Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

The Thirteenth Card by Stefanie Matteson

Author of eight mystery novels starring sleuth Charlotte Graham, published in the 1990s by Berkley Prime Crime, Stefanie Matteson has devoted much of her writing time to short stories over the past few years. A resident of the Garden State, New Jersey, she has also been working recently on a new series of novels featuring a Chinese-American landscape architect. Ms. Matteson’s new tale for us is more fanciful than her earlier stories.

Julie Smith took a seat opposite Robin Hathaway in the booth at Madame Zigana’s Tarot Parlor. She was a young woman in her late twenties with big blue eyes, a long mane of light brown hair, and a peaches-and-cream complexion.

Robin passed the tarot deck across the green baize surface of the table.

Julie picked up the cards. “I’m not going to ask a question today,” she said as she carefully shuffled the deck, her eyes half-closed in concentration. “I want a general reading.” She opened her eyes. “Is that okay?”

“Fine,” agreed Robin. “Is there something going on in your life I should know about?”

“Yes, there is,” she replied evasively. Setting the shuffled deck down on the table in front of her, Julie cut it into three piles, dropping them one by one on the table to her left.

And she wanted Robin to tell her what it was. Fine — Robin had every faith in the cards to reveal what was going on, but the more information Julie shared with her, the more accurate and complete her reading would be.

She said as much to Julie as she picked up the cards.

“I know,” she replied. “It’s just that I’m not really sure if I’m right about this, and if I phrase my thoughts in the form of a question, it might influence the outcome.” She leaned forward reassuringly. “You know I wouldn’t ever test you.”

It was true. Julie’s faith in the ability of the cards to foretell the future was as steadfast as Robin’s, if not more so.

The young woman was one of Robin’s regulars. She came to Madame Zigana’s every Thursday on her lunch hour. And she geared her life around the outcome: writing down the cards’ recommendations in a journal dedicated to the purpose and following them to the letter. Sometimes her attitude gave Robin pause; she was too impressionable.

“Remember what you said two weeks ago about the pain my mother was having in her stomach — that it was nothing?” Julie said. “Well, you were right, as usual. She had an endoscopy on Monday; it was just a mild inflammation.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Robin replied as she turned over the first card in Julie’s reading. She was relieved because her readings were occasionally wrong, but only occasionally. And even then, hindsight usually showed that the cards had been right.

“We were all worried about stomach cancer, of course, especially after my uncle died of it,” Julie went on. “But thanks to you, we were able to put those fears to rest.” Her attention shifted to the cards, which Robin had finished laying out.

Julie’s readings almost always had to do with trivial events: job issues, illnesses, family relationships. Something big rarely happened. And after three years, Robin was as familiar with the petty details of Julie’s life as she was with those of her own family.

But today was different. Julie’s readings usually contained few, if any, of the major arcana: the cards that indicated major changes. And although today’s reading contained only one major arcana card, it was right at the heart of her reading: the Wheel of Fortune, signaling that events in Julie’s life were about to take a turn.

The rest of the cards in the spread revealed the form that change would take: Julie was about to embark on a love affair. Robin was happy for her. Despite Julie’s looks — she had that ripe, luscious kind of beauty that men adore — Julie had had bad luck with men. It was the same old story: They were all out for sex, while she wanted romance.

And it was romance that was now in the cards.

Julie was looking at her eagerly.

“You don’t have to ask a question,” said Robin. “It’s all here.” She waved her hand over the spread. “The Wheel of Fortune is at the center, indicating that your life is about to undergo a major change. And here’s the agent of that change — the Page of Cups. He’s announcing that you’ve met someone you’re attracted to.”

Julie was nodding. “Right on, so far.”

“The emotional slump that you’ve been in is passing out of your life,” Robin went on, “and the attraction you feel for this man is moving into it.” She pointed to the card in the approaching-influence position, the Two of Cups. It showed a man and a woman gazing into each other’s eyes over their loving cups with an almost palpable attraction.

Julie studied the cards, a small notebook in her hands. “Very interesting,” she said as she carefully recorded what Robin had said in her journal.

“And here’s the man himself — the King of Pentacles,” Robin went on, pointing to a card that showed a distinguished man fondly contemplating the large coin he held in one hand. “An older man, successful in business, financially well-off.” She looked up at Julie with a smile. “Way to go!” She continued, “It says here that you met him on the job.”

