Jenny’s jaw dropped. In her expression of helpless surprise, she looked much younger to me now—Karen’s age instead of a near adult. “Both sides?”
“Olivia,” I interrupted, “this is getting out of hand. I think you—”
She shot me a withering glare, then returned her focus to Jenny. “Don’t you realize that the only reason I’m keeping myself alive now is the possibility that you’ll stop this? That you’ll come home to me?”
“That’s emotional blackmail,” I cried, too enraged at Olivia’s behavior to remain silent. “And of the worst possible kind!”
“Is loving my own daughter enough to be willing to die for her wrong?” Olivia countered. She sobbed into her hands.
“All right, Mom, all right!” Jenny cried. “I’ll withdraw everything legally. I’ll return home. Okay? Just quit crying!”
In as calm tones as I could manage, I said, “Jenny, please, let things simmer down before you agree to anything you might regret later.” I was livid at Olivia’s behavior. How dare she threaten to kill herself if her daughter didn’t return to her! “It isn’t any teen’s responsibility to take care of her fully functional parent.”
“This isn’t your place to interfere!” Olivia said to me.
At the raised voices, Stephanie trotted back down the stairs. “Is everything all right?”
“Not really,” I called back, knowing Stephanie would blame me for Jenny’s reversal. Perhaps with good reason. As supervisor was it my responsibility to make sure that the conversation not concern ignoring the judge’s decision that Jenny was to live with Stephanie?
Stephanie rushed into the room.
Jenny rose and said, “It’s my right to decide where I live, if I choose to live elsewhere. The judge said so. I’ve made my decision.” She looked down at the floor and with total resignation said, “I’m going to move back home.”
Chapter 10
A Fine Mess, Ollie.
“What on earth just happened here?” Stephanie cried. “Olivia, this is your very first visit with Jenny, and you’ve already manipulated her into doing things your way, haven’t you!”
“I merely convinced my daughter how much. I love her,” Olivia shot back.
Stephanie was clearly on the verge of tears. Jenny was deliberately avoiding Stephanie’s attempts to make eye contact. “Jenny, are you absolutely certain this is what you want to do? Move back home?”
“Yes,” Jenny said in a near whisper.
A look of anguish passed across Stephanie’s features. She looked at me. “Molly, do something!”
If only I could! What was there for me to do? Call timeout and put everyone in separate rooms? “As the supposed mediator here, no matter what happens, Jenny, I think you absolutely must wait at least until the murder case is solved before you consider moving anyplace.”
“That might never happen!” Olivia protested.
“Molly’s right,” Stephanie replied, though she was making no attempt to hide the venom in her eyes, and much of that anger was currently directed toward me. “This is not a good time to make hasty decisions.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Olivia retorted. “You’ve got my daughter. I want her home with me right now.”
“No,” Jenny said, looking in her mother’s direction but backing out of the room. “I think I do need at least a day or two. To explain this to Tiffany.” She started to leave, then hesitated, gave her mother a tentative hug, and fled from the room.
Olivia’s smile struck me as one more of triumph than anything else. Stephanie was clearly so incensed that I began to rethink my earlier assurances to my husband that no violence would occur. “Olivia, can I walk you to your car?” I offered.
Stephanie glowered at me for a moment, then, with her hands on her hips, regarded Olivia. “I do not profess to be Mother Superior. All I know is that Jenny is a wonderful young woman, and you obviously deserve some credit for that; however, I’ve also witnessed crocodile tears shed from your eyes often enough to surmise exactly what went on in my house just now.”
Olivia’s face assumed that stony quality I’d witnessed a few times in the last few days. “All I care about is my daughter.”
“I wish I could believe you,” Stephanie said, “but I don’t. Jenny’s felt that you’ve been neglectful and wanted to get your hands on her trust fund, and the judge agreed with her.” She strode toward Olivia and shoved a finger in her face. “If you harm one hair on her head, if you betray her in any way to get at the money that is rightfully hers, you’ll have me to answer to, and I promise you, I will make your life a living hell. Have I made myself clear?”
Olivia’s eyes flashed in anger. “Don’t threaten me. You might be the one with all the money and the power, but you’re not going to have my daughter for much longer.”
“Ultimately, that’s Jenny’s decision, not yours or mine or even the judge’s. I will gladly let her go before I’ll see her get pulled apart by us fighting over her. If you want to attack me at a PTA meeting, that’s one thing. Just don’t sacrifice Jenny’s future simply to make yourself victorious over me.”
“She’s my daughter, damn you! She belongs with her mother! And soon, that’s exactly where she’ll be, you rich bitch.”
I’d instantly lost my desire to accompany Olivia to her car, and she marched out of the house with her nose in the air. I turned back to Stephanie. “Stephanie, I am so sorry about all of this. You should have seen her. She practically fell on the floor at Jenny’s feet, threatening to kill herself if Jenny didn’t come home. I didn’t know what to do to stop her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone totally change colors that fast.”
Stephanie paused from massaging her temples. “What did you think, Molly? That I was adopting Jenny because of some ego trip? That the judge sided with me only because I’d bought him off?”
That pretty much summed up the suspicions I’d once held. My cheeks were warming, so Stephanie knew the answer.
