The Blossom Sisters (17 page)

But all that was the least of her problems.
Did someone break into the house last night while I was out? How else could the vase have toppled over? A rat? A mouse? Possibly a squirrel. No. Gus had an exterminator come by once a month. If a rodent had taken up residence in the attic, I would have seen droppings when I originally set up the altar. No, someone was in the house, someone who obviously knew how to pick a lock and bypass the alarm system. Gus? No, not Gus. Then who?

Elaine tried to calm her racing heart, her nerves twanging all over the place as she backed up and descended the ladder. She raced into the bedroom and dialed the alarm company and blurted out her questions. When she hung up the phone, she had to sit down on the side of the bed, she felt so light-headed. Someone who was smart enough to know their way around an alarm system had broken into her house not once, but twice. The first time whoever it was had broken in, they spent an hour in the house before turning the alarm back on. The second time, they stayed in the house exactly forty-eight minutes before reconnecting the alarm.

The house looked the same as far as she could tell. Nothing looked out of place. She knew that her jewelry, what there was of it, was still in her jewelry box, because she'd put her earrings in it when she got home, along with her watch with the diamond bezel and the special medallion she'd worn around her neck last night. So, then, why would someone break into her house? Obviously a professional of some sort, looking for . . . what, she didn't know. It had to concern the divorce proceedings. Maybe it even concerned Isaac Diamond, with plans to blackmail her. Although she thought that the latter might be a stretch.

Her head swimming with all manner of possibilities, Elaine raced back up the ladder to carry her materials down to the dining room, where she was going to set up an emergency altar. It took eight trips before she had everything ready. Then she looked around in a panic.

Dammit. I don't have a spare altar cloth. Wait. Maybe I do.
She ran over to the buffet and yanked at a drawer. There was a brand-new, white linen tablecloth, complete with a sticky label that said the dimensions were 108 by 96 inches. Just big enough to cover the dining-room table, which had three additional leaves. She peeled off the sticky label, shook the tablecloth out, and spread it across the table. She quickly replaced everything the way she'd had it in the attic, minus one vase of flowers.

Elaine ran into the living room, where there was an elaborate silk flower arrangement. She yanked at several white silk orchids and carried them back to the dining room, where she placed them in the empty vase. She looked at everything with a careful eye.

I'm good to go.
She was about to sit down when she looked down at the smudges on her priestess gown and felt like crying. She wasn't pure. She had to take another shower and change into a fresh gown.

Elaine mumbled and muttered all the while she soaped and showered and dried herself off. She ran to the closet, ripped a clean white linen gown off the hanger, pulled it on, and ran back down the stairs.

Like the high priestess she perceived herself to be, Elaine took a seat in front of her altar. She sat quietly, her hands on her knees, as she took deep breaths, holding her breath to the count of seven, then expelling it in a soft
swoosh
of sound. When she felt sufficiently calm, she reached for a long match, struck it on the side of the special box, and lit the black candle and the two slender incense spears. She waited till the aroma from the incense permeated the room. In her hand, she held a small black bag of herbs to ward off evil. She sprinkled salt over it, then picked up the small bottle of holy water and dripped some on the bag. Then she waved the bag through the vapors of the incense sticks. Back and forth, back and forth.

Finally, Elaine closed her eyes and started to chant words she knew by heart from long months of repeating them daily. The words flowed evenly and with passion. She ended her chant with, “All my enemies to leave my life. I cite the number nine and the number four. Four enemies, Augustus Hollister, Rose Blossom, Violet Blossom, and Iris Blossom. Remove these enemies from my life. I offer up everything on my altar. I want no harm to come to the four because I know if I wish such a thing, that wish will come back to me fourfold. I cite the number nine for this to take place. Nine minutes, nine hours, nine days, nine weeks.”

Elaine stared into the flame of the black candle as she envisioned Gus Hollister and the Blossom sisters walking away, their pockets inside out as they left all their worldly possessions behind. For her. Only her.

With spots in front of her eyes from staring into the flame of the candle, Elaine blinked as she reached behind her to the sideboard, where she had placed her Bible and her glasses. She opened the Bible and started to read the psalms that pertained to her ritual. She read aloud, passion ringing in her voice. When she was finished, she closed the Bible, set it back on the sideboard, and removed her glasses from the tip of her nose, where they rested. She stood up, opened her arms wide, and intoned, “The portals to the universe are now closed. Thank you for hearing my pleas.”

