“Cher, baby,” she said, “So nice to see you again. But what circumstances. Really bad timing. We should be lunching, don’t you think?”
Cheri introduced Pizzarelli, who said, “We want to talk to Carter Cunningham, and this is the address we have.”
“Oh, Carter doesn’t live here anymore.” Dawn Cunningham ran a finger over the flat gold chain at her neck. “He has his own apartment. What do you want him for?”
“We’re investigating the murder of Maxwell Beacham-Jones. We’re talking to people who were there last night and might know something or have a take on what happened.”
Alarm sobered Dawn’s pretty face. “Oh, I’m sure Carter doesn’t know anything. You should be talking to Maxwell’s girl friend. That Regine woman.”
“Why Regine?”
Dawn nodded her head in quick, short movements. “I always thought they made a weird couple.” Her voice contained a conspiratorial note. “I met her a couple of times. Don’t get me wrong. Not because she’s twenty years younger than the rest of us. She’s just—weird.”
Pizzarelli laughed. “Hey, we live in Vegas. You don’t have to explain ‘weird.’”
“Can you explain it to me?” Cheri asked.
“Well, I really shouldn’t repeat rumors...” Dawn began.
Pizzarelli, eyeing the Nieman painting, said, “But you will.”
Dawn leaned in Cheri’s direction. “I heard Regine’s had major plastic surgery. That’s all I heard. I don’t know what all, but I can imagine.”
“Think she had this surgery for Maxwell?”
“Don’t know. But if you find out, baby, I’d sure like to know what it was.” Dawn managed to frown and smile at the same time. “She does look good—in a kind of Barbie-on-steroids way.”
“Where can we find your son, Mrs. Cunningham?” Pizzarelli asked.
“Well, I guess it’d be okay for me to give you his address,” she said. She spoke the numbers, street name and apartment number while Cheri punched the corresponding keys into her digital notebook.
Just then Dawn’s cell phone rang. She apologized, but looked relieved. “Please excuse me.”
She hadn’t invited them into the living room, and while she talked to her caller, Cheri peeked at the impressive furnishings beyond the foyer. Dawn had done well. She’d been smart to give up dancing and get a career that would serve her later in life. Maybe Cheri had been an unknowing good influence while she was living with Larissa. But, maybe not.
“I’ve got to leave soon,” Dawn said, snapping her cell shut. “I’m on the Vegas planning committee for MAGIQUE DU MONDE, and we’ve got a train wreck. We’re trying to get hold of Robert the Great to be the opening star now that Maxwell’s, well, out. Robert’s a has-been, I know, but he was Maxwell’s mentor. We can hype that part up.”
She made a show of looking at her expensive watch. “And I’ve got a big closing shortly.”
Cheri said, “I met him for the first time the other night at the Dunes Park.”
Dawn gave her an astonished look. “Really? You never met him when you and Larissa lived together? He headlined Jubilee!”
“I saw the show, but I never went backstage.”
“Yeah,” Dawn said. “Well, he wasn’t all that sociable, anyway. Hid out in his star dressing room when he wasn’t onstage. Never said so much as ‘hello’ to any of us lowly dancers. Don’t think he even fucked any of the girls.”
Cheri did her best to hide an inappropriate smile. “He wasn’t tall enough.”
“That is—until he spotted Larissa. Yeesh, the sparks! Everybody knew he wanted her, but Maxwell popped her.”
“Robert the Great filled that room and provided a lot of job security,” Pizzarelli said. “I always heard he was the best in the magic business. I’d think they’d love seeing him perform again. I think you made a good choice.”
Cheri pursed her lips to keep from saying out loud, if he’s not in jail for the murder of Maxwell.
CHAPTER 16
Tuesday, August 9, 3:45 p.m.
When Cheri and Pizzarelli arrived at Carter’s apartment, they found someone at home and seemingly reluctant to open the door. From inside the apartment they heard muffled movement. Whoever it was, they were not hurrying to answer the door.
