Death in the Cards Read online

  Skylar sighed. “Oh, yes. I’ve always heard that part of Serpent Mound’s power comes from the unusual shape of the land it’s built on, but I don’t know much more than that.”

  “Well, the rocks underlying most of Ohio are flat, but a five-mile diameter of land on which the Fort Ancient people built Serpent Mound has an unusual underlying topography of folded-up bedrock. Usually that’s caused by volcanic activity or a meteor strike, but that’s not at all the case at Serpent Mound. It was caused by a cryptoexplosion, which means an explosion of gas from within the earth,” I said. “The gases built up and finally exploded, forming underlying layers that make up some gentle contours, and some sharp rises in the land. It doesn’t look all that different from the rest of the rolling hills of southern Ohio, until you climb up the observation tower, and then . . .” I trailed off, realizing everyone was staring at me in amazement. Too late, I clapped my hand over my mouth.

  “Josie, you really could fill in for Sienna, especially if we get her notes,” Damon started, then looked crestfallen again. “I rented a van for this excursion. I was going to drive—”

  “Aw, hell, Damon, I can drive,” said Sally. “I can drive anything.”

  “And I can point out the sights on the way there, while Josie looks over Sienna’s notes,” Cherry said.

  “You know, this could work!” Damon sounded happier again. “What do you say, Josie?”

  What could I say? They were all four of them looking eagerly at me. And—as I’d explain over and over again later on to anyone who’d listen—I just wanted to help.

  So of course, I said yes.

  4

  “And to our left, we have a cornfield!”

  Cherry, who was in the front passenger seat of the full-size van, swiveled around to face the rest of us. I was in the seat behind her, which meant I was facing her, but she ignored me, gazing over the top of my head at the passengers behind me. When I nervously glanced over my shoulder, I noted that all eight—Skylar, her mom Karen, and six other psychics—were craning to look out the windows on the left.

  No Ginny Proffitt, though. We had waited for her as long as we could, but finally decided that the meeting she had mentioned to me must have gone on longer than planned. Several people were worried that Ginny would be angry about us leaving without her, but everyone needed to get back in time to set up for that night, so Damon reassured everyone that he’d be sure to bring Ginny on a private tour of Serpent Mound after the psychic fair ended. Everyone seemed relieved by that solution, and I wondered how many people had been on the receiving end of Ginny’s wrath, which I’d experienced in the Red Horse parking lot.

  “The cornfield belongs to the Crowleys,” Cherry went on. “who have lived in the Paradise area for four generations . . .”

  I turned back around in my seat and stared out the window on my right at another cornfield, which looked just like the one on the left, although the Fowler family owned it.

  “If you get a break tonight from the psychic fair, you might want to visit the Crowleys’ gently haunted corn maze. The maze, cut out of an acre of corn, will have young ghosts, goblins, and witches—” Cherry giggled, apparently confusing psychics with witches, “—and other Halloween characters from the United Methodist Church of Paradise’s Youth Group. The maze is a fundraiser for the Crowleys to offset some medical bills of a family member—a ten-year-old-boy—who has cancer.”

  A murmur of sympathy arose behind me, and I felt a wave of sympathy, too, which never lessened even though I’d heard the story many times. I attended church with the Crowleys and knew that young Ricky Crowley-Ypsilanti had childhood Hodgkin’s disease, a form of lymphoma. Ricky was lucky in that his disease was in stage I, meaning found in only one lymph node area, and so far he had responded well to chemotherapy.

  But the emotional and financial burden was tough on his family. His mama, Maureen Crowley, was divorced, had just lost her job as a secretary in Cincinnati, and didn’t have any health insurance. Ricky’s grandpa, Ed Crowley, had passed away from a heart attack the previous August. Maureen and Ricky had moved back to the Crowley farm, with Maureen’s mama, Rebecca, who still grieved for her husband, and with her Uncle Hugh, Ed’s brother. Just a week before the psychic fair, Ricky had taken a bad turn and was in Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati.

  Most everyone in Paradise offered comforting words and prayers to ease the Crowleys’ emotional hardship, and we’d held several fundraisers to help with the financial difficulties, too. Cherry had donation cans at each station in her hair salon, and Sally had organized a line-dancing marathon at the Bar-None, and I’d coordinated a chili-spaghetti dinner at church.

