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Charmian:
Chapter IX – The Royal House of Cups

I awoke from a dream with the sensation of escaping noisy rooms, but I could neither remember the words nor distinguish the voices. That’s what thinking about the past does, it stirs the tranquil pool of my life until the waters are muddy. Yet they will settle down once more, though perhaps in some new, more exciting configuration.

It was a day of great significance in my life, the first day of the trial. As I drank my espresso and ate cantaloupe with strawberries I checked my horoscope: ” Refuse to be taken for granted. This could be the beginning of your winning streak. Trust your intuition honed to razor-sharpness. Events of timing and luck focus on you. Passion ignites: wear bright colors”. Maybe that’s why I chose an orange Chinese silk jacket and yellow linen skirt, and a pair of rose-pink granny glasses. I was still not quite used to my face in the mirror: I had never had my hair this short and I was also not used to seeing it so straight, but I had to admit that it was flattering. In my day, curls were the thing. Big, big hair. My once-upon-a-time much-admired frosted mop cost hours of labor, especially back when I was broke. No more. I had always feared short hair would make me look mannish. But it’s more like viewing Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo – it only emphasizes how feminine she is. My face was so tanned I only needed a touch of concealer on my proud scar. Didn’t bother with makeup other than a slash of lipstick – break them in slowly to the evolution of the Widow Quantreau.

Before walking out the door I naturally pulled a card. The Lovers. How appropriate! In the Rossetti deck these beautiful young people are both naked, with only her flowing hair and his ripe thigh protecting their privacy. He holds her breast; she grasps his buttock as they gaze into each other’s eyes, reclining beneath a verdant bower ablaze with roses. The Lovers is not just sex, it indicates productivity, success, new creation and the unexpected. It is especially powerful with the number six, but I did not have time for a full reading this morning. It was too exciting, too evocative to leave behind. I tucked it into my breast pocket.

Driving my Mercedes through the gate – top up ready for underground parking – Judge Sugarman stopped me. The fussing he had been doing with the flowerpots around his mailbox was so obviously unnecessary I knew he had been lying in wait. My stalker! Well, I had turned even a stalker to my advantage! He put his big dinner-plate hands right inside my open window as if to take hold of me.

“I was wondering if we could have coffee later,” he asked, smiling ingratiatingly. “I’d love to hear about the trial.” A big man with a stomach that preceded him, he looked especially ludicrous in a pair of aging madras shorts and a puke-green golf shirt. He should get rid of those wisps and leave his skull proudly gleaming. He has a powerful jaw with a bulldog set; I wondered how dangerous enemy he would prove. His squashed nose suggested he had supported himself through law school as a boxer. Better to keep him dangling rather than to shut him down completely.
“I don’t think we’re allowed to talk about the case,” I averred, playing dumb.

His face was a study as he tried to figure out how to bring me into the “in” club without breaking his prosecutorial code. Pity he has such an uninteresting mind to read.
“Oh, I know all about it,” he gruffed bluffly. “Kozlowsky’s the judge on that one – no friend to the defense, and that’s for certain. Let’s plan dinner when you’re free. And call me Saul.”

“Sure thing, Saul,” I said, exulting in getting away so easily. “I touched his hand, giving him that electric thrill. It was all he stood to get from me. “And thank you so much for this opportunity.”
He reddened. I was talking about it again! The first rule of “In Club” is never talking about “In Club!!! I adjusted my seat belt forcing him to release his hands. He patted the side of my car as if blessing a horse and giving permission to depart. I didn’t run over his feet but I almost wished I had.

That repulsive man…imagine him thinking I would welcome his advances! Quid pro nothing! He was lucky to be allowed to gaze at me – fortunate in the extreme that I deigned to speak to him. How could he not realize how old and hideous he looked? I felt insulted by his attentions. When I thought of my pre-Raphaelite “Lovers” I quivered with indignation. It is an insult to the Goddess when ugly people mate with the beautiful. They should keep to their own kind. I began to amuse myself with a plan to send him anonymous letters! What fun that would be! It never would have occurred to me if I hadn’t received one of my own. What would it say? What could most shame him? Make a note to self – something to chew over when court gets boring – as we know it must. The government mills grind exceedingly fine. And slowly, so I’ve heard tell.

Closer to the courthouse I stopped at the Kay-Cup and made myself a soy latte. As I stood in the cashier line, there was something very familiar about the guy buying lottery tickets just ahead of me. He was huge, seeming to sway as he stood, giving off testosterone in waves. He was built so like my archer. I could almost imagine the quiver of arrows hanging off his flannel shoulder. He wore a colorful bandanna around his head, a pair of ratty jeans, a pinkish hanging flannel shirt that had evidently been used as a rag and a tattered t-shirt with the logo, Champion Motor Oil. I usually shun men who work with their hands – ever since my stepfather. Less than perfect hygiene gets a turndown at the sex club. After all, I made such an effort to get out of that world. But there was something about him.

The Goddess was speaking to me. I felt bathed in his maleness like a hot summer sun. His pale hair was grew back sketchily on his scarred head in a thin fuzz. What had happened to him? Really bad haircut from a Benihana wannabe? Brain surgery? It seemed ancient, cuts and scrapes like someone tried to scalp him. Obviously he wore the bandana to keep speculation such as mine to a minimum. When he turned he crashed into me, because I was standing right there, staring. I spilled coffee between us, like an offering.

“Sorry.” We both said it at once. He had a raw, grainy voice. Producing that sound from somewhere deep inside himself made his cheeks quiver, showing a single unlikely dimple. His eyes swiveled over me like camera lenses, pale irises expanding as if sucking me in appreciatively. He was just a kid. Where had I seen him before? I know I knew him. Intimately. Eager to say something, I gestured at the lottery tickets. “Are you a believer?”

It’s what people say about the cards. He smiled a beautiful, deep smile, shaking the colorful handful. “Oh these,” he said, in his gravelly burr, like a person unused to speech. “I give them away. To the panhandlers outside the courthouse. Maybe there are some believers there.”
Then he was gone.

The entire courthouse throbbed with the excitement of the first day of trial, even though there were other cases, this was The Case. The Press was out in force, The Times-Call, The Daily Camera, even the Denver Post. My fellow jurors – all wearing our distinguishing blue stickers – appeared to have dressed down for the occasion, though there was one overly tanned, well-kept older woman in a pencil skirt, who looked at me in a startled way. She’d plainly expected to be the belle of this particular ball, until I showed up.

