In the closet he’d found both a large and small suitcase, so Dayan hadn’t packed anything to leave. He might have taken off suddenly, though, if he’d been the one who’d killed Maxwell. But why would he do that? Maxwell had promised Dayan that he would teach him everything he knew about magic and mold him into a great magician.
Meiner knew Maxwell had even hinted that in his will he would leave all his effects to Dayan, when in fact they should have gone to his son, Peter. Did Maxwell plan to change his will? Could that be a motive for Dayan to make the handcuff switch that caused Maxwell’s death?
The thermostat in the apartment had been set at eighty-five, and the closed-in heat and stuffy air caused Meiner to sweat profusely. He’d spent too much time here. While he was trying to make logical sense of events, Dayan could be on his way home right now. It wasn’t hard to imagine how he’d react if he found Maxwell’s personal coordinator in his ravaged apartment.
At the front door, he pulled the blackout shade a fraction to one side so he could make a cautious peek outside to check if anyone was coming. The street appeared deserted. He inhaled a deep breath which caused him to cough from the dust. Fearful of the sound he’d made, he opened the front door and stepped out into the dazzling morning sun.
He closed the door behind him with care, as if he’d been a friend who’d come by to feed a cat and water a few plants.
He tried not to hurry as he walked down the cracked cement walkway and climbed into his car. As he drove back out onto Maryland Parkway, tension drained from his shoulders. He hadn’t been caught illegally breaking and entering someone else’s apartment. The weight of a new fear pressed at the back of his skull, like a neck cramp from remaining too long in a trick casket.
If Dayan Franklyn didn’t have the DVD, who did? And how soon would it rear its ugly head to ruin his life?
CHAPTER 24
Wednesday, August 10, 9:30 a.m.
“My ex-wife used to date a guy who lived in here,” Pizzarelli told Cheri. In their Ford Explorer they approached the guardhouse to the gated community called Rancho Estates. “I told her if the guy could afford to live here, she should marry him.”
Cheri was driving with one hand and fingering the police identification badge hanging from her neck with the other. “And did she?”
“No. But then she never did anything else I told her to, either.”
They slowed to a stop in front of a massive iron gate and a guard in a white uniform came out of a stone house that stood between two wide driveways.
Cheri gave him her best bet-you-think-I-was-a-showgirl smile as she showed him her police identification. He responded by barely glancing at the i.d. Pizzarelli held out.
The guard went back into his house and came out with a long card that he instructed them to hang from their rear view mirror.
Terrible distraction and obstruction to view while driving, she thought. He pressed a button, the gates inched open, and they entered a winding, tree-lined drive.
“Regine lives at 48 Rockfield Drive,” Pizzarelli read from a slip of paper. He also held a publicity photo of Regine he’d found on the internet. A frank smile, open and inviting, her sharp-jawed face framed in a wild blaze of Irish setter red hair. “What a looker,” he murmured.
Separated from the street by a pristine lawn, the house was a retro-seventies design, with a slate roof, picture windows, and unusual angles. Surrounding it were lush gardens of flowering trees, Mexican primroses, and colorful pansies and mums. “No water shortage here,” she said.
Regine herself answered the door. She was taller than Cheri expected; at five-foot-ten she didn’t often meet a taller woman. Regine wore no make-up and her thick red hair was piled loosely on top of her head, held in place with a large gold plastic banana clip. She wore jeans and a tight gray tee shirt. Purple-edged blotches marked the left side of her face and neck, and she had a broken arm.
Even with the cast and sling, she managed to cradle in her arms a small, white rabbit.
“If my show wasn’t temporarily dark,” she said, “you’d never have found me awake at this ungodly hour.”
At Regine’s invitation, they followed her across a flagstone entry and walked down two steps into a tasteful living room of beiges and ivories, punctuated with a black ebony grand piano.
“We have some questions about your friendship with Maxwell Beacham-Jones,” Cheri said.
Pizzarelli spied some photos in black frames on the marble fireplace mantel. “We’ve been told you’re his girlfriend.”
