The Cards of Life and Death (Modern Gothic Romance 2) Read online

  Another series of metallic thuds at the front door brought her attention from the card, back to the present. “I’m coming,” she muttered, rushing from the room.

  At the large oaken door, she peered through the frosted, stained glass sidelights. It was the FedEx man with a package of contracts and documents from Mickey. As she closed the door, Diana turned just in time to see a streak of white dash across the hall.

  “Motto,” she exclaimed, crouching in the hall in hopes of luring the cat back out. “It’s about time you came out of hiding, kitty. Where’s Arty? You two must be missing Aunt Bee.”

  She’d seen neither hide nor hair of the cats since she arrived, although they’d eaten the food she left out for them every night. Aunt Belinda’s description, through their phone conversations and the letters she sent regularly, hadn’t included the fact that the cats were extremely anti-social. In fact, if they hadn’t eaten the food Diana left out for them, she would have thought they were the figment of an old lady’s imagination.

  Diana pulled to her feet and spoke in the general direction of the felines. “I guess you’ll come out when you’re ready, won’t you? I’m going to run into town. Don’t party too hard while I’m gone.” She started into Belinda’s bedroom to get her purse and car keys.

  She stopped short in the doorway. The mahogany box had been upended off the bedside table, and its contents spilled all over the floor. How odd.

  “I could have sworn … .” Her voice trailed off as she remembered how she’d left the room in haste to answer the door. “What a klutz.” She stooped to gather the Tarot cards.

  They were oversized and awkward for her to straighten into a neat stack. And when she pulled them all together and was just tapping the deck into place, somehow a card slipped out. It flipped onto the floor and landed face-up.

  Diana meant to simply replace the card on top of the deck, but something compelled her to look at it … really look at it. The High Priestess, the caption read. A Roman numeral two identified it as the second numeric card of the Major Arcana.

  The High Priestess was crowned and seated on a throne behind which were pomegranates and palms. She held a scroll in the lap of her blue gown, and seemed to be tucking it under her cloak. On the left of the throne was a black column labeled B, and on the right was a second column—white—labeled J. A crescent sat on the floor in the trailing pool of her gown.

  Diana studied the card for a long moment, her breath turning shallow as she fought back an unaccountable sense of unease. What did it signify to one who believed in the Tarot? Not that she bought into that malarkey, but her Aunt Belinda had. Much to her mother’s disgust.

  With a sudden tsk of irritation, she returned the card to its place in the stack and replaced it once again in the smooth wrapping of black silk and mellow mahogany. This time, I’ll put you away, she thought, pulling open the drawer of Aunt Belinda’s beside table.

  But something happened as she did so, and the drawer, always a little unsteady, came completely out of its slot with the force of her yank, thumping onto the floor and just missing her bare foot. When Diana tried to fit it back into place, she banged the back of her hand on the corner of drawer. And the old, sticky wood refused to slide home, thus she was left with a drawer that wouldn’t fit in its hole and a painful mark on the back of her hand that was already bruising.

  Fine, Diana thought, pulling herself to her feet and retrieving the mahogany box from the recalcitrant drawer. She set the box of cards on the kitchen counter and, after one last (ignored) invitation to the cats to join her, Diana headed to the grocery store.

  ~*~

  An hour later, Diana stumbled back into the house, arms hooked through plastic bags filled with groceries and hands filled with mail from the post office. She dumped the whole pile on the kitchen counter with a sigh of relief and went back out to make another trip.

  As soon as she walked back in, Motto and Arty decided to make an appearance directly underfoot, and she nearly landed on her face trying to avoid a fluffy tail.

  As soon as she dropped the bags onto the counter, she crouched, calling for them to reappear. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she sang in a falsetto, remembering the Good Witch of the North’s entreaty to the Munchkins. And then she looked around in embarrassment, as if someone might hear her. Good thing there wasn’t anyone around. “I brought you some treats, kitty-kitties. Do you like catnip? How about Fresh Feline Fancies?”

  Of course they didn’t come.

  Diana gave up and turned back to the bags of groceries sprawled on the counter. It was then that she noticed the note.

  Note?

  Diana snatched it off the counter, eyebrows furrowing. “Just dropped by to pick up a book I loaned Belinda, and my beer,” the bold, black letters read. “Hope you don’t mind I let myself in. Sorry to have missed you—since we’re neighbors, maybe we’ll run into each other on the lake. Call me if I can be of any help. (Dr.) Ethan Tannock.”

  A little shiver raced down her back. He’d been in the house again! But her twinge of discomfort was abruptly replaced by a wave of irritation. Hope you don’t mind I let myself in, indeed!

  Of course she minded.

  People didn’t just let themselves into other peoples’ houses. Not where she came from, anyway. Especially when they didn’t know the person living there. And if she weren’t so irritated, she might be more than a little freaked out about it. And what if he’d still been there when she got home and was singing and talking like that to the cats? Her cheeks warmed at the very thought.