There were several rooms off the long hallway in the bowels of the courthouse. We were shown our “deliberation room” – the judge’s chambers, the clerk’s room, and the prosecutor’s office. There was also a small cloakroom. I saw the defense attorney’s junior, a young highly-made- up faux platinum blonde so pretty my fellow jurors referred to her as “the Bond girl”. She tossed some used fashion magazines across our table. Her eyes met mine and she gave me a big smile. “Good morning!” she said. All this friendliness in aid of her client? Or did she favor every casual stranger with this desperation? A born pleaser. I recognize it because I can fake it. Takes one to know one.
She bustled away down the hall in her platform boots to the conference room given over to the defense. I knew she’s just wanted to get a look at us. No one else seemed interested.

People over-burdened with files, water bottles and huge cups of coffee rushed from their doorways and scurried like vermin along the hall. I caught sight of the judge, “Kozlowsky” very unimpressive without his robes, a fish-faced man with prematurely white hair dressed as if for a day of golf. No one would look at him twice when he wasn’t on the bench.

“I guess fashion doesn’t count as “news”, said my belle-of-the-ball juror I thought of as “the belle of the ball” juror, trying to be friends. Checking out the competition. “I hear we’re in for a long siege of boredom. They say this trial could last three months!”

“That is a long time,” I smiled. “But you know what?” I hissed conspiratorially. “People always break the rules a little.”

“Bend them anyway,” she agreed. “They’re rules because they’re hard to follow. Hi, I’m Lacey Morag.” Her lifetime honorific “pretty” was expiring. Fraying at the edges. I saw powder in soft drifts along the lines of her cheeks and her pale hazel eyes quivered with the need for approval.
I’ve got this one, I thought. I can make her do anything I want.

“I forgot to bring anything to read. In voir dire we had to sit around so much. It’s wonderful to have someone to talk to. I’m Charmian Quantreau.” We shook hands. I checked her loveline – one marriage. Possibly some love frustration.

I saw her visibly relax. Now we were confederates. We chose seats beside each other in the jury room.

“It’s going to be hard, living without any news,” I said. To say something.
“At least we’re not sequestered,” said a tall, pencil-necked man in a button-down shirt. Too bossy for an actuary. Probably some sort of accountant. “That would be hell.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lacey, responding to him in spite of his wedding ring in a “take me I’m yours” sort of way. “I could use the vacation. And don’t you think the news is so artificial these days? It’s so partisan. When my kids were at home I used to sponsor a “Turn off the TV Week” at the schools. Life is about so much more than politics, gossip and titillation.”

Was she just ignorant, or the type of woman who subtly insults you and then disclaims intentionality? The reading I was getting was “stupid” and “fault-finding”. But I felt no need to flush out of cover yet. I can play one-up.

“I know exactly what you mean. I live on Hayden Lake and it’s so glorious at night. The silence! The stars are magnificent, and there are so many owls. Always something to watch and do. I sit out in my kayak pitying the addicts glued to their glo-boxes.”
Now she knew I was rich. Her face sharpened.

“Hayden Lake? Do you live alone?”

“I’m a widow,” I said comfortably, status was now assured. “But it was his time. I’ve been very lucky.”

“It must be so beautiful… I’d love to see it sometime.”

“Let’s have a party. As soon as this is over. It’s a wonderful place for entertaining. You know, I’ve heard jurors bond for life on these important cases. We’ll feel we deserve it after our deliberations.”

“That would be lovely,” she echoed faintly. One in the corner pocket! Now, who else could I get?
Appointing herself social director of our cruise, Lacey moved on to a shriveled old woman of the “proud crone” variety. I smiled at a swollen young man in glasses who wore a t-shirt depicting a howling wolf. He was hardly a wolf. He’d chosen the wrong power animal. Howling Woodchuck, I dubbed him. He told me he was a web developer between jobs, who lived with his parents at home. I started right in on how I was thinking of starting a foundation named after my grandchildren. Shouldn’t it have a presence on the web? Really, I was so ignorant. His eyes gleamed. He had lots of suggestions.

I kept sneaking peeks at the married accountant. He had clear leadership qualities. I suspected we would wrestle for jury control; but I am willing to be the power behind the throne. He is gifted with the sort of long, lean physique despised in high school that holds up well in middle age.

Ron Roccam was his name. He was nicely turned out in a sweater vest, tie and neatly pressed slacks to go with his button-down shirt. Had he mistaken our civic requirement for a job interview or did he always dress like this? Lots of men don’t know how easy it is to impress a woman with clothes. Certainly Roccam was the only male juror making any effort.

Now we were all showing pictures of our families. Ron Roccam had the sort of wife and two little boys that comes ready-made in a K-Mart frame: could he be a bullshitter? I’d find out of he tried to get me to invest in something.

I saw their expressions when I showed snaps of me and the late doctor who looked, as usual, like a Gila monster. I made a mental note to dump this photo – my stepdaughters and their children made a much more positive impression. Lacey’s eyes actually filled with tears while she told me how lucky I was to have grandchildren. Her own daughter was approaching thirty and working a sixty-hour week. It was starting to look hopeless.

I was startled to find out Roccam was actually laid off. He said otherwise he never would have accepted jury duty. He seemed to think they were lucky to get him. A plump retiree with a thin fringe of hair clinging to his pate like seaweed to an inhospitable rock jumped in and talked eagerly about the horrible economy and the nightmare of diminishing fixed income.

He told us all to call him “C.D. – the safe investment”. Talk about irony. Roccam cluck-clucked sympathetically. Didn’t try to sell him anything. Agreed no safe investment is worth anything any more. I ventured that I liked unpredictability. It makes life so more exciting. They gazed at me, bemused.

A jury room is not a place to get comfortable. I guess that’s so the taxpayer gets the quickest reasonable verdict. The room is dominated by a coffin-shaped table and the chairs are too stiff to sleep in. Between a coat rack and a coffee table stacked with decks of ordinary playing cards, crossword puzzle and wordsearch books and shabby sets of out of date games were connecting doors to a men’s room and a ladies room. At least it would be possible to be occasionally alone, which I have always found to be a necessity in life when others become too claustrophobically overwhelming. Three vending machines – coffee-tea-cocoa, juice and soda, snacks and fruit, and a miniature refrigerator containing a variety of creamers. Not Acceptable.

A plump young woman looking barely old enough to vote was rifling through the fashion magazines. Howling Woodchuck gestured to the cover and rolled his eyes. “I wish women would realize skeletons don’t turn men on,” he said. Flirting! The plump girl regarded him gratefully. Would love bloom in our lengthy sequestration?

“Turning men on isn’t the be all and end all of every woman’s existence,” snapped the crone. Retired schoolmarm? I wondered. Some sort of gray panther. I noticed her nubby-woven peasant vest was ornamented with cat hairs. Too bad the metal detector lacked a vacuum attachment! I wondered if my fake asthma would be flaring up. So far its kept me out of my stepdaughters’ dog-and-cat infested homes.

The very plump woman introduced herself as Luna. “All those pictures are airbrushed anyway,” she said. “Nobody really looks like that.”

