The Ambitious Card (An Eli Marks Mystery) (18 page)

Harry shook his head, but continued to smile benignly. Arianna quickly moved ahead without skipping a beat. “Or actually, it feels more like a rheumatoid condition.” Another gentle shake of the head from Harry. Arianna set down his right hand and took up his left.

“A respiratory ailment, something in the chest, on the left side.” She looked at Harry questioningly. He smiled and shook his head. She released his hand. “Harry, you seem to be in fine shape.”

“Knock on wood,” he said, giving the wooden portion of the counter a solid rap.

“Harry’s not a big believer in the intuitive arts,” I said, feeling that someone had to state the obvious. I was surprised that the only person to raise an objection to this was Harry.

“On the contrary, I often look to the intuitive arts to help me plan for the future,” Harry said, turning back to Arianna. “In fact, I’m a big believer in Clidomancy, Gyromancy, and Tiromancy, to name only three.”

“I don’t think I’m familiar with those,” Arianna said, a puzzled expression on her face.

“Oh, they’re the art of divining the future by, respectively, dangling keys, walking in a circle until you become dizzy and fall down, and my favorite, Tiromancy, whereby you tell the future by means of a piece of cheese.”

Arianna looked at him for what seemed like a long time, and then her lips began to form a wry smile. “Harry, you’re having fun with me, aren’t you?”

He returned the smile. “Yes, I am, just a bit.”

She put an arm around him and pulled him close, enveloping him within her massive bosom. “Eli, I like this man.”

I could barely see Harry’s face, but what little I saw told me that he liked her right back.

When we got out to the parking lot, I discovered that I’d forgotten my iPhone in the car and that someone had left me a message.

I turned on the engine to get the heater going, and while Harry cooed over his cache of albums again, I checked my voicemail. It was an unfamiliar number and a slightly familiar voice, but she got my attention right away.

“Hello, Eli,” the voice on the recording said. “This is Franny Higgins; we met at the memorial service? Sorry to bother you, but I thought we should talk. I just got a phone call from someone. He wanted a psychic reading. And the thing is, he said he thinks that he was the one who killed Grey.”

Chapter 13

“Are you hungry? You must be hungry. I’ve made lunch.” These were the first, breathless words out of Franny’s mouth when I arrived on her doorstep.

I had dropped Harry off at Chicago Magic, because he had insisted he wanted to open up the shop. In reality I knew he was itching to put his records on the turntable and take a leisurely trip down memory lane.

Consequently, I was flying solo when I arrived at Franny’s small bungalow on the edge of Richfield, a suburb that is itself on the edge of Minneapolis. Hers was a perfectly nondescript house nestled among other post-war bungalows, each unique only in their color and trimmings, as they were all otherwise exactly the same.

For someone who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, it was clear that Franny seemed awfully interested in eating, as demonstrated by her all-consuming interest in food at the reception. And upon arriving I was immediately ushered into her tiny but immaculate kitchen and greeted by enough food for a small battalion. Franny walked ahead of me, although
flitted
would be a more accurate description.

The primary color in the kitchen was yellow, with the secondary colors being variations on yellow, making the room feel buttery. The kitchen table was not exactly overflowing with food, but the spread was pushing the edges of what the tabletop could hold. She picked up an empty plate and handed it to me.

“First we eat,” she said with finality. “Then we’ll talk.”

Eight and a half minutes later, with the shattered remains of a terrific roast beef sandwich in front of me, and the last bite of a classic German Minnesotan potato salad hovering on a fork in front of my mouth, Franny resumed our aborted conversation. She set her napkin down and pushed her chair a few inches away from the table.

“So I got a phone call,” she said in a very businesslike, just-the-facts manner. “About nine-thirty this morning, which is early for me, but I was up and about, so I took the call.”

I finished chewing the potato salad and was contemplating another small helping, but I didn’t want to plunge us back into silence. “You don’t take every call that comes in?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Oh, I couldn’t. I’d be on the phone 24/7.”

“Really? I had no idea there was that much demand for phone psychics.”

“Well, I can’t speak for the others, dear, but there’s that much demand for this one.”

Her lack of humility on that one topic made me smile. “So, where do you advertise?”

