Scarlet Nights

  “Watch out for her, that’s all I ask,” Mike said as he left the arena to go back to Ellie’s tent. As he knew she would be, Sara was waiting there for him with a clean shirt.

  Minutes later, Mike got a text message.

  HEY KID. HEARD U GOT MY INVITE TO JOIN ME. WHATEVER

  UR DOING ITS WORKING. VANDLO PEELED OUT IN A RAGE.

  Smiling, Mike tossed his phone in the air and caught it.

  “What was that about?” Sara asked as she smoothed his shirt down.

  Grabbing her about the waist, Mike swung her around.

  “What’s made you so happy? Last night and now this. What’s going on?”

  “Instinct, babe,” he said, laughing. “It hasn’t failed me yet.”

  Sara was waiting for an answer to her question.

  “Let’s just say that I was concerned that someone had betrayed me, but I couldn’t make myself believe it.”

  “And he … or she … didn’t betray you?”

  “Naw. So where’s Kim’s little sister? Anna, was it? We need to rehearse before the show starts.”

  Sara’s sister Taylor entered the tent. “I talked to Anna and she wants nothing to do with you. She saw your fight and she said, and I quote, ‘He’s too old and I don’t like his beard.’”

  Mike put Sara down and kissed her neck. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to persuade a woman to like me.”

  “Now why do I doubt that you’ve had much practice at that?” Taylor asked, and Mike smiled at her.

  “Stop flirting with my sister and go find Anna.”

  “Yeah,” Taylor said, “or my husband will beat you up.” Her husband was an overworked doctor who never had time to go to a gym.

  “I’ll win this game, and it’ll be the last one,” he said softly to Sara. “After it’s done, I’ll come back and put the wires on you, so stay around here and don’t leave. Got it?”

  “Yes,” she said and took a deep breath. She knew he was telling her that Greg was on his way, which meant that the big blowout with him was going to happen soon. Her fear was that she’d be so angry when she saw him that she’d blurt out the truth about his mother and the investigation, and she’d ruin everything.

  “You’ll do fine,” Mike said. “And don’t worry about saying too much. I’ve seen what a great liar you can be.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  He pulled her into his arms and after a quick glance to see that Taylor had her back turned, he kissed her. “When this is done I promise to make you feel a lot better.”

  She nodded, but she was still worried.

  He kissed the middle of her forehead, and left the tent.

  “Sara,” Taylor said, “Luke told me that Mike’s thinking about opening some sort of gym. Can I sign up Gene now?”

  As Sara laughed she realized that she was at last beginning to bond with her sisters.

  27

  SARA WANTED TO see her husband in a jump rope contest, especially with a spitfire of a girl like Anna Aldredge, so she rushed to finish the chores her mother had given her. While she was out front unloading apple pies, she heard a lot of praise from people who’d seen Mike in the fight with Colin. Teenage boys were kicking at one another and making people laugh when they fell on the ground.

  How very much she wanted to tell them that Mike was her husband!

  Ellie stopped beside her and whispered, “It won’t be long before we can give out advertising for Mike’s gym. And are you ready to take on remodeling that run-down old farm?”

  Sara smiled; her mother knew just how to cheer her up. She loved thinking of her future with Mike.

  “He moved the prize car off the stand,” a kid yelled. “He and some kid are going to give a jump rope show up on the platform.”

  There was no doubt who “he” was, and Sara untied her apron. Every year the Fraziers donated a car to be awarded to the overall winner of the games. Now it seemed that Mike’d had the vehicle removed so he and Anna could put on a performance. It wasn’t something Sara wanted to miss.

  But her father stopped her. “Sara, could I see you for a moment?”

  He had on what her family called his “doctor face.” For the most part, Henry Shaw was an easygoing man, content to let his wife and energetic two older daughters run his life, but when his medical abilities were needed, his whole personality changed. He became the man in charge.

  Without hesitation, she went to him. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Joce.”

  Instantly, Sara started toward the fortune-telling tent next to them, but Dr. Shaw caught her arm.