Cheri glanced up and down the hallway, sniffing at a dry, dusty smell she couldn’t identify. With his big fist, Pizzarelli knocked several times before the door opened. Manicured fingers appeared to hold it no more than a crack. Beyond the door they heard a murmuring noise that sounded like pigeons in a big-city park.
The unseen woman called, “Who is it?”
“Metro police detectives Raymer and Pizzarelli, looking for Carter Cunningham. Is he at home?”
The woman’s voice held a hint of alarm. “He’s busy right now. Can you come back later?”
Cheri flashed her badge. “Can we come in?” She had no intention of being put off.
Behind the woman she heard a man’s voice. “It’s okay, let them in.”
“I’m going to open the door quickly,” the woman said, “and you have to step inside really fast. We can’t have the door open too long.”
Pizzarelli and Cheri exchanged puzzled glances. Cheri said, “Fine. We’re ready.”
The woman stepped back and opened the door just enough for the two detectives to slide through. With an audible sigh of relief, she closed the door behind them.
The smell Cheri had noticed in the hallway was stronger here. Dried hay in a hot barn came to mind.
Carter’s apartment was ultra modern, a kind of décor she hated. All black leather, chrome, hard angles, fifties shapes, cherry wood polished to a gloss you could see your reflection in. She could never relax, never feel at home in a place like this. She imagined red satin sheets in the bedroom, a round bed, blackout drapes, recessed lighting. All very chi chi. So, Dawn’s son was doing well in show business.
Her nose tickled. The picture of the apartment didn’t go with the smell.
She asked, “Are you Carter Cunningham?”
In the center of the living room, the young man dressed in a tuxedo complete with ruffled shirt and top hat bowed elegantly. “At your service.”
A small, stainless steel cage and several colored silk scarves sat on a glass, kidney-shaped coffee table. In a corner, in a cage as tall as Carter’s six-foot frame, Cheri estimated at least a dozen white doves.
The woman who had admitted them wore a tight black dress slashed with silver sequins that made lines like a spider’s web across her breasts and hips. The skirt slit up her left thigh. Her chestnut hair, piled on top of her head, exploded with spiky tendrils that curved downward to frame round cheekbones.
Carter noticed the long look Pizzarelli gave the sequined dress and said, “My partner and assistant, Andrea.” It was apparent that they had been rehearsing a dove act.
“We want to talk to you about Maxwell’s death,” Cheri said.
The young magician did not offer them seats, so she stood with Pizzarelli by the front door.
Carter smiled at them in a professional manner. “First I’d like you to see a new effect.”
With a sudden movement, he threw two doves into the air. They morphed into two white silk scarves, which floated gracefully to the floor. In a sweeping movement, he leaned down, caught the silks before they touched the carpet and stuffed them into his tuxedo jacket pocket. His assistant gazed at him with her own professional stage smile of approval.
“Mr. Cunningham—”
Andrea said, “Wait, there’s more.” From a glass tabletop she picked up three large metal rings and handed them to him. Each ring was a solid circle, and as Cheri and Pizzarelli watched, he began to link them together.
Pizzarelli shifted his weight from one foot to the other in impatience. “Hate to interrupt the performance, but we’re here on business.”
Without the slightest acknowledgement that anyone spoke, Carter finished linking the three rings. In the last one, a dove magic
ally appeared to perch. Cheri clapped and Pizzarelli half-heartedly followed her lead.
“The trick is to take a standard effect and add a twist to it,” Andrea explained.
Despite her love/hate relationship with magic, Cheri had always been fascinated with dove effects. “I’m glad to see you don’t dye your doves.”
Andrea looked horrified and indignant at the same time. “That’s soooo dated.”
Cheri wanted to know all about how they cared for the doves, how they trained them to fly and return, how they traveled with them, how they tailored their costumes for dove work, but she was here on a police matter, she reminded herself. Now was not the time and this was not the place. Most likely Carter wouldn’t reveal his mastery of the dove vanish, anyway.
“I’m going for some water. Want some?” Andrea asked.
Cheri nodded. “No ice, please.”
