Disappearing Nightly

by Laura Resnick

  “I think I should go home.” I stood up.

  “Sit down.” His voice was clipped and hard.

  “But—”

  “Sit.”

  I sat.

  He propped himself on Magnus’s desk, folded his arms over his chest and stared at me. I stared back. It would never do to tell him so, of course, but the stern, don’t-mess-with-me attitude was kind of sexy on him.

  “What happened last night?” he asked.

  Still sticking close to the truth, I said, “My whole worldview changed.”

  He frowned. “Go on.”

  I said, “Look, I told you I thought something was wrong. I told you I was anxious about getting into the cage without knowing what happened to Golly.”

  Magnus muttered, “Women are always saying ‘I told you so.’”

  “So you ran out on a performance?” Lopez asked, looking like he might be willing to believe me.

  “I can’t answer that in front of him.” I pointed at Magnus. “He knows Matilda.”

  Lopez glanced at Magnus. Magnus blinked and said to me, “I won’t tell Matilda what you say now if you don’t tell her the crystal cage has been sitting in my truck all day.”

  Lopez looked back at me, a faint sparkle entering his long-lashed blue eyes. “Deal?”

  I sighed. “Okay.”

  “Well?”

  I explained that Joe had been such a wreck during rehearsal, as had I, that I wound up preparing to go onstage last night, in Golly’s place, without having done a complete run-through of the show. And without having practiced the vanishing act since her disappearance. I just couldn’t do it, I told Lopez. I was too scared of what might happen in the crystal cage. “I wasn’t entirely faking, I did feel ready to toss my cookies. Again. And, well…” I shrugged. “I freaked out and, yes, ran out on the performance. Which,” I added defensively, “is the only time in my life I’ve ever done that. Ever. I even went on as Little Red Riding Hood in the third grade when I had stomach flu and kept throwing up backstage.”

  Lopez startled me by asking, “Who was the doctor?”

  “The doctor?”

  “You know,” he prodded. “The doctor who made a house call to your dressing room last night? The one who told your producer you were too ill to go on? That your condition was highly contagious?”

  “It is?” Magnus blurted.

  We both looked at him.

  “Never mind,” Magnus said.

  “Well, Esther?”

  “Just a performer,” I said.

  “Where’d he come from?”

  “The street,” I said. “He was a street act. I offered him twenty bucks to help me.”

  “His name?”

  I wondered if Matilda had told Lopez the name. I wondered if she had reported or would report Max’s visit to her today, now that she and Lopez were on such chatty terms. Could I risk pretending I didn’t know Max’s name, or would Lopez just catch me in the lie?

  I said, “I told him to call himself Dr. Zadok.”

  “Why?”

  “Just came into my head.” I couldn’t tell if Lopez believed me.

  He switched the subject on me again. “How’d the crystal cage get destroyed?”

  “Is it really destroyed?” I asked, feigning dismay rather well. “Matilda wasn’t exaggerating?”

  Lopez unfolded his arms and lowered his hands to his sides, bracing them against the desk. He had nice hands. Nice wrists, too, smooth and golden-skinned. Not hairy like some guys.

  “Why were you looking for the cage here?” He couldn’t stop his lips from twitching when he added, “In disguise.”

  “Matilda called me this morning making all sorts of threats and accusations. I don’t know what happened to the crystal cage, but I know she’s blaming me for it.”

  Lopez seemed to be trying to keep a straight face as he said, “And the obvious solution to the problem was to behave as suspiciously as possible?”

  “I wanted to find out what happened to the cage. I couldn’t call Matilda back and ask her, she was so vicious to me. I had to see Magnus. But I couldn’t risk bumping into Matilda if she happened to come here this afternoon to nag Magnus.”

  “Which would be just like her,” Magnus said wearily.

  “So I had to make sure Matilda wouldn’t recognize me.”

  “I didn’t recognize you,” Magnus admitted.

  “But you did?” I asked Lopez curiously.