Julie smiled knowingly.

“A sugar daddy?” Robin teased.

“Hopefully more than just that,” said Julie, her pen poised. “What does it say?”

“Actually, it does show that the relationship will be more than that,” Robin replied. She pointed to the card at the head of a column on the right: the Ace of Cups. “It says that you’re going to fall in love. A new love relationship.” She looked up at Julie with a smile. “No doubt about it: You’re going to be head over heels.”

“And it will be reciprocated?”

“Ah, the crucial question,” said Robin, who by now was well into the spirit of the reading. “Here it is right here, in the hopes-and-fears position.” She pointed to the Five of Cups. “You’re afraid it’s not going to work out. But don’t worry,” she reassured her. “It’s going to be a love affair of major proportions.”

Julie set down her notebook and leaned back with a sigh. She was grinning from ear to ear. “It’s about time,” she said. “I’m tired of being unlucky in love.”

Robin turned back to the cards. “Now, what about this guy?” she asked. She looked up at Julie. “Let’s find out some more about him. I know that you know all about him,” she said, “but I want to know more.”

Removing the King of Pentacles from the spread, she set it aside. Then she gathered up the rest of the cards and handed them back to Julie to reshuffle and cut. Once Julie had passed the cards back, she threw a second spread with the King of Pentacles at the center as the significator card, indicating the person about whom she was inquiring.

“The cards never cease to amaze me!” she exclaimed once she had finished throwing the spread. She looked up at her client. “He has almost exactly the same cards as you. Except that he’s farther along. He’s already in love with you. The Ace of Cups, which was your outcome card, is at the heart of his reading.”

Julie was looking very pleased.

“But,” Robin continued, lifting a warning finger. “There are some problems.” She looked up at her with concern. “He’s married, isn’t he?”

Julie nodded.

Robin showed her the High Priestess. “Here she is — the wife. She dominates the spread. She’s a very powerful woman. They’ve been fighting a lot.” She pointed to a card that showed men fighting with sticks. “But this is what concerns me,” she went on. She picked up a card that showed people jumping out of a burning tower.

“The Tower,” said Julie, reading the title on the card.

“Yes,” Robin said, setting it down. “Right next to the High Priestess. Which means that she’s going to make trouble.” She pointed to a card showing a family gathered in front of a castle. “She doesn’t want her home wrecked. You haven’t slept with him yet, have you?” She looked up inquiringly. “The cards don’t show that you have.”

Julie shook her head.

“Well, if you do, I would advise the utmost discretion. If his wife finds out, it will be devastating. It won’t be only the end of the affair, it will be the end of...” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t like to make dire predictions; after all, the cards weren’t infallible, though in her experience they were almost always right.

“I’ll be careful,” Julie said.

“Good,” said Robin. One of her tarot teacher’s favorite expressions had always been, “There are no accidents in the cards,” which meant that although the throw of the cards might be random, their meaning was not.

“How did it go at Madame Zorro’s today?” Ron asked over cocktails in the mahogany-paneled library. It was ten and he’d just gotten home. Few were the evenings when he got home on time anymore. During the week, he hardly saw their two teenaged sons, who were usually in bed by the time he got home, as they were this evening.

That’s what he called Robin’s business, “Madame Zorro’s.” He made it sound like a friendly joke, but it was really a thinly disguised form of ridicule. He hated her business. He thought it was unsuitable for an executive’s wife to be telling fortunes. But it was more than just that. He also hated it because he didn’t understand it.

Robin had started fooling around with the cards in the ’seventies. It had been the thing to do, along with smoking dope and stringing love beads. Her pastime had quickly turned into an obsession. In her daily readings, she had found that the cards offered amazing insight into the depths of her unconscious, as well as the occasional uncannily accurate prediction. Now and then, she’d been coaxed into doing readings for friends, but that had been the extent of her ventures into fortunetelling — until an office cocktail party.

Her husband, who had been vice president of marketing at the time, had wanted a business-development theme. It was Robin, who also worked for the company, who came up with it: “See your future with Reliance Insurance.” The guests were all business prospects; the gimmick was fortunetelling. Robin would do tarot readings, which, of course, would predict a successful business relationship with Reliance; others would do palm readings and crystal-ball gazing.