Elaine sat back down and repeated the earlier procedure. She placed her hands on her knees and did her deep breathing exercises. After she leaned over and blew out the black candle, she carried the container with the incense to the kitchen and set it in the sink.

Elaine felt buoyant as she practically flew back to the dining room, where she prepared her altar for a second ritual. To be sure, she had everything ready for what she called a
twofer.
She ripped through her ritual manual until she found the page she wanted. Her index finger raced across the words as she committed them to memory.

This second ritual was a money ritual, one she performed weekly, but today was the first time she would add a second part to it. Isaac Diamond was the second part of the ritual.

Elaine placed new sticks of frankincense in a crystal cylinder. She set up four green candles, not the squat black kind she'd used earlier. These candles were more like short, thin tapers, which would burn out by the time the ritual was finished. Green symbolized money. Next to the candles were a small green change purse and a small box covered in green felt. She reached for a green velvet drawstring bag, which, according to the ritual instructions, was called a prosperity bag. From the sideboard she picked up a handful of loose change—four pennies, four nickels, four dimes, four quarters—and placed them in the coin purse. She deposited four one-dollar bills in the green felt money box.

Elaine reached for the special gold medallion. It was old, something she'd found in a pawnshop years before. She'd had it modified several days after purchasing it, into a miniature recording device capable of recording for two full hours before the tiny tape had to be replaced, which in the end had cost more than to purchase it. The medallion had proved to be invaluable over the years.

Elaine walked over to the sideboard and picked up a large green crystal and a small container of cinnamon oil. She would use the oil to anoint her candle, the felt-covered box, and the change purse. The last thing she had to do was place jasmine flowers in the middle of the altar. She rummaged in one of the drawers in the sideboard for the pressed jasmine that she'd preserved last summer when they bloomed at the side of the house. The salt to be used this time was sea salt, as opposed to the table salt she'd used in the first ritual.

Elaine looked at her altar, staring at each article to make sure she had it placed properly. Satisfied, she sat down and did her deep breathing preparations.

Calm now, Elaine stared into the flames of the flickering tapers as the vapors from the incense wafted about the dining room. Her hand stretched out to pick up the medallion. She clutched it in her hand as she started to chant, the number four taking precedence in everything she asked for.

Four minutes, four hours, four days, four weeks. Her voice was as passionate as before, her arms waving upward as she pled for help. When she was finished with her chanting, she reached for the green crystal and rubbed it over her forehead, her cheeks, her chin, then up and down her arms. Then she rolled the crystal in the sea salt. The crystal went into the green velvet drawstring bag. The rest of the sea salt was sprinkled over her head. Then she counted the coins and placed each one into the same bag as the crystal. The four one-dollar bills followed. Once again, Elaine anointed the bag, the change purse, and the green money box with the cinnamon oil. Using the same oil, she dabbed her forehead, her neck at her pulse points, and her wrists.

Elaine sat down, took deep breaths, closed her eyes, and chanted her money ritual. “In
hours
of four, my money worries will be no more. In
days
of four, my money worries will be no more. In
weeks
of four, my money worries will be no more. In
months
of four, my money worries will be no more.” She repeated the chant four times before she let out a long sigh of completion.

Elaine squared her shoulders. She picked up the medallion again and pressed a little button on the back. Isaac Diamond's mellifluous courtroom voice filled the dining room. Elaine grimaced as she stared into the flickering flames of the tapers sitting on the dining-room table. She repeated Isaac Diamond's name four times as she wrote his name four times on a piece of paper. She folded the paper into a little square and reached behind her for a small glass jar. She slipped the folded square into the jar and turned the lid.

“Four, four, four, four.” Now she had to wait four minutes before she could fill the jar with the special boiled vinegar mix in the refrigerator, along with the herbs that she'd poured into the vinegar when she returned home in the early hours of the morning.

Elaine watched the minute hand on her watch. When the big hand reached eleven, Elaine ran to the kitchen and opened the door of the refrigerator. When the big hand reached the twelve, she poured the vinegar mixture into the glass jar in her hand. All the while, she chanted, “Four, four, four, four!”