  He smiled a little. “No. The high heels, the makeup, the wig, the sunglasses, the voice, the accent, the posture…It was all good. Very good.”

  I beamed. “Thanks!”

  “But I wondered why you were still wearing sunglasses while you were looking at clothes.”

  “Ah.” I’d thought so.

  His gaze lingered on my face. “And even skilful makeup and a wig can’t hide those cheekbones.”

  Our eyes locked, and I suddenly felt warm.

  “I didn’t know it was you, but I’d have figured it out if I’d had another couple of minutes. Something clicked.”

  “That’s why I turned my back.”

  “Of course.” He lowered his gaze. “But even from the back…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, there’s something about you in tight clothes that sticks in my mind,” he admitted. “So you still looked familiar. I just didn’t know why.”

  “Tight?” I said indignantly.

  “That raincoat’s tight, Esther.” He glanced up and added, his eyes glinting, “In a good way.”

  “Well…I guess it is a bit tight,” I said, flustered. “I get stuff like this at church sales and thrift stores to wear as rehearsal costumes. It’s a lot easier to start getting into a role if you dress for it.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Anyhow, yeah, I guess that coat is a little small for me.” I was babbling. “But it only cost me seven dollars, and—”

  “It looks good on you.”

  I blinked. “Really?”

  “Excuse me,” said Magnus. “Are we done here?”

  Lopez cleared his throat and resumed questioning me. “So you come into the shop, and Matilda’s not here. Why not take off the dark glasses and be straight with us?”

  Thinking it best to avoid explaining that I was spying on him so I could report back to the Magnum Collegium’s local representative, I said, “Because it was obvious Matilda had reported the attack on the crystal cage to you.”

  He pounced. “Attack? What makes you think it wasn’t an accident?”

  “Because she’d reported it to a cop. And since I knew she was blaming me, I thought you were probably blaming me, too. Which,” I added sourly, “seems to be the case.”

  “Finding you sneaking around here in disguise has contributed a lot to my blaming you,” he shot back.

  “I was just trying to avoid exactly what we’re doing right now!”

  “What are we doing right now?” Magnus asked plaintively.

  “I was going to come downstairs and talk to Magnus as soon as you’d left,” I told Lopez. Looking at Magnus, I added, “I was going to ask you what had happened to the crystal cage and how long it would take to repair it.”

  Lopez said, “So now you’re suddenly eager to do the act?”

  “Not really,” I said. “But with Golly missing, whatever happens with the cage affects my career. So I am interested.”

  “What made you start screaming?” Lopez asked, in yet another deliberately sudden change of topic.

  “Up on the third floor?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Magnus suddenly shaking his head at me, behind Lopez’s back. I said, “It’s dark upstairs. There are shadows, weird magic props, creepy replicas. Something up there moved….”

  Magnus shook his head a little more frantically.

  Still looking at me, Lopez said, “What moved?”

  “I didn’t know at first, so I screamed. I was startled. Then I realized it was a mouse. And I fell over at the same time. Then I screamed bec
ause I didn’t like being on the floor with a mouse running around.”

  Both men looked like they weren’t sure whether I was telling the truth.

  I added with a shudder, “I hate mice.”

  That helped. They both seemed to relax a little.

  I didn’t know why Magnus didn’t want me mentioning the three staff members I’d seen upstairs, but he evidently didn’t. Now he looked as if he hoped I hadn’t seen them and really was as scared of mice as I claimed. Or maybe he was worried about the snake? Was there some reason he couldn’t risk a cop hearing about it? I wondered if permits were needed to keep a reptile that big in the city. Maybe it wasn’t properly licensed or something?

  So apparently I now knew a secret that Magnus wanted kept. That might come in handy, if I needed any leverage to convince him to stall Matilda about the crystal cage until Max and I had solved the problem of the mystical disappearances. But talking to Magnus about that was not something I could do with Lopez present. So I decided to try to get rid of the detective, who was running a hand over his ruffled black hair as if his head was starting to ache.

