Fool's Moon, page 13
“The cards reveal what the cards reveal,” Ruby intoned in her best imitation of Rosa. Then, when JoJo rolled her eyes, she added, “Don’t worry, I’ll bring all my cute girl-power and fluffy bunny kinds of decks. I’ll make sure the bride and all the bridesmaids have fun.”
“Great! I wish I could be there to see you in action, but unfortunately I’m not on the invite list. I’m just the facilitator.” JoJo gave Zuki a pat and then looked around. “So where’s little Ophelia this morning … sleeping in?”
“Probably. And you are not going to believe what happened last night.”
While JoJo started on her second doughnut, Ruby told her how she’d come home from class only to find that the cat population at the Botanica had doubled while she was gone. And, even more amazing was the fact that the new cat in residence was none other than Ophelia’s missing brother.
“Rosa is going to kill me, of course,” she finished, “but I’ve already decided that if she complains, I’ll pull a ‘her’ on her and talk about Fate and Karma until she agrees both cats were meant to be here.”
“Your half sister’s created a monster, and she doesn’t even know it,” JoJo replied with a grin. “Seriously, you get more woo-woo every day.”
Glancing at her phone, she added, “I can’t wait to meet Kitty Number Two, but I’ve got to get to work. Shoot me a text tomorrow and let me know how it went with Courtney’s girls.”
“I will. Here, I’ll walk you out.” Ruby grabbed the cardboard box with its remaining doughnuts—you never left any food sitting outside unprotected in Florida unless you wanted to attract fire ants or lizards or other creepy crawlies!—and then headed with JoJo back inside.
Ophelia waited until the door closed after the two humans; then she crawled out from behind the tangled-root base of the strangler fig tree and gestured Brandon to follow. At the sight of the cats, the roosters startled and then scattered in a flurry of flapping wings to the side yard.
“We should have come out earlier and said hi to Ruby’s friend,” Brandon complained, watching the retreating chickens with interest. Ophelia had already warned him that the birds were off-limits; still, a feline could look!
“If you didn’t make us hide,” he went on, “maybe we would have gotten a bite of doughnut like Zuki did.”
Ophelia made a little grumbly sound deep in her throat. “We weren’t hiding, we were collecting information on the down-low,” she told him, proud that she’d been able to use that strange human expression in front of her brother.
She lightly leapt onto the tile-topped concrete table that Ruby and JoJo had just vacated. “We don’t have time for yakking with humans,” she went on. “I told you yesterday that Luciana was in trouble. We need to start working on a plan to help her.”
Brandon jumped on the table to join her, flopping atop the tile surface so that his stub of a tail hung off the table’s edge. “But I thought Ruby said last night that everything was all right.”
“Hmmph. Who are you going to believe, her or the Tarot cards?”
She didn’t wait for Brandon to ask who Tarot Cards was. Instead, she pawed at the deck that Ruby had left behind, flipping over a few of the thin pieces of cardboard as she began explaining to Brandon what Tarot did.
Humans need them to help figure out things, since they can’t see or hear what we felines can! They look at the pictures on these cards and tell stories about them. See, look. These are the bad cards that mean something awful will happen.
She sifted through and found the same cards from yesterday, the Tower and the Devil. Those, she pushed to the edge of the table, near where her brother was sitting. With them as illustration, Ophelia told Brandon how people came all the time to the Botanica, sometimes to buy statues and books and pieces of plants with funny smells. But sometimes they came to have Ruby tell them stories about the cards.
She didn’t dare mention—at least, not yet—that she, Ophelia, seemingly had her own knack for interpreting these strange human symbols.
“That’s what Luciana came for,” she explained. “You remember the night we rescued you from the street dogs, how I told you that Luciana had come to the Botanica. She wanted Ruby to look at the pictures and say what they meant. She was happy to see me, of course. She said I should stay here, and that she’d keep looking for you. She acted brave about that, but she was scared as a mouse when she talked about the son. She thinks he killed the old woman, our human mom. That’s what she came to ask Ruby about.”