I amused myself picturing Howler and Luna’s Dueling Bellies. I have landed smack dab into a meeting of the Royal House of Cups here! Imagine attempting to defend oneself with a cup! They do not realize they are being fattened for slaughter.

Pentacles are magic, Swords rule, even Wands possess the power of fire. But the Cups? Their collective motto is “I’ll have another.”

Yes, you will. It makes you so much easier to take down. You can be bribed with a cookie. If shared tastes are key, these two trencher-persons, Howling Woodchuck and Luna, surely are made for each other. How many couples got their romantic start as fellow jurors?
The Gray Panther introduced herself to me, but I missed everything she said while attempting to identify her strange scent. Mothballs? Penicillin? Saved by the bell – the court clerk, a settled woman with a hairband and large unfashionable glasses put her head around the door.

“Time, ladies and gentlemen.” She distributed a notebook to each of us as we filed past.
In the red upholstered jury box we were the cynosure of all eyes. Every body at the prosecution and defense tables rose. It’s nice to be treated royally. Doesn’t happen often in this democratic society. The defendant crossed her wrists in front of her as if they were still handcuffed, or as if she were praying to us: the Gods of the Courtroom. She wore a long skirted suit of drab autumnal tweed to conceal her electronic bracelet, but her form fitting pink sweater left nothing to the imagination. Some men admire that red hair, but the skin that goes with it is usually problematic. The eyes she swept over us were feverish.

Who among our number was born to save her? I couldn’t believe she found much comfort in our motley crew; most dressed as if for a sporting event, and too obviously handicapped in life by a love affair with the pleasures of the table.

Both the prosecutor and the defense sat with their juniors: the prosecution had a huge, shambling young man who looked at if someone with a sense of humor dressed him in the morning, and at the defense table sat our photogenic Bond girl, holding a protective arm around the defendant. The visitors’ benches were packed.

The judge admonished us about custody of the eyes and brain. No discussing the case, no reading the news, no email, no Facebook. No social networking. It was only by reading the newspapers when I was safe home that I discovered that I discovered the “pro-forma” motion heard in our absence was to dismiss the case for lack of other than circumstantial evidence. Righteously tossed out. And we were off. Mr. Wilmot, who has always looked to me like a high school kid disguised as an old man for a play, stood up to give his opening statement. As he stands before the defense table, trying to kill this woman, a little shrinking violet trying to vanish behind her defenders, shall we rank Mr. Wilmot a King of Swords? Being as he has chosen a career of at least attempting to put people to death, I think we must.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a case about a woman who is accustomed to winning. A woman who has always been successful at persuading others to do her dirty work. A woman who simply didn’t like her brother-in-law, and who so made the decision that his existence should be terminated. Her family did not want to lose control over her niece, and in the contentious litigation in which the two families were engaged, Rafe Zanelli declared he would move his family out of state rather than allow Karen Sivarro’s family access. For that threat he paid with his life.

You already know that she has pled not guilty to the charges of conspiracy, of murder and of accessory to murder with which she is charged. After all, she didn’t buy the gun and never touched it or its bullets. She didn’t use her own dollars to pay the hitman, and according to our evidence only met him once, although they may have seen each other on several occasions. But the man who was her lover will come and testify in this court that it was she who gave sole birth to this idea of murder, that she nagged him relentlessly into hiring the murderer, then continued to wheedle every day until the crime was accomplished.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is a crime, even though gunpowder never touched her fingers. This murder benefited the defendant and her family — and only them. It devastated many other lives, including the life of the man who will testify that she demanded of him as a test of love that he do this for her.

In trials, it often comes down to which witnesses you believe. I have every confidence that you will do an excellent job. Thank you.”

Mr. O’Hara rose, walked right over to our seats, placed his hand on the rail and gazed at ups with his crocodile eyes suddenly gentle in their bags of skin. I felt grateful to be in the back row. Those eyes were cynical; I could not read him. Under a thatch of sandy hair, those eyes were very old. Forget crocodiles; Mr. O’Hara is a dragon. Does he also wield a sword? Let us see.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will not be making an extensive opening statement at this time, but I don’t want to let slip the opportunity to inform you that my client is absolutely innocent of these charges. The state has no case against her. Her crime has been to fall in love with a completely untrustworthy, drug addicted man who was cheating his clients and embezzling their money, a man who would stop at nothing to bind her to him, and for that she has already been heavily punished. No evidence connects her with this crime other than the most self-serving statements of this same man, who has by redirecting blame avoided the death penalty he so royally deserves. I have absolute trust that you will discharge your duty fairly and refuse to end the life of an innocent person. Thank you.” Slapped the rail and he was gone.

So we began.

Charmian:
Chapter VII – The Fool

Safely accepted for jury duty, I felt free to become…myself. How ecstatic are my beauty routines! I make love to myself with every unguent, every potion. No medieval knight encased in chain mail could feel as protected as I do, standing naked in front of the full length mirror with a paintbrush in my hand. I am I own greatest creation. I celebrate myself.

Every time I make myself beautiful, I am spitting on my stepfather’s grave. My stepfather, whose first gift to me was a spiral fracture of the arm when I was seven, was a skinny, worthless loser despised by the universe as well as by yours truly. I was eleven when he told me it was his duty to teach me about sex. He said that was what stepfathers were for. Don’t tell me my mother didn’t know what was going on; her cooperation (or at least her silence, she was too fat for cooperation) could always be ensured by a carton of Little Debbies.

Weirdly, he never wanted me to look beautiful, or even attractive. I suppose he feared I’d grow up and leave him. When my girlfriends and I streaked our hair one sleepover, he acted as if I had set the house on fire. Luckily it was the innocent kind that washes out; otherwise I think he really would have shaved my head.

I remember exactly how scared I felt the first time I decided to ignore my stepfather’s diktats about how I should look and dress. It was the kind of terror that makes you wet yourself; but what the enemy forgets is that can be the rocket fuel of rebellion. His own possessive rage became the engine of his death.

I recall my motivation, too; all those memories are crystal clear. Nothing that happened a week ago can retain that kind of power. It was my first day of high school, my first day among the Grown-Up People, and I wasn’t going in there looking like some Amish refugee. I knew I could make up my face and change my skirt at Deirdre’s house; her parents were never home. Contrary to what he tried to make me to believe, I knew in my heart my stepfather could not read minds, had no eyes in the back of his head, could not see through walls, did not have spies everywhere, was not connected to the Mafia and the CIA. He expected me to worship him. He apparently thought that if he could convince one poor slave that he was superman that would make him immortal.

But I discovered that what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. Makeup was not too radioactive a substance to keep me from shoplifting it – I built an impressive secret stash at Deirdre’s house. Deirdre’s parents didn’t care how much makeup she used or how trampy she looked. They wanted her gone and off the teat, and they welcomed the universal solution: transfer her grip to some poor guy.

