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

“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.”