The party was a huge success. For three hours, Robin had sat at a card table and read fortunes. At the party’s close, the company had a stack of new contracts and Robin had a new profession. She had discovered she had a natural talent for divination, which was more than she could say for insurance underwriting. Besides, a part-time career as a tarot reader would allow her to leave her full-time job, which she had wanted to do ever since their sons had been born.

By the end of the year, she had set up shop in a storefront in the small city near the suburban community in which they lived. She took the shop’s name, “Madame Zigana’s,” from the Hungarian word for gypsy girl. A neon sign in the window proclaimed: “Reader, Advisor.” She worked from nine to three, when her sons were in school. If she needed to take off to go on a class trip or attend a class play, she did. And although they didn’t need the income, her work gave her money that wasn’t under her husband’s control.

And control — with him — was becoming more and more of an issue.

She was reminded of Julie’s reading. Ron had once been Robin’s King of Pentacles: a person of character and intelligence with natural leadership ability and a gift for making money. Now he was her King of Pentacles reversed: mean-spirited, spiteful, controlling.

It was called the male climacteric.

She answered Ron’s question in the terms he understood. “Fifteen customers,” she replied. “About average for a weekday.”

“At fifteen bucks a shot, that’s two hundred and twenty-five,” Ron calculated. “Subtracting half for overhead, that leaves you with about a hundred and twelve.” (Ron did their taxes.) “Times ten, it just covers the payment for your expensive new vehicle.”

In other words, pin money. With Ron, it was always the bottom line. At least, that’s the way it had been recently. If he couldn’t control his mortality, he would try to control something else. Money.

And, she was beginning to suspect, something — or someone — else...

Ignoring his put-down, she said, “I had my regular Thursday customer today.” She never revealed the names of her customers, in keeping with the sign in her office that promised confidentiality. “It looks as if she’s about to take a lover.” She always tried to share the events of her day, however futile the effort might be.

“Oh, it does, does it?” he said, already engrossed in the newspaper.

After a moment, she changed the subject. “The church is holding its progressive dinner this weekend. I thought we might go. We had such a nice time last year.”

He looked up at her over the rims of his reading glasses. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m going to be in Cincinnati for a conference.” Catching her expression of disappointment, he added, “Maybe you can go with one of your friends. Or we could go out the following weekend for a nice dinner. How does that sound?”

She nodded in assent, but she was suspicious.

She was convinced he was having an affair. Unfaithfulness was one of the characteristics of the King of Pentacles reversed. And her readings for him had consistently turned up the Fool: the innocent who steps blithely into the unknown without regard for how his actions will affect others.

The prospect disappointed her, but it didn’t make her mad. Her work with the cards had revealed the frailty of human nature. Indeed, it sometimes seemed as if the motives of her adult clients were as transparent as a child’s. But if the cards exposed human weaknesses, they also showed how one could deal with them.

She glanced around her at the beautiful room, with the silver-framed photos of the boys displayed on the gleaming surface of the baby grand. According to the tarot, if she could get Ron over this one temptation, everything would be all right. Embracing husband and wife, dancing children, beautiful home — she had seen it in the cards.

Julie was right on time for her appointment the next Thursday. Robin was glad: She was eager to do her cards. It was exciting when events were unfolding in a client’s life. She was reminded of those nineteenth-century novels that had been issued in weekly installments, and how their readers would mob the news agents for the latest issue.

But she didn’t need to look at the cards to see what had happened in Julie’s life. She was aglow. Had Robin been able to read auras, which was not one of her psychic abilities, she was sure Julie’s would have been psychedelic. She was in love.

That’s what her cards showed, too. The Lovers was at the center of the spread, while the card indicating a mere attraction had receded into the position for the recent past. “There you are,” she said, pointing to the Lovers card. She looked up at Julie. “You did it, didn’t you? You took the plunge.”

She nodded with a happy, if somewhat embarrassed, smile.

Robin looked back at the cards. There was the wife again, crossing the Lovers. “Well, the wife’s here, and she’s about to find out, if she hasn’t already. I warned you that you had to be careful,” she chided. “You went away together,” she continued, pointing to a card indicating a recent trip. “Did the wife find out about that?”

Julie shook her long mane of hair. “I don’t see how she could have,” she replied. “We were very discreet. We were both attending the same business conference. In Cincinnati.”

