Joyland(32)

While we ate, I told them about Madame Fortuna's prediction that I would meet a boy with a dog and a little girl in a red hat who carried a doll. I finished by saying, "One down and one to go."

"Wow," Erin said. "Maybe she really is psychic. A lot of people have told me that, but I didn't really-"

"Like who?" Tom demanded.

"Well . . . Dottie Lassen in the costume shop, for one. Tina Ackerley, for another. You know, the librarian Dev creeps down the hall to visit at night?"

I flipped her the bird. She giggled.

"Two is not a lot," Tom said, speaking in his Hot Shit Professor voice.

"Lane Hardy makes three," I said. "He says she's told people stuff that rocked them back on their heels." In the interest of total disclosure, I felt compelled to add: "Of course he also said that ninety percent of her predictions are total crap."

"Probably closer to ninety-five," said the Hot Shit Professor.

"Fortune telling's a con game, boys and girls. An Ikey Heyman, in the Talk. Take the hat thing. J oyland dogtops only come in three colors-red, blue, and yellow. Red's by far the most popular. As for the doll, c'mon. How many little kids bring some sort of toy to the amusement park? It's a strange place, and a favorite toy is a comfort thing. If she hadn't choked on her joyland

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hotdog right in front of you, if she'd just given Howie a big old hug and passed on, you would have seen some other little girl wearing a red dogtop and carrying a doll and said, 'Aha! Madame Fortuna really can see the future, I must cross her palm with silver so she will tell me more.' "

"You're such a cynic," Erin said, giving him an elbow. "Rozzie Gold would never try taking money from someone in the show."

"She didn't ask for money," I said, but I thought what Tom said made a lot of sense. It was true she had known (or seemed to know) that my dark-haired girl was in my past, not my future, but that could have been no more than a guess based on percentages-or the look on my face when I asked.

"Course not," Tom said, helping himself to another s'more.

"She was just practicing on you. Staying sharp. I bet she's told a lot of other greenies stuff, too."

"Would you be one of them?" I asked.

"Well . . . no. But that means nothing."

I looked at Erin, who shook her head.

"She also thinks Horror House is haunted," I said.

''I've heard that one, too," Erin said. "By a girl who got murdered in there."

"Bullshit!" Tom cried. "Next you'll be telling me it was the Hook, and he still lurks behind the Screaming Skull!"

"There really was a murder," I said. "A girl named Linda Gray.

She was from Florence, South Carolina. There are pictures of her and the guy who killed her at the shooting gallery and standing in line at the Spin. No hook, but there was a tattoo of a bird on his hand. A hawk or an eagle."

That silenced him, at least for the time being.

"Lane Hardy said that Roz only thinks Horror H ouse is 110

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haunted, because she won't go inside and find out for sure. She won't even go near it, if she can help it. Lane thinks that's ironic, because he says it really is haunted."

Erin made her eyes big and round and scooted a little closer to the fire-partly for effect, mostly I think so that Tom would put his arm around her. "He's seen-?"

"I don't know. He said to ask Mrs. Shoplaw, and she gave me the whole story." I ran it down for them. It was a good story to tell at night, under the stars, with the surf rolling and a beachfire just starting to burn down to coals. Even Tom seemed fascinated.

"Does she claim to have seen Linda Gray?" he asked when I finally ran down. "La Shoplaw?"

I mentally replayed her story as told to me on the day I rented the room on the second floor. "I don't think so. She would have said."

He nodded, satisfied. "A perfect lesson in how these things work. Everyone knows someone who's seen a UFO, and everyone knows someone who's seen a ghost. Hearsay evidence, inadmissible in court. Me, I'm a Doubting Thomas. Geddit?

Tom Kennedy, Doubting Thomas?"

Erin threw him a much sharper elbow. 'We get it." She looked thoughtfully into the fire. "You know what? Summer's two-thirds gone, and I've never been in the Joyland scream-shy a single time, not even the baby part up front. It's a no-photo zone.

Brenda Rafferty told us it's because lots of couples go in there to make out." She peered at me. 'What are you grinning about?"

"Nothing." I was thinking of La Shoplaw's late husband going through the place after Late Gate and picking up cast-off panties.

"Have either of you guys been in?"



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We both shook our heads. "HH is Dobie Team's job," Tom said.

"Let's do it tomorrow. All three of us in one car. Maybe we'll see her."

"Go to Joyland on our day off when we could spend it on the beach?" Tom asked. "That's masochism at its very finest."

This time in spite of giving him an elbow, she poked him in the ribs. I didn't know if they were sleeping together yet, but it seemed likely; the relationship had certainly become very physical. "Poop on that! As employees we get in free, and what does the ride take? Five minutes?"