She wore a live boa constrictor around her neck; the animal somehow seemed to increase the size of her breasts and enhance her sensual mystique. There was something about her that seemed familiar, but Jenna couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
“Ah,” Madam Sam said softly. “Welcome. How curious that you have come to me for a reading!”
She didn’t offer Jenna a hand but instead indicated a chair in front of her table, which held a crystal ball and a large tarot deck.
Jenna said. “You know me? Have we met?”
Madam Sam-or Samantha Yeager-laughed, a low, throaty and melodious sound. “Of course I know you. Your name is Jenna Duffy, and you’re attached to that delightfully devilish rogue, Sam Hall, and you’re here to investigate the recent horrors that have occurred in Salem. Have we met? No, never, I’m afraid.”
“Very good,” Jenna told her. “I mean, we haven’t met, but you do know exactly who I am.”
“Oh, yes, and you work for the FBI,” Madam Sam said.
“Okay…”
“Aye, yes, well, my other powers may be questionable, but I do read the local papers very well,” Samantha said, grinning. “You didn’t have to pay for a reading to speak with me.” Her voice had changed; it was tinged with amusement, and the sound was down-to-earth.
“I’ve wanted to talk to you. And with all the business going on with Haunted Happenings, I thought I should seize this opportunity.”
“Talk away. We have fifteen minutes,” Sam told her.
The boa stretched out toward Jenna.
“Nefertiti won’t hurt you,” Samantha assured her quickly.
“I’m not afraid of snakes,” Jenna told her.
“Good old Saint Patrick got them all out of Ireland, eh?”
“Doesn’t she scare away costumers?”
Samantha shrugged. “Some, maybe. But I think she attracts more than she loses. It’s all showmanship, really.”
“So you’re not a medium?”
“What’s a medium, really? I talk to people, I try to understand them. I don’t tell them that money is going to fall into their laps, or that they will find true love. What I do is try to draw out what is troubling them, and show them the directions they might take. I don’t have any kind of a degree in psychology but, really, reading people is simple as long as you listen.”
Jenna laughed softly. “Some might call that being a fraud,” she warned.
“And some might call it making a living. I’m sure that some call you a fraud.”
“Oh, definitely,” Jenna said, chuckling some more.
Samantha picked up the tarot cards and shuffled them. “Not the tarot cards-they come up as they come up, and a reader is supposed to interpret them. I’ve studied the tarot and all the ways that the cards might be interpreted. So, shall we read the cards? Cut, please, and we’ll use the Celtic Cross layout.”
Jenna cut the cards and Samantha began to lay them out.
“So, what did you want to know?” she asked.
“You wanted to buy the Lexington House.”
“Yes, I did. I still want to buy it.”
“And you made an offer to Abraham Smith?”
“A very generous one.”
“But he turned you down.”
“Flat.” Samantha looked up at her. She was smiling. “And you want to know if I killed the old man and his family-except for the crazy kid-to get my hands on the house?”
“More or less,” Jenna admitted.
Samantha kept looking at her, still amused. “Nope,” she said.
“You think that Malachi Smith is crazy?”
“As a loon!”
“So, do you think that he killed Peter Andres and Earnest Covington, too?”
“Yup.”
“Even though the grocer swears he saw Malachi in his shop?”
Samantha laid out cards before answering her, and then looked at her again. She sighed. “I’m not a cop or investigator or whatever, but I understand that the poor kid is truly a pathetic creature and I can also understand that you feel sorry for him. But you have to feel sorry for the dead people, too, the victims. Why kill Peter Andres? He was a farmer who substituted at the schools now and then. And Earnest Covington? He was harmless. You had to be crazy to have killed either of them, that’s all I can imagine. Oh, dear!” she said suddenly, looking down.
Jenna wasn’t really familiar with tarot cards, but she saw that the horned god-or, according to the cards, the devil-had come up in the middle. She tried to recall what she did know of the tarot… The card known as the devil was really a half god, half devil, and he represented what was in all men, and the fact that they had to choose to be slaves to the evil within, or to slip out of the chains that bound them.
Samantha looked at her and smiled. “Well, seems you have a few options ahead of you. Give in to decadence, or hold the line of morality. If it were me-I’d sleep with the man!”
“It could mean, too, that there’s both evil and goodness around me,” Jenna said.
“Oh, it could, but how boring! And look, you have the Fool over here-ah, yes, so, moralistically, you are looking at others. How rude of you! Your Fool looks down upon the Devil, yet sees no evil in himself. And there-you have the hanged man. At least it seems you are progressing and realizing the foolishness of judging what you see as evil in others. Sex, perhaps. Is that it?” She looked curiously at Jenna.
Jenna didn’t answer. She tapped another card. “Death, of course, means change?”
Samantha laughed. “Or death! Oh, come, I’m sorry. Yes, it signifies change. But, without kidding you or just being bitchy-really, forgive me-the layout of these cards is almost…”
“Almost what?”
“A warning that if you judge others and pursue them, you will die.” The look she gave Jenna was perplexing. “You seem like you’re really nice. Yes, I’m a fraud, but…maybe you need to be careful. You have the Devil, followed by Death.”
Suddenly, the cards seemed to leap from the table and fly across the room. Both women jumped back in their chairs.
And then they stared at each other accusingly.
“I swear, I didn’t do that!” Samantha breathed, and the look she gave Jenna seemed both stunned and fearful.
“I didn’t do it,” Jenna said.
Samantha waved a hand in the air. “You’ve asked your questions. Go, will you?”
“I have another question,” Jenna told her, rising.
“What?” Samantha asked crossly.
“Where were you when the Smiths were killed?”
“That’s easy. I was right here-ask the clerk!”
“And what about Earnest Covington?”
“I was probably right here!” Samantha said, growing agitated as she started picking up her cards.
“And Peter Andres?”
Samantha stopped and stared at her. “How the hell would I know? That was six months ago! I had barely gotten to town. Look, please, this is how I make a living.”
“Sure. Thanks,” Jenna said. She slipped out from the curtained cubicle and walked to the counter to pay for her reading. She wasn’t sure what she thought about Samantha Yeager. She was a woman who knew showmanship and how to use her assets. She knew it was all a game, as well. And yet…
She started looking at the jewelry in the glass case at the checkout counter and drew the young clerk with the huge nose ring into conversation. When they had chatted about the marvels of Madam Sam and Haunted Happenings, Jenna asked her, “And Madam Sam has been working here since the Haunted Happenings
