Magicide

by Carolyn V. Hamilton

  She arrived to find Pizzarelli just getting out of his car. He’d parked in front of the red and white Emergency Medical Services van.

  The front door to the house was open. A sniffling Maria led them upstairs to Peter’s bedroom, where they found Larissa sobbing in a chair by the window. Black circles under her eyes said she hadn’t been sleeping well before this happened. Dawn sat on the floor, holding Larissa’s hand to her cheek, murmuring. Cheri had a Fellini moment where she saw Dawn talking to Larissa’s hand.

  Peter’s nude body lay crumpled in front of a mirrored antique armoire. One of the paramedics unfolded a blue sheet and spread it over the body. Told her the coroner had been called.

  “The guy’s gone,” the paramedic said. “Appears he injected a hypodermic full of something into his blood stream. Heart stopped.”

  Cheri took her electronic notebook from her pocket, turned it on and began tapping. She was afraid that if she looked anyone in the eye, she might begin to cry.

  “Suicide?” Pizzarelli asked.

  “Looks that way.”

  “Leave a note?”

  The paramedic nodded in the direction of the mirrored wardrobe. “Not exactly.”

  Scrawled on the glass in lipstick were the words, “I loved you—why couldn’t you love me back?”

  CHAPTER 53

  Saturday, August 13, 9:00 a.m.

  Digbee arrived at his shop in good spirits. Maxwell’s funeral had been a huge success. He looked at his watch. At ten, he had an appointment with Tom Raymer. Raymer, Raymer, something about the name nagged at him, but he dismissed it.

  The bell at the front door tinkled. He put on his best stage smile, and opened the door.

  “Good morning, my boy.”

  Here was young Tom, all lean arms and legs quivering to be a magician, with the same heated eagerness in his eyes that he himself had had at that age. What was it, a calling? A hunger? It was something beyond desire that made a great magician. Maxwell had it. This boy had it, too, and with the right preparation he could take it from the boy and make it his own.

  “Hey,” Tom said. “How was the funeral?”

  Digbee smiled. “I was feeling drained, but delivering the eulogy revitalized my energies. Nothing in the world like an audience, the elixir of life itself.”

  Tom entered the shop, his eyes sweeping the expanse with his usual keen interest. Digbee led him into the back room where he set Tom up to practice the Woman Sawed in Half illusion. He watched the young man’s every move and made comments of encouragement. When Tom became exasperated, unable to quite grasp the quick movement that was crucial to the transformation, he said, “Take a break. I have something for you.”

  Tom stepped off the short stage and followed him to the other side of the room. Digbee repositioned several boxes until he found the one he wanted and opened it. He removed a stack of magazines and handed them to Tom.

  “Old copies of Pentagram,” Tom exclaimed, delighted.

  “They’re yours to take home.”

  “Bitchen’.” Tom sat down and began to leaf through one of the issues.

  “Something else I think you’ll like.”

  Tom raised his head from the open magazine in his lap.

  “Tonight is the opening of MAGIQUE DU MONDE. They’ve asked me to be the opening star performer—“

  “What illusion are you going to do?”

  “Tonight…” Digbee paused for dramatic effect. “I will show the world I still have the power. I will perform the Bullet Catch with a smooth precision that will awe every magician in attendance.” Just imagining it made his spirit soar. They would once again revere him, envy him. Next solstice he would be the one to reap the benefits of the ritual.

  He would become the most powerful magician in the world, and they all would pay homage to him.

  Tom whistled low. “Dangerous.”

  Digbee smiled. Just looking at the boy gave him confidence. No doubt that Tom would play a key role in his future. “It’s very dangerous. Magicians have died performing it, but not me. I’ve perfected it.”

  “Eat your heart out, Houdini,” Tom said.

  He laughed. “How would you like to sit onstage at the side where the audience can’t see you, but you’ll have a command view of my performance?”

  “Bitchen’.”

  “I take it that means, yes. I’ll arrange for you to be admitted backstage as a back-room boy, but you won’t have to do anything but watch.”

  Tom’s foot, on the rung of the stool, bounced with excitement. “Thanks a lot.”