Regine’s face was impassive. She sat down on the cream-colored sofa and smiled down at the rabbit, carefully positioning it in her lap. “Were is the operative word, and not because he’s dead. Please sit down. I broke up with him last week.”
Cheri sat in an overstuffed armchair and opened her digital notebook. “What day would that have been?”
“Tuesday—no, Wednesday.” Regine’s husky voice was harsh. “A week ago today, in fact.”
“Five days before the escape that killed him. Where were you Monday night?”
“At the Dunes Park, Of course. Wasn’t everybody?”
Regine had the kind of voice that made Cheri think of a telephone sex worker who smoked five packs a day. “Where was your seat?” she asked.
“Not in the VIP stands, I can tell you that.” Regine stroked the rabbit’s back in gentle moves. Her voice had taken on a bitter edge.
Pizzarelli, still standing by the fireplace, held out a photo he’d picked up from the mantel. The woman in the photo wore a long, clingy red dress and held three white doves on her outstretched arm. “This is you?”
“When I worked the big room at Caesars Tahoe.”
“The rabbit in the act, too?” Pizzarelli asked.
Regine’s eyes lowered to her lap, and she stroked the rabbit with the long, manicured fingers of her free hand. “Pubic here has been retired for a long time. I specialize in doves now. Would you like to see them?”
Pizzarelli coughed. “Pubic?”
Seeing his startled expression, Regine’s mouth stretched into a devilish smile. “Pubic Hare.”
“Maybe another time,” Cheri said. If there were doves in Regine’s home, she did a good job of covering the smell. “Maxwell’s handcuffs were switched before the escape. Would you know anything about that?”
“Moi?” Regine’s hand touched her chest where the cloth of the sling met her neck. “I don’t think so. Are you telling me someone did it on purpose—Maxwell was murdered?”
“When was the last time you saw Maxwell?”
“The day we broke up.”
“Did you talk to Maxwell on Monday, the day of the roller coaster stunt?” Pizzarelli asked.
Regine’s smile disintegrated. “I wanted to. This is going to sound crazy, but I had a sense something might happen. The roller coaster escape is spectacular, but not without danger. Any number of things can go wrong, no matter how carefully it’s set up—“
“What kinda things?” Pizzarelli asked.
Regine stared into Pizzarelli’s face with clear, hazel eyes. “Mechanics, timing, weight factors, the effects of the weather on the steel of the tracks, human error.” She shrugged. “Personally, you’d never catch me even riding on one of those things, let alone lying down on the track in front of it. Those roller coaster things are dangerous. But then, that’s the attraction of major illusions.”
No guile there, Cheri thought. “So you wanted to talk to him? What did you say?”
“I never got to him. I got as far as the dressing room, and those goons turned me away. Told me he didn’t want to see anybody before the show. He needed to ‘prepare himself mentally.’ But that’s why I wanted to see him. I was afraid he was still upset about our... break-up, and that it might distract him from concentrating on the effect.” She presented a sad smile. “When you’re getting ready to perform something that complicated and dangerous, it’s important that you clear your mind completely of anything except the moment
. I wanted to tell him all was forgiven.”
“What made you think”—Cheri consulted her notes—“you said, ‘something might happen’ to Maxwell?”
“I don’t know,” she said huskily. “Just a strange feeling, a bad premonition. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. It was as if I saw it happen in advance, and then it happened... leaves you feeling funny, you know?”
Pizzarelli replaced the photo to the mantel. “Why did you break up with Maxwell?” He moved to a bookcase that contained several framed pictures. “What happened?”
Regine’s fingertips brushed her jaw line, where the discoloration on her face began. “It wasn’t pretty.” Her alto voice turned acid. “We argued over Dayan Franklyn. I thought it was disgusting and getting way too out of hand the way he was fawning over that boy, when he has a son of his own who should now be inheriting his act.”
“What triggered the argument?”
“I saw a bill for dental work he’d paid for for Dayan. Okay, it was none of my business, but it was right there on the table at the house. Tens of thousands of dollars so the kid could have a smile like a Buick grill.”
