“This session is over,” she said, blowing out one candle. The room darkened.

“What have you sold her into?” I said. “What terrors is she feeling now? Tell me where she is, Madam Anna, or I’ll bring the police with me next time I come.”

“You want to bring the police here? That’s a laugh. I’ve been calling them for months. The prostitutes are working this corner every night now, and they do nothing. The cars come by honking, they park in front of my house. Every morning I sweep up the condoms. Tell them to come. Please.” She blew out another candle, the room darkened further. Only one candle now burned, its faint flicker reflecting on all our faces before dying at the room’s edges.

“Maybe when they come, they’ll check your license,” I said. “I’m sure you have a business-privilege license as required by law. And this house, I’m sure, is zoned for commercial use.”

“Oh, yes, that is the work of your law. Shut me down, the scourge of the neighborhood. Forget the whores, forget the drugs, the gangsters. Good day, Victor Carl.”

She was about to blow out the last candle when Horace said, “We care about her, too.”

Madam Anna held her breath, raised the gaze from her one good eye to Horace. I turned my head, too, because there was a note of tender softness in his voice.

“The way her eyes squint when she laughs,” said Horace. “The way she skips instead of walks. The cool feel of her hand when she’s holding yours. The way she looks up at you with a face full of trust. You care about her, I see it in you. And we do, too. A girl like that, with a mother like that, she needs all the help she can get in this world.”

“What do you want?” said Madam Anna.

“We just want to know where she is,” I said. “And that she’s okay.”

“Leave your card,” said Madam Anna.

I took a card from my jacket, tossed it on the table. While it was still spinning on the wood, she blew out the last candle.

The room plunged into darkness, nothing to be seen but the faintly glowing tip of the incense stick. I stood up quickly, went to grab hold of her, grabbed only air, and howled out in pain.

“What happened?” barked Horace from the darkness.

“I stubbed my toe.”

“What kind of fool takes off his shoes whenever any old lady says so?”

I took out my phone, flipped it open, turned it on, used the faint light from the display to check out the room. Madam Anna was gone, and so was my card.

With the cell-phone light, I found my shoes, slipped them on, moved around the table, and opened the door that the fortune-teller had come through. There was a hallway and a bedroom and a kitchen and a bathroom, but no sign of the old woman and no sign of the presence of Tanya Rose either. I took the liberty of searching the rest of the apartment. Nothing. Madam Anna was gone, and Tanya, if she had ever lived there, lived there no longer.

“What’s next?” said Horace T. Grant on our way out of the apartment.

“I don’t know.”

“You better figure out something, boy.”

“Yes, I better. That was quite the speech in there, Horace.”

“A bunch of horse crap tied in a pretty knot.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Think whatever the hell you want.”

As we stepped out the door, two men stood on the porch. One was older, bent, wearing a black mourning suit. The other was far younger, a teenager almost, holding on to the old man’s arm.

Horace stared at the two men for a long moment and then held the door open. “Go right on in, gentlemen,” he said. “She’s expecting you.”

45

With my search for Tanya Rose stymied by Madam Anna’s milky-white eye, I turned my attention back to the François Dubé case. Which explains why I was sitting next to Beth in my car in the salubrious environs of the Peaceful Valley Memorial Park.

“There’s something almost cheerful about a cemetery on a shining day, isn’t there?” I said. “The bright grass, the gleaming stones.”

“I find it morbid,” said Beth.

“Or maybe I just enjoy the peace and serenity, as if a manifestation of the promised sweet kiss of death.”

She leaned back, looked at me. “The sweet kiss of death?”

“Wouldn’t it be nice to just be finished with all the striving, the hopes, the jarring needs, the raging disappointments? Wouldn’t it be nice to just be done with it all and to fall into the arms of that final, gentle sleep?”

“You don’t have to die for that, Victor, just retire to Boca.”

“I can’t eat dinner at four.”

“I think you like cemeteries because it’s the one place in the world where you’re surrounded by people with less promising futures than your own.”

“That must be it. You’ve been cheery lately.”

“Have I?”

“Oh, yes. Smiling at your desk, dancing in alleyways.”

“Maybe anyone who doesn’t look forward to the sweet kiss of death seems cheery to you.”

“No. It’s something else. You’re glowing.”

“As promised by that infomercial for this year’s revolutionary new skin-care treatment.”

“Is that it? Did you make that call to change your life?”

“No. I still haven’t used up last year’s revolutionary new skin-care treatment. Where is she?”

“She should be here soon.”

“You couldn’t have just called her?”

“Where’s the impact in that? Our intrepid investigator, Phil Skink, left us a schedule of her regular visits around the town. Today it’s the Peaceful Valley Memorial Park before she heads to her upscale nail salon.”

“And you don’t think it’s rude to intercept her here?”

“Perfectly appropriate, if you ask me.”

“How’s Carol?”

“Fine.”

“I agree, mighty fine. But how are things with her?”

“Progressing.”

“You don’t sound so excited.”

“She’s rather assertive.”

“And that’s a problem how?”

“I don’t know, Beth. I sort of like to dress myself in the morning. Wait, over there. Is that a hearse or a limo?”

“A limo.”

“Bingo,” I said.

The long black car eased to a stop at Row U. The driver hopped out, opened the back door, and out slid Velma Takahashi. She was dressed for the part of the grieving friend with a terrible secret: white scarf around the hair, dark glasses over the eyes, deep red lipstick on her puffy lips, a single white rose in her hand. She walked slowly down the row and then stopped at a granite marker and stared for a moment before kneeling in front of it. We gave her some minutes to perform her ministrations, smoothing the grass, tossing off the seedpods from the maple overhead, we gave her some minutes to wallow in her guilt before we stepped out of the car.

Her head rose at the sound of our doors closing. She aimed her dark, round glasses our way, stared for a few seconds, and then turned back to the gravestone as if she had been waiting for us all along.

We walked slowly toward Velma until we were standing behind her. In front of us was a marker that spread across three sites. CULLEN. And carved over the site to the right, where Velma kneeled, was the name LEESA SARA, and beneath that the words BELOVED DAUGHTER AND MOTHER. Her parents had scrubbed her married name and wifely status from Leesa’s gravestone, and you couldn’t really blame them.

“We need to talk,” I said.

“Uh-oh,” she said without turning around or rising at the sound of my voice. “Does that mean we’re breaking up?”

“Something like that. We need to talk about Clem.”

“What is there to talk about?” she said. “He is nothing, a figment of a bad dream from a different life.”

“But you think he might have killed Leesa.”

“Since when does what I think matter? I think people mourning their friends at a cemetery should be left in peace, and yet here you are.”

“What is Clem’s full name?”

“Clem.”

“Where is he now, do you know?”

“He’s nowhere. He’s a phantom. He appeared as if by magic, did his damage, and now he’s gone.”