Brandon had been only half listening to her explanation about this thing called Tarot. He was more interested in watching a pale brown gecko change color as it walked across the yellow case of Ruby’s phone, which she’d left behind on the table, and then onto the gray stone box. But at the mention of Luciana’s name and talk of their first human mom, he forgot the lizard and sat up.
“What?” he exclaimed, tail bristling. “That can’t be right. I thought the old woman fell into the pool, just like the birds and the snakes and the mice did. If he pushed her on purpose, not just for a game, we have to tell Ruby so she can tell other humans!”
“But Ruby doesn’t think he did it,” Ophelia hissed back. “And Luciana didn’t see him do it. But she knows he’s bad, and she’s looking for something she called proof. I think she even figured out he was the one who put us in that box!”
“Then he might try to put Luciana in a box, too! And maybe no one will find her. You’re right, we have to help her.”
Brandon bristled his fur, ready for action. Ophelia, meanwhile, leaned to look under the table at Zuki.
“Brandon and I need to sneak out again tonight while Ruby is gone. Do you want to come with us, back to our old house?”
The pit bull had been sitting at her spot beneath the table staring at the back door Ruby and JoJo had gone through with the pastry box. Reconciled to the fact that the doughnuts weren’t going to return anytime soon, she crawled out and put her front paws on one of the benches, so she was nose-to-nose with the cat.
“Go with you? No way. Even if you knew how to get to your old house, it would take you all night to walk there, and then you’d have to walk back again.”
“So what? If we get tired, we can take a nap.”
Zuki snorted. “You won’t get much sleep. There’ll be lots more street dogs like the ones from last night, plus big roads with lots of cars. All you’ll be doing is running and hiding.”
Ophelia snorted back. “Me and Brandon, we’re not mice. We’re not scared of dogs and cars.”
“Well what about mean humans with their shooting things?” Zuki countered. “You might never make it back here.”
Ophelia squinted her green eyes. What the pit bull was saying was true. It would be a dangerous trip … and in the end, they might not be able to do anything to help Luciana. But they had to try!
And then Brandon poked his fuzzy face over the edge of the table, too. “It wouldn’t be too far to go if we drive a car.”
Zuki gave a howl of laughter and tumbled off the bench. “Drive … a car,” she choked out, raising both paws like she was holding an invisible steering wheel. Giving said invisible wheel a few twists, she added, “But you … don’t have … a driving license.”
“Hey, this is serious business! Quit laughing at my brother!” Ophelia gave her friend a stern frown, even as she shot Brandon a look that said, Are you for real?.
Brandon, meanwhile, gave his short tail an imperious flick. “I didn’t say we would drive. The PAWN human, Luis, has a picking up truck. And he goes to our old neighborhood at night all the time.”
“He does?”
Zuki quit laughing and stared at the cat. “How do you know?”
“Because I went with him one time.” Brandon gave his paw a quick lick, like he was embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to. You see, he’s got one of those hard tent things on top of it—”
“A camper top,” the dog helpfully supplied.
“—and since that makes it nice and shady, one day I thought the truck would be a good place to take a nap. I guess I was real tired because when I woke up, it was dark out and he was driving! We went all the way to Palm Beach, and we even drove past our old house. I’ve never gone so fast before. Ophelia and I could sneak into the truck and let him drive us over.”
“Brandon, you’re brilliant!” Ophelia cried, doing a quick figure eight around him.
Zuki, meanwhile, sat pondering. “But how do you know he’s going to go there again? What if he drives the truck somewhere else, like to the ocean?”
“He’ll go there,” Brandon insisted. “I heard him tell this other human in the store—a fat man with pictures drawn all over his arms—that he had a sweet deal on the island and was making lots of money. And that he could go there every night if he wanted to. If it’s sweet, maybe he’s selling doughnuts.”
“Or tuna,” Ophelia suggested, since that obviously made more sense.