In that year Saturn and Mars were equally fiery, it was dry and there had been a comet. According to Nostradamus such are times potent for revolution. In the first few weeks of school, Deirdre found her guy and I found mine. Paul. I have never forgotten him. I often wonder where he is and what he’s doing. To break the spell I try imagining him as a fat old businessman, but in the Eden of first love he will always represent manhood to me. You remind me of him.

I thought we would be happy ever after. I was too young to realize how expensive love can be. Dating I did not even aspire to: that would get my stepfather involved. All I wanted was someone else’s hand to take away the stain of his touch. It worked the very first time, and I could tell that, just as with any incantation, it would work better and better the more we practiced.

Paul had a car. This is probably the whole reason the sight of black leather so arouses me. Here in our time capsule we could be alone, and when I was alone with Paul, he was touching me, and I was touching him. Every caress added to the fund of courage I would need to kill the man who tried so hard to convince me of my imprisonment. Self-defense, your Honor.

I began by attempting to poison him with chokecherries, then yew berries. I would have tried deadly nightshade if I had known what it looked like, but our high school science teachers were beginning to look askance at all my questions. Mark Twain said, if the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill always came together, who among us would escape hanging?

Alas, he suffered no ill results. A horrible feeling crept over me that in some satanic way, these poisons were actually improving his health. He became more vigilant, and I noticed he was drinking less. Uh oh. But opposing him was beginning to become addictive for both of us. Our battles were escalating. I was as tall as he was now; he must have felt his fists and his penis were no longer sufficient to control me. One day he produced a gun. His idea was that we were now a threesome, little me, paralyzed with fear, and Superman with his two dicks. My idea was different.
He knew I was afraid of the cellar. He locked me down there as a punishment when I was little. I thought it was the mouth of hell; a dirt hole clawed beneath the bowels of the house that stank like a sewer. I never even passed the top step but clung to the doorknob, eye pressed to the light crack, wailing for release.

My expanding mind saw will as a muscle; you can train it just the way you train the body. I had transcended so many fears already; why couldn’t I outgrow this fear of confrontation? Previously I concentrated on making his death look like an accident; but what if he simply disappeared? He wasn’t employed, my mom was scared of him, nobody except his bar buddies would even notice he was missing. And they were way too fuzzyheaded to stage a meaningful inquiry. The only drawback I could see was that unlike poison, a gun guarantees your presence while he dies. I had to convince myself this was better, more immediate. Pop, pop, pop, you’re gone. I knew how to cock the pistol; I knew how to release the safety because I’d seen him do it countless times. If the cellar was dirty and stinky, and no one ever went down there, why couldn’t I bury him where nobody would ever look?

While my stepfather was out buying smokes I took a flashlight down to check it out. The wooden staircase rocked as if it would collapse, no problem, it had only to bear us up for two or three more times. Just as I had feared, there were bugs, centipedes and worms, but now I saw them as my friends. Let them eviscerate his corpse; if only they could chew the bones as well. The walls were rough stone, probably offering less support after all these years than the roots I saw sticking out between them. Then I saw the blessing of the Goddess. A wooden well cover, and I knew the time was now.

I was about six years old when the county forced us to go on public water and sewer. I recalled the furor as my stepfather raged against fluoridation and my mother pled abject poverty. Finally the town officials, after a desultory snoop into all our business or its lack, agreed to waive the co-pay.
And all this time that old well was down there. The water in the bottom reflected the flashlight as I leaned over. It was even set flush with the floor; what could be easier? I practiced moving the wooden cover; no problem. The only difficulty now was to get him down here with the gun.
No problemo. All I had to say was that there were rats down there; he was longing for something to shoot. At first he was a little suspicious, knowing how I avoided the place, but when I said I heard them scratching at the door, he was convinced.

He liked to be considered a man of surprises. I was surprised when he made me go down first, carrying the flashlight and a garbage bag. That meant I couldn’t push him from behind the way I’d planned. It also cut down on my time, because as I think I said before, the place was just a tiny hole.

But if he had surprises, I had ideas. The garbage bag gave me another one.
I’ve met people who believe that hauntings are triggered by scenes of desperate violence. If that is true, then that cellar is haunted forever by me in a red sweater, red kilt and matching tights and my stepfather wearing a garbage bag over his head, struggling with a gun. I had to drop the flashlight which shot its crazy, useless stream of light across the floor.

He was wiry and amazingly strong, but I had the gun two-handed and I would not have let it go if the world around me exploded into flames. I discovered in that moment the secret of power, which is that if you want something with your whole being, if you have not one cell of doubt, you are invincible. I had to stomp on his instep to loosen his grip, but the gun came to me pre-cocked. I shot him right through the bag. That gun kicked like a rattlesnake. I shot him again and again and again, and one of the bullets somehow came back to graze me in the face. Doesn’t bother me. I wear that tiny chip along my cheekbone as a badge of honor.

I hadn’t expected all the blood. I guess I thought the bag would somehow contain it, but the bullets tore through that bag like tissue paper. I rolled him to the well, tipped him in, threw the gun and what was left of the bag in after him. I put the wooden cover back on, and I fled up the stairs. I had to throw out all my clothes, even my bra and underpants. Put them right in the garbage. Then I took a hot bath, reveling in making it deeper than my stepfather ever approved of, hotter than he ever allowed, using so much bubble bath that if he had looked in the door he would have accused me of “playing with myself”. Well, he could never look at my body again. In my innocence, I thought it was all Paul’s now. I did not know the Queen has many courtiers.

My mother was cooking a double shift at the diner; she would be gone for hours. Once I redressed I looked around carefully, but there was nothing to see. A little dirt from the cellar was easily swept up, but I saw no blood. He probably went into the water with his truck keys in his pocket, but I knew where he hid his spare. I drove his truck to the bus stop and called Paul for a ride home. Ironically, that call marked the beginning of the end of Paul’s and my relationship; he never would believe my story about what I was doing there.

My mother never even reported him missing. She acted mad that he was gone, but she cashed his VA checks just the same. She must have realized something had happened to him when they told her the truck was in the impound, but instead of paying the fine she signed it over to the lot owner. She never mentioned it to me.

I walked out of that house a year later when I was sixteen years old, and I’ve never been back. Fled Louisiana for Texas where I even changed my name. Mom and I were not what you could call “close.”

Consulting the power of my second sight, I like to think my mom guaranteed herself a (short) retirement of unlimited Little Debbies by selling out to lake property developers, and when they uncovered the skeleton they weighed the opportunity to rename the property Skeletal Acres, rejected it, and sold the trophy to med students. I don’t feel the need to test the veracity of this vision, nor have I regretted what I did for one single second. My stepfather’s card is The Fool. He was a born victim. The universe constantly offers us the challenge to believe in ourselves. Acceptance, and creation of our new world, is the key to inner peace.

