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As I’d expected, the store was quiet that morning. Joyce would be over at two, but otherwise, I didn’t expect much foot traffic.
Just as well. It was definitely time to try those “other” methods Josie had mentioned in our call the day before.
I’d brought my Everyday Witch Tarot cards with me down to the shop, and so I reached under the counter, pulled them out of their green velvet bag, and started shuffling them.
And shuffling.
And shuffling.
I wanted to frown but wouldn’t let myself. The same thing had happened during Danny’s reading, but I told myself the universe knew what it was doing, and so I just needed to keep at it until the cards felt right. It wasn’t as though I had customers beating down my door that morning.
Finally, though, after I’d shuffled through the cards for what felt like the umpteenth time, it seemed they were ready to tell me what I needed to know.
First card out, lying face up on the glass countertop.
The Lovers.
I frowned. At first glance, the card seemed to tell me the murderer had to be someone who had a romantic connection to Danny, but I’d already gone down that road and found it to be a dead end.
Had I messed up by not talking to Susan Laughlin in person? Just because Chuck had said he didn’t believe she was capable of murder, it didn’t mean he was right. I thought he generally had decent instincts about people, but a casual social acquaintance in high school didn’t necessarily give someone deep insight into another person’s soul. If I arranged a meeting, I might be able to get a glimpse of her aura, which would tell me a lot.
Or maybe Chuck had been correct in his assessment of Susan’s character, and I was barking up entirely the wrong tree here. I circled back to Danny’s revelation about his affair with one of his students. Maybe Mike Harrison really had found out that his daughter Taylor had been sleeping with a man old enough to be her father and had decided to remove Danny from the equation before he could corrupt any more innocents.
That theory felt wrong to me, though. I could see a father going into a rage and blowing Danny awayJohn Wick–style for his transgressions, but poison didn’t seem like the sort of thing a furious parent would use to enact their own form of justice.
Then again, what did I know? I’d never killed anyone…never been angry enough with someone to even contemplate murder, although I had to admit there were a few times in my life when I’d hoped karma would enact a swift and dirty revenge.
Obviously, I needed more data.
I laid down the second card.
The Knight of Cups, reversed.
Some people didn’t read reversals, but I’d always incorporated them into my own Tarot readings because I thought they added a certain richness to the interpretation. As with all of the cards, that particular one could mean several things, but the one which leaped into my mind then was a single, powerful emotion.
Jealousy.
Over the years, I’d learned to trust my intuition, so I didn’t see any reason to question it now.
Had someone been so jealous of Danny that they’d decided to get him out of the picture?
That particular scenario didn’t seem to make a lot of sense, though. I had to admit I didn’t have all the facts at my fingertips, but everything I’d heard from Danny seemed to indicate he’d dated Jennifer, Susan, and Corinne serially. It wasn’t as though he’d played them off against one another or anything like that.
Frowning, I stared down at the card, at all the heart-shaped bubbles floating around his head as the Knight rode his broomstick. If one of those women had been jealous of the others, wouldn’t she have tried to get rid of her rivals rather than the man they were all competing for?
It didn’t make any sense.
I blew out a breath and drew the final card.
The Seven of Swords, upright. Again, a card which could mean a great many things, but I immediately thought of one of the card’s most negative aspects…getting away with something.
Getting away with murder?
It sure looked that way.
I stared down at the cards for a long moment. Once again, I had the feeling that although I might have teased out an interesting detail or two, the overall big picture continued to elude me.
Unless….
