The Ambitious Card (An Eli Marks Mystery) (7 page)

“The spirit is not a blood relation, but is closely related. Perhaps a half-sibling. Do you have any step-brothers or sisters?”

“No.” Harry shook his head but didn’t offer any more information. This didn’t seem to faze her for a second. She moved quickly over this psychic speed bump and continued. “Perhaps a spouse. Has your spouse passed?”

Harry dipped his head slightly in agreement with the question, but again didn’t offer any additional help.

Megan nodded in agreement. “Yes, it’s feeling very much like a spouse. And she passed several years ago, am I right?”

Harry shook his head.

“It was more recent, wasn’t it?” Megan continued, plowing ahead unabated. You had to admire her spunk. I sure did. That and her hair, her eyes, her lips…

“Yes, I see that now, this is a relatively new spirit,” she said, drawing me back to my note taking. “She went through a long, protracted illness, is that right?”

Harry shook his head again and he continued to shake it with increasing frequency for the next 20 minutes. I filled several pages of notes as Megan stumbled her way through the reading. If this reading had been a golf game, she would have shot one of the highest scores in history. If she had been bowling, she would have scored in single digits. Every path Megan went down found her hitting false turn after false turn, or, more often, yet another dead end.

To his credit, Harry remained cordial but at the same time he didn’t give her an inch of assistance. It was painful to watch at times, like a stern lifeguard who refuses to throw a child a life-preserver while she’s attempting to cross a treacherous stream.

After several minutes of this, Megan finally settled back into her chair. She looked tired but exhilarated. She looked great.

“Did any of the things I received from the spirit connect for you?” she asked Harry, as if hearing the word “no” forty or fifty times in a row hadn’t already answered that question for her.

“Nothing hit like a lightning bolt, if that’s what you mean,” Harry said diplomatically.

“Well, they say that sometimes it takes a couple of days for all the pieces fall into place. You might be surprised.”

Harry smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I might be.”

She stood up and Harry followed suit, reaching for his wallet as he got up. “How much do I owe you?” he asked softly as he opened the wallet and began sorting through the bills.

Megan waved away his question with one hand, resting the other casually on her hip as she pushed a stray strand of hair out of her face. “Oh, nonsense,” she said. “I can’t charge for connecting people to the other side. That just wouldn’t be right.”

A psychic who doesn’t charge money. Harry gave me a look of surprise and wonder. I shrugged. Although it hadn’t seemed possible, she just became even more attractive.

Megan began walking Harry toward the front of the store, with me tagging along. “I just saw that poor spirit over your shoulder,” she continued. “Saw it the moment you came in, and it was just so persistent, I just had to help get its messages across.”

“Well, thanks for that,” I said before Harry could answer.

“You know, I’m amazed I could hear anything at all, what with all these new crystals I got recently,” she said, gesturing toward a display case filled with various stones, gems, and crystals. “Crystals can be so loud sometimes, don’t you think?”

Yes,” I agreed, trying to sound sympathetic. “Yes they can. Rambunctious, even.”

This produced a sidelong glance from Harry. I ignored it and drove forward, now that I had her attention. “I noticed that you’ve added a used-book section since I was last in.”

“Yes,” she said, looking over at the corner that housed several makeshift shelves of old paperbacks and hardcover books.

Two teenage girls were looking through the titles and exchanging conspiratorial whispers.

“That’s working out well,” she said with a hint of pride in her voice. “It’s nice to be able to keep those books circulating to new souls.”

“You know, I had an idea for a promotion that you could do,” I said, gesturing to an invisible banner that could hang over that section. “You could have a banner that says, ‘Used New Age Books—Any Book You Think You Read in a Past Life is Half Off.’”

She gave me a long, questioning look and then burst out laughing, giving my shoulder a playful slap in the process. “You’re funny,” she said, looking me in the eye—finally!—and then turning to Harry. “He’s funny, isn’t he?”

Harry was attempting to suppress a scowl and coming up short. “Hysterical,” he said without humor, his flat tone speaking volumes.

“Could you be any more of a lovesick puppy?” Harry asked, not nearly as quietly as I would have liked.

Harry and I stood outside the front door of
Chi & Things
in silence for a few moments, making sure that Megan had returned to talking with customers and that we were well out of earshot.