Whitney:
Chapter VI – The High Priestess

She was certainly up to something. You should have seen her getup! Lying to me only makes me more suspicious. She thinks I can’t tell when she’s lying but it’s actually pretty easy. She has a “tell” as Penn, my on again off again boyfriend gambler, would say. She widens her eyes like she’s trying to hypnotize you. Works wonders on men – if she’s appropriately suited up. Maybe not so much in granny guise.

Could this be the result of my anonymous letter? I certainly didn’t expect a reaction this extreme! I was just laying groundwork, so to speak. Trying to master my frustration.

I pretended to drive away, listening to the mix CD (title: “I Hate My StepMom”) that I made for myself. First up: Scars of Life’s Bullet With Your Name On It. Ha ha. Always makes me feel better.
Parked at the boat launch and walked back to the house up the beach. A few hours when I can be certain she won’t be home is too precious an opportunity to pass up. I love sneaking around in her house – my house – the house she bought with our money –the thrill is downright sexual. Probably something like what Penn feels when he looks at Internet porn. They expect you to look: it’s all for show. An addictive frisson composed of loneliness and unseen participation.

You can’t call it “breaking and entering” when it’s your own house. I never had difficulty with the security system. There’s one codeword – six letters, none repeated. Anyone with a brain could figure that out. She sees herself as the High Priestess of her own little tarot card, fortune-telling cult – she’s a nut about palmistry and astrology, too. She makes such a fuss about her symbol as the “Queen of Swords” She even wears a little golden dagger around her neck. (Bought with our money.) But Queen doesn’t fit and Swords has a repeat letter. Same with dagger. So what would you do if – let’s say – you were massively undereducated? I tried “SWORDZ” — worked the first time! I can’t tell you what a boost that gave my confidence. Now I know I can outthink her.

Of course she could change the word. She could install cameras. Knowing she’s overconfident, I can’t afford to make the same mistake. I have to strike fast and invisibly. I call it “spelunking”. You never know what you might find.

I look for anything different. Recent acquisitions. How has she been spending our money? I try not to touch things but sometimes I just can’t help myself. Snooping makes me need to pee and when I use her private bathroom I fantasize that the electrically warmed toilet seat is heated from her touch. She left it nice and warm – for yours truly. “Queen of Swords” – bullshit! More like queen of the wolves. Better look out, there’s always some other big mean bitch coming up behind you.

Peering through the floor to ceiling glass windows along the deck I saw the book right away. It’s so big it looks like a freakin’ briefcase. Mauve suede with gold-deckle leaves. Laid out so appetizingly on her faux-Empire writing desk – that must have cost a pretty penny – along with my father’s Art Deco desk accessories. But I couldn’t be so lucky that she would actually write anything there. It’s probably a scrapbook or some such thing. Maybe she bought it to record my anonymous letters!
In spite of a fancy vocabulary acquired from my father she’s basically illiterate. All her books are just for show; you know the kind: “Castles of Ireland”, “English Country Houses”, “Japanese Gardens”. Here I am, scrawling my every idea in a dollar-fifty steno book, because that’s the way I was raised. Planning. First draft, second draft, third draft, show! Give your ideas the best presentation possible before you send them out begging.

I wondered if that “knitting bag” of hers contained the anonymous letter. Who was she gong to consult? The police? A private detective? Someone she wanted to view her as a victim. Someone she had never seen before, obviously. Thrilling! Who knew I had so much power?

I was ready to run around front and let myself in when my cell phone went off. Office. Needs me Stat. I’d have to save Charmian’s Big Book for another time. This earning-a-living-business sucks ass.

Charmian:
Chapter V- The Princess of Wands

On the morning I was under mandate to show up at the courthouse I routinely pulled a card. Justice. This is the balance card, the card of the Midnight Court. In the Midnight Court, women weigh men in the balances. On the face of my card the Goddess pulls down her blindfold to peek out at the man she assesses. As we all know, Justice requires assistance. It is built on the bodies of those who must submit. The Goddess herself calls me to sit on that jury.

Carefully I assembled my disguise. Any well-appointed home has just the thing. I went upstairs to the second bedroom to see what I could pull together.

Of course I don’t call it a “bedroom” around anyone else. They might get ideas. It doesn’t even contain a bed. Officially, it’s The Boxroom.

I live in the most beautiful house on the lake. Everything about it is perfect except its rather silly name – “Topside”. Some sailing expression. I was happy to wash my hands of Dr. Quantreau’s hideous house in Colorado Springs. Vast, dark, creaky and vaguely Japanoid. “Modern” back in the fifties. Ugh. Topside is too perfect even to allow a housekeeper, or maid, like the ones I had back in Colorado Spring. It would be too intimate, having another person here. I relish caring for all my beautiful objects. It doesn’t take up too much of my time to stroke my own beast.

Boulder is a much more happening place than poor old Colorado Springs. Here, we are all making ourselves up as we go along out here. How you were born is no comment whatever on how you will end up. Life on the lake combines the best of both worlds; the power, tradition and beauty of the status quo with the fiery challenge, the imaginative power of the self-made.

Whenever I step inside my door I hug myself. All this space is just for me. Three bathrooms and a massive two storey living room whose glass wall overlooks the lake, a pro chef’s kitchen (in case I entertain); even “a media room.” Plus underground storage for my current “baby”, a gold convertible Mercedes SL.

I sigh as I tell my stepdaughters that it is not a good house for children. Too full of treasures. And the lake is so dangerous. That’s why all family parties need to be at McKenzie’s house. She has a pool. I try not to visibly smirk as I watch five dirty children struggling to exhaustion in the chlorinated water. Then I finish my drink – McKenzie’s wine is as good as anybody’s – I know because I bring it myself – and leave. As I disarm and rearm the security system the house itself seems to sigh with pleasure. “I have been waiting for you.”

The Boxroom is where ill-advised gifts come to die. Who can know me well enough to actually give me anything? Not a soul on this planet, sister. On this morning I was looking for a specific sweatshirt given to me by McKenzie’s youngest. It’s pink, it’s covered with strange-looking cotton balls and it says Best Granma Ever!

Wig? I thought of that already – my sex club wigs certainly won’t do. Do they even sell gray wigs? Baby, they sell everything. Gray wig, check. No makeup. Ouch. Reading glasses. Big-bottomed elastic waisted Mom jeans. Am I shameless enough to pad them? Why not? Could be amusing. A couple pairs of the boys’ jams that form my usual lakeside attire ought to thicken me up nicely. Wow. If I had long brunette hair I’d look just like Whitney.