“Oh, I don’t, really. I have a lot of regulars. Most of my new clients come via word of mouth. My nephew set up a nice little website for me, so that might be helping, but I don’t really know.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Well, I’ve had the gift since I was a child, but I didn’t really start to put it on a paying basis until about fifteen years ago.”

“But you don’t take calls at any time of day?”

“No, I try to run it like a business and keep business hours, like ten to six on weekdays. Some Saturdays I’ll take calls, if there’s nothing else going on. Otherwise, I turn off the phone and turn on the machine, which tells them to try back during business hours. Most of them do. They just keep coming back.”

“Franny, there are a lot of businesses that would kill for that level of customer loyalty.”

“Well, my philosophy has always been that when I work, I work. And when I’m not working, I’m not working. It’s pretty simple, really.” She saw me eyeing the potato salad dish and gave it a gentle nudge in my direction. “Hardly enough left to bother wrapping it up. Why don’t you finish it?”

“So, anyway, you got a call around nine-thirty this morning…” I prodded as I scooped the last dollop of potato salad on my plate and then snagged a pickle as well.

“Yes, a call came in and I answered it. It was a man. I asked for his access code…”

I interrupted her, even though I was in mid-bite with the pickle, which was crisp and tart and most likely homemade. “Access code? What’s that?”

Franny sighed as she scraped the remaining morsels of potato salad off the serving dish and onto my plate. “Well, to simplify billing, I belong to a national psychic network. A customer goes online and buys a certain number of credits, which they can use with any psychic in the network. When I take a call, I put the client’s access code into the system on my computer and it deducts it from their account and gives me the credit. Much easier than the bother of taking credit card numbers over the phone, writing down all those numbers and all that nonsense.”

I nodded and she continued. “Anyway, I put his access code in the computer, which said he had an hour of credit available and we started chatting. I asked him if he had any question in particular or if he was looking for a general reading.”

She had moved the now-empty potato salad bowl away and slid a plate of brownies into its spot. Not wanting to appear rude, I took two. “Which did he want?”

“Well, he said he wanted a general reading,” she explained, “but I could tell from the tone of his voice that he had a particular question in mind. You get so that you can sense that after a while and eventually they always get to the specific question, so it hardly matters. So I gave him a general reading.”

“And what did that entail?”

“Fairly typical stuff, really, nothing too surprising. He’s in his late twenties or early thirties, he’s a bit lost, has a bad relationship with his parents, there’s trouble with his current romantic partner, he’s got some serious issues concerning money. Lost one sibling in his teens, nearly drowned himself when he was four, allergic to shellfish, misplaced his car keys last week, stubbed his toe this morning. Standard stuff.”

“He told you all of that?”

She gave me a long look, shaking her head like I was a dim child who was not paying attention. “No, dear.
I
told
him
all that.”

“Really? And it was all correct?”

“Of course. Why else would I say it?”

It took me a few moments to process this. “So, how did you know all that stuff about him?”

She reached over and patted my hand. “Do you not understand the concept of psychics?”

“Yes, I get that part. It’s just that I’ve never met one with, let’s say, that level of reliability.”

She shrugged. “Well, as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.”

“So, anyway, did he get to the specific question?”

“Yes, well, he hemmed and hawed a bit, and then he asked if I could see any recent violence around him. I asked him what sort of violence he was concerned about, and then he just let it all spill out. He said that he’s been drinking a lot lately and on occasions has suffered blackouts—he’d wake up and not remember how he got home the night before. He said that someone he knew had been murdered recently, that I’d probably read about it in the news, and that he wasn’t at all sure that he hadn’t done it, and then there’d been another murder and he was very much distressed.”

I had trouble believing I was about to ask this question, but since she had been correct on so many other things I figured it couldn’t hurt.

“So, what did your…” I wasn’t sure what word to use. “What did your powers, your intuition, your gift, what did it tell you?”

She took a sugar cookie off the plate on the table and leaned back in her chair. She nibbled on it for a moment, and then brushed some fallen grains of sugar off her brown polyester slacks.

“It wasn’t altogether clear,” she said slowly, choosing her words with care. “I got a sense of intense anger and hostility from him, those feelings were apparent right away. And there was violence…something fatal, I think…but to be honest, I couldn’t nail down whether it had already happened or was about to happen.”