In a flash, she was back at her altar, the small jar still in her hands. She passed it over the flames of the four candles. Then she waved the jar over and through the vapor from the incense sticks. Finally, she anointed the jar with the cinnamon oil.

Done.

But there was one thing she still had to do. She had four hours to take the little jar with the vinegar mixture to a body of water and throw it in.

Elaine leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes. Her ritual was complete. She felt drained, but cleansed.

As Elaine set about cleaning up her altar, she kept chanting, “Four, four, four, four.”

Chapter 18

G
US FELT JITTERY FOR SOME REASON AS HE PUT HIS GROCERIES
away. He looked at Wilson, who was watching him like a hawk; he smelled meat. “I'm going to make it all up to you, Wilson. You and I are going to barbecue two nice, big, thick tenderloins. We'll eat out on the deck and spend the night together. We're home, big guy; this is it for us. We are home.” Wilson tilted his head to the side and stared up at his master. At some point, the dog must have made up his mind that things were indeed okay, because he let loose with a soft growling sound that made Gus laugh out loud.

Gus spent the next half-hour marinating the steak, preparing a salad, and scrubbing a potato that he would bake and then top with sour cream and chives. He was as much at home in the kitchen as he was in the laundry room, thanks to his granny, who had taught him to cook and clean and do his own laundry at an early age. He considered himself truly self-sufficient.

Satisfied with his preparations, he reached for a chew bone for Wilson and a beer for himself and went out to his deck. He looked around and decided he needed some flowers or some kind of greenery to take away the starkness from the deck. He liked that the Realtor had chosen bright-colored cushions for the deck furniture, and he really liked the bright, lemon-colored table umbrella. At some point, he might think about ordering a retractable awning, since the deck got sun for the better part of the day. He thought about all those ads he kept seeing on TV each year when winter came to an end.

Gus leaned on the railing as he gulped at his frosty beer. He liked the pruned bushes and shrubs. He thought he could keep up with everything once he got the right equipment. Saturdays would be lawn days and cleaning days—unless one of the trees in the yard turned out to be a money tree that showered him with coins and bills so he could afford to hire a gardener and a part-time housekeeper. The vision of a money tree with the coins and bills raining down was so funny, Gus burst out laughing. Wilson raised his head long enough to look around to see what was so funny. He went back to his chew bone.

Gus let his thoughts wander then. He skimmed over thoughts of Elaine. How weird was that? How was it possible he could skim over someone he'd loved with all his being a little more than a week ago? His thoughts took him to Granny and the aunts and their newly recovered relationship. He smiled with feeling. He so loved those old gals. Barney invaded his thoughts at that point. He loved his best friend as much as he loved his granny and his two zany aunts. It bothered him that Barney was suddenly coming back to the States when he had said he was going to be gone for months. He didn't believe for one minute that Barney was tired of making money. Barney, the protector. Barney wanted to make sure nothing happened to him, since he was going it alone with too many things on his plate. Gus smiled at that thought.

His beer finished, Gus walked over to a bright yellow trash receptacle with a large white daisy painted on the side. Women. He could actually see Marsha painting the daisy on the can. She'd think the colored trash can would perk up the deck. And it did. He made a mental note to send Marsha a gift or, at the very least, some flowers for all her help.

Back in the house, Gus looked at the old-fashioned phone hanging on the wall. He didn't know why, but he felt compelled to call his grandmother. He didn't stop to think, just punched in the numbers. Violet answered the phone. To Gus's ear, his aunt sounded frazzled. “What's wrong, Aunt Vi?”

“Technically, nothing is wrong. We just can't cope with the fortune cookies. We're trying, but we aren't meeting the demand. We have roughly twelve restaurants we supply cookies for—fifteen hundred each a week. That's eighteen thousand cookies each and every week. We have to bake the cookies, insert the fortunes, wrap the cookies, then deliver them. We just don't have enough ovens. We might have to cancel this service, and that would be a shame, because we make some serious money with fortune cookies. We've tried to streamline our operation, but it's hard. If you have any ideas, we'd like to hear them, Augustus. We have to make a delivery in two days and are seriously behind.”

