by Jane Tesh
Jordan checked his computer. “The report’s not complete. Looks like he died sometime Sunday morning.”
“Did the medical examiner find any marks on his body, signs of a struggle?”
Jordan turned back to the computer and clicked a few more keys. “Sorry. No marks on the body.”
“No marks of any kind?” And why didn’t the latch work? Maybe it wasn’t there. Maybe it was broken. “Did your guys check out the latch?”
“Yep. Works fine.”
“Somebody definitely didn’t want Taft to get out.”
“You know, that’s exactly what we thought. Imagine that.”
“Any indication he was drugged?”
Jordan’s little eyes narrowed. “Do I recall putting you on this case?”
“You never put me on a case, so what’s the difference?”
He sat back in his chair. “We’re still waiting on the lab report. What’s your stake in this, anyway?”
“Rahnee Nevis hired me to find out what happened.”
“Well, you need to keep out of our way.” He glanced at Camden and lowered his voice. “Do you see anything unusual about this?”
Jordan will use Camden’s talent on occasion, but never officially.
“Not yet.”
“Then both of you get out of here. I’ve got real work to do.”
As we walked back to the car, I said, “Why aren’t you seeing anything? It would be very handy if you knew who killed Taft.”
“Aside from the fact that this talent of mine is unpredictable, I’d have to shake hands with Taft to find out who killed him, and I don’t think that would work.”
“You’ve had contact with dead people before.”
“If Taft starts haunting the Magic Club, and if he wants to talk to me, maybe I could find out. And you know things get really foggy if I’m involved somehow.”
“Involved how? You hadn’t met the Finches before, had you? Or Rahnee or any of the other magicians?”
“Somewhere along the way there’ll be a connection. I can’t see it till it gets here.”
“Useless, I tell you. Useless.”
“I’ll buy lunch.”
***
We drove to the Quik-Fry and I let him buy the cheeseburgers and fries. We sat in the car to eat. There’s plenty of room in the front seat of a ’67 Plymouth Fury.
I put more salt on my fries. “Maybe Taft took too many pills. Maybe he panicked and passed out. Nick said sleeping pills should never be taken with alcohol. I thought maybe Taft had a few Saturday night, but Jilly said he didn’t stop for his usual drink.” I ate another fry. “Somebody could’ve put their hands around his neck and given it enough of a squeeze to knock him out, somebody tall enough and strong enough to fold Taft into the trunk.”
Camden unwrapped his cheeseburger. “Any ideas?”
“Looks like Lucas Finch is the only one who fits that description, although Rahnee Nevis is a tall, strong-looking woman.”
“Motives?”
“Lucas was not happy about Taft losing the box. Maybe he lost his temper. Rahnee—I don’t know.”
He took a drink of Coke. “How about the other people at the club?”
“Well, you saw WizBoy, a wispy nerd of a magician and Jilly, the equally wispy bartender. They’re in love, only no one’s notified Jilly.”
“They might have put their wisp together and killed Taft.”
“Well, as we heard, WizBoy saw him as a rival for the club, and he’s not very happy with Rahnee’s restrictions. Is there more ketchup?”
Camden dug in the bag and tossed me another packet. “So he kills Taft to cause bad publicity for Rahnee.”
“Maybe.” I couldn’t see WizBoy making that much effort.
“And Jilly? If Taft wasn’t in love with her, she might have been testy.”
“Wispy and testy, a deadly combination. She wants to be a magician’s assistant, and Taft promised to put her in his act, promised to teach her some card tricks. I think things were going smoothly between them. The last time anyone saw Taft alive was around ten when he finished his act. Rahnee and WizBoy were backstage. Jilly was at the bar, unhappy because he left in such a hurry.”
“And the next time anyone sees him, he’s dead in the trunk.”
“That’s right. Maybe this box is more valuable than we thought, and someone killed Taft to get it.” I took the card out of my pocket. “The only thing I found in Taft’s desk that might be helpful is this birthday card from Rahnee saying she wants to be just friends. Maybe it made him suicidal, so he climbed in the trunk and closed the lid.”