  (Chili-spaghetti is Cincinnati-style chili—more of a sauce, seasoned with chili powder, nutmeg, and even a bit of chocolate—served on spaghetti and topped with mounds of grated cheddar cheese for a “3-way.” Onions or beans makes it a “4-way,” both makes it a “5-way.” I prefer my chili-spaghetti “4-way,” with onions.)

  The “haunted corn maze” had been Ed Crowley’s idea, but after Ed died, the Crowleys lost heart in it, until Pastor Lamb, at the Methodist Church, turned the idea over to the youth group, which had worked with Hugh Crowley to make it happen.

  “Now, the haunted corn maze opens tonight,” Cherry was saying, “and it will be open Saturday night, too, and the next two weekends as well, through Halloween.”

  I was looking forward, myself, to going on a date to the corn maze that evening with Owen. Maybe afterward we could stop by the Bar-None, and then . . .

  The Ford swerved, jolting me out of my daydream.

  “’Possum!” Sally called out. “Sorry ’bout that.” Sally was driving the van, a Ford 350 SuperDuty valued at about $40,000, Damon had said nervously when he handed the keys over to her. Sally had assured him she’d once chauffeured a rock band.

  (Damon looked so worried about Sienna and his business and the upcoming weekend that I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Sally’d been paid in six-packs and cigarettes, the band was a rockabilly gig thrown together by Sally’s brother Garret for a weekend contest, and the “coach” was a 1965 VW microbus that they’d had to abandon in favor of a Greyhound when Sally stripped its gears beyond redemption.)

  I glanced down at Sienna’s notes. Sienna’s cramped handwriting was hard to decipher. Poor Sienna and Damon. We’d stopped by the Rising Star on our way out of town to drop off Damon and pick up the notes. I’d only glimpsed the damage through the store’s front pane window, but it looked even worse than what Damon had described.

  Who would have done such a thing? My first thought—which I hated—was that it was Pastor Dru Purcell and his followers, wanting to mess up the weekend for them. But would even Dru stoop that low?

  “After you’ve set up your crystal balls and things, come on out to the Crowleys this evening to visit their corn maze,” Cherry was saying. “Your goal is to find a map piece in each section of the maze, until you have a complete map.

  “That sounds truly a-maz-ing!” said Samantha Mulligan, a pet psychic who sat behind me.

  I groaned.

  “I’d love to go!” hollered Max Whitstone, a large, muscular man wearing a Stetson and, despite the chill of October, a T-shirt that showed off dragon tattoos on his biceps. Perhaps predictably, Max and Cherry had already hit it off, although if Max couldn’t foresee that a love connection with Cherry would probably be a bad idea, I didn’t have much faith in his palm-reading prowess.

  The van suddenly jerked again. “Sorry!” Sally called out cheerily. “Didn’t see that curve coming.”

  “Damon promised a smooth ride,” whined Maggie Langguth from the back of the van. Balancing chakras was her specialty. “This is disturbing my inner equilibrium!”

  I turned around in my seat, pulled up on my knees, and faced all eight psychics. I ignored Cherry’s poke in my back, swallowed hard, smiled and said, “Well, we sure do appreciate Cherry’s comments about, um, rural lifestyles around Paradise. Now, we’ll be
at the entrance of Serpent Mound soon. The mound was originally attributed to the Adena culture, circa 800 B.C. to A.D. 100, who created two burial mounds also at the site—as well as other burial mounds found in southern Ohio. But a third burial mound, near the serpent’s tail, was known to have been created by the Fort Ancient culture, which existed much later, from about A.D. 1000 to 1500. The most recent excavations uncovered wood charcoal, which was carbon dated to the time of the Fort Ancient culture, so the belief now is that these people were the actual creators of Serpent Mound . . .”

  I told myself, Josie, everything’s going to be just fine . . . you’ll get through this tour, then never have to see any of these people again.

  Too bad I didn’t have my own crystal ball, one that would really work. I’d have jumped right out of that van and into the nearest cornfield.

