5 - Her Deadly Mischief by Beverle Graves Myers

The bedcovers had been pulled back, and the logs in the narrow fireplace hissed and cracked as they settled into glowing embers. I crossed to the table by the dying fire and pulled off my shirt.
    Liya’s tarocchi quartered the mahogany tabletop: a Greek cross of bright, fanciful pasteboards. The cards depicted peasants and kings, monks and nuns, and other figures in the standard suits of coins, cups, batons, and swords. In most people’s hands, these cards represented an evening’s game, a harmless pursuit to fill the time between supper and bed. But Liya used them to delve into the future. I had once described her tarocchi as an unbound picture book, and she’d told me I wasn’t far wrong.
    I couldn’t pretend to understand her cards’ hidden secrets, but I didn’t doubt their existence. The proof lay before me. At one corner was a white horse with a front foot raised. I shook my head, wondering how the cards could possibly know that a horse would provide part of my evening’s excitement. And it wasn’t hard to see where Liya had formed the notion about the fall at the theater.
    In the very center of the cross, a position to which all the other tarocchi pointed, was a card depicting a tower on a rocky crag. The sky behind was a deep, inky black rent by streaks of yellow lightning. One bolt had blown the top from the stone tower; blocks and debris rained down among gobbets of fire. A man and woman flew through the air, their mouths forming silent screams and their fine clothing billowing from the wind created by their fall. I grimaced when I noticed that the female of the pair wore a gown of peacock blue.
    “What are you doing, Tito?” Liya called from the basin, drying her face with a thick towel.
    “Just thinking, my love.”
    “Thinking what?”
    “That perhaps tomorrow you might visit the ghetto and see what you can find out about Zulietta Giardino.”
    “Why, Tito?” Her voice was husky with an emotion I couldn’t identify. Though my back was turned, I sensed her approach. I shivered as she trailed her cool fingers along my bare shoulders. “You know I’m not welcome there, and what does it matter, anyway? This Zulietta has nothing to do with us. Messer Grande should be the one to ask questions.”
    I turned to face her, the card of the lightning-struck tower concealed in my palm. “You know that Messer Grande will be as welcome in the ghetto as a stray cat at the fish market. How much do you think he will really be able to discover?”
    My request did not provoke the flash of anger I feared. Liya’s expression reflected the poignant resignation it often did when her childhood home was mentioned. In addition, I was glad to see the tiniest glimmer of curiosity.
    “But, Tito,” she replied, shaking her head until the dark tendrils of hair danced like undulating snakes. “Why do you ask me this?”
    I raised my hand. “This card found its way into your design as surely as Zulietta’s death found its way into my aria.”
    Liya sent me a dubious glance from under charcoal lashes. “Surely it’s mere happenstance that the woman was killed while you were singing.”
    “Haven’t you always instructed me that there are no true coincidences?”
    She shrugged, but I saw that she regarded the card with a new intensity.
    “Well?” I asked. “What do you say?”
    She tossed her head and threw her towel at the washstand. “I say there will be plenty of time to think about it tomorrow.”
    Once we had slipped beneath the bedclothes, I drew her to me and we snuggled close. I lay on my back with my arm beneath her warm curves, and Liya notched her cheek in the hollow between my shoulder and chest, tickling my chin with her jasmine-scented mane.
    “Tito,” she murmured, “do you think Fortunata would turn me away if I visited Papa’s shop?”
    I stroked Liya’s smooth skin. “I can’t imagine she would. You were always her favorite sister, weren’t you?”
    “Yes,” she breathed, so soft I could