Camden set his cheeseburger aside. He held the card for a few moments. “Prepare to be dazzled by my psychic insight.”
“I’m ready.”
“He kept the card, so maybe being just friends was okay with him.”
“Yeah, I guess if he’d been upset about it, he would’ve put it through the shredder.”
“He’s had this card for a while. There was more to this relationship.”
“It was back on, you mean?”
“I don’t think it was ever truly off.” He gave me the card. “No other clues in his desk?”
“The usual stuff.” No school pictures. No DVDs. No memories that kicked you in the stomach and made you wish you’d died in a car crash, too.
Camden’s glance told me he’d tuned in on this useless little bit of soul searching. He picked up his cheeseburger and changed the subject. “I really oughta put in an appearance at the PSN.”
“Sure you want to go? I thought you were endangering auras over there.”
“Thought I’d be there for moral support.”
My cell phone rang. A sultry-sounding woman’s voice said, “This is Fancy returning your call.”
“Thanks for getting back to me. My name’s David Randall, and I’m investigating the death of Taft Finch.”
There was a pause. “How about the Bombay Club tomorrow, say, around ten a.m.?”
“That would be fine.”
“See you then.” She hung up.
I closed my phone. “That was a magician named Fancy. She sounds as fancy as her name. I’m meeting her tomorrow.”
“So you have time to meet the Deadly Sheila at the network today.”
I started the car. “Can’t wait.”
***
The first thing I noticed about the Deadly Sheila was her two overlong front teeth. The teeth plus the bleached blonde hair in fat old-fashioned curls reminded me strongly of Bugs Bunny in drag. She had on an expensive-looking yellow suit and white blouse, no jewelry except a wide gold bracelet watch, and large glasses in clear frames with gold trim. She was about five feet nine and stout, with pinched features, as if she had only five minutes to solve all the world’s problems, and here were two more of them right in front of her.
She crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Who are you?”
“I’m David Randall, friend of Camden’s.”
She gave us the once-over, and unlike most women, didn’t seem impressed by my dashing dark good looks, or by Camden’s sloppy charm. “Are you here for some specific purpose?”
I could see why Ellin didn’t like her. Two steamrollers have trouble flattening the same road. “No, we just thought we’d come by and get in the way.”
I could tell she didn’t want to talk to us, but she managed a brief smile. “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Randall, but we’re really quite busy. So much to do.”
I looked around the studio. It was odd not to see Bonnie or Teresa, the two lovely but vague young women who usually host the PSN’s shows.
“Is Ellie here?” Camden asked.
“I believe she’s talking with the cameraman. But we really have a lot of work to do, so if you don’t mind—”
Ellin saw us and
hurried over, followed by Reg Haverson, the last remaining original PSN cast member. Reg is always posing, even when no one’s looking, a male model type with perfectly sculptured hair and unnaturally white teeth. Today, he’d lost his sparkle and I knew why. Hired to warm up the audience and occasionally host, he was always scheming in a harmless way to get more airtime, and Sheila was this new threat to his career.
Ellin was working hard to control her temper. “I see you’ve met Randall and Cam. Everything’s ready for the taping, if you’d like to get on set.”
Sheila protested. “But I wanted to turn the chairs the teensiest bit to the side.”
“We went through this yesterday, Sheila. They’re fine.”
“I don’t think the audience on the left side can really see me.”
Both women spoke politely but with undertones of steel. Everyone else in the studio stood quietly, watching the battle. Reg rolled his eyes.
“When the audience comes in, we’ll ask them,” Ellin said.
Sheila had already turned one chair around. “Let’s go ahead and move the chairs and see how it works. We can always move them back.”
Ellin started forward and Camden touched her arm. “Ellie, it’s just a chair.”
I could see her neck muscles tense as she decided what to do. “All right, we’ll try it. Anything else?”