Pizzarelli said, “You hadda comment.”
“I told him he ought to be putting that money into his own son’s career. He told me he was taking care of the little fag alright. He couldn’t stand the idea that his son was homosexual, you see, and he began to rage. I didn’t want to hear it anymore.” Regine paused and shrugged.
“And?” Cheri prompted.
“And I opened my big mouth and told him about me. I think the words I said were, you can’t stand your son, but you sleep with a woman who used to be a man.”
Pizzarelli, who Cheri knew prided himself on having seen and heard it all, expelled a sound that was half groan/half expletive.
If Regine noticed, she didn’t react. “That’s when he turned his anger on me. He’d never hit me before, so I wasn’t expecting violence. He just went ballistic.”
“Hence the bruises and broken arm?” It still surprised Cheri that she could keep her voice dispassionate when she asked questions about physical abuse.
“What do you think?”
“You’ve had sexual reassignment surgery?” Cheri asked.
“Eight years ago. The works. Vaginoplasty, labiaplasty, and augmentation mammoplasty. It was a complete commitment to a life I’d always dreamed of.”
Pizzarelli had regained his composure. “Maxwell had sex with you and couldn’t tell? So when you told him he beat you up. And in return you killed him.”
“No! I couldn’t believe he’d hit me, but I never wanted to kill him.” Regine remained expressionless, but her voice betrayed strong hidden emotions. Pissed off, Cheri thought, but she wasn’t sure if it was at Maxwell or detective Pizzarelli.
“Do you know anything about a DVD of Maxwell involved in a magic ritual?” Cheri asked.
Regine tensed. “I’ve heard about it—I haven’t seen it. Maxwell conducts a ritual every spring up on Sunrise Mountain. He told me he gets power from it, that it’s the source of his great talent and fame. I thought it was nuts. Hey, to each his own, I say.”
“Right,” Pizzarelli said, his gaze focused at the place where tee shirt fabric stretched across Regine’s augmented chest.
Regine stopped stroking her rabbit. “I’ll tell you, if I had that footage right now, I’d take it straight to the media. Maxwell doesn’t deserve to be remembered as a nice guy. He was a bastard, pure and simple. It only took me ten months to figure it out, even though I’d heard stories before I ever dated him. But I didn’t want him to die. I never wanted my premonition to come true. I wanted to make my peace with him.”
“What sort of stories did you hear?” Cheri asked.
“Maxwell didn’t get to be rich and famous from some magic ritual. He got rich and famous from stealing the best from other magicians. He stole lines, patter, effects, entire routines, and everybody hated him for it. Probably every magician in the world could be a suspect in his murder, if you started checking out all the stories.”
Pizzarelli said, “We’ll do that.”
Regine didn’t smile when she said, “You know, once Maxwell and I were talking about the coffin escape he’d just done in Japan for a Nippon Television Special, and he said to me, ‘When I go out for good, it’ll be the grandest effect in the entire magic world.’”
CHAPTER 25
Wednesday, August 10, 10:30 a.m.
Regine stood in her living room window stroking the rabbit cradled in her arms and watched the two detectives get into their Explorer and drive out of her circular driveway. When they were no longer in sight, she walked into her kitchen and, with difficulty because of her arm cast, deposited Pubic in his cage.
She picked up the phone and punched into the keypad the number she knew by heart.
She dreaded what she knew she had to do.
Months of planning, endless phone calls, using every negotiation skill she had to get the job done. All without Maxwell knowing she had a hand in it. His ego would never have let her manage the arrangements. She’d worked so hard to make all this come out right.
She cradled the phone in her shoulder and tapped her long nails on the counter, but the clicking sound jarred her nerves. She slapped her hand flat on the counter.
The man finally answered. “It’s Regine,” she said. “I’m afraid we may have a bit of a problem.” She concentrated her focus on a calm tone that would magically make her bad news somehow palatable to the man on the other end of the phone.
