"I appreciate that. Do I need to stick around to talk to the police?"
"If you want them to have a really good description of it, yes. Otherwise, all I know is it's a cabinet the size of a closet."
"Okay, I'll stick around."
While they waited for the cops to show up, Kevin dug through the promotional photos the Trubeau had on file looking for one where the box was featured or at least visible. A good photo would make it easier to identify. He knew its workings inside and out, but that didn't mean he could make anyone else see it the way he did. The cops took twenty minutes to arrive and it was a younger man, probably fresh into his uniform.
"Ma'am, sir," he addressed them both. "You said you wanted to report a robbery."
"Yes, there was at least one item stolen off our property," Caitlyn said. She came up the cop's chest. "If you'll follow me this way."
"While we're going to see what it was that's missing, maybe you can tell me how you realized there was a break in?"
"I realized there was a break in when I came in this morning to open the theater for rehearsals. The front door was unlocked, but there wasn't any damage to it. At first, I thought maybe Mr. McCarthy had let himself in and was upstairs going over the books, but I didn't find him up there, so I turned on the lights and went looking around. When I got to the storage area in the wings, I found that the locks had been opened, but I didn't have any idea what might have been taken. This is one of our performers, Mr. Ellis, Master Mephisto as he's called on stage. He's reporting a cabinet missing."
"A cabinet, sir?"
"Yes, an escape cabinet. It's a cabinet with a false bottom so that you can hide someone in it and sneak out of it." As much as he didn't like telling others how the trick worked, this wasn't some sycophant looking for an answer to a riddle; this was a cop asking about a piece of stolen property. They weren't equivalent.
They reached Kevin's storage space and opened the chain link gate.
"Where's the cabinet usually located?"
"In that back corner that's empty now."
"Can you give me a description of it?"
"I can do you one better, I found an old photo that shows you a full view of the front which is the most distinguishing part." He handed over the photo of the black cabinet with its carved front doors of flames.
The officer looked at it for a moment and said,
"What's something like this usually go for and where would you buy it?"
"Magic supply shops are few and far between and most don't deal in the furniture of magic anymore. Now it's more personal shops that do handcrafted items."
"So there's no clearing house for magical cabinets?"
"No. Maybe there was once, but not since I got into the business."
"Okay. How much would it cost to make?"
"A few thousand dollars. That one was good and sturdy, so maybe 10 grand."
"That's an expensive cabinet."
"Yes, but it's one of a kind and solid wood."
"I see."
The cop pulled a notepad out of his pocket and jotted down a few things. "Is there somewhere I can reach you in case we do find it? So that you can identify it?"
"I'm on file here at the Trubeau and I carry a cell phone for my personal dealings. I'll give you the number."
"Thank you." He jotted down another short passage or two. "And this report is being made by?"
"Caitlyn Peters and Kevin Ellis," Caitlyn supplied.
"Right."
The whole procedure took less than thirty minutes and left Caitlyn and Kevin standing at the front door to the lobby watching as the patrol car pulled away from the curb.
"I hope they find it," Caitlyn said.
"I do too. I would very much like to have it back."
Kevin shoved his hands in his pockets past his wallet and his keys.
"Caitlyn, where's the nearest flower shop from here?"
"Five blocks down, two blocks over at the southern edge of downtown, why?"
"Just thinking I should brighten my wife's day with some roses, that's all."
"That's romantic." The wistful way she said it made it sound as if she wished someone would do that for her. Kevin watched her with half his attention. Some roses would be just the thing to bring her mood up and he might even get to sleep in their bed tonight. Add a little wine and things would be perfect.
"I’m going to go see about some flowers and maybe some wine and chocolate. Give her a truly special evening. One of us should have a good day in spite of all this."
"You go do that. I'll see about getting the locks changed and issue you a new key once I do."
"Thank you, Caitlyn. I appreciate it."
A fitful breeze tugged at the edges of his hair under the summery sunshine. He walked the five blocks down and was stopped by an old man with a dog holding a sign: Will YOU help me feed Fido? Kevin looked from the man to the dog which slinked away from his gaze and said,
"Sure." He dug a few small bills out of his wallet and handed them to the man who gave him a gap-toothed smile.
"Thank you, sir, god bless."
"No problem."
Then he followed the sidewalk another two blocks to get to Foolin' Blooms florist. The front sign depicted two daisies dancing around holding each other’s hands. He walked in and a chime announced his presence. A plump woman bustled out of the back to the glass counter which held glass recreations of flowers. Kevin looked around before heading to the counter.
"And what can I do for you this fine day, sir?"
"I need some roses for my wife?"
"Is this an anniversary, a makeup, or a date night bouquet?"
"Are they different?"
"Well, not really, but it tells me what kind of card to give you." Her smile radiated kindness in spite of her words. "So which is it?"
"I guess it's a makeup. We fought this morning before I left home." He didn't get much deeper into his transgressions. They were in the past. Better to focus on the things he could fix.
"All right then, do you want to say a little sorry or a big sorry?"
"A big sorry."
"That's two dozen roses and an I'm Sorry card," she said. "Costs 45 even after taxes." She wiped a stray brown/gray strand out of her face.