“Me?” I squeaked, my voice hitting a higher range than I had intended. “What about you?”

I did my best impression of him. “I think a reading would be just
delightful
,” I said, drawing out the last three syllables into about six. “You old phony.”

He gave a harrumph and I harrumphed right back at him and then we turned and started heading up the street to the magic shop. I realized that I was still holding the small notepad Megan had given me. I absently flipped through the pages.

“Did she get even one solid hit?” I asked as I scanned my notes.

“Nada,” Harry said.

“You’d think that mere chance would factor in and help her out with at least one hit.”

“You’d think,” he agreed, and then he stopped. “Wait, there was something. Something about dimes. She said it very quickly.”

I paged through the notes until I found it. “Here it is. She said that your late wife is leaving you dimes. As reminders of her love.”

I looked up to see that a cloud had crossed over Harry’s face. “What?” I asked.

“It’s just,” he said, pulling on his beard thoughtfully. “When I first met your aunt, it was at a party. At someone’s house, I don’t remember whose. Anyway, at the end of the night I asked Alice if I could call her some time. And she said yes. She said yes, I could call her,” he repeated, smiling at the memory.

“So? I don’t get the connection to dimes.”

“Hold your horses, I’m getting to it. At the end of the party, I shook her hand goodnight, which is what we did back then, not like your generation,” he said pointedly.

“Yeah, whatever. Finish your story.”

“Anyway, I shook her hand, and when I pulled my hand back, I found that she had slipped a dime into my palm.” He grinned. “You see, at the time, a dime was the cost of a phone call.”

“Well, that’s sweet. However, that’s not what Megan said in the reading.” I looked at my notes again. “She said, ‘Your late wife is leaving you dimes. As reminders of her love.’”

“Well, you see, that’s just the thing,” Harry said as he continued walking toward our store. “The last couple of weeks, or maybe more, I keep finding money on the ground.”

He gestured to the sidewalk in front of us and I half expected to see some coins there.

“Now, pennies you find all the time. No one bothers to pick them up. I certainly don’t. But I haven’t found pennies. Nor nickels. Nor quarters. No,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “I keep finding dimes. Like that one right there.”

Harry stopped and pointed to a bit of silver, just visible in the dirt by the curb. I knelt down and picked it up, brushing it off on my pant leg. It was worn and scruffy, but it was a dime. I held it up and Harry took it from my hand, smiling at it. “Come on,” he said as he dropped the coin into his pocket. “We’re late getting the store open.”

Still not entirely certain about what I had just seen and heard, I followed, lagging a few steps behind him.

Upon approaching our store, I was surprised to see a pirate leaning against the locked door. He was dressed in the full regalia, including three-sided black hat with a skull and cross-bones emblazoned on its side, eye patch, and a sword. I should clarify. I wasn’t surprised to see the pirate. I was surprised that he was on time.

The pirate, Captain Magic to his young audience, is a kids’ magician. He’s also my friend Nathan, and anyone who knows him would consider him an odd candidate for the role of court jester to the kindergarten set. Perpetually depressed, he’s lived his life under a dark cloud that follows him wherever he goes. He’s a hell of a magician but I’ve never seen him get much joy out of that, either.

“Morning Eli,” Nathan said in his slow, monotone. “Morning Harry.”

“Good morning, Nathan,” Harry said with extra cheer. Harry, like many people who know Nathan, was attempting to pull him away from melancholy by being just a little too cheerful himself. It has no effect on Nathan. Never has.

“Hope you haven’t been waiting long,” I said as I unlocked the door. “I’ve got everything ready for you.”

“No, I just got here,” Nathan said. “Found a parking place right out front, but I think I rolled over some broken glass, so I’ll probably have a flat by the time we’re done.”

That sentence was Nathan in a nutshell. He could find the dark cloud under virtually any silver lining.

I let the three of us into the store. Harry immediately began his morning ritual, which included pulling open the blinds, turning on the lights, and removing the cloth covers from the display cases. Nathan and I made our way through the store, toward the basement.

Over the last few years, foot traffic in the store has dwindled considerably. We still did a brisk Internet business, with the tricks and devices Harry had invented throughout his career. And a couple items I had come up with were also starting to sell online. The basement housed our workshop, where we both had several projects in various stages of completion or abandonment, depending on our moods.

