Deadly Fortune Read online

  “I can see that,” the woman said. “Who might you be, mister?”

  “I’m Clint Adams.” When he spoke, he watched for anything in the woman’s face or mannerisms that might tell him she was any sort of trouble for him. From what he could tell, she didn’t even recognize his name.

  Holding out one hand, she said, “Pleased to meet you, Clint. I’m Madame Giselle. What brings you here?”

  “Thought I’d duck into this tent before I got trampled by that crowd outside,” he told her.

  She laughed and showed him a smile that made the effort of fighting through the locals to be completely worth the trouble. “I know how you feel. It’s quite overwhelming, especially for someone new in town. When did you arrive?”

  “Just today. In fact, I hadn’t intended on staying longer than it took to have a drink and maybe a meal.” Taking in the sight of the shapely curves beneath the filmy silk clothing she wore, he added, “Glad I didn’t leave town, though.”

  When she shook Clint’s hand, Madame Giselle did it as if she were wrapping herself around him. Even though her fingers were the only part of her wrapping around anything, Clint could feel it all the way down to his toes. “I am, too,” she said. “What brings you here today? Do you have specific questions or are you simply curious?”

  “Oh, I definitely have specific questions.”

  Raising her eyebrows, she said, “I like a decisive man. Why don’t you come inside?”

  Clint was more than happy to watch Madame Giselle turn and reach for the curtain behind her, but wasn’t quite so eager to follow her through it. When she turned back around to check on him, he asked, “Do you greet all of your customers by having a shotgun pointed at them?”

  “I was hoping you’d overlook that.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  Despite the difference in their heights, Patrick genuinely recoiled when Madame Giselle shifted her gaze toward him. She softened considerably by the time she was looking once again at Clint. “There was a bit of trouble with some recent customers,” she said.

  “Didn’t like what their futures held?” Clint asked.

  “In my line of work, trying to shoot the messenger is more than a turn of phrase.”

  “I’ve had the job of unwelcome messenger a few times myself. Never pleasant.”

  “Indeed. Would you like to come in? If my partner’s misstep where the shotgun was concerned has spoiled you on the idea, I completely understand.”

  Clint looked over to Patrick. Although the big fellow didn’t shrink from him the way he had from Madame Giselle, there didn’t seem to be cause for alarm. Not yet anyway. “I suppose we’re all entitled to making mistakes. Would asking for an apology be out of line?”

  “Yes,” Patrick replied.

  Smirking, Clint said, “I’d rather hear that than a halfhearted platitude. After you, ma’am.”

  Madame Giselle accepted Clint’s courtesy with a bow of her head and walked through the doorway into the next portion of the tent. When Clint followed her, he was surprised by the fact that the room was at least three times bigger than he thought it should have been.

  “Now this is a damn good trick!” he said as he looked around the spacious quarters containing bookshelves, cabinets, side tables with all manner of relics and charms, a few small altars, and a larger table in the middle of the room that could comfortably host a poker game for five men but had only two chairs at the moment.

  “Are you talking about getting my hands on incense that is normally only found in Tibet?” she replied. Directing some of the smoke rising from a small stick resting in a specially shaped bowl, she added, “One of the vendors down the street truly doesn’t know what he’s got or he would double his prices.”

  “No,” Clint said. “I’m talking about fitting all this furniture into a tent that’s half the size of this room.”

  “Oh, that’s easy. I just brought it in through the house.” After taking a moment to relish the perplexed look on Clint’s face, she peeled back a dark purple curtain to reveal a wooden floor and ceiling that had been sawn apart. “This building was falling down and I bought it for a song. Instead of putting the place back together again, I had one wall partially rebuilt and set my tent in front of the hole. That way I get to conduct my business without the wind blowing the Tarot cards off my table.”

  “And,” Clint added, “you can put your back to a wall instead of a sheet of canvas.”

  “There’s that, too,” she said while settling into one of the padded chairs at the table. Motioning to the chair across from her, she said, “Please, have a seat.”

  Clint sat.

  “You mentioned you had specific questions,” she said.

  “I did.”

  “What are they?”

  “First of all,” Clint said as he crossed one leg over the other and rested his hand within easy reach of his holster, “why did you send two men to kill me?”

  SIX

  After a few seconds of silence, Madame Giselle said, “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Did you say you think I sent someone to kill you?”

  Clint nodded.

  She leaned back in her chair. When she glanced toward the flap leading to the portion of the tent where Patrick was waiting, Clint’s hand inched a bit closer to his pistol. He doubted she noticed and he felt badly for preparing to draw with an unarmed woman about, but he’d weathered too many storms to let his guard down when he spotted dark clouds on the horizon.

  “Why on earth would I want to harm you, Mr. Adams? We’ve only just met.”

  “That’s pretty close to the question I asked, ma’am.”

  She smiled in a surprisingly warm and genuine way. “Since you’ve come all this way to accuse me of trying to kill you, there’s no need to be so formal. Please, call me Gigi.”