  She crumpled up the note and flung it into the garbage, then turned and yanked the telephone book from the drawer under the phone. Flipping through the pages, she quickly located the Ls—laundry, lawn services, liquor stores, locksmiths.

  “I’ll fix him,” she muttered as she dialed the number.

  After she arranged for a locksmith to come and change all the locks later that afternoon, Diana strolled through the house just to make sure Ethan Tannock hadn’t disturbed anything.

  The living room seemed as empty and formal as she remembered it being, furnished as it was with heavy, dark antiques and hundreds of knickknacks in several cabinets. Long, heavy curtains brushed the floor, covering tall windows that overlooked the front yard of the big clapboard home. Diana noticed some thick white cat fur on one of the upholstered chairs and paused to brush it off.

  That room seemed undisturbed, so Diana moved on down the hall to Aunt Belinda’s den. This was a room that she hadn’t even begun to go through and organize because it was so cluttered.

  A heavy, oaken desk dominated one corner of the dimly lit room, and stacks of magazines, papers, and books littered its top. Diana flicked on the light. Even if Ethan had rummaged through the contents of the room, she wouldn’t be able to tell. Messy piles of periodicals from all over the country lined one wall, more books filled shelves from ceiling to floor on an opposite wall, and three battered filing cabinets edged a third wall. Their drawers gapped open and files hung haphazardly out, but the mess didn’t alarm Diana. That was the way it had been when she first arrived at the house, and although she itched to get in there and begin to clean things up, she had work to do first, and she’d already wasted half the day.

  Belinda’s bedroom was next. The sense of discomfort Diana had felt earlier still hung in the air, as though a fine fog hovered, but it wasn’t compelling enough to keep her from walking in. This room also seemed undisturbed, but she almost tripped over the empty drawer that she’d left in the middle of the floor.

  Diana picked it up, determined to wedge it back into the bedside table if she had to slam it into place. To her surprise, it slid back so quickly and easily that she smashed her fingertip. What in the world? She glared, sucking on the end of her finger—which happened to be on the same hand she’d bruised earlier. I must just have been in a hurry.

  She would have gone upstairs to look through the other five bedrooms, but the telephone rang. Too late, sh
e remembered that she hadn’t hooked up the cordless phone yet, and she rushed into the kitchen to answer it.

  It was Mickey, doing her daily check-in call. “Hey, boss, how’s it going?” she asked.

  “Things are fine. I got your overnights this morning, but haven’t had a chance to look at them yet. Any new developments?”

  “No,” Mickey replied, “except that Merkovitz agreed to Skype with you tomorrow at two—he says he’s not available until then. And then he gave me shit about making certain I send an agenda to him and plan of action by the end of the day today—but he’s the one who’s got the information, and how can you have a plan of action if you haven’t gotten the details from him yet? How’s it going up there all by yourself anyway?”

  “Fine, but I have a lot to get done before the house goes on the market,” Diana told her, neglecting to mention her need to put some space between her and Jonathan. She hadn’t told Mickey anything of what had happened when she went down to Atlantic City. Her gaze fell on the mahogany box that she’d left on the counter, and she idly opened it to finger the black silk.

  “You’re going to sell it?” Mickey sounded surprised. “Why don’t you just keep it for a weekend getaway? It’s not that far from Boston.”

  Diana raised her eyebrows at the suggestion. “Well, I guess I didn’t think seriously about doing that. It might be nice to have a place to get to once in awhile.” Then, she frowned, “Nah—you know Jonathan and I never have a free weekend anyway. We’re either working or going somewhere.”

  “Yeah … maybe you ought to change that,” Mickey said tartly. “You’re just a little uptight.”

  Diana rolled her eyes, but didn’t comment. She was used to her assistant’s blunt commentary on her life—not that Mickey, who was the same age as Diana and had been married since she was seventeen, had had any simpler a life.

  She spent the next fifteen minutes jotting notes on her laptop and answering questions about other issues at the office. As they were finishing, Diana’s attention was drawn again to the mahogany box.

  As Mickey was giving her some more personal updates about the office—namely that there was a cute guy who’d just started working in the architectural office across the hall with whom Corey had become immediately smitten—Diana pulled out the deck of Tarot cards from the box and smoothed them into a facedown pile. Idly, she picked one from the center and turned it over. The High Priestess.

  Again? Huh.

  Diana stuffed it back into the center of the mass of cards and mixed them up by pushing them around the kitchen counter. “So, do you know anything about Tarot cards?” she asked her assistant.

  “Tarot cards?” Mickey sounded as if her boss had just announced she was joining a cult. “I’ve had my cards read a few times—just for fun,” she added hastily.

  “I think it’s a lot of baloney, but my aunt used to play around with them. When I was going through her things, I found her set. I was just looking through them, wondering what some of the cards mean.” She pulled one from the mess of cards on the counter.

  The High Priestess.

  A shiver zipped up her back. Weird.

  Diana held the phone between her neck and shoulder as she gathered the cards into a tidy pile. Her insides were doing funny things, but she was determined to prove that there was nothing to this.