“Cincinnati?” Robin repeated.

Julie nodded.

As the significance of what Julie had said sunk in, Robin felt the sensation of a physical blow to her midsection. No — it couldn’t be, she told herself. When she had recovered her composure, she said casually, “I don’t think you ever told me what line of business you’re in. Though I know from the cards that it’s financial services of some sort. Banking, investing...” she prompted.

“Insurance,” Julie said. “We do underwriting on construction jobs.”

It was true. Julie’s King of Pentacles and her King of Pentacles were one and the same! “But you don’t work for the same company as your lover.”

“No,” Julie said. “He’s the director of marketing for one of our competitors. Actually, I met him at a business conference.”

Ron was marketing director. “That’s good,” Robin said, carefully feeling her way. “There’s less chance of the wife finding out if you work for different firms.”

“Yes,” Julie agreed, “especially since she used to work for the same company. She married the boss. Though she’s a stay-at-home mom now.”

Her suspicions had been right! Ron was having an affair, and the object of his affections was Julie Smith. She studied the young woman sitting across from her. An air of innocence, timidity, malleability. A flower child — that’s how he viewed her, according to the spread, while she viewed herself as a little girl — Daddy’s little girl.

Robin groaned inwardly with dismay. She was a made-to-order girlfriend for a middle-aged control freak in the midst of a midlife crisis.

Obviously, Ron hadn’t told Julie about his wife’s work. That wasn’t surprising. He made no secret of his embarrassment that she worked at such a (in his eyes) disreputable occupation. “Have you told him about coming to see me?” she asked.

“No,” Julie replied. “I have the feeling he wouldn’t understand.”

At least she knew him pretty well, Robin thought. “I think you’re right,” she agreed. “Men like him are too left-brained to understand divination. They dismiss it as hocus-pocus.” She looked up from the cards and smiled at Julie. “But we, on the other hand, know different. I would suggest that you not tell him. Now let’s get back to the cards.”

“Does it say anything about him leaving his wife?” Julie asked.

Robin looked up. “Why do you ask?”

“Because he said he was very unhappy and had been thinking about leaving her for some time. The implication was...” her voice trailed off.

Robin completed her sentence. “That he would marry you?”

Julie nodded.

“The cards show that you’re entertaining a fantasy of marriage.” She indicated the domestic Ten of Cups in the hopes-and-fears position. “But as for the reality... I don’t know.” She pointed to the Fool in the outcome position. “The outcome card is the Fool.”

“Does that mean what I think it does?” Julie asked, anxiously biting her lip.

“Not necessarily. It means all the possibilities of adventure. A fresh choice is before you, but” — she raised an admonitory finger — “you have to choose wisely. The outcome is ambiguous: It could turn out well, or it could turn out disastrously.” She pointed to the High Priestess on her throne. “You’re up against a powerful adversary.”

The barometer of Julie’s emotions was on the downswing. Tears welled in her eyes. Rarely had Robin encountered such an impressionable client. She passed her a box of tissues that she kept on hand for such occasions.

It was at that moment that Robin conceived her plan. “Do you want to ask a question about marriage? We could do that,” she offered.

“No,” said Julie, blinking back her tears. “I think that would be premature. Maybe at some future time. Let’s see what happens first.”

By the time Julie returned to Madame Zigana’s, Robin’s plan had been polished to a work of beauty and elegance. The linchpin of her scheme was a second deck of cards, which she concealed on a recessed shelf she had installed under the table. During the week, she practiced switching decks until she was as adept as a magician pulling a card out of his sleeve. Though a reading depended largely on intuition, it was also based on the meaning and position of the individual cards, as well as on their relationships to one another. With a less experienced client, Robin could simply have manipulated the reading, but Julie was familiar enough with the cards that she could tell a good reading from a bad one. Which was why switching decks became necessary.

The succession of readings she planned for Julie would run over the course of six weeks. Six weeks was enough time for the first bloom of the affair to wear off, as well as enough time for a pattern of credibility to develop. Not that Julie didn’t already have faith in the cards: She was among the most suggestible of Robin’s clients. But Robin’s scheme was designed to tweak that suggestibility, to turn Julie from a true believer into a pawn. It would now be Robin, not the hand of fate, who determined the lay of the cards.

