would be best for the likes of me, but for someone like Patience something metal would be better: a necklace, perhaps. Something Selena had worn close to her body. Most intuitives who were skilled in psychometry were able to pick up vibrations from metal jewelry.

I made a mental note to ask Carlos about going back to the store and picking something up.

But in the meantime, I happened to be driving right by Patience Blix’s neighborhood. If she was as skilled as Sailor and Aidan kept insisting, what with being the head of the Fortune-Tellers Association and what-all, she should be able to look into her crystal ball and give me something to go on.

Even as I thought this, I knew it wasn’t true. Magic didn’t work that way. If it were that simple, murderers and ne’er-do-wells wouldn’t get away with a darned thing. But still . . . I was right here, and I was burning with curiosity about this particular clairvoyant.

I drove around the block four times, debating whether or not to knock on Patience’s door. On the one hand, I should have come prepared. On the other, I might well chicken out if I gave myself too much time to think about it.

What was I afraid of? This was Sailor’s cousin, the woman who was training him to become stronger, and better. Surely I wasn’t threatened by that, was I? So she was beautiful, what was the big deal?

While these thoughts were crowding my head, a Camry pulled out of the parking spot less than half a block from Patience’s fortune-telling sign. I pulled in.
Enough with the indecision, Lily. This isn’t about you, and it’s not about you and Sailor. It’s about Selena, a fourteen-year-old girl who needs help.

I got out of the car and climbed the wooden steps to the front door, painted a deep blue. The sisal doormat was decorated with a huge eye.

Ringing the bell, I gazed directly into the tiny camera in the corner.
Not so much of a psychic that she didn’t need a little electronic assistance,
said a snide voice in my head.

An angry buzzing noise spurred me to open the door.

Straight ahead was a flight of carpeted stairs, a velvet cord strung across the first step from which hung a sign marked “Private.” To the left, through a wooden archway, was the front parlor, a large room almost completely devoid of furniture. A worn Oriental rug lay upon the gleaming hardwood floor, and in the center of the rug was a small round table. It was covered by a heavy blue brocade that matched the floor-to-ceiling drapes and was flanked by two straight-back wooden chairs. An overhead chandelier and wall sconces cast an ambient glow across the room. On the walls were mirrors of all types: round and square, oblong and rectangular, antique and brand-new. One concave mirror radiated gold and silver spikes, like a sun. In the mirror’s reflection the room appeared serene but distorted. Double doors at the back of the room separated the rest of the home from the parlor where Patience conducted her business.

I had barely taken it all in when the double doors slid open and a woman appeared.

She was even more beautiful than her photograph. Backlit by the sunny room behind her, Patience Blix was the embodiment of a romance novel heroine: Her hair was abundant and glossy, curling around her face and falling in a tumble down her back. Her mouth was
full-lipped and generous, highlighted with red lipstick. Sparkling green eyes were lined in kohl. She was dressed in the best Hollywood Gypsy fashion: a purple peasant skirt, loose white blouse cut low across her ample bosom, a scarf tied jauntily around her waist, and lots of gold jewelry. Ropes of necklaces cascaded into her cleavage, big gold hoops in her pierced ears gleamed against the dark mass of her hair, and bangles adorned her slim arms. Gold anklets circled her slender, sandal-shod feet.

She smiled. At least, I thought it was a smile until she cocked one eyebrow and I realized it was more of a haughty smirk. She was amused, peering down her nose at me even though she was only a few inches taller.

“Lily Ivory, I presume?”

I nodded. Maybe she
was
psychic.

“I’ve been expecting you.”

“Have you?”

“I saw it in my crystal ball.”

“Really?”

She laughed, a sound like merry, tinkling bells. “No, of course not. Sailor said you might drop by. Have a seat. May I offer you some tea?”

“Um, no, thank you,” I said, feeling off-balance. What did it mean that Sailor had assumed I might drop by? Was he annoyed at the thought? Amused by it? He couldn’t read my mind, so did this mean he now knew me well enough to anticipate my movements? And if he could, what did that imply about us and our future together?

I slipped into one of the wooden chairs at the small round table. A stack of well-thumbed tarot cards sat to one side, and a large crystal ball held pride of place in the center.

Patience took the chair across from me.

For a moment we stared at each other.

She let out a husky peal of laughter. “You’re not . . . quite what I expected.”

“Is that right?”

She shrugged, the mocking smile never leaving her face. “When Sailor said you were a powerful witch, perhaps even more powerful than Aidan Rhodes, I pictured . . . someone else.”

“Like who?”

“A woman. Not a little girl.”

A small mirror flew off the wall and landed on the table with a clatter.

Patience jumped and I enjoyed a moment of satisfaction at seeing her smile slip. She regrouped and raised an imperious eyebrow.