Gus didn't think he'd ever heard Violet talk so much at one time. And she had actually asked him for help. His chest puffed out. “I can be there in fifteen minutes, Aunt Vi. I need to see the operation with my own eyes.”

“Thank you, Augustus. We'll be expecting you.”

Gus set the marinating steak back into the refrigerator and whistled for Wilson. “Wanna go for a ride, big guy?”

Wilson ran to the door as Gus slid the sliding doors shut and locked them. He checked everything the way he always did: lights off, stove off, doors locked. He was good to go.

Seven minutes into his drive to Blossom Farm, Gus knew he was being followed by the silver-colored car. He bit down on his lip, looked over at Wilson who was riding shotgun, and said, “Hold on, bud, we're going to catch this guy.” Wilson's ears went straight up as he anticipated action. “When I catch him, you bite him on the ass. You hear me, Wilson?”

Gus careened around a corner, downshifted, and pulled to the curb just as the silver car barreled behind him and screeched to a stop. In one swift motion, Gus had his Louisville Slugger bat, which he had transferred from his Porsche to Barney's Jeep, in his hands and was in the middle of the road. He raised the bat and got ready to swing. Straight at the silver car's windshield. A black Mustang swung around Gus as its driver leaned on his horn. Gus ignored it when the silver car's window slid down.

“Get out of the damned car, or your windshield is confetti. Wilson! He makes one wrong move, you bite him on the ass. You hear me, Wilson?”

Unmindful of moving traffic, which was light, Gus approached the man getting out of the car, his hands up in the air.

“I'm not a cop, so put your arms down. Who the hell are you, and why the hell are you following me? And don't lie. You've been following me for days now.”

Mickey Yee eyed the menacing shepherd, who was showing him his teeth. He saw the fur on the back of the dog's neck moving in the light afternoon breeze. He put his arms down but froze in position as he wondered what it would be like to get bitten on the ass by the monster dog standing in front of him. The visual was not one that appealed to him. He remained statue still, one eye on the man swinging the bat, his other eye on the ferocious-looking dog.

Gus swung the bat back and forth. “Talk to me and make it good, mister.”

“My name is Mickey Yee. I'm a private investigator. I work for Lynus Litton, who is working for your attorney, Jill Jackson. Yeah, I have been following you. Someone else is following your wife. I'm not the one you should be worried about. That black Mustang that went around you when you cut in front of me is who you should be worried about. He's been following you also. It's been like a damned parade for days now. I even know the skank's name: Bill Donovan. He'll do any job, break the law for a buck. I'm thinking he's working for your wife or her attorney, but that's just my guess.”

Gus lowered the Louisville Slugger and called Wilson to his side as he digested what the man standing in front of him had just said. “Are you telling me I have a tail on me?”

“For several days now, yes, that's what I'm telling you. The guy's a sleazeball, so when and if you ever see his report, most of it will be lies.”

“Why are you following
me
?”

“Orders. By the way, you're boring as hell. I thought I'd go out of my mind when you were shopping at Target. What, you can't make up your mind when it comes to towels and sheets?”

“Thread count is important. Towel thickness is just as important, for absorbency. Didn't your mother teach you that? Boring! I'm a hell of an interesting guy.”

“I guess I missed that lesson. Okay, so you made me, now what?”

“Stop following me.”

“You sure you want me to stop? If I keep following you, then I can keep tabs on Bill Donovan. Would that dog really have bitten my ass?” Yee asked anxiously.

“Yeah, and loved every minute of it. Stop following me. I'll deal with Donovan on my own. Go on, get out of here.”

“Hollister, hold on a minute. Listen, it's not just Donovan. I saw someone else out at your grandmother's farm yesterday. No clue who he was, but he was snooping around. Mud on his license plate, so I couldn't run the number. I have a soft spot for old people, and I wouldn't want to see anything happen to your grandmother and the people who come and go. I have to admit, they have me wondering what's going on there, and don't try to tell me they're playing bingo or some such shit.”

“What did the guy you saw look like? And, they
are
bingo addicts. They live for bingo. They eat, sleep, and drink bingo.”

