Now You See It (11 page)

Presently, he took me downstairs once again and rolled my wheelchair to the kitchen. There, he fed me like the child I had become in my eating habits—bib around my neck, spoon scooping up what food I dribbled from my mouth.

All this he did without a word, his expression unreadable—even to me, who had always read him so well.

When I was finished eating, he finally spoke.

“I’m going to leave you in the kitchen for a little while,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

He kissed me on the cheek and left.

I think I felt a tugging at the corners of my eyes; a hint of tears?

Why had he done all this?

Had his need for revenge on Harry and Cassandra been so rabid that he’d been driven to kill them both?

It seemed hard to believe. Max had never been a violent man. Certainly, to me, he had been nothing but a loving son.

Then
why?

So there I sat in the stillness of the kitchen, bathed, changed, and fed—like the physical infant I’d become. Only my brain remained alert.

Wondering and suffering.

How long was it before he came for me? I would estimate the time as half an hour or so, perhaps a little longer.

When he returned to the kitchen, he rolled me back to The Magic Room without a word and set my chair in its customary spot, patted my shoulder, and said, “I hope you’ll understand in time,
Padre.”

With that, he left me there alone … as I had been before the nightmare had commenced.

I looked at the desk clock.

It was 2:33
P.M
.

A random flicker of lightning continued in the distance, an occasional rumble of thunder. They seemed closer now.

The storm was still approaching.

I looked around the room.

Everything was back in order except for a single detail.

The bloodstains had been wiped up.

The fragments of terra-cotta had been gathered and removed.

The pill vial was gone, presumably returned to the center desk drawer.

The African blowgun was, as noted, restored above mantelpiece.

The pair of dueling pistols had been similarly returned to their places.

The Arabian dagger lay on the desk in its original position.

Four changes had been made.

On the bar, the silver bucket was filled with ice, a bottle of Dom Perignon protruding from its top.

The globe had been covered with a red silk scarf.

The casket was closed.

The Egyptian burial case was closed.

Only one detail deprived the room of orderly appearance.

Still in the same position, crumpled and immobile, lay the body of Cassandra Delacorte.

This I did not understand at all.

Not that I truly understood the reasons for Max’s brutal actions.

But this was downright confusing.

Why commit a double murder, hide one body, clean up all the evidence, then leave the other body untouched?

It made no sense.

But then, very little of what happened that day—what had already taken place and what was about to take place—made sense.

At which point—with me utterly perplexed—the lunacy resumed.

In the entry hall, the doorbell rang.

There was no response.

Where is Max?
I wondered.

The doorbell rang again.

No response.

Then, as though the person at the door felt that the doorbell wasn’t loud enough, he (or she) began to knock.

No answer.

The knocking grew louder.

Soon became a pounding.

Causing a response.

My nerve ends (what was left of them, at any rate) jumped as Cassandra made a feeble sound.

My eyeballs rolled with startled speed.

Her right hand was stirring on the floor.

Now wait a second
, said my mind.

The pounding on the front door stopped.

Cassandra moaned a little. Turned her head.

My eyeballs rolled again. (They were to get a real workout that afternoon, let me tell you.)

Outside the house, a man had appeared.

He was in his middle fifties, stocky, dressed in the hat and uniform of the local constabulary, a holstered pistol belted at his portly waist.

He peered into the room, shading his eyes with his left hand.

At first, he only looked around TMR, a frown of curiosity on his thick features.

Then he started, mouth gaping in surprise, as he caught sight of Cassandra.

Immediately, he charged back toward the front door.

Cassandra opened her eyes.

Confusion reigned in me. She wasn’t dead—or even incapacitated that I could see.

She had pushed up on one elbow.

As she did, the front door of the house was flung open, crashing against the entry-hall wall.

Cassandra gasped in startlement and looked around.

There was a rapid fall of boots across the entry-hall floor.

Cassandra twitched in alarm as the door was thrown open and the heavy man came bursting in.

He ran to Cassandra and knelt beside her hurriedly.

She stared at him in bewilderment as he helped her to a sitting position.

“Who are you?” she asked. I noticed that her voice was thick, the words slurred; an aftereffect of whatever drug had been on the dart, I assumed.

“Easy,” was all the man replied.

He assisted Cassandra to her feet, where she evidenced some difficulty with her balance and the focus of her eyes. “Easy, easy,” said the man.

“Who
are
you?” she persisted.

“Sheriff Plum,” he answered.

“Plum?” She stared at him for several moments, then pulled away; she immediately began to stagger.

Plum made a sudden move to prevent her fall.
“Easy,”
he said.

She blinked her eyes, grimacing, clearly struggling to regain the use of her senses. She swallowed, and it made a dry sound in her throat.

Disengaging herself once more, she stumbled toward the bar and fell against it, clutching at the top for support.

