Ashley Bell (Ashley Bell #1)(32)
She stood in line behind her target, telling herself not to force the moment, to wait for the woman to notice her. She wouldn’t take a snarky tone when disclosing her good fortune. Striving to sound sincere, she would thank the professor for all she had learned in those three months, as if being harried out of the university had been a valuable service, had awakened her to her faults, and had brought her to her literary senses. She would be so convincingly humble and ingenuous that Solange St. Croix would be left speechless.
The professor’s handbasket contained nine items, and when her turn came at the checkout conveyor belt, she turned to her left to unload her purchases. She saw Bibi from the corner of her eye and turned to face her with an almost comical expression of astonishment.
The woman seemed to be wearing the same outfit as on the day in her office when she’d breathed fire, a tailored but drab pantsuit and a blouse the gray-green of dead seaweed. Her graying hair was still in a bun, her face without makeup, and her blue eyes were cold enough to freeze her opponent in a smackdown with the mythical Medusa.
Before Bibi could get out a word, the professor said, “You bold little bitch,” spraying spittle with the B’s, and her face contorted with what seemed to be both anger and fear. “Following me, stalking me.” Before Bibi could deny the charge, the woman rushed on: “I’ll call the police on you, don’t think I won’t, I’ll get a restraining order, you crazy c—!” In the river of invective that followed, she used the c-word, the t-word, the f-word more than once, and it was impossible to tell whether rage or genuine terror scored higher on her emotional Richter scale. “Get this girl away from me, someone help me, get her away from me.”
Three shoppers had stepped into line behind Bibi, making retreat a clumsier bit of business than she would have liked. Maybe they knew who the esteemed professor was or maybe she looked so unthreatening and widowlike that, in spite of her foul language, they were inclined to sympathize with her. On the other hand, customers and clerks and aproned bagboys stared at Bibi, gaped at her, as if she’d committed an offense against the helpless older lady that, although witnessed by none of them, must have been malicious in the extreme. With St. Croix still asking for help and warning everyone about her dangerous assailant, Bibi made her way among the shoppers in line behind her and turned left, crossing the front of the store. Rattled as she rarely was, mortified, she didn’t know where she was going—that is until she put down her handbasket of vegetables on a display of Coca-Cola, said “Excuse me” to a young mother and child with whom she collided, and headed for the nearest exit.
So much for floating.
“You tensed up all of a sudden,” said Calida Butterfly.
“Just a bad memory.”
“Men,” said the masseuse, making a wrong assumption. “Nothing we can do about them except shoot them, if it was legal.”
Bibi hadn’t gone back to Gelson’s for a year, although it was her favorite market. Even to this day, she imagined an employee now and then recognized her and, to be safe, kept out of her way.
She hadn’t seen Dr. Solange St. Croix since. Hoped never to see her again. With no slightest clue to puzzle out the reason for the professor’s bizarre behavior, Bibi had decided it must be early-onset Alzheimer’s.
A draft stirred the candle flames for a while, and fluttering cascades of soft amber light spilled across the room, which smelled sweetly of roses. Bibi took slow, deep breaths and exhaled through the face hole in the massage table.
“That’s better,” Calida said, “much better.” A few minutes later, she said, “We’re done with this part, kid. Now let’s find out why you were spared from brain cancer.”
Fully dressed, feeling pleasantly wrung-out, Bibi opened a chilled bottle of chardonnay, poured two servings, and brought the glasses to the chrome dinette table with the red Formica top.
Calida Butterfly had moved some of the candles from the living room and distributed them on the table and countertops to provide the proper mood for the second thing that she had been hired to do.
Laying her ostrich-skin suitcase on one of the chrome-and-black-vinyl chairs, Calida said, “Do you know what divination is?”
“Predicting the future,” Bibi said.
“Not entirely. It’s also a tool for uncovering hidden knowledge by supernatural means.”
“What hidden knowledge?”
“Any hidden knowledge,” Calida said, as she opened the half of her suitcase that didn’t contain items related to massage therapy.
“I don’t believe in prognostication, all that stuff.”
Calida wasn’t offended. She said cheerily, “Well, the way it works is, you don’t have to believe in it for it to be true.”
Bibi saw, among other things in the bag, a Sig Sauer P220 or maybe a P226. She recognized the weapon because the P226, chambered for nine-millimeter ammunition, was the standard pistol issued to SEALs. Paxton had purchased his own P220, because it was chambered for .45 caliber and more likely to knock a bad guy down hard in close combat. The two guns looked all but identical.
Bibi had her own P226, which Paxton had taught her to use. An engagement gift.
The uneasiness about Calida, which Bibi had shaken off, now crept up on her once more. “Why the gun?”
Calida took the pistol from the suitcase and put it on the table. “Divination creates the psychic equivalent of seismic waves, shock waves. The vast majority of people can’t feel them or don’t realize what they’re feeling. But certain people can feel them—and sometimes locate the source.”