Julie arrived promptly at noon on Thursday, fresh-faced and eager. Her reading for that week wasn’t very significant: There were to be no major changes in her life, only the gradual development of her love affair.

“All these cups!” Robin exclaimed, studying the spread that lay on the table before her. “Love, happiness, emotions.”

“That’s good.” Julie smiled.

“I see that you’re spending several evenings a week with your lover,” Robin went on. “You’re meeting him at an apartment or a hotel room in a big city. Since the cards don’t indicate that you’ve traveled outside of the area, I surmise it must be New York.”

“Amazing!” Julie exclaimed as she made a notation in her journal. “It’s an apartment, actually,” she offered. “In lower Manhattan. His company maintains it for business guests. We’ve been meeting there several times a week, just as you said.”

All of this Robin had already pieced together for herself and had arranged the second deck of cards, which she adroitly substituted for the one Julie had cut, accordingly.

“You’re finding him an ardent lover,” she said. “Eager to please you,” (though this will change, she thought) “though perhaps not as capable a performer as a younger man.”

Julie looked up and a blush crept up her long white neck.

Though he was her husband, Robin could have made the prediction even without personal experience: He was, after all, an out-of-shape executive in his mid fifties — not exactly a candidate for sexual athletics.

“The wife is still in the picture,” Robin went on, “though she’s in the background at the moment. Apparently, she hasn’t found out yet.”

“That’s the only thing the cards have been wrong about,” Julie said. “At least, I think they were wrong. He says she has no idea.”

Little does he know, Robin thought. “Here’s something nice,” she said. She pointed with a smile to the Page of Cups. “He’s going to send you a gift. I would guess it’s flowers. Yes, roses,” she said definitely. “Not just one, not just a dozen” — she threw out her arms in a gesture of expansiveness — “dozens of roses. Five or six dozen red roses.”

Julie looked sceptical. “He’s not the type,” she said, quite accurately.

“Love can make people do things that are quite out of character.”

“I suppose,” Julie agreed reluctantly. She smiled her timid smile. “It would be nice if he did. Nobody’s ever sent me flowers. My junior-prom date gave me a single rose, but nobody’s ever sent me a bouquet. I’ve never gotten a love letter, either.”

“Well, that’s about to change. Look for your flowers within the next few days.”

The flowers arrived at Julie’s apartment on Sunday: six dozen red roses. She didn’t even have enough vases for them, she later told Robin. She’d had to use her coffeepot for one bunch. They covered every available surface in her tiny living room. “It all came true exactly as you said,” Julie had marveled. She had showed Robin the entry in her tarot journal. “You said five or six dozen red roses and it was six dozen.”

The next week was the love letter. Though Robin had been an English major, it had been many years since she’d used her writing skills, and it took her a number of drafts before she got it right: just the requisite degree of mush. Not so much that it would be unbelievable coming from an undemonstrative King of Pentacles, or so little that it wouldn’t have the desired impact.

“There’s nothing in all the world I want but you — and your precious love. All the material things are nothing...” she wrote, cribbing shamelessly from Zelda’s letters to F. Scott Fitzgerald, which she happened to have on her bookshelf. She wrote it on the computer. Thank God for the electronic age; at least she hadn’t been called upon to forge Ron’s handwriting. She knew he’d be too cowardly to disavow authorship.

The computer gave her another idea, which she used for week three: e-mail. Over the course of the week, she sent Julie several e-mails from Ron’s computer at the office. She figured the password would be the same as for his e-mail at home, which it was. Ron was predictable — he was King of Pentacles, after all. Having once worked at the office, Robin wasn’t an unusual visitor; only now she made sure to drop in only when he wasn’t there.

The next week it was mash notes that she faxed from Ron’s office. After that, it was sexy lingerie in the mail, and finally — for the finale on week six — the ring.

It looked more expensive than it was: a cubic-zirconium solitaire — very much like an engagement ring, in fact. Robin had always been a fan of cubic zirconium: Why pay for the real thing when the illusion was so effective?

All of these events in Julie’s life had been duly predicted in the cards.

Ron was tense and anxious over cocktails in the library that evening — the evening of the day Julie had received the ring. In fact, he’d been becoming increasingly tense and anxious over the last five weeks. He had mixed himself his usual martini, but, contrary to custom, it was nearly all gin. The set of his shoulders was stiff, his manner even more remote than usual. He sat in his leather wing chair in front of the fire. A silver tray of canapés rested on the coffee table.