"All right."
"My, you must truly be in trouble if you're not even going to express a little outrage about the prices."
Kevin looked down at the counter and sighed.
"Things have been really strained between us lately. I'm just trying to see if I can build us a bridge back to when we were happy."
"Well, flowers are a wonderful way to say 'I miss you' as much as 'I'm sorry', so maybe this will be what you need to start nailing some boards together." The clerk moved from the counter to a backroom hidden behind a beaded curtain. When she returned, she had exactly 23 red roses and one white that she put in the exact center of the bouquet. "The red ones are I love you and adding the white one signifies the unity of your marriage." Once the roses were wrapped in paper, she plucked a card from a small rack on the counter.
"Who shall I say these are from?"
"To the Author from the Magician." Confidence infused his voice.
"Ah, so pet names for each other. Very smooth." She wrote with whorls and flourishes and by the time she was finished the card was a work of art to go with the beautiful flowers.
"There we are," she said. "Now if you'll kindly tell me what kind of card you'll be using."
"It's a Visa."
"We always like Lady Visa around here."
Kevin smiled as he handed the woman his card.
When he exited the shop, the smile stayed. He turned to wave goodbye to the woman through the window and stopped. His face. His smile. Something wasn't right. He looked so pale and his lips too red. What was wrong with his teeth? The smile faded slowly and he blinked. Then he was looking at himself in the almost mirror like glass of the bay window of the shop. Just himself in a reflection. Nothing was wrong. Just his nerves
playing tricks. It had already been something of a long day.
He flagged down a cab with his free hand and decided to forget the wine. He wanted to see Marie's face light up at the sight of the flowers sooner rather than later. Perhaps he could have a better afternoon than his morning.
CHAPTER NINE
The words weren't coming as Marie sat in her desk chair and stared at the screen. As if there was a mental blockage. Everything kept coming back to the awareness of seeing her symbol, a piece of her imagination, on the wall of a crime scene. Nothing broke through that. Kevin said he was leaving. That hadn't made her want to come out of her room, but it did lift some of the gloom from the house. They were on the precipice of a divorce. She hated to say the word, but it waited there lurking. If they couldn't get past this somehow, if she couldn't get over her hurt feelings, if things didn't improve. If. If. If. The word made her sick. Marie punched her thigh and gritted her teeth down on the pain. She couldn't just sit there and do nothing.
Kevin said they didn't want the detective coming back and hounding them. What would he do if he found out they had known about the symbol and chose to keep their mouths shut? Quite likely, he would be less inclined to believe them when they said they knew nothing about what had gone on.
Sitting back in her chair, Marie covered her eyes then rubbed her forehead. What was she supposed to do? Well, being flummoxed by a blank screen wasn't helping matters. What could she do?
She put her hands down on the desk to either side of the keyboard. It was an old desk, a leave over from their first apartment. Besides, the bed and Kevin's magic equipment, they hadn't kept much from the early years. As if they were trying to erase the time it took for them to get to where they were. Experimentally, she opened the long thin drawer directly beneath the keyboard. Stacked inside were paper notes. Her handwriting was easy to recognize. The paper was yellowing and the one on top had a coffee stain. Marie pulled them out one at a time. One of them was labeled 'Overarching timeline for series'. On it were dozens of entries in blue pen. Under pre-history she had written: Timothy meets Keyana. She discarded that sheet to a pile beside the keyboard. The next sheet was marked 'Synopsis: Grave Silence'. It and the sheets it was paper clipped to went into the stack. Marie was moving faster now, picking through and discarding sheets.
Finished with that drawer, she opened the larger filing cabinet like drawers along the bottom. There were old manuscripts, forgotten storylines, bits and pieces of poetry. The detritus of a working writer's life.
"Where is it?" As she spoke, Marie realized she really was looking for something. It was there somewhere, maybe.
A half hour later, she had been through the entire desk and the one thing that was the object of her quest remained out of sight. Dumping sheets back in willy-nilly she shoved the drawers closed. There was still somewhere left to look. Bolting out of the chair, she headed for the room's closet. On the floor inside sat a steamer trunk. Gifted to her when she started college, she had carried it from place to place. It made a convenient hiding place for things she wanted to hold on to but wouldn't necessarily need for some time. Marie knelt down in front of it and said,
"To you I commend my dreams and draw my nightmares."
The lid clapped back with an easy push to hang heavy on its hinges. Marie couldn't avoid thinking about how much it reminded her of the way a head would hang if the throat was cut too far. Inside were more paper and a book. The book weighed five pounds and had lived longer than its owner. Cecilia Coren, Marie's mother, gave it to her before she passed away. In it, inspiration dwelt. She shifted the papers around it, looking at each with an almost fervent eye before discarding it to the side. Finally she found it. The page was thick paper, slightly wavy from a long time spent in a not quite bent position. Not typing paper, but the leavings of a sketchbook. Marie did not draw, but Naomie did. Once, before any of the books were published; in fact, before Marie was given her publishing deal, Naomie had drawn the symbol for the Dark King. It was a freehand circle denoting a full moon. Inside of it was a scythe blade drawn long on one edge. The handle cut the moon in half. Marie put the drawing next to her legs on the floor and leaned over to grab the top of the trunk. She closed it with a light click. Then she looked at the picture on the floor again. The ink had long since dried and even seemed to be turning a little brown.