Add a tapestry bag full of yarn and canvas and there she is, the Widow Quantreau. Fair, balanced, but so easily swayed. Inexperienced – deliberately — in the ways of the world. The Widow Quantreau has kept her mind pristine. She tries to think only the best of people. In her life unpleasantness has always been taken care of by someone else. She hasn’t had to fight her way up, the way I have. The status quo is God-given and naturally right, and all who breach it should be punished. Unless they have a particularly alluring sob story, and then I guarantee my eyes will glisten and my lower lip will droop – droop – droop.

Talk show television, that’s what the Widow Quantreau favors. And non-abrasive cooking shows. You know, the helpful as opposed to the competitive kind. That’s what I told the questionnaire anyway. As I looked at myself delightedly in the mirror I almost wished I was going to the sex club. This was a new disguise for sure! Sadist or masochist? Because you better believe it, you’ve gotta be one or the other. Top or bottom; lion or lamb. I take my lamb rare, thank you. Very rare. But they don’t let lions sit on juries, if they can sniff them out in advance. They might enjoy themselves too much, and as we’ve all had dinned into our ears since grade school, it’s not “work” if you enjoy it.

Judge Sugarman made his call; I made sure of that. He owes me. So I probably have a fairly high interview number. Still, he assures me they will have a list of questions already prepared to ask me. (Sometimes designed by an expensive jury consultant.) Under “religious affiliation” I did not put Wiccan, as I sometimes do just to scarify and tease. Nor did I put down my mother’s church, the complex name of which I’m sure I can’t recall correctly. The Church of Christ Crucified and Unforgiving. Something along those lines.

No, I claimed Episcopalian, just like dear old Dr. Quantreau himself, the old atheist. Not that he bothered with a priest when he decided to get hitched. He was in too big a hurry, since I wasn’t prepared to get naked without suitable guarantees. Read: no pre-nup. But that Matterhorn proved amazingly easy to climb! I thought it was going to be the biggest challenge of the campaign. I didn’t know about “ux”. That’s what Latinists call “wife” apparently. He had all the trust documents set up – whoever was married to him at the time would step right in. Easy-peazey.

Dr. Quantreau showed up at church only twice a year, and then only if he thought someone was looking. He spurned what he cynically described the “comforts” of religion for himself, describing them as the province only for “females of both sexes”. Knowing that, I didn’t bother with last rites. There was nothing and nobody to protect him at the end.

Knitting bag in hand, I hurried out to the rental car. What kind of vehicle does the ideal juror drive? I wasn’t taking chances. You never know who you’ll meet in the parking lot. Each time – prosecution and defense – has a universe of hangers-on. Mid-size, mid-expense, nondescript seemed my safest bet. That’s what I ordered and that’s what they brought me. A gray Buick. One yawns at the sight of it.

No gardener today, and if I hurry, no Judge Sugarman, but it’s hard not to pause just long enough to survey my plot with pride. Spring is my season! I feel the blood fermenting in my ripening veins. The carefully hand-scattered daffodils have sprung up beside the stone wall; the weeping cherry trails kimono sleeves across the Buick’s roof. Beneath the thundercloud plum a slate birdbath vaunts a tall metal sculpture of feasting heron and dancing frogs. Frogs dance when they are about to be eaten. It’s an old Cajun joke. I’m Cajun on my stepfather’s side. Didn’t you know that? You acquire the powers of anyone you kill.

I shouldn’t be surprised to see Whitney’s jalopy. Fortunately she’d turned the engine off – she’s always playing the most God-awful, brain jangling music. No wonder kids can’t think if this is the stuff they listen to.

I pulled her card yesterday so I knew she must be lurking. In the Tarot universe she’s the Princess of Wands; a girl-woman whose weapon is the fire wand. Naturally she doesn’t know how to use it; she has yet to come into her power. Fire wands may have their place, but a sword will cut a fire-wand in half. A true Queen will not be burned even by a shower of sparks. The Princess’ only hope is to catch a Sword Queen napping, but…

Aging Dr. Quantreau didn’t do Whitney any favors, making her into his “ideal companion” while he was waiting for me to arrive. A teenage girl who is half seventy-five year old man is most certainly fated to struggle to find her place in the world. She should be out clubbing with her friends, daring the rituals of sex and drunken exaltation.

Instead, she’s hanging around me. I used to think she nourished quite a charming little passion for me; it’s the man-woman in her. Her sisters and I have mastered the language of femininity; but she refuses. My Empress (whose powers I also acquired) also risked mannishness. And look how she ended up.

Yes, I had high hopes of Whitney, before she set herself against me. She is an Archer, just like myself, born under a full moon at the exact time of the Winter Solstice. Mercury and Neptune hung above her cradle. Mercury is the Mind, Neptune the Imagination; it is a fatal double blend. She will over-think all her choices and frequently suffer paralysis between competing options. Her questioning sarcasm might remind me of myself. But I corral and empower my thoughts; spitting out an endlessly empty hostility is a mark of cowardice.

Her father spoiled her rotten. Her sisters – Princesses of Cups (so zodiacally impoverished they must share identity) at least understand that a family trust that pays all education and health expenses is extremely generous. I can feel Whitney wanting more. She is too wily (or fearful) of my power to come right out and claim what she desires, and I have no incentive to make it easy for her. Let her come to me, if she ever thinks she can summon up the power.

I realize I went about befriending her in completely the wrong way. I was unsure of my sway over the doctor –what if he got well before I could get rid of her? Plenty of men recover from stroke. Luckily she opposed me so obviously he took my side. Plus, he yearned to be alone with me. Ah, the naked nights and the drunken days! He should have been suspicious of upselling at his age. But we all are victims of our hopes, are we not? I didn’t have time to break Whitney’s spirit; I had my hands full with her father. Respect once lost can never be regained.

Whitney lacks self-pride. She never seems to care how grungy she looks. She shops at thrift stores. If she’s ever had a boyfriend, I’ve never met him. She insists on remaining a club that even she doesn’t want to join.

The Princess of Wands would be a proud archetype for anyone but Whitney, who refuses to so much as acknowledge its existence. Her fire throne (Fire is Whitney’s element) is guarded by a pair of lions and a single black cat, reminding us of the Egyptian goddess she once was. Her flower is the Sunflower, her star the Sun. In my deck she has long dark hair, just like Whitney. Whitney may come into her own someday; but she’s not going to do it on my dime. With no husband or children, a studio apartment and the merest hint of an excuse for a job, Whitney seems to have plenty of time to gad about; which she uses poorly. Hovering around me. The helicopter stepdaughter is always up for getting into trouble. I’ll never make it easy for her, why should I instruct her in her powers? I zip my lip. Intimacy with her ilk – even the kind obtained through criticism – is to be shunned. I certainly hated her unwelcome appearance on this morning; seeing my disguise. But it could play out to my advantage. “Might could” as my mother used to say. Let’s keep her guessing.