  “She’s all right, but she’s overexerted herself. Luke and I are taking her home for a few hours so she can rest. Sara, I know you want to see Mike, but could you fill in for her? There’s a long line outside Joce’s tent, and the idea of letting people down is stressing her out. She said that you’re the only one who knows what to do to take over for her.”

  “Of course,” Sara said. “I’ll do whatever she needs.” She consoled herself with the thought that she’d be staying near her mother’s tent, just as Mike had told her to do.

  “Joce had Luke get her some clothes so she changed. Would you mind putting on that …” He waved his hand to mean the gaudy costume Joce had been wearing.

  “Sure. Just give me a few minutes.” As she went into the little curtained-off room at the back of the fortune-telling tent, Sara wondered how much Mike had told her parents on the night he’d arranged their marriage.

  It didn’t take Sara long to slip Joce’s big, flowing robe on over her own costume and put on Tess’s hoop earrings. At least with impersonating Joce, Sara could remove the bandage covering her wedding rings. On impulse, Sara asked her father to help her put a pillow on over her flat stomach. With the veil and her heavy black eyeliner, Sara hoped no one would notice the change in fortune-tellers.

  As Dr. Shaw tied the pillow in place, he said, “I hope that boy you married makes this real. I like grandkids. Uh, Sara, do you think I’m too old to join Mike’s gym?”

  She kissed his cheek. “Dad, in my eyes, you’ll never be too old for anything.”

  Smiling, he fastened the veil around her face. With the red turban over her hair and her marriage rings finally exposed, it was difficult to tell her from Jocelyn.

  “Go to it,” Dr. Shaw said, and as he opened the flap to go outside, she saw a quick movement at the back. In other circumstances she wouldn’t have noticed, but now she knew it was Brewster Lang lurking about.

  As soon as her father was out of sight, Sara said quietly, “Everyone loves your cookies, Mr. Lang.” She went inside and seated herself at the low chair. In front of her was a little round table that Shamus had decorated with astrological signs and iridescent stars, with another chair on the other side.

  In front of the tent was one of the high school girls who’d volunteered to help at the fair, and Sara told her to start letting customers in.

  An hour later, she wanted to scream that she needed a nap too. The townspeople had known it was Joce doing the fortune-telling. Maybe it was because they knew she was a newcomer to town or maybe it was the veil, but for some reason, the people poured out their hearts—and they took what Sara said in reply very seriously. From the first “reading” she’d found herself playing the role of counselor.

  “Should I leave him?” one woman asked. Sara knew the woman and wanted to yell, “Yes!” Instead, in as mystical a way as she could manage, she referred her to a counselor in Williamsburg who worked with abused women.

  “Is my husband having an affair?” Sara assured the woman, who was notoriously jealous, that he wasn’t. Her husband had a belly bigger than Joce’s, and no one made passes at him.

  “Will I meet someone?” Sara liked the question from this woman because she’d seen Mr. Peterson looking at her in church. Sara told her that if she didn’t immediately buy four new tires at Peterson’s Wheels she’d have a wreck—and also, Arthur Peterson had a sp
iritual message for her so she needed to talk to him personally. The woman left in a hurry, and Sara hoped she was on her way to the garage.

  Sara told two teenage girls to stop smoking in secret and to wear longer skirts. They went away laughing hilariously.

  The worst part of the job was hearing crowds in the distance as they cheered at the games. She wondered what Mike was doing now. She’d never seen him jump rope. How good was he? That was, of course, a rhetorical question as there didn’t seem to be a sport that Mike wasn’t brilliant at.

  Smiling, Sara wondered if their children would inherit his talents. She’d like a boy who was a martial arts expert. On the other hand, she hoped she didn’t get a daughter who thought tree climbing was an art form. How would Sara relate to her?

  “Oh, dear, I seem to have interrupted some serious daydreaming.”

