The White Magic Five & Dime (A Tarot Mystery) (21 page)

They went upstairs.

Barbra had
said she’d wait five minutes before bursting into the room. Long enough but not too long.

“What’s going on here?” she would shout. “What are you doing to my daughter?”

“D-d-daughter?” the mark would sputter.

And his adrenaline would kick in and his brain would shut off (assuming it was working anyway) and he’d shed his money like a snake shedding its skin, eager to slither off under a rock and never look back. And the girl would have gained a little experience with men without losing anything in the process.

That was the plan. That was the
promise
. And the girl knew it would be broken.

How long would it be before the door finally opened? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Twenty? Every extra second that passed would be a brick the girl would carry forever. Another pound of hate weighing her down.

So when the door opened again just
three
minutes after it had closed, the girl jumped up, startled.

“Mom?” she blurted out.

Barbra stalked into the room, glaring past her.

“What’s going on here? What are you doing with my daughter?” she said.

She couldn’t say “what are you doing
to
my daughter” because it was obvious nothing was being done.

The girl and the man had been on the bed together, not in it. Sitting silently side by side as they waited.

“Barbra Harper,” the man said now, “you’re under arrest for criminal conspiracy, pandering, and the corruption of a minor. You have the right to remain silent.”

Barbra whirled around and yanked open the door.

Another man stood just outside, blocking her.

Another cop.

“Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law,” said the first cop—the one who’d been sitting with the girl at the bar and in the room. The one they’d eventually taken her to that afternoon when she’d walked into the police station and said “I’d like to report a crime.”

Barbra turned toward him again.

“You have the right to an attorney,” he said. “If you cannot afford an attorney—”

Barbra focused on the girl standing beside him.

“What have you done?” she said. “
What have you done
?”

“I’m sorry, Mom! I…I thought you were going to…that you wouldn’t…”

The girl buried her face in her hands and wept.

When she looked up again, her mother and the other cop were gone.

She never saw her mother again. Not alive, anyway.

Back at
the police station, there were forms to fill out. They’d started some that afternoon, but things had moved forward now, weren’t just hypothetical, and that meant more paperwork.

Some of the forms were for the social worker who’d be placing the girl in emergency foster care.

“Name?” the social worker asked.

The girl wiped her eyes dry and thought for a long, long time.

“Good question,” she said.

It’s midnight at the oasis, and after a long, hard, thirsty journey—so long, hard, and thirsty our heroine somehow lost all her clothes—there’s finally water to spare. Our weary traveler even has enough left over to give the lawn a spritz now that her own thirst is quenched. Needs are met, good deeds are done, peace reigns. Enjoy it while you can, girlfriend!

Miss Chance,
Infinite Roads to Knowing

“I was
in a foster home for two days before I ran away,” I said. “I don’t know what happened with the charges against Mom. I assume they were dropped because I wasn’t around to testify. I don’t know. I never looked it up, and my mother never tracked me down. She got the message. She was better off without me. That’s why I was so surprised when she left me the White Magic Five & Dime. After what I did to get away from her…well, a forgiving heart wasn’t among her virtues. If she had any.”

Clarice hadn’t said a thing since I’d started my story, and she seemed in no hurry to say anything now, so we drove in silence for a while. All I could see ahead were a starry sky and our headlights on the road. The desert around us had disappeared into nighttime darkness. We could have been driving through a black hole.

“What did you do next?” Clarice finally asked. “After you ran off?”

It seemed to be a question she’d thought about a lot.

You run away…and then what?

“I bounced around, got into trouble, wriggled out of it. Looked for a boring life to bury myself in. Tried to stay honest, play nice. I guess I eventually got close. Kinda-sorta.”

I looked over at Clarice. Her eyes were glittering moistly in the dashboard’s dull glow.

“My mother wanted you to do the same thing, didn’t she?” I said. “She wanted to use you as bait to trap a man. That’s why you told her you’re not a whore.”

Clarice nodded.

“It wasn’t as bad as with you, though,” she said. “There was nothing in person. It was just Web stuff. Old pervs online. At first it was her stringing a few along, getting money out of them. But then she wanted me to help ‘expand the operation,’ ‘cater to different tastes.’ I tried it once, on my laptop, with her standing on the other side of the screen watching. Like,
directing
. It was awful. I couldn’t believe she’d ask me to do something like that. And then she kept pushing me to do it again and again…”

Clarice turned away and put her head against the window glass. Though she’d been fighting it, she was starting to cry.

“I’m sorry she did that to you, Clarice,” I said. “So, so sorry. It’s obvious she was like a mother to you.”