“New car?” She studied my rental curiously. She’s all about the moolah. Let her think it’s mine.
“You don’t like it?” I asked airily. Always answer a question with a question; never give out free information. Make them pay for it. What she’s really worried about is my spending of her father’s money. Because she thinks she gets what’s left. That’s if there’s any left! I lean as hard as I can on Trustee Nicholas Rudoff’s investment decisions to keep them out of the “blue chip” category. That is, when I have nothing better to do.

She continued to stare. “It doesn’t seem like you, somehow.”

So now I’m obligated to live up to her fantasies, whatever those might be? I tried not to manifest my annoyance. “I contain legions,” I teased. Somebody famous said that once. Goddess knows what the real quote is.

Whitney’s “job” is selling advertising. Her Mazda Protégé is slapped with stickers. Beats me how a person so deliberately unpleasant can survive on commissions but she says she loves the excuse to be out in the open air. She must rely on her garrulous nature. She loves “chewing the fat.” Today she wore white pants, too early for the season, a brilliantly colored op-art blouse and a short pink suede jacket emphasizing her girth. Why does she insist on wearing belts as if she had a waist? But what can you do? I’d tried and failed. Built for comfort, not for speed, as my stepfather used to say.
She fastened her eyes on my knitting bag. “Late for class?”

“That’s it. I’ve got to run.”

Of course I had to lie. If I got on the jury she’d find out eventually. Let her. But while I wove my spell I required a decent darkness.

“Sure is a new look,” she remarked, her eyes sliding about inside the glop she decorates them with. Brunettes don’t need so much makeup. Someone should tell her.

Pointedly I unlocked the Buick door. I seriously doubted I was even the target of this visit. It’s spring, after all. She, too, had probably noticed Brainerd’s Beautiful Assistant. She must have sap – or something – running through her veins.

“I’d offer you coffee but I’ve already set the alarm,” I climbed right into the front seat. Buh-bye! No need to stand on ceremony with family members!

She leaned right in the driver’s window so I found myself staring right into her somewhat bulgy pale blue eyes. She has worn the same makeup ever since high school; black eyeliner, turquoise mascara, rose blush and a sweep of pink lipstick. Just like an American girl doll. Sacrificial offering to the Lost Daddy.

“Wow, do you look different,” she emphasized.

“I’m in disguise,” I hissed conspiratorially. “Charitable works.” Keep her guessing. I tried not to seem too impatient as I pointed to her car blocking my path. She hurried to accommodate me.
Do her good to run. She can use the exercise.

Charmian

Chapter III – The Judge

What do you give the woman who has everything? It’s a problem. By definition, femininity is yearning for a never-to-arrive completion. Queens, of course, are different. Power is what we yearn for. One thing I’ve learned, if it’s masculine “approval” you’re waiting for; you’ll never get that! Men call us “insatiable” in self- excuse. So what new toy could tempt me?

I hesitated a little as I opened the mailbox. Usually it’s a pleasure to stand in my immaculately groomed garden looking through trust and bank statements, but last week, for the first tie in my life I received an anonymous letter. It was postmarked Colorado Springs, the old neighborhood, but the address had been made by label and the return address was “Suite 7, Flatirons Office Park”. So even though the envelope said “Hallmark” I opened it with a distinct lack of excitement. Almost certain to be begging disguised as an invitation. Strangely enough, it was both.

Inside were cut out letters assembled to form the words:

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

A chill ran through me and I looked up hastily, but as far as one can see through woods and leaves, I was alone. Things that seem very unpleasant at first conceal hidden delights; there’s a life lesson for you. Emotions first repelled as shocks to the system can even become addictive. So I thought hard about it. In fact, I had been thinking about it all week.

A new game. I used to love games. A hazard of wealth is a lack of surprises, since you control everything. I usually visit the sex club as a corrective. Plenty of surprises there. Here’s a game with a new disguised player. Someone jealous, obviously. Someone who feared coming out from behind the mask; someone who hoped to upset me from a distance.

I’ve done some terrible things in my life, that’s for certain. A Queenship that’s routinely handed over isn’t worth having. On the other hand, it’s literally impossible for anyone to know what those were. So here’s a person – a disguised person, a gameplayer – trying to manipulate me into acting in some way I wouldn’t have acted without this incitement. Now what could that be?

Criminal psychology says it’s a woman, an older woman (what junior would ever choose this mode of communication?) but it might be a man. A man-woman. I know plenty of those.
That’s the reason that I put my hand slowly into the mailbox as if a second coachwhip waited in the dark to pounce. But no Colorado Springs Hallmark card. Instead, a summons to jury duty!

What could be more intriguingly amusing than a power of life or death? In Colorado, death sentences are decided by the jury. My whole life has been about deciding when to cut the cord. I might have to share it with eleven others, but most people are easily manipulateable, and our jury system is such that one holdout is all it takes to derail a prosecution.

KDVR has been screaming at me for weeks about the Sivarro-Haymaker case. Did pretty Karen Sivarro, dragged back from Europe in chains, really ask her boyfriend to hire a hitman? Is she as responsible as said hitman or perhaps even more so? The murder of Rafe Zanelli – we had all seen pictures of his bullet-ridden body sprawled in the roadway – wouldn’t have occurred without her, that’s for certain.

I became aware of someone creeping up behind me. It could only be my neighbor, Judge Sugarman, who has lately been stalking me. I steeled myself to face him with a smile.
The Judge came lumbering at me with such speed he must have been spying from his kitchen window with binoculars. Judge Sugarman has a sort of a wife – what is left of her. She’s already been outsourced to a nursing home so he is frantically shopping for a replacement. He has a fine pool to select from – literally vans of women arrive carrying electric brooms and casseroles and baskets of flowers — but in the most ancient tradition of romance, he doesn’t want anyone who wants him.

He wants me. His only love affair at present is with the internal combustion engine, so a racket of clippers or weed whacking usually precedes him as he angles towards the privet separating our lawns. I tried not to gag at the love light in his eyes. After all, this summons I held in my hand could give him an opportunity to be useful. Quid pro quo makes the world go round, as my dear, late, late husband used to say.

I could have told him that being alone these days is no reason to go without sex. As a local potentate he probably knows about the sex club. I see plenty like him on my nights there – suited up and eager for excitement. But they don’t last. They soon discover that anonymity removes their sole attraction. Suddenly they experience the kind of catastrophic fall in status it used to be their professional obligation to inflict on the rest of us. They find themselves subject to a new order – the rule of beauty. If they expect to dance, they had better bring a partner. Judge Sugarman has big shoes that need filling.

He is looking to purchase, not rent. His clothes say Nieman Marcus but his jowls say prenup. Someone patient with him in bed, supportive at public events, self-effacing at parties and ready to memorize the birthdays and anniversaries of children and grandchildren. Been there, done that. This man doesn’t need a beginner, he needs an immigrant. Off the boat, or under the fence. An indentured servant with a huge bill hanging over her head. He had better look elsewhere. Now I please only myself.