“There are easier and infinitely better ways to glorify myself than to gain custody of a second teenager, believe me, Molly.”
“I’m sorry, Stephanie. Maybe I should go talk to Jenny on your behalf and—”
“No. I meant what I said to her so-called mother. I will not treat Jenny like a wishbone. She’s decided to return to her mother, even though the woman cares more about her silly art gallery than her own daughter. As long as Olivia knows that she’s going to experience the wrath of God if she tries to cheat that poor girl of her inheritance, we’re going to support Jenny’s decision.”
Feeling numb and mildly nauseated, I nodded and got to my feet. “How could I ever have misread Olivia so badly?” I murmured, thinking out loud.
“Oh, don’t beat yourself up over this. Self-pity doesn’t become you. You were working from the disadvantage of being such a totally decent person. As I tried to tell you earlier, it takes one to know one.”
We ate an early dinner that night so that I’d be on time to be a magician’s assistant. Remarkably, Jim was home by six and we were finished eating and ready to go by six-thirty, when Martin rang the doorbell. By then the kids had decided they’d have a better time making fun of Martin than of Grandma—a wise choice—and so we all met him at the door and grabbed our coats. I introduced everyone.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he said with a small bow, tipping his top hat in the process.
“Is there a rabbit in there?” Nathan asked, trying to peer inside the top hat during its return trip to Martin’s head.
“Why, I’m not sure,” he replied, and stared at Nathan.
“But there does seem to be something in your ear.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Nathan rolled his eyes just as Martin started to reach for Nathan’s ear. “And if it’s a quarter, can I keep it?”
Martin indeed revealed the quarter he’d “found” in Nathan’s ear and gave it to him. Forcing a smile, Martin said to me, “Clever boy. We’d better get going, Molly. Show starts at seven, and
we’ll have some prep work to do as well.”
“We’re all going. They’d like to see the act.”
“Ah. Wunnerful. Wunnerful.” He rubbed his hands together and smiled. “The only thing is, I have a shortage of passenger seats. Have to haul my own equipment in the pickup, you see.”
“We’ll just follow in our car,” Jim said. “Are you coming with me, Moll?”
Martin immediately said, “I thought we would verbally run through the routine during the drive. I’d hate to have my assistant louse up and make me pull a turtle out of my hat, hey, Carol?” he said with a smile, looking at my daughter.
“Karen,” she corrected. “Actually, a turtle would be great. No one would expect it.”
“That’s stupid,” Nathan told his sister. “Rabbits are cute. A turtle would just go into its shell. He might as well pull a rock out of his hat.”
The two continued to bicker as we went to our respective vehicles. I considered apologizing to Martin for having subjected him to this, but was distracted when I saw what was in the back of his pickup. “They look just like the booths from your finale at the variety show.”
“Not exactly. Only the one that Stephanie was in is the same. Chester built me a new one to replace the one that Corinne was in. He built the original ones, too.”
“Martin, I’m sorry, but there’s no way I’m doing that trick. I cannot and will not step into that box after watching Corinne get shot to death.”
He opened the passenger door for me. “I can see your point.” There was a rabbit in a small travel cage on the front seat. Jammed into the small space behind the seats, a pair of doves cooed in greeting. “There’s not much room. You’ll have to hold Bun Bun on your lap.”
Fine, fine, I thought, but silently followed his instructions.
As he slid behind the wheel he said, “We won’t do that trick if you feel squeamish about it. I have a better finale now, anyway. I’m putting a couple of swords through your head.”
“Pardon?”
“Don’t worry. It’s foolproof.”
“Before or after the swords are in place?”
Ignoring me, he started the engine and we headed off. “It’s this box that sits on a stand that I fasten around your neck, and it has the slots for the swords. Only it’s deceptively large.”
“So’s my head.”
“Trust me. For the sake of building drama, you need to scream like you’re in agony, but you won’t feel a thing. The swords will actually go behind your head.”
“If I’m supposed to pretend to be in agony, how will you know the difference if your trick isn’t working and I really am in agony?” I stopped him mid chuckle with a glare and went on, “And don’t you dare say that the blood will be a dead giveaway.”
“I had Chester Walker help me build it just today, and I tested it on him.”
“He’s bald, and even if you miss my scalp, I don’t want chunks of my hair getting cut off. More importantly, I truly think that my head is a lot larger than Chester’s.”
“I have to have a big finale, Molly. Trust me.”
I managed a feeble smile and nodded. Surely it couldn’t be easy to poke a sword through someone’s skull. If anything went seriously wrong, at least we would already be in a hospital. Chances are I’d only need a few stitches. As would Martin, by the time I was through with him.
“You know,” I grumbled, “Chester recently promised me up one side and down the other that he was going to be at my house today, if not yesterday, building my sunroom. Now it turns out that he’s been busy building boxes so you could get a sword through my head.”
Through the plastic of the travel cage, I could feel Bun Bun trembling. “Your rabbit seems frightened.” I opened the cage and reached toward him to stroke his fur.
All of a sudden I felt a sharp pain in my finger. “Ow!” I yanked my hand back. “He bit me!”