  “Are we done now?” I asked him.

  “For the time being,” he said.

  “I can go?” I’d lurk outside, wait until he left, too, then double back here to confront Magnus.

  “I’ll take you home,” Lopez said.

  “What?” I blurted.

  “Or wherever you’re headed next.”

  I was headed to Zadok’s Rare and Used Books next. But not with Lopez as my escort.

  “Not necessary, Detective,” I said firmly, rising to my feet.

  “Oh, I insist.”

  “But I—”

  “Let’s go.”

  He took my arm. We both paused and looked at each other. It was nice to be touched. By him. He blinked, then dropped my arm and stepped away. He thanked Magnus for his time, then held aside the red curtain and made a gesture for me to precede him.

  “After you, Miss Diamond.”

  Lopez had a nondescript car parked illegally near the magic shop. A handy official notice propped in the window warned other cops not to make the mistake of assuming that parking statutes applied to this vehicle the way they did to others.

  He opened the passenger door for me, then got into the driver’s seat while I buckled up.

  “Where to?” he asked. He kept his gaze forward and was frowning slightly.

  “I haven’t had dinner yet,” I heard myself say.

  He let out his breath and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. “Esther…”

  We were silent for a moment, not looking at each other.

  “We can’t have dinner together,” he said at last.

  “I wasn’t asking—”

  “Yes, you were.” He lifted his head and sat back.

  In for a penny, in for a pound, so I said, “Okay, why can’t we have dinner together?”

  “I can’t date someone who’s part of a current investigation.”

  “It wouldn’t be a date.”

  “Yes, it would,” he said, “and you know it would. You know it’s been on my mind ever since I saw you without glitter and green body paint all over everything but your teeth.”

  “It has?” I asked, pleased.

  He gave me an exasperated look. “No, I always make inappropriate comments when I’m interviewing women, Esther. It’s my ambition to get suspended for sexual harassment.”

  “I think your comments to me are nice.” But only because he was the one making those comments. I liked Lopez saying things to me that, in fact, we both knew he shouldn’t be saying, given the nature of our acquaintance.

  “Well, they’re meant to be nice.” He smiled as his gaze traveled over my face. “But the point is…” Our eyes locked and we found ourselves in a staring contest. “The point is…”

  “Yes?”

  “Huh?”

  “The point is?” I prodded, unable to look away.

  “Um…I think I’ve forgotten the point.”

  “I think it was that we can’t go on a date?” I said.

  “Oh! Yes!” He blinked. “Yes, that’s the point.”

  “But I don’t see why—”

  “Just how much are you not telling me about what’s going on?”

  That caught me off guard. As it was meant to do. The cop’s tactic of changing the subject abruptly with a new question. “Uh…I don’t know what—”

  “I should press you harder,” he said, looking down. “I should take you down to the station, get in your face, scare you.”

  “We could still do that,” I said. “The night is young.”

  He laughed. Then he sighed and shook his head. “The problem is, I can’t do that to you.”

  “A cop who can’t pressure and scare people? Maybe you’re in the wrong line of—”

  “I can’t do that to you.”

  “Oh.” I got a little warm again.

  “But I’m not an idiot, Esther.”

  “I know.” I’d never thought he was.

  “How much of what you told me in Magnus’s shop was true?”

  My heart thudded. “Um, quite a lot of it, actually.”

  “What part wasn’t true?”

  I looked out my window, feeling both anxious and disappointed. My previous instinct to get away from him as soon as possible had been the smart choice, I realized. So I said, “I live on West Thirty-third Street, between Tenth and Eleventh.”

  “What did you leave out of your story?”

  “You can just take me home. Forget about dinner. It was a silly idea.”

  He put his hand on my arm. I closed my eyes, and my heart pounded even harder.

  “You’re a suspect,” he said.

  “Suspected of?” My voice was a little breathy.