Mickey Yee looked disgusted. “Hey, the guy's probably a dick, okay? What he looked like yesterday doesn't mean he's going to look the same today. And while he was driving a beat-to-shit Honda yesterday, today he might look like a movie star and be driving a high-end car. Old people are prey. I just gave you a heads-up. So, you want me off this or on it? Or are you still going to go this alone? Makes me no never mind.”

Gus realized everything the detective said was true. “No, okay, stay on it. But . . . I don't want you to tell anyone I made you. Will you agree to that?”

“Hell yes, man.”

Gus swung the Louisville Slugger. “You go back on your word, you're going to find out what a bite on the ass will feel like.”

“You got it. Can I go now?”

“Yeah. I'm going to the farm. If you see anyone at the farm watching my grandmother, call me, okay?” Gus rattled off his cell-phone number, and Yee punched the numbers into his own cell phone.

Wilson whined all the way to the farm. “Get over it, big guy. One of these days you're going to get the chance to bite some bad guy's ass, trust me on that.”

Wilson dropped his head onto his paws as if to say,
promises, promises, promises
. Gus reached over to scratch the dog behind the ears. He grinned. God, how he loved this dog.

The kitchen at the farmhouse smelled wonderful. Chili, if his nose was on the money. He also smelled the sweet scent of vanilla, and something baking. While the kitchen was huge, with two double ovens and two stove tops, every burner seemed to have something cooking and bubbling on it. He could see the trays of something baking in the double ovens.

Iris appeared out of nowhere and said, “Chili and rice pudding for dessert. We can send you home with some of each. We're baking the fortune cookies. With all our new staff's meals to prepare, this kitchen is getting a workout, and we're stumbling over each other. The summer kitchen looks the same as this one does. We simply do not have enough room, Augustus. Something has to give.”

“I see that. Tell me how the cookie operation works,” Gus said as he headed for the steps that would take him down one level to the old summer kitchen. It didn't look old now—everything was new and modern. In the old days, before air conditioning, the summer kitchen was used for all the cooking so the rest of the house didn't get too hot.

The contents of pots were simmering, and the same vanilla-sugar-cinnamon scent was present. On the long counter, he saw trays and trays of baked fortune cookies ready to be packaged.

“We can bake two trays of cookies every twenty-five minutes. Each tray holds thirty-six cookies. We have two double ovens, so that means we're baking one hundred and forty-four cookies in these two ovens every twenty-five minutes. We need an extra five minutes to slide the cookies off the trays and get the next batch ready, so actually it's thirty to thirty-five minutes. The same goes for the two double ovens upstairs, for a total of two hundred and eighty-eight cookies. We bake from seven in the morning until eight at night. We are not meeting our goal of eighteen thousand cookies for the Chinese restaurants we service, although we did meet it last month. Prep time includes mixing and inserting the fortune into each cookie. Two hours to do all this as we try to mix enough dough to carry us through the whole day. Out of every nine hours the ovens are going, we're only utilizing six of those hours for actual baking. That's a total of 3,456 cookies a day. Having said that, it's not
actually
3,456 sellable cookies. Some break, some burn, and we have a lot of throwaways, making the count more like thirty-two hundred on a good day. Sometimes even less than that. Last week, our actual count of cookies that were delivered was fifteen thousand. Having said that, there are seven days in a week and with each restaurant giving out an average of two hundred fifteen cookies a day for lunch and dinner, we're short. We've had to cut back on the number of restaurants we service.”

“Just Chinese restaurants?” Gus asked.

“In the beginning, it was just Chinese, then some of the Japanese takeout places wanted to place orders. We also have four Vietnamese locations who want our cookies. Most of the restaurants have takeout orders, so you have to factor that in the numbering, too. People sometimes ask for two cookies; children want them. We don't have a good bead on that end of things. I remember Rose saying that last month when she was doing the final tally for the month.”

“How much do you make on, say, fifteen hundred cookies?”

“Rose has all those numbers. We are making a profit, but according to Rose, not enough to justify the work that's entailed. We pay two Asian students at the university to come up with the fortunes. They send them via a download from the Internet. We print them out, cut them to fit the cookie; then there's the cost of the ingredients, the cost of the wrappers, the labor to wrap them, and, of course, to mix the dough and do the actually baking. Then there's the cleanup and getting them ready for delivery on each restaurant's delivery day. Even though our staff does not take a salary per se, our expenses are quite high.”