Death in the Cards (15 page)

“Who's Henry?” Sally asked.

“Just someone the Pennsylvania lady was concerned about, I guess. Anyway, Ginny said 'no, dear, you'll be fine and so will Henry, but I've flashed on something I must stop right away.' Then she grabbed Skylar's arm, taking her away from her client, too. They disappeared for about fifteen minutes in the curtained area. Then they came back out. Skylar went to her table—her client had left by then—and waited
for someone else to come along. No lines for her table. And Karen looked plenty mad.”

Mad enough to kill? I wondered.

“Then Ginny looked into her ball, gasped again, grabbed it, and walked out with it, still wearing her gold lamé robe. Several people in her line started calling to her, but she didn't respond—just walked out.”

“She ignored their calls?” I asked.

“She didn't even hear them. She seemed upset.”

“Like she'd seen her own death, maybe,” Sally said in a low, thoughtful voice. We both stared at her for a moment. She shrugged, and then picked up a dumpling from Cherry's plate and popped it in her mouth.

We were all silent for a moment.

Then Cherry said, “Now what?”

I finally told them about the suitcase. “I'll take that to Chief Worthy when we're back in town,” I said. “Then I'll ask Winnie to see what she can dig up about Ginny's background. She could use the distraction from her bookmobile woes.” Just like I needed distraction.

“We can see what more we can learn from the other psychics,” Cherry said. “I'll talk to Max.”

“Like that's going to be tough duty for you,” Sally said.

“It seems lots of the psychics didn't like Ginny,” I added. “We need to find out if any of them left to take a break near the time Ginny left.”

“I'll ask Max,” Cherry repeated. Her voice had a dreamy quality to it.

“You ought to be more careful with your heart,” I said.

“How's Owen?” Sally asked pointedly. “I'm surprised he wasn't at the hospital—”

“I called him. He wasn't home. I left a message. I'm sure he'll call me as soon as he hears it,” I said tightly.

Sally opened her mouth to speak, but thank goodness Suzy
Fu herself came over before she could. Yes, I've been to Suzy Fu's often enough that she knows me. I filled her in on Guy.

“Oh, my sweetie, I'm so sorry!” Suzy said. She gazed sadly at my plate of crab Rangoons. “I get you box. You need those. Comfort food.” Suzy hurried off to get the box.

It's nice to know even rule makers sometimes break the rules for a friend. Suzy came back quickly with a box and three fortune cookies.

“Aren't these great?” Cherry said, plucking up a cookie. “I love reading them. I read my horoscope every day, you know.”

“Me, too,” Sally said, grabbing her own cookie. “And sometimes, when I'm really worried, I get out my old Magic 8 ball. Remember when those were the rage?”

“You still have yours?” Cherry asked, awe in her voice.

“Yeah,” Sally said. “I love the simple answers. No. Yes.”

“Reply hazy, try again later,” I interjected, stunned by my friends. They didn't really think they were getting guidance from horoscopes and Magic 8-Balls, did they? I wondered, even as I snagged the last fortune cookie.

I grinned at myself as I pulled off the wrapper and cracked open the cookie. Sucker, I called myself. But I still felt a thrill of anticipation as I pulled out the white slip of paper.

“‘Do not confuse blessings for chaos,'” Sally read. “Wow. Whoever wrote this must have been by my trailer,” she said, but with a smile. I knew she was thinking of her own little blessings, Harry, Barry, and Larry.

“Ooh, ooh,” squealed Cherry. “Listen to mine—‘Love will find you when you least expect it.'”

“But you always expect it,” Sally said, “And what Max expects from you ain't exactly love . . .”

While Sally and Cherry bickered, I read my fortune. “Where you look determines what you find.”

I laughed and tossed the fortune down on the table, along
with a generous tip for Suzy to more than cover my rule-breaking take-out box of Rangoons.

How was I to know that my fortune cookie would prove to be truly prophetic?

11

A traffic jam in Paradise usually means two drivers have stopped their cars or trucks in the middle of a street and rolled down their windows to have a chat, maybe to double check the Moose Lodge's bingo time. Or the deadline for entering baked goods at the county fair. Such traffic jams are easily cleared up with a tap of the horn and last at most three minutes. Even when all three of Paradise's traffic lights go out, traffic might slow, but it doesn't jam.