“Well, we’d already talked about the flower arrangement. I can have some new ones in here by tomorrow. And didn’t I say something yesterday about this picture? Can we do without it?”
Camden kept his hand on Ellin’s arm. She took a deep breath. “It was a gift from the National Psychics Association.”
“I find it distracting. Can we hang it somewhere else?” She turned to Reg. “Take it down, would you?”
Reg blanched. His idea of physical labor is doing his nails.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
Ellin’s lips were compressed into a tight line. She gave me a brief nod.
“You can hang it in my office,” Sheila said.
I saluted. “Yes, ma’am.”
She was either oblivious to sarcasm or too busy planning what to change next. I took the large photo of swirling stars off the set wall and carried it offstage to the office Ellin now shared with the Deadly Sheila. Her desk had been pushed over to make room for another larger desk. Two filing cabinets and a large plush swivel chair took up most of the room, along with stacks of boxes. I propped the picture beside one cabinet and came back to find the set completely rearranged to suit Sheila. She was telling Reg where to sit and what to say.
“You can do the commercial announcements and introduce the guests.”
Reg looked aghast. “But I told you, Mrs. Kirk, I usually warm up the audience and interact with them all during the program. Didn’t you see me do that during yesterday’s taping?”
“I don’t know about interacting so much, but the warm-up will be fine if you do that before we start.”
“That’s what ‘warm-up’ is.”
“As long as you’re finished when I’m ready.”
Camden now had a tight grip on Ellin’s arm. “Ellie, you’re still the producer. If she wants to change a few things, you can change them back.”
Her voice was low and tense. “She’s ruining everything.”
“She wasn’t too bad yesterday, was she? How much is her husband giving the PSN?”
“Enough for the whole season.”
“Worth a little irritation?”
“I suppose so.”
Sheila waved a plump hand. “Ellin, I’ll need you to stand over here and cue me.”
“Oh, I’ll cue her all right.”
As I’ve said, the PSN isn’t high art or even high entertainment, but I’ve watched enough episodes to know today’s show was a disaster. Dispirited by his demotion to straight man, Reg failed to get much warmth out of the audience, and as a result, their reactions were tepid. Sheila’s idea of hosting was to keep the camera focused on her the entire hour while she told her life story. Despite Ellin’s cues, she rambled through a commercial break and forgot to answer the phones during the call-in segment.
So far, Reg hadn’t gotten in a word and had to stand on the sidelines with me and Camden. I expressed my sympathies. “She’s pretty bad. You’ll have your old job back in no time.”
Reg was so upset he ignored a strand of hair that had escaped from his perfect upsweep. “Bad? She’s awful. Look at her out there, the old bag. If I turned on my TV right now and saw that face, I’d run screaming from the room. And what’s all that crap she’s saying about being psychic? Listen to that.”
As if sensing an entertainment disaster, the audience had on attentive faces. Ellin stood next to the camera, arms folded, her expression grim.
“So I want all of you out there to call me or come by the station and get on the air with me,” Sheila said. “I’m not only a host, you understand. I’ve been blessed with extraordinary psychic powers. I can solve your problems, big or small. Why worry about the future when you can know all the answers? Why fret over money troubles, troubles of the heart, or petty daily annoyances? Come talk to me, Sheila, reincarnated spirit of the Oracle of Delphi, ancient goddess of prophecy.”
I forced my snort of unexpected laughter into a sneeze. The audience sat rapt. Reg groaned. I could read Ellin’s lips, and what she said I can’t repeat.
“Yes, friends, from now on, the PSN not only stands for Psychic Service Network but for Psychic Sheila Network. Until tomorrow, keep thinking good thoughts.”
The audience applauded. Sheila beamed. Reg glanced at the studio clock. “There’s still three minutes.”
“You’re on, Reg.”
“She doesn’t deserve it, but I’ll take care of this.”
