“I want you all to write a question about your life on these pieces of paper I am passing out. I will then call you up one by one at which time you will hand me your folded paper and take a seat right here.” Madame Spoker pointed to a lonely-looking chair on the bare stage. “This way I will be able to gather your own personal vibrations. I’m not going to look at the question—I will feel it.”

Veronica started scribbling madly on her allotted scrap while Regan sat there wondering what the heck to ask this voodoo woman. Then it came to her. She leaned the paper on her purse and wrote, “Will we ever find Athena’s murderer?” As she folded it up she realized this was a first in her years of detective work.

There was no way Madame Spoker could avoid calling Veronica up to the hot seat immediately. Veronica grabbed it as though it were the last one available in a game of musical chairs. “What do you feel for me?” she beseeched.

Madame Spoker crumpled Veronica’s paper into a ball in the palm of her hand, closed her eyes, and began to sway back and forth. “You are a very wise woman, Miss . . .”

“Exner. Lady Veronica Exner, widow of the late Sir Gilbert.”

“Yes. I feel that peerage. You are a most giving person and much more savvy than people realize. You’ve had a long life . . .” She paused, shook, and opened her eyes.

“But what about my question?” Veronica asked.

Madame Spoker looked troubled. “It would be best if you come to my next session on Friday. I’m not getting a good enough reading on you right now. I need more time to concentrate on your magnetic field and I don’t have it today. There are numerous people here and I want to give as many as possible a chance to come up. I promise you will be first on Friday.”

Veronica looked disappointed but was a good sport and reclaimed her seat next to Regan.

Nice way to make sure people come back to your next hour of abracadabra, Regan thought. Abracadabra. It sounded like abra-cadaver.

Others came and went to the front of the room and Madame Spoker went through all the appropriate shaking and writhing motions. There was a group of girls from a cosmetics firm who were traveling together, all having won the trip for selling cases and cases of everything from lip gloss to eyebrow pencils to the ever-popular concealer stick. One of them, twentyish, with teased hair sprouting from every follicle on her scalp, and wearing a diamond engagement ring, was warned not to marry her fiancé.

“I see trouble there. There is something you don’t know. He might take you to nice places but he’s a LIAR! I’m sorry, but I feel so strongly about this, I must warn you.”