Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery Read online

  When I finished, I headed back toward my room pausing at the door of Gunther Wherthman, my closest friend, who stood less than four feet tall and carried himself with a dignity that should have been the envy of every slouching congressman.

  I knocked. Gunther called for me to come in. The door wasn’t locked. No doors at Mrs. Plaut’s were allowed to be locked. Privacy, she believed, nurtured the possibility of perversion.

  Gunther’s room was the same size as mine, but that’s where the comparison ended. My room looked like a messy college freshman’s dorm closet. A worn sofa against one wall, a dresser near the door, a small table with two chairs. A box of a refrigerator the size of a peach crate, and a mattress against the wall. The mattress plopped down on the floor at night and so did I. My back is ever on the verge of rebellion and needs a firm thin mattress and the promise that I will never sleep on my stomach or side.

  Gunther’s room had a neatly made-up single bed in the corner with a muted multicolored Indian blanket over it and matching pillows on top. There was a single soft brown leather armchair, a dark Persian throw rug on the floor, dark wooden bookshelves against the walls, and a desk near the window with neat piles of paper, magazines, reports, and books. In the swivel chair by the desk, Gunther sat wearing, as he always did, a three-piece suit and tie. Gunther worked in his room as a translator for industry and the government. He always dressed for work.

  “You think Grieg’s music can cause someone to feel no pain?” I asked, standing in the open doorway.

  “He was of a dour Norwegian bent,” Gunther said seriously, with his slight Swiss accent, “and it has been said that even his Peer Gynt Suite might incline those less than devoted to his work to escape the performance by a protective self trance.”

  “Meaning?”

  “When bored by Grieg, people have been known to fall asleep, sometimes with their eyes open,” he explained. “May I ask why you present this question?”

  “Shelly,” I said.

  Gunther shook his head. The dentist’s name was explanation enough.

  “What do you know about magicians?” I asked.

  “When I was with the circus,” Gunther said, tapping the tiny fingers of his right hand on his desk, “I encountered several. At one point I was even employed by Spengler Aroyo, Spengler the Magnificent. Magicians like to have little people in their acts. He billed me as Hugo the Dwarf. I objected. I am not a dwarf. I quit. Magicians are often dual of visage—open, gregarious in public, intense and brooding in private.”

  “Phil and I are working for Harry Blackstone,” I said.

  “It is my understanding that he is an amiable gentleman of his word,” said Gunther. “Can I be of service?”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said. “What are you working on?”

  “This?” he said, putting his palm on a yellow folder. “This is a fascinating technical report in Danish of a process for the ultra-refinement of crude oil.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “You jest,” said Gunther with a smile.

  “See you at dinner,” I said. “Beef heart stew.”

  I left the room closing the door behind me as the phone at the end of the hall rang. I moved to get it.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Tobias,” said Phil. “Our client got another call. “Tomorrow night’s performance at the Pantages. The son-of-a-bitch said it would be Blackstone’s last unless he turned over his secrets to someone who would come to him at the theater before the show.”

  “You talk to the caller?”

  “Yeah,” said Phil. “I told him we would be waiting for him. He laughed and called me a blustering stooge.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Tore the damn phone off the wall.”

  Chapter 4

  Write something on a sheet of paper, fold it, and tell the other person to place it in his pocket. Lay out two small piles of cards. Make it clear that the piles do not have the same number of cards. Tell the other person that you have predicted which pile he will point to. Have him point to a pile. Tell him to open the sheet of paper you have written on. The number 7 is written on the paper. Pick up the pile and count. There are seven cards in the pile. Solution: If the other person had picked the pile with four cards, you turn the cards over. They are all sevens.

  From the Blackstone, The Magic Detective radio show

  AND THEN IT WAS WEDNESDAY, the 25th,and I was on the platform on my back about to be buzz-sawed up the middle, while dressed in a blue uniform with epaulets and big brass buttons.

  I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how it happened. I do know that the blade was real and spinning noisily very close to the last place I wanted it to be. Then darkness. I felt myself turning over, rolling to my right. Then I was lying on a mattress looking up at Jeremy Butler who reached down, took my arm, and lifted me up. Jimmy Clark, the freckled kid with the limp, stood next to him.

  I reached down to be sure I was intact and dry. I was.

  “Come,” said Jeremy, turning and leading me away. Beyond the curtain, from where I had tumbled onto the mattress, the crowd was applauding.

  “What happened?”

  “Blackstone turned you into a lion,” Jimmy said. “We’ve got to hurry so he can turn the lion back into you.”

  The three of us dodged props, went through a small pack of heavily made-up girls with spangled blue swimsuits, evaded two men in Babes in Toyland uniforms like mine and headed up a steel staircase. The kid was in the lead, then Jeremy, then me.

  The staircase rattled. Someone in the wings below gave a loud “shush,” which could probably be heard in the first half dozen rows of the theater.

  At the top of the stairs, the kid went to a door, opened it and stepped back. I entered a large dressing room lined with mirrored dressing tables.

  There was only one person in the bulb-lit room, a man at the third table on my left. He was leaning forward, his face pressed against the mirror, eyes open as if he were astonished by his own image and trying to get a closer look.

