Murder By Misdirection

by Debra Snow

  Copyright 2019 Debra Snow

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Cover Design: Marianne Nowicki, PremadeEbookCoverShop.com

  Editing: Brandi Salazar; www.brandisalazar.com

  ISBN-13: 978-1732659377

  ISBN-10: 1-732659370

  Published by:

  Mindbender Press

  474 South Main Street

  Phillipsburg NJ 08865

  www.mindbenderpress.com

  Books From Mindbender Press

  PARANORMAL MYSTERY:

  (In The Mind Series)

  Fire In The Mind

  Seduction In The Mind

  Reunion In The Mind

  Haunted In The Mind

  Devotion In The Mind

  Asylum In The Mind

  Specter In The Mind

  Vengeance In The Mind

  HORROR:

  The Muse: A Novel Of Unrelenting Terror

  Kept In The Dark

  ULTIMATE URBAN FANTASY:

  The Wizards Of Central Park West

  ROMANTIC MYSTERY:

  A Study In Murder

  Murder By Misdirection

  Dedication

  To my wonderful husband,

  Arjay Lewis,

  without whom this book would not exist.

  "Magic is the only honest profession. A magician promises to deceive you and he does."

  -– Karl Germain

  “Theft annoys me more than anything else. The purloining of effects from another magician. Some people think it's massive to steal the secrets of nuclear reactors, but to steal a card move is trivial. They're wrong.”

  —Ricky Jay

  1. Indian Rope Trick

  Detective Tom Chu sat in the driver’s seat of his unmarked police car. He glanced in the rearview mirror to move his dark, straight hair off his forehead. He had thin and narrow eyes that spoke of his Korean ancestry, and his slim fingers grasped the steering wheel. He enjoyed the fact that he was thin and average height, as he was strong and an expert in several forms of combat. This came in handy when he had to take down a suspect.

  He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, just as the sound of a finger ring tapping on his window caused him to raise his head and glance over.

  “You takin’ a nap?” the African-American woman at his window said, muffled by the closed glass.

  Chu smiled, sat up, and hit the release to unlock the passenger door as his partner, Pro Thompson, came around the car. Chu reached over and opened her door, as she carried two cups of coffee, the white paper emblazoned with the green Starbucks logo.

  Pro got in, her gray pantsuit and white blouse giving her the look of a corporate professional. This not only hid her strong, fit body, but the shoulder holster and Sig Sauer P229 sidearm she wore.

  Chu knew from his partner’s workout regime that she could handle any situation a cop might face.

  She handed him one cup and kept the other for herself. Chu took a sip; it was prepared just the way he liked it. That was the nice thing about having a partner: they knew your habits.

  “So, were you sleeping?” Pro teased as she took a swig from her own cup.

  “No, just enjoying the calm before the storm,” Tom answered.

  “What storm?” Pro frowned and looked out at the spring day. “There’s not a cloud in the sky.”

  Chu looked over at his partner, her striking blue eyes in such contrast to her dark skin tone, which was the color of café au lait. “I mean the calm before our day gets busy.”

  “I heard that,” Pro sighed and ran her free hand through her hair, which was short in the back and a bit longer in front. It not only looked professional, but with the tight natural curl of her hair, it was a logical choice that required little care or upkeep. “But it might not get busy. We could just have a lovely spring day, sit in our car, and maybe even relax.”

  Tom smiled. “That would drive you crazy. You’re an adrenaline junkie.”

  “Still, it could be a quiet day.”

  “Pro, we’re homicide cops in New York City. Every day is crazy.”

  Pro looked out the windshield at the city—her city. Their car was parked at a hydrant on the corner of 52nd and Ninth Avenue. She’d grown up only about thirty blocks north of here. She had to admit, the city never stopped, never slowed down, and she did get a rush from being a part of it, being out there, making a difference.

  Chu’s cell phone rang with a very businesslike tone, and he reached under his suit jacket to pull it from his belt. “And so the craziness begins,” he said as he moved it to his ear. “Chu,” he said as he hit the virtual button on his device. He looked to Pro, but she had already retrieved her detective notebook from her pocket and pulled out a pen. “258 West 47th Street? We’re on our way.”

  Chu slipped the phone back into his belt and started the car all in one, well-practiced move.

  “We got a DB?” Pro asked, using the abbreviation for a “dead body.”

  “We do,” Chu said as he glanced into the side mirror and slid the car into the busy traffic. “911 got a call, uniforms got there fast. They have the DB and a suspect in custody.”

  Pro considered this. “That’ll speed up the process. Seems like we caught an easy one.”

  “Yeah, it’s good work when they catch the perp still at the scene,” Chu agreed, as he weaved the car across several lanes to take a left turn down 46th Street.

  Pro had pulled out the small rotating blue light and put it on the dashboard. Since they had a suspect in custody and traffic wasn’t too bad, there was no need for sirens. As a New Yorker herself, she tried to avoid additional noise pollution in a city that was already far too loud.