The scene was set. “What is it, honey?” Robin asked solicitously as she passed him the tray. “Is everything all right at the office?”

“No, as a matter of fact,” he growled, helping himself to crackers with caviar.

Ignoring his comment, she proceeded to fill him in on the trivia of her day as she waited for him to settle down and for the sedative effects of the martini to take hold. When it was clear that he was as relaxed as he was going to get, she asked: “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, honey?”

He waved a dismissive hand. “It’s not anything I want to get into. Let’s just say that I think someone in the office is out to get me.”

“That sounds a little paranoid, doesn’t it?”

“You know the saying: ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody isn’t out to get you,’ ” he replied. “Someone’s been sending letters and e-mails and—” He paused to consider his words. “—other things — in my name.” He added: “They’re sending them to someone who works for one of our competitors.”

“Are these... things... that could get you into trouble?” she asked innocently.

“Of a sort, yes,” he said, casting her a sidelong glance. “The sender has been setting me up for something I’m not sure I want to get involved in. At least, not yet and not to this extent. What baffles me is this person’s motivation.” He shook his head in perplexity. “Why is he pushing me into this course of action?”

She refrained from asking what the course of action was. “You’re being very mysterious,” she teased. “Never mind,” she added with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Obviously, you’re not in a position to tell me anything more.”

He shot her a grateful look over the rim of his martini glass.

“I assume the course of action this person is setting you up for is not a wise one.”

“Why do you say that?”

“If it were a wise one, it would mean this person wants you to succeed; if not, it would mean this person wants you to self-destruct. And,” she added, “knowing the office as I do, I doubt it’s the former. Who’re your enemies?” she asked, knowing that Ron sat atop an ambitious heap of middle managers, all of whom envied him his job.

“As you know, they’re legion,” he replied with an ironic chuckle. “But what I don’t understand is this: If this person is out to get me, why doesn’t he expose this—” He groped again for a phrase that wouldn’t be too revealing. “—ill-advised course of action that I’ve embarked upon. Why is he spurring me on?”

“Maybe he wants you to dig yourself in deeper?” she offered.

Ron was quiet. Robin could see the wheels turning. How would it look for him to leave his wife of twenty-seven years for a woman half his age, and one who worked for the competition, besides? Granted, insurance wasn’t rocket science, but consorting with the competition wouldn’t be taken lightly nonetheless.

“Or maybe he’s” (Robin readily accepted her husband’s choice of gender) “spurring you on as a way of helping you to recognize the folly of a course of action that might have been less apparent had it developed at a more gradual pace.”

“A guardian angel who’s pointing out the error of my ways?” he commented.

“Something like that,” she replied. A guardian angel who didn’t want to see him destroy the comfortable life it had taken him years to create, all on account of a simple lapse of judgment brought about by an infantile need to prove his virility.

Ron stared at the fire, sipping his drink thoughtfully. The pendulum was poised at the height of its arc; in a moment, if things went according to plan, it would start swinging back in the opposite direction — coming back home.

“How would Simon view this course of action?” she asked, knowing full well that the company’s chief executive officer was a self-righteous prig who would take a dim view of any extramarital affair, much less one with a competitor.

“Not very well, I’m afraid,” he said, finishing the last of his drink. Setting his glass down on the coffee table, he reached over for her hand and squeezed it. “Thanks,” he said. “I think you’re the one who’s my guardian angel.”

How right he was.

It was a principle of the cards — and of life itself — that, pushed to extremes, everything changes into its opposite. Thus, the libertine metamorphoses into the Holy Roller, the perfect child into the psychopathic killer, the steadfast employee into the swindler. And just so had all the good qualities of her husband — the sober King of Pentacles — turned under the pressure of earning a living, keeping his job, losing his youth — into their opposites: his reliability into unfaithfulness, his authority into arrogance, his talent with money into tight-fistedness. It had been happening for years. His affair with Julie was the culmination of that process. But that didn’t mean the pendulum couldn’t swing back. All it needed was a little push to get it going.

And that’s what Robin had provided.

