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My husband nodded. “That could work. Maybe Tom will want to come along to the garden center. Does he know anything about growing lawns?”
The elegant Mediterranean-style house my mother and Tom shared in Woodland Hills definitely had beautiful grounds…but he also employed a gardener to make sure the grass was always a perfect, shimmering green. Maybe he’d mowed his own lawns back before his plumbing supply business really took off, although I had to believe those days were far enough behind him that he might not remember all that much.
Still, it would be kind of an outing for the guys. Tom had mentioned going up to Payson to golf, but Calvin had diplomatically shot down that idea, saying he didn’t want to be that far away from me when I was so close to my due date.
Calvin hated golf, but he also didn’t want to offend his father-in-law.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I’ll ask my mother if he’s interested in giving you some advice.”
My husband seemed fine with that idea, and a while later, we headed back inside. Although I’d been doing my best to avoid my phone and allow Chloe to handle her first day at the store on her own, my willpower failed then, and I picked it up when I went into my office so I could give her a quick call.
“Once in a Blue Moon, how can I help you?”
It was exactly the same way I always answered the phone when I was at work, and I couldn’t help smiling — even as I lowered myself onto the couch and heard it creak slightly under my weight.
Maybe it would be a good thing if this baby came early. Beached whales had nothing on me.
“Hi, Chloe, it’s Selena,” I said. “I just thought I’d check to see how things were going.”
“Oh, fine,” she replied. “It’s been kind of steady all day but nothing too crazy.”
“And there hasn’t been anything…strange?”
Her voice sharpened slightly. “Should there be?”
I hadn’t told her about the hex because I hadn’t wanted her to worry any more than she already was. “No, no,” I said hurriedly. “I suppose I’m just a little on edge. I’ve tried using the Tarot to help me figure out who killed Jack, but I didn’t get anything definitive.”
“Same here,” Chloe said. “Usually, I’ll get a pull that provides some illumination, but nothing seems to make much sense to me. No dreams, either.”
I supposed I should have guessed that my little sister would also have turned to the cards for some insight into the identity and motivations of the murderer. While she didn’t have as many years of experience as I did, that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of using that particular method of divination. As to why she hadn’t experienced any true dreams during this episode, I couldn’t say for sure. I honestly didn’t know how often she had them, and frankly, after the nightmare I’d suffered the evening before, I wasn’t about to wish vivid dreams on anyone.
“Well, if it’s supposed to come, it will,” I told her. “The universe has its own timing, and we can’t force it.”
“Maybe,” Chloe responded, although now she sounded almost dubious. “Right now I’m just waiting to hear from Alec. He said he was going to make his case to the judge at two o’clock today.”
That was only about forty minutes from now. I was surprised she’d been able to concentrate at all, with such a momentous decision hanging over her, but maybe it had helped to be at the store focusing on customers rather than brooding over what the judge might or might not say to determine her fate.
“I’m sure it will all work out fine,” I said. “And I won’t keep you. But call me as soon as you hear something, okay?”
“I will,” she promised. “Or at least, I’ll call you after I call my parents. Talk to you soon!”
We ended the call there, and I set my phone back down on the bookcase where it had been sitting. As I did so, my gaze moved to the shelf that held all my Tarot cards.
Should I try again?
Or maybe it was time to deploy my pendulum, although working with it could sometimes be tricky.
I stood there for a moment, hands on my hips — which definitely felt a good bit wider than they had six months ago — and held myself still, letting the calm, lightly incense-scented air surround me and bring me to a place where I could make the right decision. Off to one side, a clock ticked, its rhythmic sound almost hypnotic.
All right, the pendulum it was.
Both my favorite fluorite pendulum and the pretty mat with butterflies and twining leaves that I used for divination in the springtime sat on a separate bookshelf, so I gathered them up and took them over to the altar. After I set them down, I got out a lighter and touched its flame to the incense cone that sat waiting in a celadon bowl. At once, the faint scent that always seemed to drift on the air in that room grew stronger as smoke began to swirl upward.
Once again, I let myself stand there quietly, allowing my thoughts to begin to slow so they could formulate the correct questions to ask. Working with a pendulum meant framing everything in questions that could be answered with a simple yes or no; while there were pendulum mats out there printed with all the letters of the alphabet and sometimes numbers one through ten, I’d never had much luck working with them to get more precise responses.
No, it was much easier to keep things to a set of simple binary equations.
Which meant I couldn’t ask who had killed Jack Speros. Instead, I had to come up with a way to make the questions I asked point back to either yes or no.