  From the top of the observation tower, we could see everyone else—except Cherry and Max—seated cross-legged in a circle near the head of the Serpent Mound. Maggie was leading some kind of meditative ceremony to, as she put it, “tap into the universal power of the ancient earth mother.”

  I took that to be some kind of prayer.

  Sally, Cherry, and I had been invited to join in—which I thought was mighty generous of the group—but we declined, Sally and I because we just needed a break, and Cherry because she was eager to go off “exploring” (mmm hmmm) with Max.

  During our self-guided tour and lunch—poor Sienna had prepared a cooler full of sandwiches, cookies, and sodas—we’d come to know most of the psychics better. They were enraptured by the mystery and spirituality of Serpent Mound. The psychics were a mixture of beliefs—mostly Christian, Wiccan, and one self-professed “seeking” (which I think pretty much describes everybody)—but unified in their fascination with the Mound.

  I felt peaceful, standing up in the observation tower, overlooking the earthen works and the meditative ceremony. Did this place inspire a sense of peacefulness because I knew the Fort Ancient people had created for themselves a spiritual, mystical place, or was the place peaceful in and of itself, and that’s why the ancient ones had chosen it?

  “You reckon this place has spooks?” Sally broke into my musing. She never was one for contemplation.

  I shrugged. “I don’t think so. I think the psychics are just trying to get in touch with the spiritual nature of this place by getting in touch with their own inner natures.”

  Sally shook her head. “Too complicated. Me, I just would like a night to go two-steppin’ and beer drinking.”

  Sally had little time for just fun, with her three sons, and no daddy around to help, although she’d commented often about how she was better off without Waylon Hinckie, the Rat.

  “But you know, as flaky as their beliefs seem to be, they do kinda grow on you,” Sally said, looking fondly down on the circle of psychics, as if they were a litter of puppies instead of just people with beliefs different from what Sally and I had been raised to accept. “And you did a nice job on the tour.”

  I was surprised at Sally’s compliment. “Thanks,” I said. “But I’m glad it’s over. Nothing can go wrong from here, right?” All I had to do was keep my fingers crossed that Sally’d get us all back to the Red Horse in one piece. Then I’d go home, freshen up, and go out on my corn-maze date with Owen. I was looking forward to that, and the quiet normalcy of the coming weekend.

  “Nah, nothin’ can go wrong,” Sally was saying, “except by the end of this weekend, he’s gonna break her heart.”

  Sally pointed to the path below, where Cherry and Max walked arm in arm, Cherry regarding Max with giggly adoration.

  “Poor Cherry,” I said. “You’d think she’d learn to recognize man trouble, even when it comes nicely packaged with Stetsons and tattoos.”

  “Yep,” said Sally. “I surely hate to see my girlfriends get their hearts broken.”

  I looked away from the path to Sally. “My heart is gonna be fine,” I said.

  “You sure about that?” Sally asked.

  I held her gaze as long as I could, then finally broke away to look again at the earthworks. It wasn’t that her gaze was too hard to hold. I’d won my share of stare-downs with Sally. It was just that I wasn’t sure how to answer her question.

  I knew Sally didn’t like my boyfriend, Owen Collins, because she sensed that he’d hurt me. And he had, although I hadn’t told her the details—that for the first nine months we dated, he’d withheld the truth of his past, that he’d once been married, had a twelve-year-old son, and had, in a fight he hadn’t started, accidentally killed another man, and so had spent time in prison for manslaughter. It wasn’t my place to share Owen’s story with Sally, not yet, but because she sensed he’d hurt me, she was wary of him, and said we came from different worlds. She said sooner or later he was bound to get tired of Paradise and move on to better places, and she knew I never would because of my cousin Guy.

  “Besides,” I said, “I’ve had my heart broken before. I can deal with it.” Cherry and Max disappeared behind a tree.

  Sally gave a short laugh. “Breakin’ up with John Worthy back in high school doesn’t count, sister.” She calls me that when she’s annoyed with me, even though we’re cousins. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she has six brothers and no sisters.

  “Does, too,” I said, elbowing her. “The bum left me high and dry for junior prom.”

  “I offered to set you up with Bo!” Bo was a biker buddy of her ex-husband—and both men were fifteen years older than us.

