Lady in the Lake(47)

Did Madame Claire—oh, Claire for clairvoyant, too clever by half—intuit any of this as Maddie stood on her doorstep? Maddie didn’t believe in psychic powers, but something in the woman’s fearsome gaze suggested she could read Maddie’s mind if she so desired.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“I assumed you would know I was coming,” Maddie said, and immediately regretted it. Why would she use Diller’s joke? It wasn’t going to endear her to the woman.

“My gift is not always on,” Madame Claire said. “It affords me respite as needed. It can be exhausting, my gift.” A significant pause. “When I use it, I expect to be paid.”

Maddie thought about her purse, the few bills she had with her, her wan hope of taking a taxi home.

“I’m not here as a client. I’m from the Star. I want to ask you a few questions about the reading you did when Cleo Sherwood was missing.”

“Questions inevitably engage the gift.”

“Would three dollars be enough?”

“Let me see the bills.” She took them from Maddie and literally sniffed them.

They must have been found acceptable, because she took Maddie into what had once been the house’s front parlor. The windows facing the street were draped with shiny red material that hoped to pass for satin, but Maddie could tell that it was a cheap imitation. There was a crystal ball, a deck of regular playing cards. Madame Claire ignored those, asking Maddie to sit opposite her and place her hands, palms up, on the table. She then put her own palms on top, her fingers reaching to Maddie’s wrists. She could have taken Maddie’s racing pulse if she desired. But she didn’t. She didn’t do anything.

“So Cleo Sherwood’s parents came to you?” Maddie asked, breaking the uneasy silence.

“The mother, not the father. The father believes what I do is the work of the devil.” Frowning. “He is a very ignorant man.”

“What did you see?”

“I held an object that her mother believed had great meaning to Cleo.”

“An object?” This was new.

“An ermine stole.” Her voice caressed the word, drew it out. “A very fine piece of clothing.”

“How did Cleo come to have a fur?”

The psychic’s look was disdainful. Of course. How did any young, single woman come to have a fur?

“I know what you told the Afro. It doesn’t seem to have been”—Maddie had to tread carefully—“it didn’t match up with where she was found. Maybe the green, because of the park or her blouse. But not the yellow. Was it from earlier in the evening? This color yellow that you saw?”

Madame Claire nodded. “Yes. I was seeing something from earlier. I think she must have been in a yellow room. Yellow was the last thing she saw.”

“You mean—she was killed elsewhere?” Maddie thought back to the morgue, the medical examiner’s scenarios. A dead body is heavy. It would be impossible for a man, even a strong one, to heave it up and into the fountain.

“Yellow is the last thing she saw,” Madame Claire repeated.

Maddie could not believe she had squandered time and money for so little. The detail about the stole was new, but it wasn’t enough to make an article. “Do you see anything else?”

She closed her eyes and kept them closed for so long that Maddie began to wonder if she had fallen asleep. Then her eyes flew open with what was clearly practiced flair. “A secret.”

“Cleo Sherwood had a secret?”

“No, I think it’s yours.”

Maddie had to will herself not to snatch her hands back from Madame Claire’s rough ones.

“Everyone has secrets,” she said.

“Yes, they do. But you have one that’s been causing you distress. It’s like a tiny pebble in your shoe, yet you keep walking. All you have to do is stop, shake it out, and you’ll feel better. But you don’t want to. I wonder why that is. It’s not a big secret, yet you don’t want anyone to know.”

Did Madame Claire mean Ferdie, who had just flashed through her mind? Don’t be silly, she scolded herself. The woman is a fraud. This is all hokum. “Maybe it’s not my secret to tell. Or not mine alone.”

“No, this happened long ago. But I also see yellow in your aura, although it’s slipping away, disappearing, as if the lights are going out very slowly. Is it a streetlight? I don’t know. It’s gone now.”

Maddie put her hands in her lap, breaking the connection, just in case. “Do you ever feel guilty about what you do?”

“Why would I feel guilty?”

“Your reading for Cleo Sherwood’s mother gave her hope. But she was almost certainly dead by the time she consulted you. You couldn’t give her any real answers.”

“I did not ask for the gift and I don’t make people come to me. I did not make you come to me. And I don’t promise answers. People ask me what I see and I tell them. It’s not my fault that the otherworld is indirect, that the visions don’t come with explanations.”

“Can you tell me anything about my future? So far, you seem to be looking only at my past.”

Madame Claire took a deep breath and held it, staring into Maddie’s eyes, her pupils dilating. Maddie felt like a cobra facing a snake charmer. Finally, Madame Claire exhaled.