I reached out to touch her gently, cautiously on the shoulder. But then she was suddenly whipping around to face me again, her tear-streaked face full of frustration and fury, and I snatched my hand back.

“Christ, Alanis—how can you be so smart and still be so dense?” the girl raged. “Athena wasn’t
like
a mother to me! She
was
my mother!”

I hit the brakes.

“Whooooaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!” Clarice
cried as we skidded to a stop.

Fortunately, the road was deserted, so no one slammed into us from behind.

I eased the car onto the gravel by the side of the road, then shut it off and opened my door.

The overhead light came on.

“You don’t believe me?” Clarice said.

I was staring at her. Studying her face in the dim light.

Obviously the skin and hair were different. The shape of the face and the nose, too. But there was something about her eyes and ears and neck…

“Get out of the car,” I said.

“What?”

“Come on. Out.”

I was already swiveling around and springing from my seat.

“Alanis, I’m not lying!”

I walked quickly around the hood to Alanis’s side of the car. The girl was slowly, reluctantly standing up.

I wrapped my arms around her.

She was stiff, wary at first. Maybe she thought I was trying to pick her up and throw her.

She figured out I wasn’t when I started sobbing.

She hugged me back. She cried with me, too.

So there I was, in my second hug of the day. A tearful one under the stars this time. Not my style, I would’ve thought.

But you know what? Who needs style?

I had a sister.

“I’m an
idiot,” I said. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

We were on our way to Berdache again. After the initial shock wore off, I could trust myself to not drive us into a canyon.

“You just met me,” Clarice said. “There are people I’ve known for years who never guessed.”

“Why keep it a secret?”

“Athena used to say she had to ‘maintain her womanly allure’ and a kid would kill that. But I always assumed the black thing was a big part of it. She never thought about anything but money money money, and some of the people she was trying to cozy up to around here were pretty racist. And it’s not like being a mother was a big deal to her anyway. It was more like…I don’t know…”

“You were just a prop for her cons?”

“Yeah. That’s it exactly. It wasn’t as bad after we moved here. She didn’t really need me once the store took off, so I could actually go to school and make real friends and have my own life. Then she had to start in with the online stuff…and then she was dead.”

“Where’s your father?”

“Beats me. You may as well ask
who’s
my father ’cuz I don’t know that either. I think I’ve seen him, though. I found old pictures of some guy stuck in Athena’s Bible. I used to pull them out when she wasn’t around and stare and stare and stare at him. He was always smiling. He looked happy. He looked nice.”

“He was, in his own weird way,” I started to say. “But that’s not your dad.”

I stopped myself.

She thought she’d seen her father’s face, and it was a kind one. Why take that away from her? It was more than I ever had.

“Well,” I said instead, “no wonder you weren’t thrilled when I showed up. You don’t even know I exist, then I roll into town and scoop up everything Mom had to give. Why didn’t you tell me who you really were?”

“I didn’t trust you. Even if you were Athena’s daughter—and I wasn’t sure at first if you were—that might just make you another Athena. I missed her and I was torn up about what happened to her, but I didn’t need
that
. So I figured I’d be better off just waiting till you were gone.”

“Makes sense. But I hope you see now that I’m not Athena. Not the evil parts, anyway. Well…not all of them.”

“Sure,” Clarice said.

She didn’t sound entirely convinced.

“Hey, I hug people,” I said. “And I use my superpowers for good.”

I didn’t sound entirely convinced.

I was going to have to prove it to both of us.

We traded
mommy war stories for a while. Mine I’d never told anyone before. Who could’ve heard them without thinking
my god, what a messed-up weirdo
? While looking at
me
.

With Clarice it was different. She told me about her screwed-up childhood, I told her about mine, and instead of horror on her face I saw something like relief.

At last!
she seemed to be thinking.
A freak just like me!

I know that’s what
I
was thinking.

“There’s something
I should show you,” Clarice said when we were upstairs again at the Five & Dime.

She went to the refrigerator, dug around in the freezer, and pulled out a large plastic container. When she brought it to the counter, I saw that there was a strip of masking tape on the lid. One word was written on it:
meatloaf
.

I groaned.

My mother was not the meatloaf-making type, and Clarice was not the meatloaf-eating type.

Whatever really was in there, I should’ve found it already.

When Clarice took off the lid, I was expecting to see a bunch of frozen jewelry. Instead there was a big wad of tinfoil. Clarice peeled it back to reveal a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

“We found it five months ago,” she said.

“We?”

Clarice grinned sheepishly. “Ceecee likes meatloaf.”

“Lucky for us. Otherwise someone might have thrown out ten grand.”

