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Cordia said, "Belmira claims she's a witch, though you couldn't prove it by me." She peered toward the dining room. "Dorothy's around here someplace. Where'd she go, Bel? I haven't seen her for an hour."
"She's in the bathroom," Bel said, and turned to me. "I didn't catch your name, dear."
"Oh, sorry. I'm Kinsey. Nice meeting you."
"Nice to meet you, too." Her hair was sparse, a flyaway white with lots of pink scalp showing through. Under her dark print housedress, her shoulders were narrow and bony, her wrists as flat and thin as the handles on two soup ladles. "How're you today?" she asked shyly, as she pulled the tarot deck together. Four of her teeth were gold.
"I'm fine. What about yourself?" "I'm real good." She plucked a card from the deck and held it up, showing me the face. "The Page of Swords. That's you."
Cordia said, "Bel."
"Well, it's true. This is the second time I pulled it. I shuffled the deck and drew this as soon as she stepped in, and then I drew it again."
"Well, draw something else. She's not interested."
I said, "Tell me about your names. Those are new to me."
Bel said, "Mother made ours up. There were six of us girls and she named us in alphabetical order: Amelia, Belmira, Cordia, Dorothy, Edith, and Faye. Cordi and I are the last two left."
"What about Dorothy?"
"She'll be along soon. She loves company."
Cordia said, "Bel will start telling your fortune any minute now. I'm warning you, once she gets on it, it's hard to get her off. just ignore her. That's what I do. You don't have to worry about hurting her feelings."
"Yes, she does," Bel said feebly.
"Are you good at telling fortunes?"
Cordia cut in. "Not especially, but even a blind hog comes across an acorn now and then." She had taken up her knitting, which she held to the light, her head tilted slightly as the needles tucked in and out. The narrow piece of knitting trailed halfway down her front. "I'm making a knee wrap, in case you're wondering."
My Aunt Gin taught me to knit when I was six years old, probably to distract me in the early evening hours. She claimed it was a skill that fostered patience and eye-hand coordination. Now, as I watched, I could see that Cordia had dropped a few stitches about six rows back. The loops, like tiny sailors washed overboard, were receding in the wake of the knitting as each new row was added. I was about to mention it when a large white cat appeared in the doorway. She had a flat Persian face. She stopped when she saw me and stared in apparent wonderment. I'd seen a cat like that once before: long-haired, pure white, one green eye and one blue.
Bel smiled at the sight of her. "Here she is."
"That's Dorothy," Cordia said. "We call her Dort for short. Do you believe in reincarnation?"
"I've never sorted that one through."
"We hadn't either till this kitty came along. Dorothy always swore she'd be in touch with us from the Other Side. Told us for years, she'd find a way to come back.
Then, lo and behold, the neighbor's cat had a litter the very day she passed on. This was the only female, and she looks just like Dort. The white hair, the one blue eye, the one green. Same personality, same behavior. Sociable, pushy, independent."
Bel chimed in. "The cat even passes wind the way Dorothy did. Silent but deadly. Sometimes we have to get up and leave the room."
I pointed to the knitting. "It looks like you dropped some stitches." I leaned forward and touched a finger to the errant loops. "If you have a crochet hook, I can coax them up the line for you."
"Would you? I'd like that. Your eyes are bound to be better than mine." Cordia bent over and reached into her knitting bag. "Let's see what I've got here. Will this do?" She offered me a J hook.
"That's perfect." While I began the slow task of working the dropped stitches up through the rows, the cat picked her way across the floor and jumped up in my lap. I jerked the knitting up and said, "Whoa!" Dorothy must have weighed twenty pounds. She turned her backside to me and stuck her tail in the air like a pump handle, exhibiting her little spigot while she marched in place.
"She never does that. I don't know what's got into her. She must like you," Belmira said, turning up cards as she spoke.
"I'm thrilled."
"Well, would you look at this? The Ten of Wands, reversed." Bel was laying out a reading. She placed the Ten of Wands with the other cards on the table in some mysterious configuration. The card she'd assigned me, the Page of Swords, had now been covered by the Moon.
I freed one hand and cranked Dorothy's tail down, securing it with my right arm as I pointed to the cards. "What's that one mean?" I thought the Moon might be good, but the sisters exchanged a look that made me think otherwise.
Cordia said, "I told you she'd do this."
"The Moon stands for hidden enemies, dear. Danger, darkness, and terror. Not too good."
"No kidding."
She pointed to a card. "The Ten of Wands, reversed, represents obstacles, difficulties, and intrigues. And this one, the Hanged Man, represents the best you can hope for. "
"She doesn't want to hear that, Bel."
"I do. I can handle it."
"This card crowns you."
"What's that? I'm afraid to ask," I said.
"Oh, the Hanged Man is good. He represents wisdom, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy. This is what you want, but it isn't yours at present."
"She's trying to help with my knitting. You might at least leave her be until she finishes."
"I can do both," I said. Though, truthfully, Dorothy's presence was making the task difficult. The cat had rotated in my lap and now seemed intent on smelling my breath. She extended her nose daintily. I paused and breathed through my mouth for her. "What's that card?" I asked, while she butted my chin with her head.
"The Knight of Swords, which is placed at your feet. This is your own, what you have to work with. Skill, bravery, capacity, enmity, wrath, war, destruction."
"The wrath part sounds good."
"Not overall," Bel corrected. "Overall, you're screwed. You see this one? This card stands for pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation."
"Well, dang."
"Exactly. I'd say you're up poop creek without a roll of TP." Belmira turned up another card.
Dorothy climbed up on my chest, purring. She put her face in mine and we stared at each other. I glanced back at the tarot deck. Even I, believing none of this, could see the trouble I was in. Aside from the Hanged Man, there was a fellow burdened with heavy sticks, yet another fellow face down on the ground with ten swords protruding from his back. The card for judgment didn't seem to bode well either, and then there was the Nine of Wands, which showed a crankylooking man clinging to a staff, eight staves in a line behind him. That card was followed by a heart pierced with three swords, rain and clouds above.
By then, I'd succeeded in rescuing the lost stitches, and I reached around Dorothy to return the knitting to Cordia. I thought it was time to get down to business, so I asked Cordia what she could tell me about Mickey.
"I can't say I know all that much about him. He was extremely private. He worked as a bank guard until he lost his job in February. I used to see him going out in his uniform. He looked handsome, I must say.
"What happened?"
"About what?"
"How'd he lose his job?"
"He drank. You must have known that if you were married to him. Nine in the morning, he reeked of alcohol. I don't think he drank at that hour. This was left from the night before, fumes pouring through his skin. He never staggered, and I never once heard him slur his words. He wasn't loud or mean. He was always a gentleman, but he was losing ground."
"I'm sorry to hear that. I knew he drank, but it's hard to believe he reached a point where drinking interfered with his work. He was a cop in the old days when I was married to him."