  She looked up to see Mrs. Myers hobbling into the tent. She was a widow in her eighties who lived in a tiny apartment on the outskirts of town and regularly attended church. She hadn’t been in Edilean long, but it was said that she’d lived there as a child and had returned when her husband died a few years ago. The poor woman walked with two canes, and even that was difficult. At church, she was always in the first five of any list of people needing charity.

  As Mrs. Myers sat down, Sara shuffled the tarot cards, being careful not to bend them. “And what questions can I answer for you today?” Please, she thought, don’t ask me how long you have to live.

  “Oh, the usual, dear. When am I going to meet a man?”

  Sara tried not to laugh, but when she saw the twinkle in the woman’s eyes, she couldn’t help but smile from behind the semitransparent veil. “How about a nice, healthy retired businessman?”

  “I’d rather have a horseman, lean and dark, a man who will carry me across the fields on his black stallion and make love to me in the moonlight.”

  Sara’s mouth dropped open. “I rather like that idea myself.”

  Mrs. Myers was squinting as she looked at the tarot cards. “So what does it say about me in there?”

  Sara didn’t know enough about the woman to come up with a fake fortune that fit her. But she did know she wasn’t rich. “Money,” Sara said firmly as she put down three cards. “I see a fortune in your future.”

  “Do you? And what card would that be?”

  Sara wasn’t sure what each card meant, but it made sense that coins meant money. She pointed to the one that had Greg scowling and surrounded by six women’s faces on gold coins. “This one.”

  Mrs. Myers opened her handbag—so old it had cracks in the leather—and removed her reading glasses. As she opened them, she said, “I once wore a veil very much like the one you have on.”

  “Did you?” Sara said, smiling. “And did it get you what you wanted?”

  “It got me a big, handsome husband,” Mrs. Myers said as she put on her glasses. “He was a little old, maybe, but still in working order.”

  “Then it was worth it,” Sara said, but her heart was pounding. A veil that got her a husband? A handsome young man who made love in the moonlight? Could he have been Greg’s father? Was it possible that this woman was the notorious Mitzi Vandlo? She was much older than fifty-three, but when Sara looked at the woman’s hands, she saw that they were mostly unlined and younger than her face. No one had suggested that Mitzi might disguise herself by looking older, and also, this woman didn’t have the big nose that was prominent in her only photo.

  Sara realized that if Mrs. Myers had told anyone else her story about a veil getting her a husband, it would have been a good joke. It was only because of what Mike had told her that Sara could recognize the woman.

  Sara’s first thought was that she wished she had a buzzer to push with her foot. She’d not asked Mike about the cameras in the fortune-telling tent, and now she wished she had. Was someone monitoring them or were they just making a recording that would be looked at later? If she made a gesture toward a camera, would it be seen by an agent?

  Stay calm, she told herself as she quickly hid the card with Greg’s face on it and spread others out on the little table. She reassured herself that if Mitzi had seen Sara and Mike together, it was all right because right now she was protected by the fact that everyone thought she was Joce, not Sara. This was good, because for all she knew, Mrs. Myers’s old handbag contained a gun. To reassert her identity, she let her rings flash. Joce was a married woman.

  Mrs. Myers was looking at the cards through her reading glasses, and her eyes were wide. “Where did you get that deck?” The woman’s voice was breathless, as though she was seeing something wonderful.

  The doubt of her being Mitzi Vandlo fled. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” Sara said rather loudly. “There are only six sets in the world. My husband’s publishing house printed them. They were going to use them for publicity for one of his books, but they were too expensive to produce, so these are the only decks that will ever be printed.”

  Mrs. Myers bent over to study the cards on the little table. “Do I recognize some of the faces?”

  “Oh, yes. Shamus Frazier drew them all, and he surprised us by making portraits.” Sara picked up the Judgment card with her mother’s face on it. She was wearing a red dress, with a big handkerchief over her head, and gold earrings. “That’s Mrs. Shaw, my friend Sara’s mother.” As surreptitiously as she could, Sara slipped a card with Stefan’s face on it under the stack. She thought it was better not to let the woman see Stefan as a thoroughly unpleasant-looking man. “But I seem to be telling you all about my life, when I’m supposed to be talking about yours.”