Today, traffic was stopped on the way into Paradise. But on the two-lane road, there was no traffic coming out of town.

“You reckon this is all from people going to the psychic fair?” Cherry asked, her tone incredulous. She'd ridden back with me because her salon is right next door to my laundromat, and the Bar-None was on the north outskirts of town. It was a quarter to three o'clock as we sat in the traffic jam. The Red Horse Motel was on the south outskirt of town, so anyone coming down from Columbus would pass through town to get to the motel and the psychic fair.

“How crowded was it last night?”

“Not crowded enough to support a traffic jam,” Cherry said.

“Maybe psychic fairs draw their biggest crowds on Saturday afternoons?”

“But no one's coming up the road away from Paradise,” Cherry said. “That's definitely unusual.”

True. Most Saturdays, while folks from the big cities of Cincinnati and Columbus and Dayton venture into Paradise to browse through old stuff at the antique shops, Paradisites leave to go to Cincinnati and Columbus and Dayton to browse through new stuff at the shopping malls. (Well, some Paradisites go fishing and boating, too, down at Licking Creek Lake.) You always want what's not in your own backyard, my Aunt Clara always said.

But there wasn't a bit of traffic coming out of Paradise.

A few miles later, we saw why. The main road into town, right by Elroy's Gas Station & Body Shop, was blocked off, and Officer Dalton Hayes was directing traffic to detour to the right down Plum Street.

I rolled down the van window and hollered at Officer Hayes. “Hey, Dalton. What's going on?”

Dalton walked over and poked his head in my window. “Oh, hey, Josie. Cherry.” He stared past me and gave Cherry a shy smile. Dalton's long had a crush on Cherry, but she's never done more than toy with the fact of his attraction. Which she did that afternoon by giving him a full-wattage grin and leaning so far toward him—which also meant into me—that he had a full view down her blouse if he wanted it. Her left boob squished into my shoulder. Dalton blushed. I elbowed Cherry's tummy. She winced, but moved back and kept grinning at Dalton. Cherry never has been one to let major hots for, say, a psychic named Max, get in the way of her flirtatiousness.

“What's happening here, Dalton?”

Dalton looked apologetic. “I hate to be the one to tell you
this, but there's been a water main break, right on Main Street. In front of your salon, ma'am.”

“Now Dalton, don't go callin' me ma'am; you'll make me feel old, and—
What
?” Cherry sat up straight so suddenly that she whapped her head into my van's interior light—a fitting symbol, I reckoned, for the figurative light bulb that had just gone off over her head.

“Any damage to our businesses?” I asked, my stomach curling at the thought.

Dalton looked at me, as if startled at my appearance. Note to self—if I should ever be insane enough to take a road trip with Sally and Cherry, Cherry's driving. No tickets that way. “That's right—your laundromat's right there by the salon.”

Thanks for remembering, I thought. Dalton came in every Wednesday night to do his laundry. But he got his hair trimmed at Joe's, a one-chair barbershop at the other end of town. He'd probably pass out if he even entered Cherry's Chat N Curl.

“No damage that I know of,” he was saying to me, while glancing at Cherry. “But the water's been shut off to your section of Main Street.”

No water, no laundromat service. And no water in my apartment above the laundromat.

“I don't understand. It's a fairly warm day. The water lines couldn't have frozen,” I said.

Dalton shrugged. “From what I heard, it's the drought. After a drought this long, the ground shifts, and that caused a pipe to snap under Main and Orchard.” That was just a block down from my laundromat. “Water was coming up fast through the sewer.” He shook his head. “It's a mess. 'Bout a hundred thousand gallons of water before they shut it off, I heard. No water until next Monday afternoon—maybe Tuesday—when the crews get it fixed. The main's real old, anyway, and between the cold last winter and the drought since midsummer, it just couldn't hold.”

I groaned. Not only was my business shut down, but also I wasn't going to be able to stay at my apartment without the use of the bathroom or kitchen. A hopeful thought glimmered—maybe I could stay with Owen?