  The shop phone rang, and he excused himself. “I’ll be right back.” At the front counter, he picked up the phone. “The Rabbit & The Hat.” The voice on the other end brought a rising volcano from his stomach. It was as if every blood vein in his body had overheated.

  “This game you’re playing,” he snapped. “I want no part of it.” He listened to the response, and when he spoke again his voice hissed. “You’d better hope the police don’t find that DVD. How you’ve done this, I don’t want to know. If you’re smart, you’ll destroy it before it destroys us all!”

  He slammed down the receiver and looked up to see Tom standing in the open doorway, holding an open magazine in both hands, but not looking at the pages.

  Instead, he stared at Digbee with an expression of undisguised curiosity.

  CHAPTER 54

  Saturday, August 13, 1 p.m.

  The desert summer rainstorm predicted for the weekend arrived Saturday afternoon. The windshield of the Explorer began to spot with raindrops as Cheri and Pizzarelli drove from Seven Hills back to the command station.

  “Could Peter’s death eliminate him as a suspect?” she wondered out loud.

  “Not necessarily. He still had motive and opp.”

  She punched Tom’s quick-dial number on her cell phone. She wanted to touch base, let him know she’d be home in an hour or so. They had to talk. She had to tell him what had happened that night sixteen years ago so he would understand that she was a different person now, that all that made no difference, that she loved him, would always love him. She found herself counting the phone rings, and at five, when it kicked into his voice mail, she snapped her cell shut with a force that caught her partner’s attention.

  “Tom?”

  “We had a—a fight this morning. Now he’s not answering his cell phone.” She rolled her shoulders to force relaxation into her upper body. “It’ll work out,” she mumbled.

  Pizzarelli swung the Explorer into the parking lot, nearly empty on Saturday. “Hey, up front parking space. Our lucky day. Maybe the lab report’s back on the blood from Meiner’s accounting ledger.”

  Instead of a lab report, it was Edmund Meiner’s secretary who waited in the office for them. Pizzarelli pulled out a chair for her. “Please sit down.”

  Trudy Schwartz’ pearl-colored suit was rain-spotted at the shoulders. Her reading glasses dangled around her neck on a red beaded cord and under one arm she clutched a straw purse. The woman looked as if she had three teen-aged sons, all of which were giving her trouble. Cheri figured from the puffy redness under her eyes that she’d been crying. She’d wrapped a handkerchief tightly around the handle of her purse, like store owners wrapped the metal handles of their front doors when the temperature got to be a hundred outside.

  “I can’t go back,” Trudy Schwartz whispered, sinking into the chair next to the desk.

  Cheri leaned forward in a conspiratorial gesture. “To where?” she asked, matching the other woman’s tone.

  “To Maxwell’s. I quit. I can’t ever go back. I don’t know what he’ll do next.” In spite of her declaration, she sounded undecided, as if she needed to convince herself.

  “Who are we talking about?” Cheri asked. “Edmund Meiner, your employer?”

  “When I told him what I found out, he was furious. I’ve never seen him so enraged.”

  Pizzarelli sat on the edge of the desk and crossed his hands in his lap. “What is it y
ou found out that upset him, Mrs. Schwartz?”

  The woman lowered her voice to a whisper and spoke as if she were hypnotized. “Edmund made a big investment in a company called Equine Technologies. I investigated it, thinking I might make a little investment myself. Edmund’s very smart. I’ve always admired how he handles money for Maxwell. I don’t know much about investing, but I thought I’d follow Edmund’s example—not to his financial extent, of course. I don’t have that kind of money.” She paused, twisting one corner of the handkerchief.

  “And?” Cheri prodded. The woman’s eyes brightened. Fearful? Or about to cry? She pushed a tissue box closer to Trudy Schwartz’ side of the desk.

  “Equine Technologies is a fake. I mean—it’s a front for another company. That company’s registered in the Cook Islands where my nephew⎯he’s a broker⎯says is the only place left in the world you can hide money the government can’t find, y’ know, like Swiss bank accounts?”

  Pizzarelli nodded. “Go on.”