She did an “other” reading for Ron that night, laying the spread out on the dining room table after he had gone to bed. It had been a long while since she’d done a reading for him — since before she found out about the affair, in fact. It wasn’t out of lack of interest, but rather out of boredom: His cards were always the same. Until they revealed an impending affair, that was. But even that had fallen within the realm of her expectations. The King of Pentacles reversed was known for his casual infidelities. If it hadn’t been Julie, it would have been someone else. Or so she had thought.

The cards that she turned over on the dining room table that night said otherwise.

As she laid them out on the black silk square she used for the purpose, her heart grew cold. There was more of the same: the sharp business practices, the tightness with money, the impulse to control, along with the recent addition of the infidelity. But the picture the cards now painted was of a serious romance, not a casual fling. Julie was the love of his life; it was as clear as day. His current reservations — the reservations that Robin had helped bring to the forefront of his attention — were there, but they were minor compared to the strength of his love. He was going to marry her; there was going to be a wedding. Robin and the boys would be cast off. They were there, but they were sitting squarely in his past, relegated to the sideline of his life. There would even be another child — with her.

Why hadn’t she read Ron’s cards sooner? She of all people should have checked up on what was going on. How could she have miscalculated so badly?

But it wasn’t too late. The fate predicted by the cards wasn’t immutable, as she well knew. It was merely a seed that could grow into an event. But in order for a seed to grow, it needed proper conditions: water and sunshine and fertile soil.

All of which were going to be denied.

It was the sixth week, the week that Robin had thought would be the last of her campaign. Now it was merely a way station somewhere in the middle. She had the luxury of time: that, Ron’s cards had shown her. It would take him awhile to adjust to the idea of leaving his wife and perhaps his job, during which time she would have the opportunity to thwart the events that had been predicted in the cards. She was getting to be an old pro at deceit herself now, and her new scheme would be even more elegant than the last. It had to be — the stakes were greater.

The script for week six remained the same as originally planned; it was the next week that she would start turning up the heat. The cards were arranged in a predetermined order in the cubby. The card in the position for approaching influence was the Four of Cups, which showed a young man who is indifferent to the cup of love being offered him. The card in the position for the immediate future was the Six of Cups, which showed a man walking away from overturned cups, which signified rejected love. This was the card Julie had been so afraid of in her first reading about the affair. And the outcome card was the Three of Swords, which showed three swords piercing a giant red heart.

Julie burst into tears when Robin threw the outcome card.

“I think you already have a pretty good idea of the meaning of this spread,” Robin said, trying to sound sympathetic. “As you can see, the Lovers has moved into the recent-past position.” She pointed to the Five of Cups. “This card shows that your lover has become indifferent to you. He’s going to walk away, if he hasn’t already.”

“He canceled our date for this weekend,” Julie said. “He didn’t give an explanation.”

She looked up at Robin. “But why?” she wailed. “Everything was going so well. He even gave me a ring. Is it the wife? I don’t see how she could have found out. Besides, he was planning to tell her anyway. I don’t think it would matter now if she found out.”

“No, it’s not the wife,” Robin replied. She was feeling the sense of elation that comes from having mastered a difficult task; she was at the top of her form.

“What then?” Julie asked.

“It’s his job. The King of Pentacles is very materialistic. He’s realized that in leaving his wife to marry you, he would be jeopardizing the position that he’s worked so hard to achieve.” She pointed to the Three of Swords. “He doesn’t feel as if he has any alternative, even though he knows he’s going to break your heart.”

“But he knew he’d probably have to leave his job,” Julie protested. “We already talked about that. He’s ready to try something new. There are lots of opportunities out there for a man with his background.” She went on, “He even said he didn’t care about material things. It was in a letter: ‘All the material things are nothing... ’ ”

Robin arched a sceptical eyebrow.

“ ‘...compared with our love.’ ”

Robin cut her off. Zelda clearly didn’t have her husband’s skill with words. “It’s not just his job,” she continued. “It’s a whole lifestyle: the house, the country club, the Caribbean vacations — none of which he’d be able to afford if he has to divide his assets with his wife. Believe me, this is not a man who’s going to move with you to New England to run a B and B, no matter what he might have said in a love letter.”

Julie stared at her in shock and disbelief.

Looking up, Robin sliced a finger across her neck. “Three weeks and you’re history.”

There was silence for a few minutes. Then Julie spoke: “I thought it was going to be different this time.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, her tone despondent. She started sobbing — deep, lurching sobs.