“Nothing for me,” Pizzarelli said. His eyes cased the room like a burglar planning inventory for a later visit.
Cheri watched Andrea walk toward the kitchen. She couldn’t help her thoughts. The exaggerated way Andrea moved her hips reminded her of a young Larissa, the epitome of the Las Vegas showgirl, all glamour and Barbi innocence—before she met Maxwell.
To dispel the image, she returned her gaze to Carter, who wore the expression of a magician who’d just discovered he couldn’t make the weight of the world disappear. He turned away from her, blocking her view of the little cage on the glass coffee table. When he turned around again, she saw two doves flitter around in the cage before they settled on perches.
“Carter, here’s the thing,” she said. “We understand Peter Jones gave you a DVD for safekeeping, film of Maxwell Beacham-Jones that Peter didn’t want his mother to find.”
“Who told you that?” Carter’s voice was sharp.
Pizzarelli, who had been circling the coffee table, stopped and gave him a stern look, ignoring his question. “This DVD shows Maxwell in some magic ceremony up on Sunrise Mountain. We want to see it.”
Carter’s face lost its tight, controlled expression. His features collapsed in resignation. From his right pants pocket he removed a plain cotton handkerchief as if he was going to perform another magic trick. Instead he wiped perspiration from the side of his face.
His assistant returned with water in a square-cut crystal glass and handed it to Cheri.
“Andrea, would you know anything about a DVD Carter was keeping for Peter Jones?”
Andrea shrugged and her gaze moved to her right and settled on the bird cage. “Carter and Peter aren’t exactly friends. I can’t imagine Peter giving him anything.”
Her expression of innocence made Cheri suspicious. “Perhaps you didn’t know about it?”
Carter fiddled with the hair that graced the back of the collar of his tuxedo jacket. “Why are you looking for this DVD?”
From a side table Pizzarelli picked up a crystal ball that sat on a round brass stand. “We think it may have something to do with the murder of Maxwell Beacham-Jones.”
Carter frowned. “Please don’t touch that.” He tugged at the neck of his shirt. “You’re thinking Maxwell was murdered?”
Pizzarelli shifted the globe from one hand to the other and back again. “One of the trick shacles he used on his legs was switched for a real one. Also an unidentified man delivered food to one of the roller coaster riders who got sick and substituted his wife. Changed the weight of the car so that it sped faster on the track. Hit Maxwell before it was supposed to.”
“That crystal is expensive. I really wish you’d put it down.”
Pizzarelli placed the crystal ball none too gently back on its brass stand. Cheri winced at the sound of crystal scraping against metal. The birds hopped to different perches on the other side of their cage. The sounds of the doves cooing to one another filled the apartment, and a headache caused by their pungent odor blossomed in Cheri’s forehead.
Carter continued as if the faster he talked, the sooner the detectives would leave. “Well, I guess if I had it I’d be giving it to you, but I don’t how see it would have anything to do with murder. I’m told—that is I hear—it’s only a routine back-up for a magic ritual. Something anyone would do to review later to gage how the effect went down.”
“Who told you what’s on it?” Pizzarelli pressed.
“I don’t remember. Believe me, if I knew, I’d tell you.” Carter’s tone had become defensive.
“Peter told us he gave the DVD to you. For ‘safekeeping.’ And you didn’t look at it?”
“A routine back-up for a magic ritual?”
Cheri set down the glass on the coffee table. Was it her imagination, or did the water tasted faintly like the odor of the birds? “One of you is not telling the truth. Peter says he gave you the DVD. Are you saying Peter is lying?”
Carter gazed at Andrea, whose shoulders rose in a faint shrug, and said, “I don’t know what to tell you. I have no idea why Peter would say something like that.”
“Do you know Dayan Franklyn?” Pizzarelli asked. He had now moved to where he could examine Carter’s bookshelves.
Carter rubbed the back of his neck. “Maxwell’s protégé.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Haven’t seen him recently.”
“When did you see him, exactly?” Cheri asked.
“Maybe three weeks ago. I ran into him at Rabbit & The Hat. We spoke briefly, but it was just small talk, about the business.”