She stared at the bottles of chilling champagne as though the sight of them was baffling to her.

Then, shaking her head, she moved around the bar, holding on to its top to keep from falling.

Reaching the sink, she turned the faucet arm; cold water splashed down into the stainless-steel basin. Holding on to the sink’s edge with her left hand, she cupped her right beneath the fall of water, caught some, and began to wash her face.

At this point, Sheriff Plum, glancing around the room, caught sight of me.
“Oh
, my God,” he reacted.

Cassandra, face dripping, looked over at him hurriedly.

“Good afternoon,” the Sheriff greeted me.

“He can’t answer,” Cassandra told him. “He’s like a vegetable.” (What did I tell you?)

“A
vegetable?”
asked Sheriff Plum in a surprised voice.

“He had a stroke many years ago,” she explained, her voice still slurring words. “He can’t talk or move; ignore him.”

Which was pretty much my status in her mind.

“But—” Sheriff Plum gave up on me and looked back at Cassandra, who was drying her face with a bar towel.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

She looked at him, then turned her head and scanned the room.

Each sight she saw appeared to puzzle her further. She rubbed her forehead hard as though to activate the gray cells underneath her skull. Ran her hands across her breasts as though to verify their presence.

“Are you all right?” the Sheriff asked.

Cassandra looked at him, disoriented. “Where did you come from?” she asked.

“What?” The question seemed bewildering to him.

She repeated it more demandingly.

“From
town,”
he said, still looking puzzled.

“I mean—” she broke off with an angry grimace “—who let you in?” she finished.

He looked more confused than ever.

“No one
let me in,” he said. “The front door was unlocked.
I came in by myself because I saw you lying on the floor in here and thought you were the ‘one’—”

He stopped as though perplexity was overwhelming him.

“Who got murdered, then?”
he asked.

Cassandra did not reply at first. She stared at him, her features very nearly blank.

Finally, she asked, “How did
you
know about it?”

“Someone telephoned my office,” he replied.

“Telephoned your office?”
(She was totally confounded now. So was I.)

“Yes—”

She interrupted him abruptly.

“My husband’s agent,” she declared.

“Your husband’s agent telephoned my office?” asked the Sheriff.

“No!” she cried in agitation. “My husband’s agent is the one who got murdered!”

“He’s the one …” Plum’s voice faded as he watched her curiously.

She’d begun to pace around, shaking her head and blinking hard.

“You want me to call for an ambulance?” he asked.

Cassandra stopped, wavering, and turned to face him.

“My husband did it,” she told him.

“Your husband—”

“—did
it,” she cut him off.

He stared at her as though devoid of comprehension.

“Did you
hear
me?” she demanded.

“Yes,”
he answered. “You said …”

His voice trailed off again as though he hadn’t inkling-one regarding what she’d said.

Cassandra ground her teeth together. She did that when she was furious.

“My-husband-murdered-his-agent
,” she said slowly, spacing each word evenly, enunciating clearly.

Plum’s eyes narrowed. “You
witnessed
it?” he asked.

“Yes! Of course I did! Why else—”

Suddenly, she stopped and looked around the room.

“No, wait,” she said. “He wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t make sense.”

The Sheriff was as nonplussed as I was, except that he could verbalize it.

“What wouldn’t make sense?” he asked.

Cassandra threw off momentary confusion with a willful scowl.

“I want you to arrest my husband,” she told the Sheriff. “I’ll testify to what I saw.”

The Sheriff’s expression did not, in any way, reflect a bulb turning on.

“Which was what?” he asked. (
Rustic idiot
, I thought.)

“I just
told
you!” snapped Cassandra, teeth grinding again. “My husband murdered his agent.
Poisoned
him!”

“Poisoned?”
said the newly startled Plum; clearly, he could only deal with one brief bit of information at a time.

“Yes,”
said Cassandra.
“Yes. Yes
. Arrest him and I’ll testify against him.”

“Regarding what?” he asked as though trying very hard to get it straight in his brain.
Who elected this dolt?
I wondered.

“You
still
don’t understand?” Cassandra said, incredulous.

Her insulting tone made him bristle.

“I mean, regarding
how
it happened,” he responded sharply.
“Where
it happened.
When
it happened. And if you have any notions about it,
why
it happened.”

The demands, though scarcely a barrage of them, seemed too much for Cassandra now. Shaking her head fitfully, she returned to the bar, lifted a handful of cracked ice to her face and rubbed it over her forehead as though to chill alertness and perception into returning.

Plum and I observed. I didn’t know what the worthy Sheriff was thinking, but as for me, I was trying hard to fathom why Max would commit murder (down to one now), then notify the law and have it show up at his house.

I had to assume that it was done in a desire to pay for his crime.

Boy, was I wrong.