  “Well, the name of the Cook Islands company is Lewxam, which at first I thought sounded Indonesian. But I play a lot of word games, crosswords and such, y’ know. After I thought about it, I realized backwards that spells Maxwell, with only one L.”

  Cheri wrote the name on a notepad on her desk. “You think someone’s hiding money in a bank account in the Cook Islands?”

  “Edmund is beside himself. He wouldn’t believe Equine Technologies is a sham. He said I shouldn’t poke my nose where it doesn’t belong. He threatened me.”

  “What did he say, exactly?”

  “How curiosity’s known to kill cats. That if I told anyone, I’d be more than sorry. That there are things I don’t know that’re none of my business. He tried to act like he knew about it all along, like a kind of conspiracy with Maxwell, but I don’t think he knew. I think he was shocked and surprised, y’know? I think Maxwell figured out Edmund was stealing from him and set up Equine Technologies to con the money back.”

  “It sounds like it worked,” Cheri said. “With Maxwell dead, would Edmund have access to the Cook Islands account?”

  “I don’t know,” Trudy Schwartz said. “But I don’t think so. I think that’s why he’s so panicked.”

  Cheri remembered Maxwell’s other secret. “Did you know Maxwell had diabetes?”

  The secretary frowned. “I never saw any medication around for diabetes. No one ever mentioned it. Maxwell loved my German chocolate cake, y’ know. How could he eat that if he was diabetic? But if he was diabetic, I can appreciate that they wouldn’t want that to get out.”

  “Why not?”

  Trudy Schwartz looked at her as if the answer should be understood. “Why, bad press and all. It could suggest weakness, y’know? Not in keeping with Maxwell’s powerful image.”

  The telephone on Cheri’s desk rang. “Excuse me, Mrs. Schwartz.” She picked up the receiver. “Detective Raymer.”

  After a few minutes conversation in which she mostly listened, she hung up the phone, made a few quick notes on a pad, and turned to the woman sitting beside her desk. “Why don’t you go on home and rest, Mrs. Schwartz? We appreciate your coming down here to give us this information and we’ll definitely check into it.”

  In a voice edged with unease, Trudy Schwartz asked, “Are you thinking Edmund killed Maxwell?”

  A noisy disturbance erupted at the other end of the room, saving Cheri from her standard, police-vague answer. All of them turned to see a tall, red-haired woman struggling in the hands of three good-sized officers.

  “Keep your hands off me,” the redhead screeched, a banshee sound that echoed off the cement block walls. “I’ll sue you all! You can’t prove I did anything!”

  Cheri recognized the bruised face and broken arm.

  “Whoa,” said Pizzarelli. “Looks like Regine’s being arrested.”

  Regine stopped yelling when she recognized the detective walking toward her. Pizzarelli interrupted the officers’ direction and asked them instead to escort the woman to an interrogation room.

  For several minutes they let her sit to ponder what would happen next. Detective Lieutenant Washington and the police psychiatrist joined Cheri and Pizzarelli at the observation window. The arresting officers had forced Regine into a chair, where she half-sat, half-crouched in menacing agitation.

  “You know this woman?” Washington asked.

  “Maxwell’s ex-girl friend,” Cheri said. “Why is she here?”

  “She’s facing charges for B and E.”

  “Where?”

  “An apartment building off Maryland Parkway. The Mayfair Arms.”

  “That’s Dayan Franklyn’s crib,” Pizzarelli said. “How’d she break in?”

  “Crowbar to the back door. Not too subtle. Neighbor heard the noise and dialed 911. Police arrived to find the place ransacked and the woman throwing things around in a frenzy.”

  Cheri watched Regine shift her body in the chair, cross her legs and cradle her broken arm. “And then there’s her version?”

  “Says the back door was already busted in when she got there. She was worried about her friend who lives there. She just nudged the door a little so she could get in. Nobody home, place already a mess.”

  “Got an idea what she might-a been looking for?” Washington asked.

  “We know,” Cheri said, “and I think we just found it.”

  Pizzarelli turned to her in surprise. “The DVD?”

  “Dawn Cunningham just called. She was on e-bay searching for Jubilee! memorabilia and a link to Maxwell’s name popped up the thing for sale.”