“Twenty—but it used to be forty. It dropped five thousand a month every month until a few weeks ago.”

“You sure were keeping a close eye on the meatloaf.”

“I used to look at it and dream…”

“You have amazing willpower. When I was your age, I would’ve done more than dream.”

“Oh, I will, too. I’ve just been waiting for you to go away.”

“So why are you showing it to me now?”

“It seemed like…you know.” Clarice shrugged, embarrassed by what she was about to say. “A clue.”

“It’s more than that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s really good timing.”

I helped myself to a quarter of the stack.

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got some shopping to do.”

“What are you talking about? There’s nothing open but the 7-Eleven.”

“Exactly. Once I get going on those jalapeño cream cheese taquitos, I just can’t stop.”

Clarice glared at me, looking betrayed.

“Look,” I said, “thanks for showing me the money. I do think it might be important, and I do need to take some of it right now. But I’ll pay you back, I promise. As far as I’m concerned, the meatloaf’s all yours. Okay?”

Clarice narrowed her eyes, then sighed and nodded.

“Okay.”

“Good. Now, I’m going to be gone for a while. All night, maybe. And I don’t think you should be here by yourself. Any chance you could go to Ceecee’s?”

Clarice shook her head. “Her parents don’t like me anymore. I think their lesbian gaydar’s better than yours.”

“Do you have any other friends you could stay with?”

“I could call around. Why, though? You weren’t worried the last couple nights.”

“Actually, I was. It’s just that you were one of the things I was worried about. Now I’m gonna be worried
for
you.”

“Well, thanks, but I’ve been doing okay on my own so far.”

“That was before I showed up. If you’re going to stay, do me a favor: make sure all the doors and windows are locked, and look under the mattress on Mom’s bed.”

A strange chill ran through me—strange because it actually felt warm.

On Mom’s bed
, I’d said. For the first time, I didn’t mean
my
mom. I meant
our
mom.

“I was going to get the gun anyway,” Clarice said. “It might not be real, but it’s better than nothing.”

“You know about that?”

“Sure. I was spying when that crazy old guy left it here last night. Sorry I didn’t call the cops or try to help you, but…well, I was worried about
you
.”

“And how did you know where I’d hidden the air gun?”

“Hey, if you’re going to search my room, it’s only fair for me to search yours.”

Touché. Obviously I needed to brush up on my stealth snooping skills.

“I know you’ve been playing Nancy Hardy,” Clarice said. “Why? Don’t you think Logan can catch the murderer?”

“It’s Nancy
Drew
. And I think Detective Logan is a nice man and a fine police officer.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It’s not supposed to.”

“Come on, Alanis. I want to help.”

I took in a deep breath.

It was tempting. It might actually be fun—in an unwholesome, totally irresponsible way.

And it would still be wrong. I kept insisting I was not Mom. Here was another chance to prove it: I wouldn’t put a teenage girl in danger.

“Sorry,” I said. “Why don’t we bake cookies together sometime instead?”

Clarice looked like she wanted to flip me the bird.

In a sisterly way, though.

I wasn’t
lying about shopping, only about where I was going to do it.

I drove to Phoenix. Certain things are easier to find in a bigger town, and I didn’t want to be window-shopping where I might bump into Josh Logan or anyone else who might recognize me.

My shopping list looked like this:

1. Meth

2. A stolen handgun

3. Bullets

4. 2% milk

All Clarice had in the fridge was skim. Bleah.

Once I
hit Phoenix, it took me two hours to get the meth and fifteen minutes to get the gun and bullets. (Meth dealers and stolen guns go together like
rama-lama-lama-ka-dinga-da-dinga-dong
.) The milk I picked up at an all-night truck stop on the way back to Berdache. On a whim, I bought a couple bumper stickers there, too.

Then I drove to the home of William and Marsha Riggs. Thirty minutes after that, I was back in the apartment over the White Magic Five & Dime. Clarice was sound asleep. Soon I was, too.

I slept well. But not long.

William Riggs
left his house and walked out to his red Camaro at 8:23
am
. I know because I was watching from half a block away with a lukewarm cup of 7-Eleven coffee to keep me awake.

His wife did not come outside with him for a kiss goodbye. I guess she was getting ready for another busy day of cowering in the house.

It was my first time seeing Riggs in person, and he didn’t let me down. The man even walked like a dick. Quick, short-strided strut, feet and thighs turned out slightly, head back.

He went straight to the driver’s-side door, yanked it open, and slid in behind the wheel. Like anyone would. Why would you walk around your car first thing in the morning? Why would you inspect it?