Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

morning chasing strangers. But she was my most important client now, and she must have had a reason, I thought. So eight-thirty found me driving to a rundown building on Larkin Street, very near the Tenderloin. Chris had given me Rosalie’s address, but I didn’t know if “the others” lived there or somewhere else.
    Parking, I thought maybe it was drugs after all— this was the neighborhood for it. I began to wonder if I should have come alone.
    But Rosalie didn’t look even slightly scary. She seemed to be a trusting soul happy to let someone who claimed to be Chris’s lawyer into her apartment. She was in her sixties, I guess, dressed in brown polyester pants and a Kmartish green sweater. Her shoes were thick-soled brown lace-ups, good for hiking— I guessed she probably didn’t have a car and did her errands on foot. Her hair was short, brown going gray, and a little thin. It looked a lot as if a neighbor or perhaps her sister had cut it, or maybe she had lost at six-dollar-salon Russian roulette. She was overweight, someone who probably found those errands I imagined adequate for her exercise. She wore no makeup, and most of her appearance suggested she didn’t give a damn how she looked, except for one small but attractive bow to feminine adornment— a pair of earrings depicting the goddess Isis.
    The Egyptian theme was apparent in some of her furnishings as well, such as a miniature pyramid that may have been a sculpture; I wasn’t sure. There was also a black jackal-headed statue, ceramic perhaps, which would have been a little frightening if I hadn’t recognized it as the Egyptian god Anubis. The room was furnished with makeshift furniture brightened with ethnic throws, some quite lovely, one or two plain shabby. The beige rug was stained. The bookshelves were bricks and boards, and jam-packed— one or two titles I could see indicated an interest in the occult. And there were plenty of candles, which may have been another indication. On the walls were posters, one for a psychic fair, the other depicting a mermaid or some-such ethereal creature.
    It was an unusual room for the neighborhood. Here was a woman who was obviously educated, clearly a nonconformist of some description, and poor. Despite the lack of luxury, I guessed that Rosalie was quite comfortable and cozy here. A hand-thrown teapot with matching cup sat on the coffee table, along with the morning paper, one section open and folded back. The place was clean and got lots of light. It had a nice feel to it— good vibes, positive energy, something of that sort. (The jargon had leapt into my head, making me feel like a New Paradigm woman.)
    “I like Chris so much,” said Rosalie, when I was sitting on one of her shabby chairs, having refused her offer of tea. “Is she … all right?” She had hesitated a moment, caught between curiosity and discretion.
    “She’s fine, absolutely fine. But there’s been a mix-up, and I’m afraid it might develop into a court case. So I’m trying to determine what our chances would be.” I was trying hard to make it sound like a civil case, a simple lawsuit. “I was just wondering if I could get your version of what happened last night.”
    “You mean what happened here? I think you’d better tell me what’s going on.” She looked a little under fire.
    “Oh, no. Nothing to do with what happened here.” Damn! I was never going to find out what it was. “The main thing I need to know is when Chris arrived and when she left.”
    “Well, our meeting was set for eight o’clock, but nobody’s ever on time, so I never even bother to look. Let’s see, Ivan got here first, and then Moonblood; and Tanesha, finally. It was Chris’s first time, and she got lost on the way over— oh, and she had trouble parking. By the time she got here, it might have been after eight-thirty. But I’m not really sure, it could have been a little bit before.”
    “What kind of meeting was it?”
    “Chris didn’t tell you?”
    “She was kind of shell-shocked.”
    Rosalie frowned. “I think I’d better talk to the cards.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    She started to unwrap what looked like a silk scarf she’d scooped up from the top of a bookshelf. It was knotted and contained something fairly heavy. She didn’t answer me, just pulled out her Tarot deck and went to work. I sat in amazement as she put on a pair of glasses, shuffled, and laid out cards. When she had made a sort of cross with them she