“So you weren’t friends?” Pizzarelli asked, removing a book from the shelf and thumbing through it.
“I guess you could say we were business associates. Are you looking for a particular book, detective? Can I help you find something?”
Pizzarelli, his back to Carter, placed the book back on the shelf and removed another one, Encyclopedia of Dove Magic. “You grew up with Peter, right?”
Carter appeared to blush. Again, that tug on the hair at the back of his neck.
“Did Peter ever talk about Dayan’s relationship with Maxwell?”
“I haven’t talked to Peter in ages. I had the impression Maxwell was doing for Dayan what Peter thought he should be doing for him. Peter never liked to talk about Maxwell. I think he felt guilty for hating his father so much.”
“If he never talked about it, how do you know he hated his father?”
Carter pursed his lips. “You could just tell, that’s all. You could feel it.”
Pizzarelli closed the encyclopedia book and fixed cold eyes on Carter. “Tell us what you heard was on the DVD.”
“I think it’s a summer solstice ritual to celebrate the bounty of summer and the promise of largess in the future. Something Maxwell did every year to renew his magical prowess.” Carter paused, as if to consider his words carefully. “At least that’s what the official press line is.”
“You believe in that kind of magic juju?”
“I’ve studied history. I do not believe, nor do I disbelieve. You can make of that what you will.”
Cheri tapped into her digital notebook, not easily intimidated.
“Anything else on the DVD we should know about?”
Under his tuxedo jacket, Carter rolled his shoulders like a man tired of standing in a long line. “I think it’s just a symbolic ritual, a P.R. stunt, if you ask me.”
Cheri nodded to Pizzarelli and was turning to the door when she spotted something white lying against the black leather of the couch. For a moment she thought the couch cushion had been slashed and white stuffing had escaped. Then she realized it was a bird.
Her voice choked as she said, “Is it dead?”
Andrea laughed. “Pretty real, huh? It’s fake, made of latex.” She picked up the white object from the cushion and crushed it in her hand. Pizzarelli’s eyes widened as she opened her hand and the “dove” reappeared.
“You can crush it small and it resumes its shape,” Andrea said. “Except for the little glass eyes. And it’s washable. Now you know all our tricks.”
<
br /> Cheri, having recovered her composure, noticed Carter’s professional smile had not reappeared. Pizzarelli handed Carter and Andrea each a business card. “If you think of anything else, or you find that DVD, we’d appreciate a call.”
The constant guttural rumble of the doves followed them out into the hallway of the building. When Andrea closed the door the annoying sound lessened, but Cheri could still hear it faintly, like the humming of a faulty refrigerator.
“Amazing acts,” Pizzarelli said.
“They do magic better than they lie. Amazing the neighbors don’t complain about the noise of those birds, cooing all the time.”
Pizzarelli nodded. “Thought you liked birds.”
“I did, until that smell and I realized what it must be like to live with them.”
“Who knew you could make a living stealing doves?”
It was obvious to Cheri that Carter’s act had impressed Pizzarelli.
“Hey—“ His voice brightened. “How about if a guy dressed up as a bird himself and made little men disappear into thin air. That’d be great act, huh?”
“Been done,” Cheri said as they left the building and found their car. “A guy named Giampaolo Zelli.”
Pizzarelli grinned at her across the top of the car. “An Italian, of course. So, after we stop in the office, let’s go see what the ex-wife has to say.”
“And see if we can find out what those two are hiding about that DVD.”
CHAPTER 17
Tuesday, August 9, 3:50 p.m.
Edmund Meiner smiled with satisfaction as he put down the phone. He’d placed a heavier-than-usual bet on a pretty filly in the next race at Del Mar. How nice to not have to lower his voice, to not have to plan his call when Maxwell was not at home. If at any time during the day he suddenly felt like placing a bet, he could just pick up the phone and do it.
With snoopy, controlling Maxwell no longer there, his bookie no longer had to hang up if she called the private line and didn’t reach Edmund himself.
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