  “Oh, that’d have saved my heart from pain.” We laughed.

  The silence between us became comfortable again.

  Then Sally said, “You know, them people down there, maybe they’re onto something. Great-Aunt Noreen might have scared us near to peein’ our pants with her talk of dreams about us drowning over at the lake, but Mamaw still says the gift of sight runs deep back into our family. I’ve always thought it was hogwash, but Mamaw’s right about a lot of things.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. Mamaw Toadfern had stopped talking to my mama when Mamaw’s son, my daddy, ran off when I was a baby and never got back in touch with anyone ever again. When my mama ran off, too, a few years later, Mamaw turned the silent treatment on me—never mind that I was seven. Many members of the Toadfern clan, who didn’t want to make Mamaw mad, didn’t talk to me, either, unless they had to come into my laundromat when their washers broke or the water tables ran low on their farms after a drought. A notable exception was Sally and a few other cousins, who’d already ticked off Mamaw about all kinds of things. In Sally’s case, that was marrying a wild biker and then buying a bar to run. (Mamaw was a strict Pentecostal.)

  “Well, true,” Sally said, “but the point is, maybe there’s something to at least a few folks having a gift of prophecy. And I can tell, Josie, that that Ginny Proffitt woman spooked you with whatever she said she saw in your palm. And I don’t think it was really about navy blue swimsuits, either.”

  I stared down at the earthworks. Here it was, my chance to tell someone about my recurring dream of Mrs. Oglevee. I’d never considered sharing it before.

  Max and Cherry fell over from behind the tree—literally—with Max right on top of Cherry. Even from our distance, we could hear Cherry’s “oof.” But that didn’t stop Max from kissing her or Cherry from responding.

  Sally sighed. “Might as well buy the bourbon and chocolate for next week now. He’s gonna bust her heart wide open.”

  “Yes, he will. He’s known for that kind of thing.”

  Sally and I both jumped and turned. Karen was right behind us. She was breathing quite evenly, given that she’d just climbed dozens of steps. “I saw them going at it as I came up the path. It’s just desecration, pure and simple.”

  I glanced back at where the psychic group (minus Max) had gathered. They had finished their ceremony and most were milling about now along the Serpent Mound path.

  Sally waggled her eyebrows at Karen. “You thi
nk the Fort Ancient people never got it on? Maybe their spirits appreciate Max and Cherry’s homage to the life force.”

  Karen snorted—primly, somehow—at that. “Max would pay homage to the life force with anything in a skirt that’s not dead. He’s even flirted with my Skylar, although he’s old enough to be her father—”

  “—and I’m old enough to take care of myself,” said Skylar, who came up the steps to the lookout sounding weary, though not from her trek. “Really, Mom, leave poor Max alone.”

  “He’s just lucky Ginny’s not here. She’d tell him off for desecrating a spiritual hot spot,” Karen said, a little sulkily.

  “But not Cherry? She has some choice, after all, in whether or not to play tonsil hockey with Max,” Sally said. Two more people came up—Maggie, the chakra balancer, and Samantha, the pet psychic.

  Skylar laughed. “Ginny’d just warn Cherry to beware of Max—that he’s incredibly charming, but grows weary of his companions quickly. And she should know.”

  “But they were together for three years, weren’t they?” Samantha said, huffing every few words. I liked her for that. Karen, Skylar, and Maggie’s ability to bounce up all those steps without getting out of breath was a wee bit annoying.

  “Max and Ginny were dating?” I asked.

  “Living together,” said Karen. “Unwed.” She put a whole lot of negative judgment into that one word. I was surprised to realize she was a conservative psychic follower—not a likely type, I’d have thought, but I guess it really does take all kinds.

  “Until Ginny dumped Max. But not because of his flirtatious nature. Just because she tired of him,” said Maggie. “At least, that’s the talk, and it doesn’t surprise me. Ginny uses people for her own purposes, then dumps them.” I looked at little, plump, soft-spoken Maggie. She sounded so bitter.

  “Is that why Ginny didn’t come on the tour—because of Max?” Sally asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” said Samantha. “Ginny is quite capable of ignoring Max, although Max really hates her for dumping him. Male ego and all that.”