Now You See It (25 page)

A minute later, he put the pen back into its holder.

“Why have I told you all this?” he inquired.

He made a sound of dark amusement.

“Probably because you’re the only audience I’ll ever have.

“The perfect audience in one respect; you can’t fidget in your seat or walk out. You have to listen to every word.

“At the same time, the worst audience I could ever have because you can’t react, you can’t respond in any way. Applause? Forget it. A cheer? No way. The audience participation of a cabbage is limited. Forgive me for saying so,
Padre
.
I always liked you, and respected you for what you’d done with your life. But as an
audience
…” He shook his head.

Little did he know.

There was complete reaction. And response, if only inwardly.

No gofer he. Instead, a diabolically clever mari who’d played a two-sided game against Cassandra and my son.

Neither of them conceived, you see, that he was capable of such an ingeniously sinister plot against them. Blinded by their confident assumptions, they never noticed that, while each of them was involved in his (and her) intricate scheme, Brian was outmaneuvering them both.

He had even dared to call attention to himself by portraying the Sheriff as a slow-witted rustic!

Did he experience some sense of dreadful glee at that deception?

Brian stood and walked to the bar.

Removing the champagne bottle from its ice bucket, he poured a glassful and drank it in a swallow.

I wondered if my face betrayed the utter shock I felt.

“Don’t worry,
Padre,”
he said. “I’ve left a written confession on the desk.”

He chuckled.

“Not that it’s likely they’ll think you did it all. Still …”

He winced as the poison began to take effect.

Face set, he poured himself another glassful, raised it toward me in a final toast.

“Prosit, Padre,”
he said. “And farewell.”

He drained the glass and put it back on the bar.

Moving to where Cassandra’s body lay, he stretched himself out beside her and took her hand in his. He made a sound of pain. Then, chillingly, he laughed.

“The real Sheriff Plum has got a lot to deal with here,” he said.

He closed his eyes.

“Good luck,
Padre,”
he murmured.

Then he, too, was gone.

I complete the tale as expeditiously as possible.

Sheriff Plum arrived soon after—looking more like an unbearded Abraham Lincoln than the portly figure Brian had presented—and took over. Unlike Brian’s characterization of him, he was a man of sharp perception.

The case was closed in due time. Later on, I caught up with the months of newspaper, magazine, tabloid, and television coverage of the case.

The court allowed me to retain the full estate, the servants remaining to take care of me.

Then an odd—and wholly unexpected—thing occurred.

The vegetable made a comeback.

Medical opinion varied, but the consensus was that the shock of witnessing the horrors of that afternoon—while being totally unable to stop them in any way—had traumatized my system.

Whether this is true or not, I’ll never know.

All I do know is that for some fortuitous reason, my arterial blood flow discovered an alternate route to the damaged area of my brain, effecting a gradual but definite recovery.

Not complete, of course. I won’t be vying in future Olympic Games.

Still, I’m well enough, at eighty-seven, to get about a little, feed myself, manage bathroom matters unassisted (there’s a pleasure, let me tell you!), and write about what happened that day.

A minor coda to the story.

My son’s estate was not extensive, most of it being invested in the house.

Accordingly, in order to acquire living funds, I had to sell the house.

I did so with little reluctance; it was filled with too many painful memories. I sold it furnished. And to whom?

How utterly ironic—

Harry
.

He had always coveted the place, you see. No doubt he thought it grimly satisfying to be able to possess it after the way Max had tormented him there.

His offer was the highest among a scarce few bidders.

So I had to sell it to him.

Before I left, however, I called in a local handyman and had the entire place rewired so that every time Harry turned on a lamp or pushed up a light switch or tried to use an electric appliance, breaker switches were thrown. My one regret was that the house didn’t still use screw-in fuses.

Better still (I had to pay the handyman a tidy sum to keep his mouth shut on this), I had every screw in every door and cabinet hinge in the house removed, the screw holes injected with hydrochloric acid, then the screws tightened back in place.

I will carry to my grave the heartwarming vision of that amoral sleazeball having every door and cabinet face fall off, one by one, in his hands as the acid did its work!

Me?

I live in St. John. Always loved the place since my wife and I had stayed there on numerous vacations.

A jolly Irish woman named Endira Muldoon (thrice widowed, with nine children and seventeen grandchildren
scattered about the globe) comes every day to my cottage to cook and provide for me.

Each day she drives me to the beach—unless there is a hurricane, of course, in which case I remain at home.

I’ve collected a group of young children who gather around me on the sand while I perform minor hand manipulations for them. Colored balls and handkerchiefs, disappearances and replications, mostly.

They seem to enjoy it.