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I wanted to let out a bitter chuckle. However, even though I’d told Calvin I was going to my office to work with my cards, I had a feeling a single unexpected sound would bring him over here to check on me.
With a feeling of inevitability, I reached for the third card, fully expecting to see the Emperor again. However, the card looking up at me was the Queen of Cups, reversed.
Generally, she was a positive card. When reversed, however, she could mean co-dependency, unhealthy relationships.
Not so surprising when juxtaposed with the Devil and the Seven of Swords. But why had she appeared now, rather than the Emperor?
I didn’t know. While I’d been hoping for some additional illumination, all I’d really gotten was a deepening of the mystery.
My gaze moved to the crystal ball on its lower shelf. Grandma Ellen knew about my pregnancy and was happy for me, but I hadn’t contacted her lately, knowing she could see what was going on in my life when she needed to and that in general, it was better not to reach out too often to interrupt her in her existence in the afterlife.
But I was feeling awfully stuck here. And Chloe, although not related to Grandma Ellen by blood, was still my little sister. Wouldn’t she care that someone so closely connected to me would continue to have this cloud hanging over her unless I could somehow find my way to the truth?
Well, that seemed to settle things.
It wasn’t much fun to bend over and fetch the heavy crystal ball and its wooden stand from the bookshelf, but somehow I managed it. However, I had a feeling I’d have to ask Calvin to put it back for me once I was done.
I placed my hands on the crystal’s surface, feeling it warm slightly with the contact. Keeping my voice to a murmur, I said, “Grandma Ellen, I need to talk to you.”
The interior of the crystal ball remained clear, which was never a good sign. When she appeared, a swirling mist usually filled the ball first, and then she followed a little later…sometimes a lot later. Now, though, I couldn’t see any sign of her.
That didn’t mean I intended to give up.
“Grandma Ellen, it’s important.”
At last, a fine mist began to appear inside the ball. I held my breath, as though fearing that the slightest puff of air against the crystal might make the mist disappear and my grandmother might never show up at all.
But more mist swirled, and then a moment later, I could see my grandmother’s face staring back at me. As always, she appeared as she had when she passed away, younger than the forty-two she’d been, with blonde hair waving over her shoulders and the same deep blue eyes my mother and I shared as well.
She didn’t look too surprised, which told me she had at least a passing idea of what had been happening in Globe over the past week.
“Selena, you really need to be tending to your own house,” she said without preamble, and I blinked at her.
“Do you know something I don’t?” I demanded, and she gave me one of her Mona Lisa smiles, telling me that while she might possess knowledge I didn’t, she wasn’t inclined to share it with me.
“What’s there to know?” she responded. “You’re due to give birth in less than two weeks. Running around trying to solve a murder might not be the best use of your energy right now, especially since it seems as if your younger sister isn’t in any danger of going to prison.”
Wow, Grandma Ellen really had been keeping pretty close tabs. Then again, I supposed that wasn’t too strange. I had to believe she’d been watching my doings much more carefully than she might normally would have, since her first great-grandchild was due to make an appearance almost any day now.
“No,” I said, “but still, she wants to live here in Globe, and she doesn’t want to start off with a bunch of people thinking she’s a murderer. It just makes sense that I would want to track down the person responsible — and not just for her sake. No one wants a killer walking around loose, you know?”
Grandma Ellen’s lips — wearing their usual coating of Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow lipstick — curved in a faint smile. “No, they don’t,” she said. “And I have to say I’m glad you were finally able to meet your sister. I wasn’t around to offer my opinion, but I never liked the way your mother and Jordan made sure to keep you entirely out of his other children’s lives. The two of them weren’t together, of course, and yet I didn’t believe that meant you should never get to know your siblings.”
Well, at least Grandma Ellen was on my side when it came to that particular topic. I hadn’t pushed my mother on the subject, partly because the age gap meant I would probably never have a whole lot in common with my half-siblings, and partly because by the time I really started to think it was wrong that I had a family I never got to meet, I was old enough to have a whole host of other things to distract me.
“Chloe is a great girl,” I said. “She doesn’t deserve what’s happened to her.”
“But she has you providing all kinds of support,” my grandmother countered. “And while I agree it would be wonderful if you could clear her name, I don’t think it’s going to damage her life irreparably if you can’t.”
I planted my hands on my hips. “Which is your way of telling me you’re not going to help me with this.”
Once again, she gave me a half smile. “At the risk of repeating my words from previous murder cases you’ve investigated, you have all the clues you need. It’s how you put them together that’s important. Just remember that Jack Speros knew his murderer. It wasn’t someone from Globe.”
After uttering those words, she faded away, and the mists that had been swirling around her face disappeared as well. I would have tried to call her back, but I knew when she departed like that, she had no intention of returning any time soon.
It wasn’t someone from Globe.
A notion I’d been entertaining for a while, but my grandmother’s words had seemed pretty emphatic.