  Pizzarelli grinned like a kid who’d just copped his first feel. “Let’s go buy it.”

  The expression on Washington’s face didn’t change. “There wasn’t any evidence that anything was stolen from Franklyn’s apartment, and the landlord is so afraid of the belligerent woman he doesn’t want to press charges.”

  “Then let’s let Regine go,” Cheri said. “She’s no use to us in jail.”

  Washington sighed. “New computer system just went down, too.”

  When Cheri returned to her desk, she noticed Trudy Schwartz had disappeared.

  CHAPTER 55

  Saturday, August 13, 1:40 p.m.

  “Damn,” Pizzarelli said. His comment was lost in the sound of a new commotion at the door to the room. Two workmen had arrived, delivering new filing cabinets. “Who’d think they’d deliver on Saturday?”

  Washington showed them where to deposit the cabinets as people scrambled to move chairs, boxes and stacks of files.

  “We’ve got to find a working computer,” Cheri said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  In the reception area they were told, “Sorry, ours are down, too. Called the IT guy. Said what he always says—‘I’ll be there as soon as I finish this job’.”

  “That could be hours,” Pizzarelli grumbled.

  She put her hand on his arm. “Internet.”

  Twenty minutes later they were sitting in front of a computer screen at Kinko’s. Within minutes, they had the e-bay offer up on the screen.

  “Jeez, 180 minutes left to bid,” Cheri said. The description of the DVD being offered by a company called Truth in Magic read, “Learn the truth behind the famous magician Maxwell’s success. This is the only copy of a DVD of a film made secretly during a black magic ritual to enhance Maxwell’s magical powers. Not for the faint of heart, this ritual involves nudity, mutilation, blood-sharing and human sacrifice. In order to bid, you must click below to legally declare that you are over 18.”

  “We’ve got to find out the real name of the seller.” Here came her old nemesis, impatience. She hated what she was about to do, and she couldn’t help herself. She picked up the phone and with the eraser end of a pencil punched in the speed-dial number for Tom’s cell. Five rings, then the recorder came on. She slammed down the pencil.

  “Tom, this is your mother. Listen, sweetie, I need help. You have great computer skills, and I thought, maybe…just call me a
s soon as you get this, okay?” She hung up the phone and stared at the e-bay screen.

  “Tough choice, huh?” Pizzarelli asked.

  “Hate to involve him in work, but he’s a computer whiz. He could cut through the net red tape.”

  “Maybe he’ll grow up to be Bill Gates instead of Tom, the Great.”

  She shot him an annoyed look, though she knew he was trying to be supportive. In an effort to set aside her guilt for involving her son in police business, she told herself it was okay to use people, just not to misuse them. Her fingers scrolled the arrow around the e-bay screen. “Maybe I can figure this out—”

  From where he leaned over her shoulder Pizzarelli said, “Don’t even look at me. I don’t know.”

  Another voice said, “Can I help?”

  Cheri looked up to see a young man about Tom’s height peeking at their e-bay screen. His pants hung low on his hips, he wore a faded red and gray UNLV tee shirt and his tennis shoes seemed too big for his feet. She explained what she needed.

  “No worries,” he said. “Let me sit in the driver’s seat.” Cheri rose from the swivel chair and gestured for him to sit down.

  “Name’s Rick,” he said, as if speaking to the computer screen as he poised his fingers over the keyboard. From the eBay website he clicked on “advanced search” and scrolled down the menu to “Find Members”, then clicked on the Find Contact Information” link.

  Without taking his eyes off the screen, Rick asked, “What are you buying?”

  Cheri pointed to a spot on the screen. “This DVD.”

  Rick typed in the sellers user ID and the listing number of the DVD offer, then clicked “Search.” Cheri marveled at how fast he could type, though he was using hunt-and-peck instead of traditional typing.

  The screen changed and eBay displayed its original e-mail message to the seller. “There you go,” Rick said.

  Cheri pulled out her palm pilot and entered the seller’s use ID, name, city, state, phone number and date of initial registration with eBay. “That’ll do it,” she said. “Thanks, Rick. You can close it all out now.”