“Can we get to our businesses to see if everything is okay?” Cherry asked, all the flirt gone from her voice.

“The fire department has shut off traffic from Main Street, but you might be able to get to them from Elm,” Dalton said.

Elm was a residential street. My laundromat backed to a house, with a privacy fence between my tiny parking lot and the house's backyard. But I knew the people who lived on Elm; they wouldn't mind my crossing through their yards to work my way by foot to my laundromat. I at least wanted to get some clothes and a few other necessities from my apartment.

We thanked Dalton and turned left, working toward Elm.

“I sure hope my salon's okay,” Cherry said, sounding tearful. “And your laundromat, too. I don't know what I'd do if I lost my business.”

“You won't lose your business. You have insurance to cover any damage, right?”

Silence.

Oh Lord. Had Cherry done something silly and let her payments lapse?

“I'll be okay. I'll just go home and—oh, no. What are you going to do about where to stay?”

“I'll call Owen. Fish my cell phone from my purse,” I said.

Cherry did as I asked, then repaired her mascara, turning my rearview mirror into a makeup mirror. Normally that would have annoyed me, but with everything going on, I let it slide.

I called Owen. No answer, unless I wanted to count the answering machine, which I didn't. But I left a message, anyway, for the sixth time, with my cell phone number. Where could Owen be? We had plans to get together that night, but I really wanted to talk to him right away.

“You could always stay with me,” Cherry said. I glanced at her. She was smiling at me sweetly, her freshly mascara-ed eyes wide. We'd have killed each other before midnight.

I reckoned I could stay with Sally, but the thought of intruding on Sally in her tiny little mobile home—especially with Harry, Barry, and Larry returning the next afternoon—didn't make me happy.

Then there was Winnie, but she lived up in Masonville. That would put me closer to Guy, true, but farther from my laundromat. And I wanted to be nearby in case something happened to my business. Not that I could necessarily do anything about it. But still.

I sighed. I'd have to see if I could stay at the Red Horse Motel, with the psychics and psychic fair attendees.

My laundromat, Cherry's salon, Sandy's restaurant, and all the other businesses on a two-block strip on Main Street had been evacuated, as had the houses on the street behind me. It took a little begging, but the firemen finally let me through so I could cut through the backyard of the house that backed to my laundromat's parking lot. I shouldn't take long, the fireman warned me, and under no circumstances should I try to use the plumbing.

Chip had locked up my laundromat. I'd have to thank him later, I thought. Maybe buy him dinner at Sandy's, when she reopened. When I was in a more thankful mood.

Which was not at all how I was feeling as I stood at the back of my empty laundromat, staring at the sheen of water at the front. Sitting on the counter were several boxes of supplies that had previously been under the counter. The boxes, I knew, held smaller sample-size boxes of detergent and fabric
softener. I kept those available for sale at only a slight markup for customers who forgot to bring their own supplies. Even from the back of the store, I could see the wetness that had spread halfway up the boxes.

I went to the front of my laundromat and found the note Chip had taped to my cash register.

“Josie,” it read, “sorry I didn't get the supply boxes up faster. But the water came in sudden and quick!” I blinked back a tear, sniffling. Damn it. I hated that my business, and the other Main Street businesses, were closed and maybe damaged.

“I closed up the front as fast as I could after me and Winnie got customers out the back,” Chip's note went on. “Then we mopped up what we could. Hang in there. Chip.”

I looked out my laundromat's front windowpane, past my logo—a grinning toad sitting in grass, rainbowed by the slogan:
TOADFERN'S LAUNDROMAT: ALWAYS A LEAP AHEAD OF DIRT
. Usually, the cute toad and slogan I'd created made me grin, but that afternoon I found no comfort in either.

The street was flooded and the water was about an inch over the sidewalk. Water seeped in under my front door. Already, some of the tiles around the door were curling up.

What if more water poured in, damaged the washers and dryers? My business insurance would mostly cover it, although the deductible would be hard to come up with, but it could be weeks before I could get back to business.

I could survive the business loss, but it wouldn't be easy. And what about Sandy and Cherry and the others? This kind of thing hits small businesses in small towns very hard.