"I don't know what to think."
When she started looking, Marie had been seized by a frantic need to find the one piece of paper linking the symbols together. One artist's rendering mirroring another, if one could call what was on Sylvia's wall art. Now, with it in her hands, she felt a chill. Gooseflesh peppered her arms. It was the sense someone had walked over her grave with murder on their mind. The hardwood floor was unforgiving on her knees, but she didn't move. The urge had taken a backseat to something else. Now that she had that sheet of paper, what was she going to do with it? She could call the detective and say she saw the news footage and thought someone might be using her books as inspiration for a murder? If she did that, she didn't have to tell him about her dream and how she had seen a fictional character beat Sylvia to death? But wouldn't that cast suspicion back on Kevin? Marie wiped her hands down her face and covered her mouth. Kevin hadn't done anything. If justice was served, that would come out. A poisonous thought followed, 'but justice isn't always served'. Swallowing, she tried to get rid of the sick taste in her mouth. Plucking the paper up, she headed back to her desk and dropped into the chair.
It would only take one phone call.
One phone call.
Her phone was in the bedroom plugged up from the night before. All she had to do was get it and she could help start putting this thing to rest. Even as her mind turned on the possibilities, she remembered how much Kevin hadn't wanted to talk to Detective Placard. Marie, honestly, didn't want to talk to him either. Her distrust in the police force was perhaps less experiential than his, but it was there.
With the page at her side, Marie opened up her web browser and searched for any mentions of Sylvia's murder. There were of course stills from the production on the mystery earlier in the day. Clicking on the picture of her wall, Marie blew it up to full size and made sure she wasn't just seeing things. If it was just a bad dream which had gotten blow out of proportion, that was one thing. It being true was another. The pictures weren't identical, but one definitely looked a lot like the other. She sat back again. Whatever she was feeling, she needed to call Detective Placard. It was too much of a coincidence.
Yet she didn't get up. She could visualize where her phone was, in its usual place. It would take her less than a minute to get it. Still she didn't move. Instead she turned the whole thing over in her head again. She had seen the Gravekeeper kill Sylvia. It had drawn the symbol on the wall.
That was impossible.
She didn't need Kevin to tell her that. The Gravekeeper was a figment of her imagination. It couldn't do anything she didn't allow it to do. Yet Sylvia was dead. The symbol was on her wall. Things she had dreamed were true. So how could the whole dream not be true? She pushed away from her desk, rolling the chair to the center of the floor. Lazily, she kicked her feet. The book was on the coffee table if it was still where she left it. Kevin probably hadn't moved it. Going to get it crossed her mind, but what good would it do? If the Gravekeeper was real, a previous journal of his exploits would do nothing. If it wasn't real and she was just having some kind of strange delusion brought on by fear or guilt or whatever it might be, then it still would do her no good.
Finally, she rose from her seat and went into the bedroom. The other books were strewn across the floor, thrown there in her previous fit of temper. A signed copy of "Howling Laughter" stared up at her with the Jester's black rimmed too wide eyes. Picking it up, she set it back on the shelf. Then beside it went the copy of "Maddening Whisper". The two looked out of place without the third. There was a mock up of what the fourth would look like once she was finished with it, but she kept it in the office for inspiratio
n.
The cover art had already been decided. Not that it couldn't change.
Her phone blinked at her from its place beside the bed. Still waiting for her to make the choice and call the police. How would it sound to them, her telling them that a fictional character was responsible for a real death? Would they write her off automatically or pretend to humor her in order to see if she would give them more concrete details and out herself as the actual murderer? It was possible.
Flopping down on the bed, she picked up the phone. This wasn't an emergency, so 911 was out of the question. However, how did she get in touch with Detective Placard himself? It might not be useless to talk to someone else, but he was the one investigating, talking to him would be better.
The screen welcomed her with the sight of the mausoleum from "Grave Silence" as drawn by her cover illustrator, Frank Gibbons. With a slid, she opened the phone and called the local number for information.
"Hello, I need the number for Markston PD, please?"
"Would you like me to automatically connect you?" the pleasant voice asked.
"Please."
Thirty seconds later, she was listening to ringing. Then a woman picked up.
"Markston PD, Weight."
"I'm sorry did you say wait?"
"Yes, Weight. Amelia Weight. What can I do for you?"
"I would like to be connected with Detective Placard in homicide."
"Can you say what it's about?"
"I would prefer to discuss that with him."
Marie twisted the roots of her hair as she waited for the phone to stop ringing. After what seemed like far too long, a man picked up.
"Detective Placard."
"Good afternoon, Detective, Marie Ellis."
"Mrs. Ellis, it's very nice to hear from you. Did you give what I said some thought?"
"Yes, but I'm not calling you about that. I was calling you to discuss the symbol painted on Ms. Bridge's wall."
"Hold on, do you mind if I record this call?"
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