  “Vandalism, at the very least.” He squeezed my arm gently. “What’s going on?”

  I was trying to think about something aside from the way his skin felt on my skin, his palm on my bare forearm, the subtle pressure of his fingers.

  I swallowed and gave myself a mental shake. I couldn’t be sure how sincere that gentle touch was. Even if he felt something, he certainly knew by now that I felt something, and he wanted answers from me. And I doubted anyone could be an effective cop without being a little ruthless. Even with himself. Even with a woman he…

  “What’s going on?” I repeated. I gave my confused feelings a solid shove in the direction of anger. “I came to you with two threatening notes. I told you I was scared. Golly Gee is missing. You didn’t take any of that seriously!”

  He frowned and took his hand away. “Yes, I—”

  “But Matilda calls you about vandalism—of a fragile prop in an unguarded theater—and suddenly you’re all over the case!”

  “Yes, I am,” he snapped, sounding angry, too. “For one thing, there actually is a case this time. Breaking and entering, and vandalism.”

  “Why am I a suspect?”

  “Apart from your bizarre behavior today?”

  “I explained—”

  “Come off it, Esther. If you knew I was in the shop to question Magnus about the vandalism that Matilda was blaming on you, why’d you come inside? Why’d you stay?”

  “I—I—” Improv lessons suddenly weren’t helping so much.

  “You’re not an idiot, either.” He didn’t make it sound like a compliment. “You took that risk for a reason. You were there for something else.”

  I hoped that a little more truth might help the situation. “Okay, I went to ask Magnus not to return the crystal cage to Sorcerer! until someone finds out what happened to Golly. And I went upstairs looking for it to see if it was as damaged as I hoped.” While he studied me in silence, I added, “Anyhow, I thought I was avoiding you. I didn’t expect you to find out I was prowling around upstairs.” I shrugged and glared at him. “And I sure didn’t expect you to recognize me.”

  “Well, now you know better.”

  “I certainly do. I guess
I’ll wear a gunny sack the next time we meet, if I don’t want you ogling me!”

  “I did not og—Well, okay, maybe a little.”

  “You did?”

  Our eyes met again. “Yeah,” he said. “Very subtly, mind you.”

  We both laughed a little in mingled pleasure and embarrassment. Then he looked away.

  “Look, Esther,” he said, sounding tired, “if you’re that afraid to get into the prop box, why not just quit the show?”

  “I can’t do that! Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a job? I mean, a real job—an acting job? I was waiting tables for months before this! And do you know how much harder it would be for me to get another job once word got out that I’d abandoned this show as soon as I stepped into the lead role? Besides, even if quitting would solve my problem, it wouldn’t solve the problem.”

  “It wouldn’t?”

  “What if the show doesn’t fold even after losing the female lead and her understudy? What if someone else takes over playing Virtue?” I exclaimed. “What’ll happen to her when she performs the act?”

  “Oh my God,” he said slowly, looking at me with a dawning expression of amazement. “You did vandalize the cage, didn’t you?”

  I blinked, thinking maybe I’d been a tad too truthful. “No.”

  He nodded. “You destroyed it thinking you were in danger. Thinking anyone who gets into it is in danger.”

  “No!”

  “Esther, why destroy the thing? Why not get an expert to examine it? Why not ask Magnus to go through it piece by piece with you to make sure it was safe?”

  “I didn’t vandalize it!”

  And I hadn’t. I was just an accomplice. One who was currently digging a hole for herself, like a perfect idiot, because I’d briefly wallowed in my attraction to the investigating officer.

  “Look, if you vandalized the cage,” Lopez said, “it would be a first offense. You’ve got no priors.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Uh, well—”

  I gasped. “You’ve been checking up on me!”

  He looked exasperated again. “Of course I have! You’re a suspect, Esther.”

  “I can’t believe this! You had the nerve to ask me out to dinner while you’re investigating me?”

  “You asked me.”

  Since he had a point, I changed the subject. “I want to go home now.”