  He was dead. No doubt. The giveaway was not just the open eyes and mouth, but the hole in the side of his head and the thick stream of blood making its way down his cheek.

  “Who found him?” I asked.

  “Marie,” said Jimmy.

  “Marie?”

  “This is her dressing room and the other girls’,” the kid said, unable to take his eyes off of the dead man. “She came back for … and she found him.”

  I moved forward toward the body.

  “Get Marie,” I said.

  “She won’t come in here,” said Jimmy. “I know her. She’ll start screaming and all. He’s dead, right?”

  People were gathering in the open doorway.

  “Most sincerely dead,” I said, leaning over to look at the dead man’s face in the mirror. “And call the police.”

  Outside the open door, people were gathering, looking, not quite taking in what was happening.

  “Jeremy, close the door.”

  Before he could close the door, my brother Phil and Pete Bouton stepped in. Phil looked at the body. He’d seen dozens before, but this one he recognized.

  “Robert R. Cunningham,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Blackmailer, con man, blackmail, posed as a cop sometimes, or an insurance investigator,” said Phil, moving in for a closer look at the dead man. “Had a private detective license. We took it away.”

  Phil touched Cunningham’s cheek.

  “Couldn’t have gotten it more than a few minutes ago. Who heard the shot? Saw someone?”

  “The buzz saw,” said Pete Bouton. “The sound of the buzz saw probably drowned out the shot.”

  “Which means,” I said. “The killer waited for the saw to start making noise.”

  “Or he …,” Phil began.

  “Or she,” I amended, “just got lucky.”

  A knock. The door opened, and Jimmy Clark stuck his head in.

  “Called the
cops,” he said. “Marie’s out here.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and then to Phil. “She found the body.”

  Phil and Bouton stayed with the dead man. The kid and I went out onto the landing and through a small crowd of people. Voices in the crowd asked, “What happened? Someone hurt? Shouldn’t we call an ambulance? Who …?”

  Jimmy guided me into a room three or four doors down. The room was crowded with boxes of rabbits, quacking ducks, fluttering and frightened cooing doves. Sitting with her back to a mirror was a pretty girl with short dark hair in bangs, very red lips and one-piece green bathing suit covered with glitter that caught the light and shimmered with each sob.

  I ushered Jimmy outside, closed the door and turned to the girl.

  “Marie,” I said.

  No response.

  “Marie,” I repeated.

  This time her head jerked and she looked at or through me.

  “You found the body.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she answered with a nod.

  “You hear a shot?”

  This time, the nod was a negative shake of the head.

  “You see anyone near the dressing room?”

  Positive nod this time.

  “Who?”

  She tried to speak, caught her breath and said, “A man. Came running out. I was going in to get …”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Suit, tie I think. Had a beard like the devil always has in pictures and movies you know?”

  “I know.”

  “And he was wearing a what-do-you-call it? Thing you wrap around your head?”

  “Turban,” I said.

  “Yeah, with this green piece of glass right in the middle, here.” She pointed to a spot just over his forehead, and added, “He’s dead. Cunningham. I could tell, right?”

  “He is,” I confirmed. “You know why he was in the women’s dressing room?”

  “Gwen’s boyfriend,” she said.

  “Gwen?”

  “She’s the tiger lady, the one in the tiger costume,” Marie said.

  I remembered her. She was very pretty and very young.

  “Dead man is about forty-five, overweight, and looks a lot like Charles Laughton,” I said.

  “He’s also rich,” she said. “Gives … gave her lots of stuff, you know?”

  That explained a few things. Cunningham was seeing a girl in the show. Cunningham used a false name. Cunningham pretended he was wealthy. Now Cunningham was dead. The police were on the way. I wanted to find Gwen.

  “Police will be here soon,” I said. “Stay here. You want company?”

  The “yes” nod.

  “I’ll send someone in.”

  I went out the door. The pack was waiting for me. Jeremy was on the landing now, protecting the door of the dressing room where Phil was looking for whatever he could find.

  I motioned for Jeremy. He pressed his way through the crowd on the narrow landing, and I told him to sit inside with Marie till the police came. He went through the door and I asked, “Which of you is Gwen?”

  No one answered. People looked around at each other.

  “The girl in the tiger costume?” I tried.

  “Gone,” came a voice from the stage level below.

  I looked over the railing and down at an old man with an open white shirt and a pair of wide suspenders.

  “Gone? Where?”

  “Out there,” said the man, pointing a pipe toward the stage door. “You went up the stairs,” he said, pointing the pipe at the stairs, “and she went flying out, running like a banshee was snapping at her heels.” He was pointing toward the stage door again.

  On cue, the stage door opened and two uniformed cops came in.

  “What is going on?” said Blackstone, stepping off the stage and looking at the cops and then up at me. “I need Peters back on the roller right now. I have a very impatient lion and more impatient audience, and I need something that resembles silence.”

  “Man’s been murdered,” I said to the cops and Blackstone.

  The backstage crowd went silent.

  Blackstone said, “Who?”

  One of the cops said, “Where’s the body?”

  “In there,” I said, pointing at the dressing room door and then to Blackstone, “A man named Cunningham.”