“Much as I hate to say it, there are no accidents,” Robin told her. It was a phrase she had used often — one whose meaning Julie knew very well.

Robin passed her the box of tissues.

Phase II went into effect the next week. Robin called it her Gaslight campaign, after the old movie with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Its aim was nothing less than the destruction of the Tower, which had been the outcome card in Julie’s initial reading about the affair. The heartbreak remained. There was depression and loneliness. The central card was the Nine of Swords, which showed a woman sitting up in bed, crying. “It depicts the dark night of the soul,” she told Julie. And there was worse to come: Julie would have a car accident by the time the week was out. Nothing serious: a fender bender. But expensive to fix. Robin had no trouble arranging this in the parking lot at the strip mall out on the highway. Especially with her new SUV, which grossly outweighed Julie’s compact. She simply backed into the door while Julie was in the drugstore, crumpling it like a piece of cardboard. Nobody was around to notice; Robin had made certain of that.

The stolen pocketbook, which was to be the next week’s woe, took a little more finesse to pull off. Robin didn’t want to be arrested for purse snatching. But Julie turned out to be even more careless than Robin had thought, which might have been due to her state of mind. After removing her money, credit cards, and driver’s license in order to maximize the hassle factor, she tossed the purse into the nearest mailbox. The third week was the hate letters, crazy and illiterate, which Robin constructed out of letters and words that she clipped from newspapers and magazines, like the letters sent by the psychopathic creeps in suspense thrillers.

By the fourth week, Julie was primed for disaster. Although Robin may have recognized that the future predicted in the cards wasn’t fixed, Julie had no such notion. Especially after her love affair — every detail of which had been spelled out in the cards — and the events of the last few weeks. She arrived for her session in a state of extreme agitation. She was pale and jumpy; she appeared to have lost weight.

“C’mon,” said Robin blithely after Julie had confided her apprehensions. “What else could go wrong?” (Little did she know.) “Besides, don’t you know that bad luck comes in threes? You’ve just had a run of it, that’s all.”

After Julie had carefully shuffled and cut the cards, Robin proceeded to lay them out. The spread wasn’t coming out well at all. Swords — the suit of strife and misfortune — were everywhere; there were lots of reversed cards, too, which generally weren’t a good sign.

“You’re going to fall ill soon,” Robin said as she threw the card for approaching influence. “It’s going to be a serious illness involving your heart,” she added as she turned over the card representing the immediate future.

“But how could that be?” Julie cried. “I’m only twenty-seven.”

Robin shrugged as if to say, There are no accidents.

Julie thought for a moment, and then added, “As a matter of fact, I haven’t been feeling well lately. I have this sensation that my heart is beating too rapidly.” She raised her palm to her chest. “It feels like a bird beating its wings.”

Robin nodded knowingly. “Maybe you should see a doctor,” she suggested as she turned over the card for how others viewed the subject. It was as frail and vulnerable, which confirmed how Julie was feeling about herself. Then came the card for her hopes, which were for a renewal of love. Finally, there was the outcome card.

Julie watched intently as Robin turned the card over. It was the thirteenth card of the major arcana: the Death card. A menacing skeleton armed with a scythe cleared the ground around him, in which were scattered the heads and hands of his victims.

“Death,” Julie whispered. Her eyes bulged and a sweat broke out on the fine, youthful skin of her temples.

“The final outcome,” Robin said solemnly. The divinatory meaning of the Death card was rarely physical death; it was too limiting. It was usually transformation or renewal: getting rid of the old in order to make room for the new. Death was something that was always happening in life; we die to the present so that the future can unfold.

It was the tarot reader’s responsibility never to predict physical death because of the likelihood that the card represented one of these less tragic interpretations. But there were circumstances in which the thirteenth card had a literal meaning.

And this was one of them.

“There are no accidents?” Julie asked softly, in hopes of being contradicted. Her voice was the merest whisper.

Robin shook her head.

She died the next week. A heart attack. An unusual occurrence in a young woman of her age, but not unheard of. A coronary embolism. Probably from the birth-control pills she’d been taking. A side effect that was rare, but occurred nevertheless. Ron went to the memorial service. “A young woman I knew from work,” was how he described her. She’d been depressed, he said — an unhappy love affair.

Robin wasn’t surprised. She’d seen it in the cards.