“You can’t tell the past from the future?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. It’s like when you close your eyes and spin yourself around, you lose your bearings and you’re not sure which direction you’re pointed. So I wasn’t able to give him a definitive answer.”

“But you think this might be our guy?”

She pursed her lips. “I do. He emanated a level of anger and fury that was right below the surface but very powerful. I found it very unsettling.”

I finished the first brownie and could feel the sudden jolt of the sugar racing into my system. “So why tell me and not the police?”

“It’s simple…I don’t think you killed Grey, or Bitterman for that matter, and I understand they think you did. And I know from experience that they’re not going to listen to me. And I suspected that you might.” She smiled at me broadly. I returned the smile.

“Okay, I’ll check him out. What’s his name?”

She got up and started to pick up our plates. “Oh, I have no idea what his name is. That’s your job.”

“He didn’t give you a name?”

She shook her head. “I told you. Just his access number.”

“And you couldn’t, you know...” I gestured vaguely with my hands. She gave me a quizzical look.

“Couldn’t what?”

“You know. Do the psychic thing.”

She laughed. “'Do the psychic thing?’ You have so much to learn.” She shook her head as she sat down across from me again. “Names are transitory, something we’re using in this incarnation. They’re not attached to our spirit. It’s like when you give a dog a name and then you give the dog away and the new owner changes the name to something else. It’s still the same dog, but the name is different. The name is transitory. If you want, dear, I could lend you some of my books to read up on it. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Maybe later. But, this network you belong to, they would certainly have a record of his name, right?”

She smiled patiently while I spoke. “Yes, dear, but let’s think it through, shall we? If he actually is a killer, I doubt he’d have much compunction about also stealing a credit card number and lying about his name. Don’t you think?”

I nodded in agreement. “Good point.” I sat back in my chair, trying to think of a good next move and coming up short. Franny returned to the sink and added more dishes to the pile, then turned and leaned against the counter.

“There was one other reason I called you,” she said tentatively.

I looked over at her. She seemed a bit nervous. I waited for her to continue.

“When I was doing the reading, and I got the image of violence, another image came up as well.”

“What was that?”

“I saw you. An image of you. It was very unnerving.” She let this sink in. “If you don’t mind, I think it would be best if I did a complete reading of you, as well. Do you think you would be up for that?” Although her voice was quiet, it had a real strength and intensity behind it. I nodded slowly, not really sure why I was agreeing to this.

“Good,” she said. “Let’s get started.”

“I feel stupid,” I said. “Is this really the only way it works?”

“Sorry, dear,” Franny said, her voice sounding tinny through my cell phone. “I’m a phone psychic. I work on the phone. If you want, you could go sit in your car.”

“No, I’m okay.”

I was sitting on a creaky wooden swing in Franny’s back yard, my cell phone to my ear, wishing that I had thought to bring my jacket along when she thrust me out of the house for the reading.

I folded my arms close to my chest and stamped my feet on the green and brown lawn in a vain effort to warm up. The swing rocked lazily in response to my movements.

Looking around the yard, I noticed it was full of curious knickknacks. On my left was a small flock of plastic geese that lined the garden on one side. A series of wind chimes, in various colors, shapes, and sizes hung from the eaves, providing a constant tinkling sound in the background. At the corner of the swing sat three ceramic frogs, looking up at me quizzically. I returned the look and turned toward the back of the house, where I could see Franny, a cordless phone in her hand, looking out at me from her yellow kitchen. She gave me a little wave and I waved back without enthusiasm.

I looked at my hands—they were starting to turn pink from the cold.

“Are you ready?” she asked. I nodded. “I said, are you ready?” I looked back at the window and saw that Franny had turned away.

“Yes,” I said, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. “All set.”

“Okay.” There was a long pause, and I could hear her breathing softly through the phone. Finally, her voice came through again. “I think I’ve got you, but let’s make sure that I’m focusing in on the right person,” she said. “It’s always embarrassing to do a reading and find out that you’ve got the wrong person.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I can see how that might be awkward.”

There was another pause, and then she sighed, a soft and sad sigh. “Oh, your parents died. When you were ten. I’m sorry, Eli.”

This took me a little by surprise. “Thanks,” I said, not really sure of the proper response in this situation. “It’s okay.”