  In spite of everything she could do, Sara felt panic rising inside of her. What should she do? Stay in the tent, be a psychic and wait, or run to Mike? But she knew that leaving was impossible. This woman had been eluding law authorities all her life, so she’d never stay there and wait to be captured.

  Sara decided to do her best to keep the woman interested so she’d stay as long as possible and give someone time to come and … What? Arrest her? Sara tried to remember everything Mike had told her about Mitzi, but it wasn’t easy, as her heart was in her throat.

  “Let me see. Ah, yes.” She looked at the woman. “Do you want to hear the truth of what I see in the cards, or are you like the others and just want sugarcoated candy?”

  Mrs. Myers—Mitzi—blinked at her. “The truth,” she said.

  “All right. The veil you wore led to an unhappy marriage, and you’ve been a widow for a very long time.” She looked up at the woman, her eyes full of apology. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Myers, I’m just telling you what I see. It doesn’t seem that your husband was a nice man.”

  When the woman said nothing, just kept staring at Sara, she almost chickened out. She tapped a card. “But you’ve had love in your life with another man. He was young and very handsome.” Sara smiled as sweetly as she could. “Was your description of moonlight rides from your own past?”

  The woman said nothing.

  Sara looked back at the cards. “But something happened to your young man. His future is cloudy.”

  The woman leaned forward a bit, as though she were intrigued.

  “But wait. There’s another love in your life. There’s a child. A boy? A girl?” She looked to the woman for an answer.

  Mitzi leaned back against the chair and Sara was afraid she was losing interest. “You’re the fortune-teller, dear, not me.”

  Sara looked back down. “This child is very desirable to the opposite sex and you’re glad of that, but it also causes you many problems.”

  Again, the woman was silent.

  “Ah. Here. This card.” She touched one. “It seems that you have a goal in life. You want something because it will give you …” She frowned a bit, as though concentrating. “Peace. Freedom. Yes, whatever it is that you want, if you find it, you will be given the peace you so greatly desire.”

  “You are such a clever young woman,” Mrs. Myers said, then began to cough. “Excuse me.” She coughe
d some more. “The hazards of getting older. I hate to trouble you, dear, but could you possibly run next door and get me some water?”

  She wants to steal a deck of cards, Sara thought as she stood up, her eyes blinking rapidly as she tried to think of what to do. “Find Mike” was the first thought in her mind, but how did she do that without leaving this woman? What if she slipped a deck or two into her purse then ran out? Maybe she’d never be found again—and it would be Sara’s fault that she was lost.

  “Certainly,” Sara said as she went through the curtain at the back of the tent. She stuck her head outside. “Mr. Lang!” she hissed. “I need you.” The man didn’t appear. Sara stepped inside and looked through the curtain to see Mrs. Myers just sitting there, giving Sara time to leave.

  She looked up at the seam where the fabric walls joined the tent. There was a line of braid along the ridge, and she figured that the camera lenses were hidden in it. She raised her fist and turned around, then made another swirl and used both arms to gesture that someone was to come and help her.

  She glanced back into the main part of the tent and Mrs. Myers was still sitting there, her glasses on the end of her nose. She’d picked up the deck that Sara had been using and was going over them. Sara drew in her breath. In the next second she was going to see Greg’s face and she was going to know what was going on.

  “Where’s Mike?”

  Startled, Sara turned around to see Ariel standing in the back opening of the tent.

  “Mike?” Sara asked.

  “Yeah, the guy you hang on to like he’s about to drown. He’s disappeared. I saw him walking around with some stranger, a really gorgeous guy. The way that man moved made me … But anyway, now we can’t find Mike, and the next battles are about to start. Think he’s afraid of a rematch with my brothers?”

  Sara peeped through the curtain again, and Mrs. Myers was dropping three decks of cards into her bag. Since it looked like no one was going to show up to save her, Sara knew she had to act instantly or Mitzi Vandlo was going to get away. If she escaped, everything that had been set up to catch the woman would come to nothing.