  “All right, then, Gigi. Would you mind answering me or do I need to pay?”

  “Anyone who walks in through my door has to pay for answers, but I’ll give you this one for free. I don’t know who you are, Mr. Adams, and I have no reason to want to see any harm come to that pretty face of yours.”

  “Since we’re not standing on formalities, you might as well call me Clint.”

  Gigi folded her hands on the table and stared at Clint like the head of a large company sizing up an employee at the bottom of the ladder. “What makes you think I’d have any part in trying to kill anyone?”

  “A pair of men came at me in a saloon not too far from here. They were out for blood. My blood, to be exact.”

  “By the looks of you, it doesn’t seem they were much of a threat.”

  “They weren’t. Fact is, I’m surprised they were able to come at me without tripping over their own feet in the process.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” she asked. “No harm done. For all you know, they were drunk and looking to stir up some trouble just to pass the time. Stranger things have happened in saloons, from what I’ve heard.”

  “The problem,” Clint said with as much patience as he could muster, “is that those men told me they were sent by you and the only thing that kept me from catching a bullet or a knife in the back was their own stupidity.”

  For a moment, it seemed Gigi was going to claim her innocence one more time. Then, she let out a short breath and placed her hands flat upon the table. She pushed her chair back, stood up, and went to a nearby shelf to select one of several crystal spheres. Her hands caressed each one in turn, and when she looked over her shoulder at Clint, she smiled as if her hands were feeling a part of him instead.

  “Plenty of men come to me,” she said.

  “I can imagine.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, and yes,” Gigi told him as she walked back to the table with the sphere in her hands, “they do come to me for that as well.” The
room was lit by a few lanterns placed on the tables. One of those was directly behind her now and its light had no trouble making it through the thin layers of silk she wore. Her rounded hips and swaying breasts moved freely beneath the material, unencumbered by any sort of restrictive undergarments.

  Without making the first attempt to hide the way his eyes drank in the sight of her, Clint said, “It doesn’t take a mind reader to guess what I’m thinking right about now.”

  She sat down and carefully placed the sphere in the middle of the table upon a stand that Clint hadn’t even noticed before. Placing her hands on either side of the sphere, she asked, “What do you see?”

  “This isn’t what I came for,” Clint told her. “Just talk to me without a bunch of riddles or mystical nonsense.”

  “I’m trying to answer your question, Clint. Just tell me what you see.”

  He sighed and looked at the sphere. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen a fortune-teller or someone claiming to have the ability to reach the great beyond. While he’d experienced some things he couldn’t quite explain, he had yet to find any reason to believe in the power of crystal balls.

  “I see a reflection of your hands,” he said. “There’s also bright spots in the glass from the lanterns.”

  Gigi nodded. “And what if I told you the light you see isn’t from the lanterns, but from a spirit who’s trying to contact us right now?”

  “I’d have to say it’s mighty strange that a spirit that was able to pull off a trick like that looks so much like lantern light.”

  “You’re not a believer.”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Most of the men who come in here and sit in that chair,” she said while motioning to Clint’s side of the table, “aren’t so doubtful. When they look into one of my crystals, watch me decipher patterns in tea leaves, or gather smoke from my incense, they might be able to see a great many things.”

  “No doubt they’re helped along by suggestions from you.”

  The tone in Gigi’s voice lost the lyrical quality she’d had a moment ago when she said, “Of course. That’s part of my job. The men you’re talking about . . . was one of them a bit taller than you with darker skin and an ugly nose?”

  “Yep.”

  “And the other,” Gigi said while placing a finger to her temple and closing her eyes in contemplation, “was very thin. He wasn’t so bright. His name was . . . Mose.”

  “I knew you could be reasonable if you tried.”

  Placing her hands once more on the table in front of her, she said, “You’ve got to admit, that did sound at least a little mystical when I added the rhyme.”

  “Maybe a little. What did you tell those two idiots when they came to see you?”

  “Most men who come here are looking for help with one of two things,” she replied while opening a drawer built on her side of the table. Gigi took a deck of cards from the drawer, closed it, and shuffled them expertly. “They’re either wanting money or love. Sure, every now and then someone comes along looking for something a bit more heartfelt, but it usually boils down to those first two things.”

  “Love isn’t heartfelt?” Clint asked.

  “Not what most men call love. Anyway, the two you’re asking about wanted money. More specifically, they wanted to know what they could do to gain some influence within their particular social circle.”

  “And they told you they were gunhands?”

  Gigi shrugged while flipping the cards down in front of her. They were Tarot cards painted with pictures of men on horseback, maidens holding wooden staffs, and arrangements of golden cups. “No, but they obviously weren’t farmers. I told them what they wanted to hear.”

  “Which was?”

  “Which was that they would get an opportunity to prove themselves very soon if they just kept their eyes open for it.”

  “According to them,” Clint said, “you also told them they wouldn’t get another chance if this one slipped past them.”