“He does that if you’re not careful. Don’t worry. He’s not rabid or anything.” He chuckled. “A rabid rabbit. Get it?”
“Pardon me for not laughing. It’s just that I’m in a considerable amount of pain at the moment.” I looked again at my finger. “I think Bun Bun bit me clear down to the bone bone.”
“Sorry about that, Chief.”
Now he was doing Maxwell Smart? Last seen on TV in, what? The late nineteen sixties? “Are you sure your rabbit doesn’t have rabies?”
“Quite sure. He’s bit me more than once in the past couple of years, and yet I’m nerfectly pormal.” He laughed heartily.
What were the odds that the word “rabies” was derived from the word “rabbit?” Wrong spelling of the double b. That would be rabbis, not rabies. I spent the rest of the trip trying to distract myself from my throbbing finger to come up with a cartoon idea related to Jewish rabbits, then tried not to take my failure as a sign that my humor was permanently on the wane. After all, had Mel Brooks ever tried to write a joke while traveling in a pickup truck with an accountant-cum-magician and his vicious bunny? I think not.
The show was held in the small auditorium at the hospital. To my great relief, because I’m hopelessly emotional when it comes to sick children, the auditorium was open to anyone who wished to attend, and the show was casually handled, such that families dropped in for a few minutes to watch and then left.
I had told Martin that I really didn’t want to know how he did his tricks. Yet this was something like passing the scene of an accident; I couldn’t help but watch out of the corner of my eye.
In truth, though, this was much more like being in the accident. Martin’s performance was a disaster. The doves kept cooing and popping out of his pockets, and during my feeble attempts to help, the stupid things bit me twice. Then Bun Bun bit bit Martin. Although this was poetic justice, it hurt his sleight-of-hand tricks, for he kept shaking his hand in pain and dropping or mishandling various props.
Martin then had an unfortunate mishap when he was supposed to be levitating me. To my mind, the incident was more than overshadowed when, during the finale, a certain twelve-year-old boy in the audience cried, “The slots are at an angle and the swords are going behind Mom’s head!” Although there were only a few folks still watching the show by then, those screams of agony that Martin had instructed me to make turned into wails of embarrassment.
Afterward, Jim and I helped Martin carry his equipment back to the truck. I’m sure that Martin was disappointed by the reception our pedestrian performance had received. My thoughts, however, were centered on the flashback experience of having been in the very act that led to such hideous events a couple of nights before.
When he and Jim carried out the last of his things, I asked, “Martin, do you have any solid idea of who the killer is?”
“No, I don’t. My back was turned, and when I saw what was happening, I thought all three of us were goners. I just got down and tried to make myself as small a target as possible.”
“If Olivia hadn’t jammed the door on that booth that Stephanie got into, Stephanie would have snuck out the back, right?”
“Yes. Why?”
“She might have all but collided with the shooter as he or she came upstage.”
“Huh. So you think it might have been Olivia, making sure Stephanie didn’t get in her way?”
I shrugged. “That or she just wanted to embarrass Stephanie, like she claimed.”
“It might have been magic, you know.”
“What might have been?”
“Illusions are more powerful than you think. A master illusionist could have made it look like a clown did the shooting, when it was the illusionist himself.”
I had to refrain from rolling my eyes. His need to be considered a suspect in a murder just so he could gain credibility as a magician had to be the most pathetic thing I’d ever seen. “Good night, Martin.”
“What if he’s telling the truth?” Jim asked as we headed toward our own car, where Karen and Nathan were already waiting. “What if he did this just because he wanted to
make his career as pulling off the all-time best illusion?”
“You saw the show. He’s not that good a magician. For the sake of his clients, I just hope he’s a competent accountant.”
As we got into the front seat I looked at Karen and Nathan. “So, guys, what did you think?”
Karen said, “I’d rather have stayed home and brushed the dog.”
“What was your favorite part of the act, Nathan?”
“The levitating act,” he replied without hesitation. He started laughing and elbowed his sister. “He was trying to hide the bar that was holding Mom up. So he was standing with the bar between his legs. Only he lost his balance and fell.” At this last, Nathan was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes.
“That was the only part I liked, too,” Karen said, also laughing.
“Remember how funny his face looked? And he made this ‘oof’ noise. Like he was going to puke all over Mom.”
The kids burst into hysterical laughter at that. Jim was trying hard not to laugh himself and made a game attempt at clearing his throat instead.
“I noticed you were nodding out during the act,” I told him.
“He’s no Houdini.” He patted my knee. “Sure had a pretty assistant, though.”
Betty Cocker was in a major state of anxiety when we arrived. She was always happy to see us, but this time she was frantic and kept barking.
She rushed ahead of me to the back door and barked to get out. When I slid it open to let her out, she didn’t move, and I couldn’t blame her. I stood there, frozen in a disbelief that was quickly mutating into shock and rage.
I glanced down at my husband, who was settling into the couch in the family room. “Honey? Could you come here for a minute?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“This is one way to distract me from worrying about the broken window-well cover.” I waited till he was beside me, then stated the obvious. “The deck is gone.”
Chapter 11
Death at a Talent Show (Book 6 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 12