I made a magnanimous effort to pretend I’m not automatically repulsed by wandering nasal hair and a gym-free torso – Goddess knows I’ve had worse. His needs and my needs do not match up. Yet he possessed a small capability to be of service. The judge took my hand and as I touched his Mount of Venus I could read that he is an ungenerous lover. Failure to achieve paradise is your own damn fault. I relinquished his hand by the simple stratagem of spewing my mail at his feet.
He half bent – half knelt – to pick it up, allowing my eyes to stray to a more delectable sight – the arrival of Brainerd’s assistant.

Brainerd is my gardener, and there is nothing attractive about him. He is slowly becoming skeletally thin – Paris Hilton would be jealous – but on him it’s not attractive and suggests some terminal condition unresponsive to modern meds. Lately he has started bringing an assistant – his heir, one supposes – who is as radiant as sunrise. I don’t know his name, but I have stood at my bathroom window many times watching the muscles slide around under his tattoos. He’s probably gay, but I can play male. One has the obligation to explore all appetites, creating new ones as necessary.

Only the dead don’t hunger. Nostalgie de la boue, as my late husband used to say. We all suffer from an atavistic longing for the primeval mud. I admit, I’ve even been tempted to slide a guest card to the sex club underneath the bent windshield wipers of the ramshackle steamship he uses for transportation, but frankly, I’m too lazy.

Brainerd’s assistant acknowledged my presence shyly and began unloading a collection of rakes and sprays. I favored him with a luxurious smile while Judge Sugarman staggered red-faced to his feet. “You certainly get a lot of catalogs,” he puffed.

I dazzled him with a leftover lip-pleat.
“Oh, you know how it is,” I told him, “So much money, so little time. Why should my stepdaughters get spoiled? We must prevent the heirs from plundering the estate.”
He laughed gamely. He loves it when I flirt with him, but I like to go beyond flirtation into actual discomfort. Because it’s fun.

“Here’s my latest acquisition,” I said, dangling the jury notice in front of his yellow-orbed irises. “The Sivarro-Haymaker case is the one I want.”

“That’s the one everybody wants,” he said, and I saw his mind struggling with the realization that I was asking for something in his power to grant.

He backpedalled. “They usually divide the pool randomly between civil and criminal.”
I pouted. “I don’t want to waste my time on a civil case.”

Still, he hesitated. “I could make a call but…even if you had a very high number and were interviewed late the prosecution might use a strike against you.”

“Why the prosecution?” I was annoyed. Dr. Quantreau’s widow was a celebrant of the status quo, why should anyone assume I automatically identify with the accused? I have personal reason to know, where there’s smoke there’s usually a smoldering ember someplace. I felt insulted by the ugly film muddying his eyes. I could hear what he was thinking – yes, I read minds when it’s worth my while. Isn’t he thinking the trophy second wife is just the kind of predatory adventuress poor Karen Sivarro is accused of being? Yet it’s a damned poor adventuress who ends up on a murder rap. They had to drag her back from England in chains.

Cut to the chase. “So who’s their ideal juror?” No false pride here. I can play anything. Pick his brains since that’s what he’s here for.

“The different sides want different things. They’ll give you a questionnaire. The trick is to appeal to both of them.”

“And how would I do that?”

“You’re uninterested in gossip. Never read “bad” news or watch frightening television. No relatives in prison or law enforcement. No crime victims in the family tree.” He leaned forward to whisper in my ear, “Easily swayed.”

I laughed out loud. “Why that old thing!” I exclaimed in my best Southern accent. “I can fake that twice a day!”

I rapped him on the shoulder with my invisible fan. “Don’t forget to make that phone call! I’m counting on you now!” And then I was sprinting for the house, leaving him standing there as if he had forgotten why he had come, as, given his advanced age, quite possibly he had. Bastard! He owed me that phone call! The more I thought about it, the more it seemed likely that he himself was my anonymous correspondent. It was just the kind of thing an elderly law-saturated geezer would get up to.

He’d probably had plenty of cases like this, when he was on the bench. Why should a beautiful, rich young woman with all of life as her plaything have anything to do with the likes of him, unless she required his counsel, expertise, and a professional shoulder to lean on? It certainly would explain why he hovered for the “trigger” of me at my mailbox.
Men are so transparent.

Whitney:
Chapter II – Death

I always knew she murdered my father. Does evil have a smell? Only eleven percent of people can detect the odor of cyanide. Almonds. But I am one of the eleven percent. I guess I have a nose for evil. Something about Charmian twitched my nostrils from the beginning. Charmian! That name is fake like everything else about her – nails, hair, eyes, breasts; fake, fake, fake. And my poor idiot father, who raised me to know quality and to seek it out, to insist on value, to treasure worth and reward effort – said he didn’t give a damn about Charmian’s past – who or where she had been.

Didn’t care that she was forty years younger! Or was it what was left of his dick that didn’t care? My older sisters were much more pragmatic about his dick of clay. They had husbands, children, they were grown and gone. Out of the house. In fact they said all men had clay dicks. McKenzie says every man’s ideal woman is a Vegas stripper. Darby says hookers work hard and earn their money just like everyone else. McKenzie says old men are a lot of work, and Darby says Dad treated Mom like crap and karma is a bitch.

I don’t remember. I was still little when she died. I took his side, always. He was the fun parent, giver of candy and prizes. He pointed out to me how logical he was and how stupid she was; why should I ever join her team? Dad and I read hero books; Beowulf, the Iliad, Genji, Gilgamesh. He encouraged the highest aspirations. I was the son he never had and didn’t need, because he had me. Then came the stroke. He needed help. No biggie, basic assistance. He didn’t want to help from me; he said I had my own life to live. I should have worried more when he hired Charmian. She was totally unqualified.

She was dangerous. Anyone could see. Every layer I’ve peeled back is perfidious and I don’t think I’ve hit bottom yet. I learned it from you, dad. You were so demanding, such a skeptic. My father was a doctor, a teacher, a diagnostician. Whenever I say my last name everyone asks, any relation to Dr. Quantreau? His whole ethos was to look beneath the surface – never settle for the obvious – take full note of signs and portents. Intelligent people have the obligation to educate themselves until they understand what they’re up against.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m going t catch her and expose her. After they married he kicked me out of the house – she kicked me out – and he had no protections. I thought I had more time. When nobody was looking she finished him off.

I didn’t tell my sisters. I should have seen it coming. felt too guilty. So it’s up to me to do the dirty work. But is it really “dirty work” when it concerns someone you love? Dad, the raging unbeliever who taught me how to make the most of every second we are given, was tricked into lapsing gently into the dark night. How could you have disappeared so completely from the lovely earth you taught me how to savor? Exactly as if you had never been here at all.