  They drove up 47th Street and pulled over to see an officer in front of a three-story brownstone. The uniformed man appeared younger than the mandatory twenty-one and gave the impression of a teenager playing dress-up.

  The detectives came out of the car like a shot, and Pro smiled. She loved the fact that her partner moved as quickly as she did. He was the senior partner in the relationship, though he was only in his mid-thirties.

  “Whaddaya got?” Chu requested as they moved toward the brownstone. Pro was happy to let her partner take the lead, though she was perfectly capable of doing so when needed. But her year of working with Tom Chu had taught her how to be a good detective fast. He would expect nothing less of her.

  “Right here on the ground floor,” the officer said, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he spoke. “Some kind of magic shop.”

  Pro broke into a smile. “Floss’s Magic. I’ve been here.”

  Chu gave her a puzzled glance. “You have?”

  “When I was a kid,” Pro explained. “It’s well-known in the magic community. The guys who do that stuff hang out in the store all the time, usually showing each other card tricks.”

  Chu shrugged. “Let’s see the scene.”

  The young officer escorted them up the short flight of stairs, and they took a left into a separate entrance next to the main door.

  They passed through a door an
d into a storefront. There were glass display cases filled with flowers made from feathers and paper, and a large bouquet of what appeared to be fifty-dollar bills. However, the glass on several of the cases was cracked and had been repaired with shipping tape. Running up the walls on three sides were bookcases crammed with paraphernalia: there were wooden boxes with large, spotted dice resting on top of them; a small box of clear plastic filled with brightly colored silk handkerchieves; large coins of various currency and holders to display them and possibly make them disappear. However, the shelves had a layer of dust and all the tricks, though still impressive, looked old and dingy. The place was claustrophobic from the total amount of things that were packed in its limited space.

  Standing near a red curtain to a back room was a female uniformed officer. She was average height, thin, with a strong, lithe body and short black hair under her hat. She stood at military rest waiting for the detectives.

  “Wow, this takes me back,” Pro said, as her partner handed her a pair of rubber gloves. “It is exactly the same as it was twenty years ago.”

  “Really?” Chu said, as he pulled gloves onto his own hands. “I can’t imagine you coming to a place like this.”

  Her mouth became a hard line. “I didn’t choose it. I was a kid and I was taken to places like this all the time.” She turned to the officer. “Tillie, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The officer smiled.

  “Where’s our vic?”

  “Behind this counter,” she told them, and stepped back so that Pro could get to the walkway Tillie had blocked with her body.

  The pair of detectives looked over to see the man dead on the floor. He was older with white hair and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on his face. He wore cheap clothes that were worn at the elbows and knees.

  “That’s Albert Floss, the owner,” Pro stated sadly.

  “You know him?” Chu frowned.

  “Yes, that case about a year ago? He was one of the magicians at that magic club we busted.”

  “Right, Magic Over Manhattan. I remember,” Chu replied, then turned to the uniformed officer. “Tillie, is forensics called in?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re coming from another scene. Going to be delayed.”

  “All right,” Chu said and walked around the corner of the glass cabinet to crouch low near the body.

  Pro leaned in. “Ligature around the neck,” she noted.

  Chu carefully opened the collar of the man’s shirt to look at the line of red skin around his neck, and picked up a two-foot-long red rope that lay on top of the man’s open vest. “Here’s our murder weapon.”

  “Let me see,” Pro said and took the end of the twisted braid in her hand. “No, this isn’t it.”

  “Huh?” Chu replied. “It’s a rope, and the marks suggest a rope was the murder weapon.”

  “Yes, but this is magicians soft-cut rope,” Pro explained. “It would be much easier to strangle him with a real rope from a hardware store. This looks nice, but it is basically foam rubber wrapped with a cloth tube.”

  “We’ll let forensics figure it out,” Chu said and rose. “Tillie, have you verified the ID?”

  “Yes, sir, it’s the owner, like Detective Thompson said,” she replied

  “Al Floss,” Pro noted and shook her head as she stood. “He’s been running this place for years.”

  “Anyone else work here?”

  “Not from what I can tell, sir,” Tillie answered and looked around the tight quarters. “And I doubt there would be room for two people.”

  “Where’s the perp?”

  “He’s there in the back room, which is not much bigger than this one. My partner is watching him, and he’s restrained.”

  “Good work, Tillie,” Chu said. “Let’s see him.”

  There was a battered, old red theater curtain in the doorway that possessed a faded glory. Tillie took the detectives to it and pulled it aside.

  There was a male officer standing and a man in a chair with his hands fastened behind his back. The man had carefully coifed silver hair that had some black still mixed in at the top. He had a mustache with a small beard, commonly called a “van dyke.” He wore black pants and a black shirt with an open collar, and a beautiful black velvet sports coat that suggested a tuxedo. He raised his blue eyes to the detectives.