Her mind numbed as she described the visit by the two detectives investigating Maxwell’s death. She told how they had asked about a DVD of Maxwell performing black magic, and what it might mean. When she stopped speaking, she became aware of the stillness of the air around her.
“Do you know where this DVD is?” the man asked. His tone soothed in a manner that frightened her.
“I haven’t a clue.” She pulled out a bar stool, intending to sit down at the counter. It made a scraping noise that paralyzed her.
“Well, someone has it. Someone who might want to blackmail Maxwell, for example.”
Regine didn’t sit down. Her mind raced with thoughts of different things she could say to protect herself.
“Someone close to Maxwell,” she offered. “Maybe his manager, or his protégé.”
“It won’t affect our business arrangement in any way, but it would be good to have it. The probate lawyers may think they can get out of paying their debt to us. The DVD you describe sounds like excellent leverage.”
“I’ll find it,” Regine said quickly. She hoped her voice sounded confident and didn’t betray her new premonition.
“Good answer, Regine. When you brought Maxwell Beacham-Jones to us, we trusted you had explained to him the perameters of the loan. That escape would never have taken place without our financing.”
“I know that.” Regine’s fingertips tapped the countertop in an erratic staccato that she couldn’t control.
The voice on the other end of the phone spoke slowly and deliberately. “You have your commission, so it’s vital that you address this problem as soon as possible. I want that DVD.”
His meaning was quite clear.
“I’ll do everything I can to find it for you, Guido. You have my word.”
CHAPTER 26
Wednesday, August 10, 11:00 a.m.
Cheri listened to Pizza crunch all the way from Regine’s house. He was finishing the end of a carrot stick when they arrived at the twin gray stone towers that framed the entrance to the drive of the mansion belonging to Maxwell.
They stopped the Explorer in front of a ten-foot-high, ornate iron gate with the initial M scrolled in the center of each panel. Recessed into the stones was a shiny speaker panel with a button. Cheri rolled down the window of the air-conditioned vehicle and a rush of desert heat blasted them. She reached out and pressed the button.
“Maxwell Beacham-Jones’ residence,” a woman’s
voice announced.
Cheri gave her their names and said they were there on police business. Without another word, the iron gates began to slowly part.
“The Red Sea,” Pizzarelli said.
Ahead of them loomed a three-story monstrosity that had once been two houses. Cheri remembered that when Maxwell had purchased them, he’d ordered a complete remodel that resulted in the houses being joined and disappearing into a peaked and turreted faux stone structure. The progress had been followed almost daily by the Las Vegas Post. The resulting harsh architectural lines were softened by Chinese Elms and hundreds of imported palm trees. Grassy expanses were interrupted with bottlebrush and Chilean mesquite bushes.
She wasn’t the least bit surprised by the eerie opulence of the mansion Maxwell Beacham-Jones had called home. It was every bit as spooky as she’d imagined the home of a world-famous magician would be, albeit in an upscale way.
They were let into the house by the woman who’d answered the gate intercom. She introduced herself as, “Mrs. Schwartz, the secretary.” Then she left them alone in the main entry room while she went to find Maxwell’s personal coordinator, Edmund Meiner.
“What is all this shit?” muttered Pizza.
Cheri laughed. “Magic shit.” Tom would love this place, she thought. And with luck he’ll never see it.
In a niche across from the front door stood an elaborate statue of an oriental wizard, his garb dotted with suns, stars, and moons. Pizzarelli leaned closer to inspect the little statue, and a frightening “hooooooo” sounded above their heads. They both started and looked up. A stuffed owl perched on the carved top of a tall cabinet. He leaned forward again, and the owl hooted once more.
“Clever,” she said. “Certainly gets your attention.”
Mrs. Schwartz returned. “Mr. Meiner will meet you in the study. This way, please.” A curved archway leading to what Cheri figured must be the living room was festooned with dark gold velvet. The secretary led them through a large room crowded with heavy furniture. Every surface and corner was filled with exotic objets d’art, all with a magic theme. Through a dark hallway and into a room that felt even more crowded and claustrophobic.
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