  She flipped over another card and placed it across one of the others. “You met them. They’re idiots. How many chances do you think they’d get? For that matter, how many chances do you think they’d be smart enough to spot? I told them they needed to take full advantage of the chance they were given.” Fluttering her eyelashes, Gigi asked, “Isn’t that true for all of us?”

  Clint got to his feet. “The chance they spotted was trying to shoot me to impress a man who wants to hire gunmen. And since they thought they needed to seize their opportunity with both hands, they came after me twice.”

  Placing her finger once more to her temple, she closed her eyes. “My guardian from the cosmos tells me they did not succeed.”

  “Right. I’m standing here unharmed so they obviously didn’t shoot me. How about telling me whatever else you can in regard to those two men.”

  “Why? It doesn’t seem like they’re a threat to you.”

  “Because I want to know if there will be more where they came from.”

  “Of course there will be more,” she told him. “Even you know that.”

  She’d spoken that little prediction without a hint of showmanship. Because of that and the fact that it hit so close to the mark, Clint was taken aback for a moment. He recovered quickly enough and walked around the table. Before he got close enough to lay a finger on Gigi, he heard Patrick come stomping into the room.

  “The man they were looking to impress is named Torquelan,” Clint said. “What do you know about him?”

  “Time for you to go,” Patrick said.

  “Not until you answer me!”

  Gigi stood up and held a hand out toward Patrick to keep the big man from making a move against Clint. “Come back later,” she told him.

  “Why?”

  “Because tempers are flaring and that doesn’t lead to good things.”

  Clint didn’t need to be a fortune-teller to know that much either. Even though he wasn’t particularly threatened by Patrick or the shotgun he wielded so clumsily, Clint wasn’t eager to lock horns with him if it could be avoided. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll come back in a few hours.”

  “That will give me some time to put my ear to the ground and see what I can learn about the men you seek.”

  “Whatever you say,” Clint replied. He’d had enough of her theatrical talk, and the smell of that incense was making him queasy.

  SEVEN

  Although Clint agreed that the three of them could use a bit of time to cool off and regroup, he didn’t want to run the risk of letting Madame Giselle get too far out of his sight. Fortunately, there were enough vendors of different sorts within a stone’s throw of her tent that he didn’t have to go far to get the few things he needed.

  First, he wanted a place for Eclipse that was safer than the spot where he’d tied the Darley Arabian behind the fish vendor’s stall. There were several small lots that were being used as corrals and he was able to convince the owner of one of them to part with some space and some feed. They weren’t the best accommodations, but they would suffice. Since the lot was wedged in among so many other carts and tents, nobody could make off with Eclipse without creating a commotion anyway.

  Next, Clint had to tend to a more basic need. His stomach had begun to rumble so much that the scents that had induced cringes before had become downright appetizing. Clint wasn’t hungry enough to risk eating any of the fish hanging from the stall of the vendor he’d passed on his way to Giselle’s, but there was another cart across the street from her that caught his eye.

  “Something smells good over here,” he said as he approached the cart.

  The woman who worked there had long black hair that was shot through with gray. Her features were a mix of Chinese and Indian and the decorations adorning her simple brown blouse were carved from small bits of wood. She smiled at him and picked up some of her wares
to show him. In each hand, she held narrow sticks with hunks of cooked meat skewered on them.

  “What’s that?” Clint asked.

  She smiled wider and held the skewers out toward him even more.

  “Got anything that’s not on a stick?” Clint asked.

  She either didn’t speak English or didn’t know the value of bartering with customers because the woman merely nodded and picked another pair of skewers to show him.

  Before taking anything from her, Clint leaned forward to take a sniff of what was on one of the skewers. “What is that?”

  Although the woman squinted harder at Clint’s face, that didn’t seem to help her understand him any better when he asked the question a second time. Finally, the course of action she chose was to set down one of the skewers and try again with another from her modest selection.

  “Eh, to hell with it,” Clint grumbled. “I’m hungry and that smells good.” He took both skewers from her hands, paid her the amount of money she asked for by pointing to a little sign nailed to her cart, and walked away. The street was busy, but Clint was becoming used to the constant flow of people and horses. His ears had even begun to filter out a portion of the commotion so he didn’t feel as if his head would explode from everything being crammed into it at once.

  Once he’d found a spot where he could stand without being jostled too much, Clint took a bite from one of the skewers he’d purchased. The meat on that stick was stringy and slightly overcooked. However, it had been marinated in a tangy sauce made from a blend of spices that Clint couldn’t quite place. That mystery, along with the hunger that had compelled him to make the purchase in the first place, kept him going until he’d almost cleaned off the second skewer.

  “I heard something you might wanna know.”

  Clint had seen the man approaching him from the left and assumed he would just keep walking. When he didn’t, he didn’t think much of it. Someone who’d been the target of as many bullets as Clint Adams tended to develop a sense of when another was about to fly his way. More important than any sixth sense, on the other hand, was the fact that this man wasn’t wearing a gun and simply had a pleasant face.