Zuki snorted. “I bet he’s not selling doughnuts … or even tuna. I’ve heard humans talk like that, and it usually means they’re selling drugs.”
Then, when Ophelia and Brandon gave her twin puzzled looks, she clarified. “You know, the bad medicine that makes humans happy and sick all at the same time. And then the police come and put the humans that sell it in cages so they can’t do it anymore.”
Brandon’s whiskers drooped a little. “But Luis seems like a nice human. He gives me food and water, and he lets me stay behind PAWN. He even gave me a new name, Gato.”
“That just means ‘cat’ in Spanish,” Zuki told him, the explanation making Brandon’s whiskers droop even more.
Ophelia shot the pit bull another annoyed look. To her brother, she said, “Don’t listen to her. Zuki doesn’t know everything. If the human fed you, he can’t be all bad. And we don’t need Zuki. We can do this plan all on our own. We’ll sneak out after Ruby leaves, and we’ll be back before she knows we’re gone.”
Zuki cleared her throat. “What about the street dogs? If you two go alone, they’re bound to spot you.”
“So we’ll run fast. They won’t catch us.”
“But they caught Brandon, remember?”
The two cats exchanged glances. Then Ophelia said, “Well, maybe we could use a guard dog to walk to PAWN with us. You could wait there until we come back from checking on Luciana if you don’t want to ride with us, and then we’ll walk back here together.”
“I’ll think about it. Right now, I’m going back inside to see if Ruby will give me another piece of doughnut.”
So saying, the pit bull slunk off, whiplike tail hanging low.
“I think you hurt her feelings,” Brandon observed. “She looked sad when you said we didn’t need her.”
“Oh, for kibble’s sake. She’ll get over it, just like any other dog. Besides, she was making you feel bad, first.”
Still, Ophelia couldn’t help feel a tiny bit guilty. Zuki was a good friend, for a canine. And she was right that the street dogs might be a danger, particularly since they probably blamed her and Brandon for the boxer mix getting hurt.
“I’ll talk to her,” she decided. “But first, I’d better straighten up these cards before Ruby comes back outside again.”
Swiping at them with her front paws like she was scratching litter, Ophelia swiftly pulled the scattered cards into a semblance of a pile. All except the Tower and Devil cards, which still lay at the table’s edge. Before she could scrape them into the pile, she heard the back door of the Botanica squeal open.
“Quick, it’s Ruby,” she hissed to her brother. “Hop down and get under the table, and pretend you’re sleeping.”
In a flash, she and Brandon hit the literal bricks. In the process of jumping, however, Ophelia accidentally kicked the two orphaned cards, sending them fluttering to the ground.
Ruby will notice them. But no time now to worry about that!
Instead, she and her brother curled up side by side on the bricks beneath the concrete table, feigning sleep. After a few seconds, Ophelia slitted open one green eye and watched as a pair of short, denim-clad legs advanced on them. And then came Ruby’s voice saying, “Aha! There you are.”
For a moment, she thought the comment was directed at her and Brandon. Then she realized that Ruby was talking to her phone—something that humans did quite often, she’d noticed, even when there wasn’t another human talking back to them. She saw Ruby’s hand as she tucked the phone into her jeans pocket. But instead of turning and heading back inside, Ruby stood there a moment.
“What the heck?” Ophelia heard her mutter.
Act innocent, she told herself, and blinked that same message to Brandon.
Ruby stared at the Tarot deck sitting on the tiled tabletop. “What the heck?” she repeated. Her glasses had slid down her nose again, and she gave them an impatient poke back into place. But that adjustment didn’t change what she was seeing.
When she’d left the courtyard a few minutes earlier, the cards had been neatly stacked alongside her cell phone. Now they lay in an untidy heap, as if someone had taken a large hand and smeared the cards into disarray, then gathered them back into some semblance of a stack again.