  “I never told my mother,” Mickey said, “because she’d freak out. But, you know, the times I had my cards read, the psychic was pretty on-target about some things.”

  “Right. She just picked up signals from you and deduced things. It was probably so general that it could have applied to anyone.”

  “Maybe.” Mickey didn’t sound convinced. “She did tell me she saw me driving a red car—and at the time, I had that old white Honda Civic. Then three weeks later, it got totaled and I bought a red Grand Am.”

  “You probably remembered what she said and that’s why you bought the red car.” Diana smoothed the cards around on the counter some more.

  “Well, I had picked out a white one on the lot—I was going to lease it—and then the day I went to pick it up, they told me there’d been a mistake and the white car was already sold. So, they gave me fifty bucks off the monthly lease payment if I took the red car.”

  “Really? You never told me that.” She picked up the cards and tapped them into a neat pile.

  “Yep. Oh, there’s the other line. I’d better take that.”

  “All right. Talk to you tomorrow.” Diana hung up and looked down at the stack of cards. She felt little butterflies in her stomach as she reached for the deck and pulled off the top card. She turned it over.

  The High Priestess.

  ~*~

  Ethan twisted off the cap of a New Castle Ale, popping the small piece of metal into the trash. “To Belinda.” He toasted her memory, her ghost, her presence—whatever it was that seemed to hover around him. The full-bodied beer slid down his throat, cool and smooth, and the nutty, rich flavor settled on the back of his tongue. “Thank you, Belinda!”

  He’d felt strange, entering Belinda’s house, now that she was dead. She’d always told him he could come and go as he pleased. Since he took care of her yard work when he was in Maine during the summer in return for her assistance in his work, he was over there quite a bit. Now, he supposed, that would change.

  Ethan had knocked on both the front and back doors for a good five minutes before retrieving the key hidden in the birdhouse. He’d been sure he’d seen someone moving around inside the house, even though there was no car in the drive or the garage. After calling and knocking, he finally went in, leaving Cady sitting on the porch.

  “Ms. Iverson,” he’d called, stopping in the foyer and listening for her response. Silence. He hurried down the hall to the kitchen, feeling like an intruder—which, of course, he was—and opened the refrigerator door to retrieve his six-pack.

  Cady began barking outside, running around the house and stopping at several windows. Ethan glanced outside and didn’t see any evidence of a rabbit, squirrel, chipmunk, or bird—the usual suspects in a Cady bark-a-thon.

  “Cady, chill,” he yelled out the back door, then turned in search of paper and a pen.

  He saw the mahogany box on the counter by the telephone and recognized it. Belinda’s cards. A twinge of melancholy prompted him to remove the lid and open the silk wrappings. He wondered what Diana Iverson was doing with them—if anything.

  Diana doesn’t believe in anything unless it’s in black and white and been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, thanks to her mother Victoria. He could almost hear Belinda’s indignant voice. And even then if she sees it in black and white, she’s gotta question it and question it. A good lawyer, she is, but a very poor psychic. She’s got the Gift, all right, but she won’t pay any attention to it.

  He opened the black silk wrapping, looking down at the diamond-shaped blue, red, and black pattern of the back of the deck. He picked up the top card and flipped it over. The Lovers.

  Ethan knew what it implied—not necessarily the obvious. Relationships, sexuality, yes, of course, but the card also could mean the joining of any two entities—whether it be people, ideas or thoughts.

  If she were there, Belinda would tell him to meditate on the card for the day, to open his mind and let the image dig into his unconscious, unlocking answers to questions in his life. She said that the cards unleashed her psychic abilities by opening doors in the back of her mind.

  He stared down at The Lovers. He’d been working with Belinda for three years to learn the extent of her ESP, testing it and dissecting it with and without the use of the Tarot cards to see if her abilities were related to their use. So far, his work had been inconclusive, much to his frustration and that of his colleagues at Princeton. One thing was certain, however: Belinda Lawry was one of the best examples of true precognition ability that the team at Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research—PEAR—Lab had ever studied.

  And another thing was certain: he’d n
ever be able to finish the study now that Bee was gone.

  Cady began barking again. What is with her? He replaced the card, wrapping the deck and slipping the cover back onto the box. Then he found paper and a pen and scrawled a note to Diana.

  He would have hurried out of the house to quiet Cady, but as he passed the bedroom that belonged to Belinda, he found himself turning into it. Ethan stopped just inside the doorway and looked around the room.

  The bed was made, and a half dozen lacy, Victorian pillows had been organized in a neat pile at its head. The drawer to the bedside table lay on the floor, and the rag-rug that covered the wooden floor had a corner flipped up as if someone had left in haste—the only thing out of place in the room. Had he interrupted someone?

  Ethan paused and waited, listening … then shook his head. No, he didn’t sense the presence of anyone else nearby.

  Yet, for some reason, he was compelled to walk further into the room, curiosity overtaking him. The scent of something pleasant—floral and feminine—hung in the air. The open suitcase on a trunk at the end of the bed indicated that this was the room Diana Iverson was using … and Ethan found himself wondering about her once more.