“I’ve tested it under a few different conditions so far, with solid results,” I told Nathan as we made our way down the steep and creaky stairs. “Barometric pressure can be an issue, but I think I have a work-around for that.”

“Just so you can stop the kids from crying,” Nathan said with a plaintive edge in his voice. “I gotta find a way to make the kids stop crying.”

Nathan’s problem was one shared by just about any performer who employs helium balloons while working with kids. There’s nothing that makes a kid happier than a helium balloon and nothing that makes them sadder than when they lose their grip and it floats up into the sky, never to be seen again. Even popping a balloon is not as traumatic, although I’m not really sure why. Perhaps the popping sound has some sort of primal catharsis built into it. But a single balloon that gets loose can turn a happy birthday party into a tantrum-filled nightmare scenario.

To solve the problem, I’d experimented a bit and found just the right combination of helium and oxygen so that a filled balloon will float, but won’t go any higher than about six feet off the ground. It took a lot of trial and error and for days the basement was filled with hundreds of balloons, either caught in the ceiling or drifting lethargically several inches off the floor.

“Of course, finding the right mix was only the first part of the problem. The second was to make the process magical,” I said to Nathan as I helped him remove his pirate coat. “And I think I’ve cracked that, too.”

I handed him my invention, a cross between a large belt and a small corset, to put around his waist. It was a bulky fit because the back of the belt held a metal canister, like a miniature scuba tank. A tube with a small, custom nozzle on the end ran out of the canister.

I helped Nathan put his coat back on, taking care to snake the tube down the inside of his right sleeve. I gave the coat one final tug and then stepped back to check my work.

“That looks good,” I said, gesturing for him to spin around so I could see him from all sides. “You really can’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

I crossed over to my workbench and opened a fresh bag of balloons, grabbing one and heading back to Nathan, who was looking at the nozzle on the tube in his sleeve. “Where’d you get this?” he asked.

I shrugged, handing him the limp balloon. “I cobbled it together from a couple different pieces. Here’s how the gag works. You bring the balloon up to your face, just like you would if you were going to blow it up with your mouth.”

Nathan followed my instructions as I talked him through the steps. “At the same time, you’ve palmed the nozzle at the end of the tube. You bring the end of the balloon to your mouth, but it’s the nozzle that actually goes into the balloon. Your hands are covering it, so it just looks like you’re blowing up a balloon normally. Once the nozzle is in place, just press the button on its side and the balloon will inflate.”

I watched as he went through the steps and I was happy to see that it really looked like he was blowing up the balloon manually. When it reached the right size, he pulled it away from his mouth and quickly tied off the end. He then mimed handing the completed balloon to an invisible child in front of him. He let go of the balloon and it floated in mid-air right where he had left it. After a few seconds it began to drift upwards, but it didn’t get any higher than six feet. The balloon floated around the room languidly. We both watched it, transfixed.

“That’s cool,” he said finally. For a second, he almost sounded happy.

Once I got Nathan’s stuff all packed away and he headed off to his gig, I began to putter around the store, taking care of all the little chores that I never seem to get around to, but which always need to be done.

First I tackled restocking the gag gifts. It’s a sad fact, but the few walk-in sales we do get all seem to come from that one rack in a back corner. Over the years, we’ve moved it around the store, to maybe six different spots. It doesn’t matter where we put it, people always find it. It also doesn’t seem to matter that the store is packed to the gills with some of the greatest magic illusions ever made. People are always drawn to the damned gag gift rack.

On that rack are all the staples for a classic gag gift: chattering teeth, fake dog poop, fake vomit, the coughing ashtray, exploding golf balls, joy buzzers, rubber chickens, and the ever-popular fart spray. We had actually sold out our supply of fart spray and I was just in the process of unpacking the new shipment we had recently received when I heard the tinkle of the bell over the front door, signaling that a customer had entered the store.

I set the fart spray aside and turned my attention toward the door, assuming it was Nathan returning with another question. One glance told me it wasn’t Nathan. The guy was backlit by the late morning sun and he almost completely filled up the doorframe with his bulk. But I immediately recognized that big, dumb square head. It could only be one person—my ex-wife’s new husband, Fred Hutton. Or, as I always referred to him, Homicide Detective Fred Hutton, because it annoyed him. Or, at least I hoped it did.