  Pro gasped and Chu glanced at her, surprised by her reaction. The man slowly rose from the chair to his full height of six foot two. He brought his hands from behind his back as a pair of manacles clattered noisily to the ground behind him.

  “Pumpkin!” the strange man stated joyfully, as he opened his arms and took Pro into a bear hug, which alarmed Chu enough that he released his service weapon from his holster.

  “D-Dad?” Detective Pro Thompson stammered, as the two officers and her partner stared in disbelief.

  2. Linking Rings

  An hour later, while Chu tapped away at a keyboard, Pro stared through the one-way glass at her father in the interrogation room. “Did he get his phone call?”

  Chu didn’t look up but continued to type. “He even got two.”

  “Two?”

  “Yeah, one was to his lawyer,” Chu replied, and stopped to look up at his partner. “So, you want to tell me about this guy?”

  “Not much to tell,” Pro replied, still looking at the glass, her mouth a tight line.

  “Oh, really?” Chu blurted. “He slips out of a pair of regulation handcuffs like taking off a bracelet. Then you call him ‘Dad.’ Next thing I know, he clams up, says he won’t talk to anyone without his lawyer. At least we got him down here without any trouble. But you’ve hardly said two words since we picked him up.”

  “I was just surprised to see him,” Pro fumed, still unable to look away. “His name is Maxwell Martin, but you probably know him as Max Marvell.”

  “That magician from television?” Chu frowned. “I thought he worked in Vegas.”

  “He did. I mean, he does. I mean, I don’t know why he’s here.” Pro put her folded index finger to her lips in thought.

  “You called him Dad. I always thought your dad was a cop. You told me your father passed away, what was it, two years ago?”

  Pro turned to face her partner, and her eyes grew hard. “Joe Thompson was technically my stepfather. But to me he was my father. He was a beat cop and an inspiration. He was the reason I went into law enforcement.” She glanced back at the man in the closed room with anger. “This guy is just a mistake my mother made.”

  “Okay, I still need a little more information, Pro,” Chu said, his hands open in a pleading gesture.

  Pro sighed heavily. “Max and my mom were married, and I was born.”

  “That has been known to happen,” Chu considered and tapped a couple of keys on his keyboard.

  “Yeah, well, then he got hired for a huge show in Las Vegas. Pretty much just up and left us. I will give him the fact that he paid his child support and some extra so my mother never had to struggle.”

  “A lot of men don’t,” Chu stated flatly as he looked from Pro to his screen and back.

  She peered through the window where Max sat at the table. Gone was the velvet jacket, as well as his belt.

  Chu could see moisture in her eyes as Pro spoke. “I worshipped him as a child, worshipped him like a fool. Then I visited him in Vegas a couple times.”

  “I take it that didn’t go well?”

  “He was remarried to a racist bitch named Trixie, who had the IQ of a house plant. She made it clear she didn’t like Max’s little brown mistake running around her house.”

  “Always wondered about your blue eyes,” Chu said. “I used to think they were contacts.”

  “Genetic predisposition passed down…from our perp,” she said and shook her head. “When we question him, I want in.”

  Chu finally stood. “I can’t let you do that, Pro.”

  “I want to tell him what I think of him, and that if he killed that man—”

  “You’re too close
, Pro,” Chu interrupted.

  Pro turned to her partner, her eyes aflame.

  Chu spoke calmly. “Besides, he asked for a lawyer. I can’t question him until the counselor arrives.”

  Pro nodded. “Okay, I won’t ask him anything. Give me just two minutes to tell him off.”

  Chu exhaled heavily. “All right, but I’m observing you, and if you step out of line, you’re outta there and off the case.”

  “Thanks, Tom,” Pro said, and she walked to the door. Chu hit a button, a buzzer went off, and she stepped in.

  The handsome older man looked up from the manacles which held him to the table. He didn’t attempt to rise.

  “Pumpkin!” he exclaimed, delighted as Pro walked in.

  She leaned across the table from him and looked down at her father. “Don’t you call me that. You have no right to call me that.”

  The bearded man smiled back amicably, the light dancing in his eyes. “It’s what I called you when you were a kid. You loved it.”

  Pro sat. “I’m not a kid anymore, Max.”

  “Okay,” he shrugged. “But here you are—a detective. It seemed like yesterday that you graduated the police academy.”

  “Which you didn’t attend,” Pro fumed.

  “I didn’t want to be in the way. It was your day—yours and Joe’s. I didn’t want to come between you two.”

  “As I recall, you were also busy getting married to—which one was that? Mrs. Marvell number five or was it six?”

  “That was Judy,” Max snorted. “Not one of my better choices.”

  “Sounds like she was the first one since Mom that didn’t have a name like a stripper.”

  “I can’t believe you are still angry over Trixie after all these years. I divorced her…”

  “She was a freakin’ redneck, Max!” Pro spat. “She hated my guts and made sure to let me know it.”

  “Well, I’ve always loved you.”

  “Unless you actually had to be a father.”

  “Prophecy—”