“No need for parlor tricks,” she said in a dry tone. “I’ll take your word for it. Yours, and Sailor’s.”

“Sorry about that,” I said, trying to calm myself down. “It wasn’t intentional.”

She shrugged, a slow, sensuous movement that seemed to promise . . . something. I wondered if she was aware of her effect, and suspected she was.

Great balls of fire,
I thought. It was a good thing she and Sailor were cousins, because . . . how could a man resist a woman like Patience?

“What is the nature of the training you are giving Sailor?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

I had, of course, many times. And he remained mute on the subject. Which was totally his right, since it really was none of my danged business. And now what was I doing . . . ? Asking Patience about him, behind his back?
That’s low, Lily. Get a grip
.

“Sorry. Never mind. I’m not here about Sailor,” I said. “Aidan told me you are skilled at reading the crystal ball.
I’m looking for a girl, a fourteen-year-old who may be in danger. Can you help me find her? For a fee, of course.”

“Do you have something of hers? A piece of jewelry, a lock of hair? An article of clothing, maybe?”

“No.”

“And you think I can, what? Just conjure out of midair?”

“Why not? Everyone keeps telling me you’re talented. So show me.”

For the first time, she gave me a genuine smile. “Are you going to double-dog dare me next?”

“If I have to.”

“You are very . . . droll.”

“I try.”

She settled back in her seat, tilted her head, and folded her arms across her chest. “You’ve met this girl?”

I shook my head.

“Been in her space, at least? Do you have some connection to her? This isn’t some random name out of the paper, for instance?”

“Of course not. I was in her grandmother’s shop, where she spent a great deal of her time. I touched a lot of things she might have touched. And I met her grandmother, though I didn’t touch her.”

Patience nodded. “All right. Let’s see if you’re the powerhouse everyone thinks you are.”

“How do we do that?”

“I’ll use you as a conduit to the girl. We’ll hold hands and I’ll read you.”

“I . . . I don’t know about that.” I folded my hands in my lap. Like any witch worth her salt, I was habitually guarded, my emotions and sensations protected by the medicine bag around my waist, as well as a lifetime of shielding myself from others.

“Why don’t you just look in there”—I nodded at the crystal ball— “and see without seeing? Unless that’s beyond your abilities.”

She gave me a patronizing look.

“Or . . . I could try to get something from the grandmother’s shop,” I offered.

“That might help. But let’s first try it my way. What are you afraid of?”

You,
I thought.
Me
.
But especially of me and Sailor.
And that was just for starters.

“Let me ask you about something else. How does a ‘cold reading’ work?”

“It’s a technique used by fortune-tellers with no actual psychic powers. It’s a very old parlor trick, in fact, which is also used by stage magicians. It involves pretending to know something about the subject, throwing out general statements until you stumble across something that rings true with the client. Then you build upon that. If it’s done with enough confidence the client believes you’re psychic, and you gain her trust.”

“So it’s fraud.”

“Such a harsh word. I prefer to think of it as acting.”

“But it’s still a scam. I thought you were a genuine psychic.”

In her face I saw a flash of annoyance, but she continued, “Once the client is emotionally involved, the reader tosses out more generalizations, watching the client’s reactions to see when they’ve hit the right buttons. For instance, I might say: ‘Lily Ivory, you are searching for love, but you are afraid. Afraid to allow yourself to be vulnerable, to trust. Afraid your boyfriend might not be faithful to you.’ ”

Two more mirrors fell, this time crashing onto the wood floor and sending glittery shards skittering across the room.

Patience and I both jumped up and twirled three times, counterclockwise. Each of us then pocketed a
small piece of the shattered mirror that we would touch to a gravestone in order to avert the seven-year curse. I didn’t like to think I had anything in common with this gypsy woman, but clearly we shared some traditions.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

She shrugged and made a sweeping gesture, inviting me to return to my seat.

“My fault,” she said. “I am not accustomed to dealing with one such as you.”

“You sound adept at cold readings,” I said.

“The average lawyer knows how to bribe a juror, too, though they may never do so.”

“So you’re saying your fortune-telling is truthful, not a scam?”

“Most people come to me because they don’t have enough faith in themselves. They know what they should do, but lack confidence in their intuition. All I do is confirm what they already know. Yes, they pay me. But if they didn’t come to me, they might pay a therapist to achieve the same result. My way gets faster results, and I guarantee you it’s more fun for everyone involved.”

“You don’t have any genuine insights then?”

“I didn’t say that. I have insights . . . but most of them I don’t share with my clients.”

“Why not? Isn’t that what they’re paying for?”

“You should know as well as I do that great harm can come from telling someone what is in their future. Generalities are one thing, but the very act of knowing one’s future
changes
that future. And that would not be a responsible thing for me to do.”

We stared at each other for a several beats.