Except for the Tower and the Devil—the same two cards that she’d found turned up beside the Celtic Cross after her reading with Luciana the other day. They lay faceup on the brick beside the table, as if they’d been tossed, or dropped. But how … who? …
She glanced around; then, gripped by sudden suspicion, she peered beneath the concrete table.
Where Zuki and the roosters had earlier been, two black cats now snoozed. The little girl, Ophelia, opened her green eyes and yawned, revealing a neat, pink mouth and plenty of tiny, sharp white teeth. Her brother opened his eyes as well and gave front and back legs a long stretch. Both felines looked sleepy and innocent.
Too innocent.
Despite herself, she smiled.
“All right, my little Tarot cats,” she said as she retrieved the two errant cards. “I know you’ve been playing with my deck. That’s fine, but try not to lose any, okay? A deck’s not much good if some of the cards go missing.”
To her surprise, the cats each gave her a small mew before settling back down to sleep again. Had they truly understood her, or were they simply responding to her voice? Even though she knew she was being fanciful, she couldn’t help but think it was the former.
Leaving the cats to their naps, she squared up the cards and stowed them back into their onyx box. She tossed a few pellets of fish food into the pond, earning a round of bubble-smacking from Philomena. The roosters heard the shaking of the fish food container and came running for their share.
By the time the finned and feathered portion of the menagerie had all had their snacks, it was well after 8:00 a.m. Time to do a bit of reshelving and general checking of inventory in the shop before she opened up. She wouldn’t have time for shop duties after closing, she reminded herself, not if she wanted to get costumed and out the door to the party on time.
But even with a surprisingly busy day of sales and readings at the store, Ruby couldn’t stay focused on business. Instead, her thoughts kept drifting back to the two recurring cards, the Tower and the Devil, that she’d first seen turned up next to the reading she’d done for Luciana. What were the chances that the cats had knocked those same exact cards out of a second deck that morning?
It had to be a coincidence, she was still insisting to herself as 5:00 p.m. came and she was locking up the Botanica for the night. Of course, Rosa would have taken such a happenstance in stride. She could almost hear her half sister intoning one of her favorite catch phrases: Coincidence is the Universe making a point, so you’d best listen.
Ruby snorted. She liked the late, great Yogi Berra’s quote better: That’s too coincidental to be a coincidence.
But when she was back upstairs in the shared bathroom applying hair glitter to her blue streak, she found herself again worrying over Luciana and those two cards.
“Stop that,” she said aloud to her reflection, giving her head a shake so that the glittery blue lock caught the light. “You did your part with the reading. Everything else is up to her now. Besides, she knows how to find you if she wants you to take another look at the cards.”
An hour later, Ruby was properly bangled and veiled and carrying a velvet bag that held a couple of bridal-shower-appropriate Tarot decks. She called a quick goodbye to Zuki and the cats, frowning when they didn’t trot out for their usual round of petting before she left for the night. No doubt they were in the courtyard digesting their supper which, because she felt guilty for leaving them alone for two nights running, was heartier than usual.
That, or she was getting the silent treatment for same.
“I’ll make it up to you,” she called to them, adding a couple of air kisses for good measure. “I promise, I’ll be a stay-at-home-pet-mom tomorrow night.”
A few minutes later, she was in her powder blue Volkswagen Beetle heading down the darkened side streets. Her plan according to her GPS was to hit the main drag—in her case, Dixie Highway—and head to the nearest bridge over the Intracoastal waterway and into Palm Beach. Her immediate destination, however, was the chain drugstore for a refill of breath mints, an item Rosa had told her to always keep on hand for an event like tonight.
Your client won’t be paying attention to what you’re telling her about her love life if you’re breathing a Cubano all over her.
She had, of course, been referring to a sandwich—one of the go-to lunch menu items made by the Cuban locals. Similar to a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, it stepped up the game with sliced pork, pickles, and mustard atop Cuban bread and was squashed, panini-style. Ruby indulged in one at least once a week. Picturing the tasty sandwich now made her stomach rumble, since she’d foregone supper based on JoJo’s promise of appetizers at the party.