  “Why? Who did it?”

  The cops were hurrying up the clanging stairs, muscling past performers and stagehands. The cop in the lead was florid and heavy, one of the wartime retreads. The kid behind him looked like my fourteen-year-old nephew.

  Blackstone’s questions were good ones.

  I didn’t have the answers.

  “Did anyone see a guy with a beard wearing a turban with a green stone in it?” I asked.

  “I did,” said Jimmy Clark. “He was up on the landing next to the dressing rooms right before the buzz saw act.”

  “Went out that door,” said the old man with the pipe, pointing once again at the stage door. “Couple of minutes ago right behind the tiger lady.”

  “Sara,” Blackstone called in a loud whisper and pointed to a blonde girl in a Little Bow Peep costume. “You’ll appear instead of Mr. Peters. Now all I need is some new patter.”

  “The double whoops,” Pete said, leaning over the rail.

  Blackstone raised a finger, nodded, motioned for Little Bow Peep to move behind the curtains, and went back onstage.

  Chapter 5

  Hand half a pack of playing cards to two people with the cards faced down after you have dealt out two piles. Have each person take a card from his or her deck, look at it, and place it in the other person’s pile. Have each person shuffle the half deck he or she has. Place on pile on top of the other. Look at the cards. Pull out two. Lay them facedown. Have the two people turn over the cards. It will be the two cards they have selected. Put the packs together, shuffle them, and then spread them out to show that it is a regular deck. How it’s done: Take a normal pack of cards. Alternate a red card with a black card. When you deal out the two packs, one will be all black and the other all red. When each person puts the card he or she has chosen into the other pack, there will be one red card in the black pack and one black card in the red. Look through the pack and pick the two cards.

  —From the Blackstone, The Magic Detective radio show

  A THIRD COP I HADN’T SEEN was stationed at the stage door. I knew the routine. No one in, no one out, till the detectives came and said otherwise.

  “I need Gwen Knight’s address fast,” I told Peter Bouton, looking down at the cop at the door and hearing the other two cops going into the dressing room where Phil was waiting with Cunningham’s body.

  The cop at the door was familiar to me. I didn’t remember his name. He had been transferred to the Wilshire District when the Hollywood force had been juggled after a hush-hush about uniforms on the take from bookies that hung around Columbia Pictures studio. He looked up at me. Recognition.

  “Downstairs,” said Bouton.

  I followed him down the wobbling metal steps and into a small office lined with rusting file cabinets surrounding a small banged-up wooden desk.

  “I leave my stuff in my briefcase whenever we …” Pete began as he shuffled through a pile of papers reaching behind the desk. “Here.”

  He pulled a battered briefcase from behind the small desk and opened it. He found the sheet he was looking for.

  “Not what I thought,” he said. “The other girls are staying at the Arlington Arms. Gwen is staying with someone … her sister … on Beverly, the Bluedorn Apartments.”

  He found a pencil and a small pad of paper and wrote the sister’s name, address, and phone number on it. He handed it to me. I glanced at it, pocketed the sheet and said, “Thanks.”

  I left the small office, ignoring the eyes of the cop at the door, and headed for the stage. Blackstone was pointing a wand at some black enamel boxes. The buzz saw trick was over. I could only see the sides. I moved behind the curtains and down the s
tairs into the audience. People were looking at me. I glanced back. Blackstone saw me and said with a wave of his hand, “Ladies and gentleman. The man who was cut in half by the buzz saw.”

  The audience applauded. I bowed as I went up the aisle.

  “Uncle Toby,” Nate called out.

  I waved at my nephews, grinned at the audience, hurried through the doors and into the lobby. No cops on guard. I almost bumped into Calvin Ott, who was entering the theater. He was dark-blue suited and grinning.

  “Mr. Peters,” he said. “How is the show?”

  “You missed the best part,” I said.

  He looked at my uniform and shook his head.

  “Welcome to show business,” he said.

  He moved around me and went inside. I wondered what the hell he was doing there, but I didn’t have time to ask. I went around the corner to my car and squeezed in.

  Changing out of the Chocolate Soldier costume would have been nice, but I didn’t have the time. I made it to the address on Beverly in eleven minutes. It was an apartment building, The Blue-dorn, six stories, white brick, nice bushes and front lawn, slightly on the classy side, which meant there was a doorman.

  He was lean, blue uniformed, no cap, thin white hair brushed against his scalp to the right.

  “I’m here to see Gwen Knight. She’s staying with her sister, Evelyn.”

  “You working an apartment door around here?” he asked looking at my uniform.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Boyleton Arms.”

  He shook his head.

  “What’s it about?”

  “Miss Knight was at the Boyleton a little while ago,” I said. “She left her keys.”

  I took out my own keys and jiggled them. He held out his hand.

  “I’ll give ’em to her.”

  “Got to do it myself,” I said. “No offense. Manager told me I had to give them to her myself. You know how it is?”

  “She in a show there or something?” the doorman asked. “She came runnin’ in maybe a minute ago wearing one of those … a tiger costume or something.” He ran both hands up in front of him fluttering, as if that would create a clear picture for me of what she was wearing.