He stepped on camera and smoothly thanked the audience. “And another round of applause for our special guest, Sheila Kirk. The PSN was brought to you today by our good friends down at Francy’s Frame Shoppe, and Candle De-Light.”
Sheila acted as if he’d stepped on her toes, but Reg continued until Ellin signaled all clear.
By then, Sheila was radioactive. “What was all that about?”
He explained. “You had three minutes left. It would’ve been dead air, plus we always plug our sponsors at the end of each show.”
She turned her glare to Ellin. “Why didn’t you cue me?”
“I did,” Ellin said.
“We’ll have to work out a better system, then.”
Ellin’s idea of a better system would be pull the pin and hand Sheila the grenade, but before she could say anything, Sheila flapped one hand to motion someone over.
“I want my son Dirk to help with advertising. We really need more sponsors.”
Dirk lumbered up, a hulking blob with a broad dull freckled face and a head too small for his body, covered by a windblown haystack. Despite his expensive white polo shirt and khaki slacks, he looked unkempt and unfinished. Grinning, hands in his pockets, I expected he’d blurt a Goofy “huh-yuck” at any moment.
“Dirk?” His name caught in Ellin’s throat.
“Yes, my son Dirk. He’s perfect for the job.”
Dirk Kirk. Perfect. Ellin quivered to remain calm.
“Does he have any experience?”
“How difficult can it be? You go to businesses and ask for their support.”
Ellin had found out the hard way not every business in Parkland wanted to be associated with the Psychic Service Network.
“Will he write the commercials, too? Film them? Edit them? Satisfy the sponsor?”
Sheila waved her words away. “Dirk is a natural. He makes friends so easily. You see, he’s an entertainer, too.” If she’d been Medusa, she couldn’t have done a better job of turning cast and crew to stone. “We’ll be featuring him soon. This is going to be an excellent experienc
e for all of us. Show them what you can do, Dirk.”
Dirk beamed, took a pack of cards from his pocket, and waddled up to me, fanning them clumsily. The design was a garish paisley swirl of pink and red. Three cards tumbled to the floor, which didn’t faze him. “Pick a card. Any card.”
Sheila called, “Phil! Come here.”
A tall, white-haired, craggy-faced man came over to us. Mister Kirk. Sheila took his arm. “Phil, show them what Dirk can do.”
The man obligingly picked a card.
“Don’t let me see it.” Dirk tried to shuffle the remaining cards. He furrowed his brow, his tongue in one corner of his mouth. “Okay, okay, it’s the six of clubs, right?”
The card was the five of spades. “Very close!” Phil Kirk said. “Dirk’s going to be a famous magician some day.”
I had several replies to this, but to avert open warfare Ellin said, “Cam, Randall, this is Phillip Kirk, Sheila’s husband and the man who is responsible for the show.”
We shook hands all around. Camden frowned at the handshake, but the man didn’t notice his worry. Kirk gave his wife a hug. “What do you think of my little girl, eh? Hosting her own television show! I knew she could do it. You’ll see, Ellin, we’ll turn this network around.”
Like Linda Blair’s head in “The Exorcist,” I wanted to say, but valiantly held back. Apparently—though this stretched my imagination to its limits—Phil Kirk thought of his wife as a cute, fluffy little blonde who delighted him with her original ideas. I could tell he wasn’t going to tolerate any criticism, no matter how well deserved.
“Sheila’s always been psychic. Amazingly accurate. Sometimes it scares me.”
Despite Ellin’s killer glare, I had to reply. “Me, too.”
“She’s already done wonders for this show. I told her she’d be a natural.”
A natural disaster, absolutely. “Nice to meet you. Camden and I were just leaving.”
Sheila huffed, “But Dirk knows many more tricks.”
I glanced at my watch. “Gosh, sorry, I have to be somewhere in ten minutes. Maybe next time. Come on, Camden.”
He kissed Ellin. “Hang in there, sweetheart.”
“Thanks for coming by.” Her brief smile included me. “We’ll have lots to talk about later.”