Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery (10 page)

“So none of the business about Wooley and the bear is true?”

“Not a lick,” she said.

“What about all the other stories about your family?”

“All true,” she said with indignation. “Every last word. What do you take me for Mr. Peelers?”

“But Wooley?”

“I felt the tome needed spicing up,” she said. “My imagination is futile.”

“Fertile,” I corrected.

“Breakfast this a.m. is Treet omelets accompanied by margarine-fried diced carrots gently mixed in,” she said. “There will also be an announcement of consequence.”

And she was gone.

That gave me time to shave, rub some Kreml in my hair, change the Band-Aid covering the pellet hole in my shoulder, wince a few times, wash, avoid my battered image in the mirror, and knock at Gunther’s door.

“Enter Toby,” he said.

“You know my knock,” I said, opening the door.

“I know that it is nearly eight and that Mrs. Plaut does not knock,” he said.

He was dressed in his usual three-piece, perfectly pressed custom-made suit. Since he was a little over three and a half feet tall, all his clothes had to be custom made, right down to his silk ties and leather shoes.

“Treet omelets this a.m.,” I said.

“Such a culinary delight is not to be missed,” Gunther said.

“And Mrs. Plaut says she has an announcement of consequence.”

“Then we should be at the table at the stroke of the hour,” said Gunther, rising from the chair at his desk and putting aside the book he had been holding.

At Mrs. Plaut’s dining-room table sat Ben Bidwell, the one-armed fortyish automobile salesman, and Emma Simcox, a light-skinned, shy pretty Negro who Mrs. Plaut said was her niece. I never asked about this relationship. I had the feeling that one night I would come home to an explanation of the Simcox connection in a chapter of Mrs. Plaut’s never-ending, and now fictionalized, memoirs.

Gunther and I sat. Bidwell and Emma were next to each other. He wore a grin. She wore a smile. Coffee was on the table.

“War’ll be over soon,” said Bidwell.

“Looks that way,” I said.

“Then we’ll have to deal with the national debt,” said Bidwell. “Two hundred and sixty billion dollars. How are we going to deal with that, I ask you?”

“There has been a meeting of forty-four nations at the Mt. Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire,” said Gunther. “A World Bank has been established. National debts are on the agenda.”

“That a fact?” said Bidwell with admiration.

“It is,” said Gunther solemnly.

Mrs. Plaut came in with omelet plates, placing one in front of each of us. It rated “A” for smell and something murky down the alphabet for looks. The omelets were a rainbow mixture of tree bark brown, burnt carrot orange, egg yellow, and speckled hints of some dark herb.

“Before we eat,” she said. “The announcement.”

In the sitting room behind us, Mrs. Plaut’s bird from hell began screeching.

“Ignore Jacob,” Mrs. Plaut said.

Gunther and I looked at her.

“Great,” I said.

“The changing of his name is not the announcement,” she said. “My niece and Mr. Bidwell are officially engaged,” Mrs. Plaut said.

Bidwell smiled. Emma blushed. He took her hand.

“Congratulations,” said Gunther.

“Congratulations,” I echoed.

“Nuptials on January 2 of the coming year,” said Mrs. Plaut. “In the parlor. All invited. Gifts mandatory.”

The doorbell was ringing. Mrs. Plaut didn’t hear it.

“I will begin preparing the menu,” Mrs. Plaut said. “You may eat now.”

The doorbell rang again.

The omelet was damned good.

The doorbell kept ringing. Mrs. Plaut was obviously not wearing her hearing aid.

“The door, Aunt Irene,” Emma said, standing.

“Of course,” said Mrs. Plaut, a forkful of omelet moving toward her mouth.

Emma left the room and passed through the sitting room, sending Jacob into a new frenzy of screeches.

When she returned to the room, Harry Blackstone was at her side. He was wearing a dark suit and red tie. His hair was brushed back and he reminded me of Adolph Menjou.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” he said.

“We are not in the market this morning for brushes, vacuum cleaners, knife sharpenings, or the like,” Mrs. Plaut said, turning to him.

“This is Harry Blackstone,” I said. “The magician.”

My announcement brought a smile from Bidwell and Emma and a look of respect from Gunther. It also brought a strange look to the face of Mrs. Plaut, who did not turn to face him. I thought she hadn’t heard me. I introduced everyone. When I got to Mrs. Plaut, she kept her back turned and held up a hand to acknowledge the magician’s presence.

“Would you like to join us?” Emma asked.

“I’ve eaten, thank you,” said Blackstone. “I must talk to Mr. Peters.” And then, to me, he said, “Something new has come up.”

“Let’s go in the other room,” I said, getting up.

Mrs. Plaut was still turned away. As I started to lead Blackstone out of the dining room, she made the mistake of turning her head to watch us.

Blackstone looked at her for an instant. She turned away and then he paused to look again.

“Irene Adaire,” he said.

Mrs. Plaut concentrated on her Treet omelet.

“You are Irene Adaire,” he said, looking at Mrs. Plaut.

We all looked at Mrs. Plaut.

“You’re the widow of Simon Adaire,” he said.

“I look nothing like her,” Mrs. Plaut said, head down.

“I can’t be mistaken,” Blackstone said, moving around the table, standing between Bidwell and Emma to look at Mrs. Plaut. “The birthmark on the back of your hand is unmistakable.”

Mrs. Plaut shifted the fork from her right to her left hand and put the right hand on her lap out of sight.

“I’ve been searching for her for forty years,” Blackstone said, looking at me.

We all looked at Mrs. Plaut, who adjusted her glasses and continued to eat with a fury that made it clear she had a sudden attack of starvation, or else she was doing her best to hide behind the blend of carrots, Treet, and eggs.

Blackstone shook his head and smiled before looking at me.

“Simon Adaire was an amazing magician,” he said. “I saw him in Chicago when I was about twelve years old. He performed an illusion, a brilliant trick, which no one has to this day been able to duplicate.”

Mrs. Plaut was now gulping tepid coffee.

“He placed his wife,” said Blackstone looking at Mrs. Plaut, “in a glass sphere about the size of an armchair. A steel mesh surrounded the sphere. And then …” Blackstone let his right hand lift toward the ceiling, “in full view and with his wife clearly visible, he had the sphere raised by a golden rope high above the audience. There was a drum roll and with a shout of ‘Kabow’ Irene Adaire disappeared.”

“Kapow,” Mrs. Plaut corrected. “Not ‘Kabow’.”

“Kapow, yes,” Blackstone said. “An instant, no more than a heartbeat later, Simon Adaire called out ‘Lights.’ The house lights came on and he pointed to a spot in the audience. From a seat, not an aisle seat, Irene Adaire stood up wearing the same costume she had worn in the sphere. I waited at the stage door till the show was over,” said Blackstone. “Adaire shook my hand and I told him I wanted to be a magician. His wife shook my hand. That’s when I saw the small birthmark, the tiny purple star.”

“It’s not a birthmark,” Mrs. Plaut said. “It’s a tattoo.”

We were all looking at Mrs. Plaut now.

“You were lovely,” Blackstone said.

Did Mrs. Plaut blush? Maybe.

“Simon Adaire died two years or so later,” Blackstone said. “My brother and I have tried for years to duplicate that piece of magic. We’ve come close, but never quite got it. Others have tried. Cheap and obvious imitations. Eventually, people began to think that the original Simon Adaire’s Woman in the Sphere illusion had been one of those cheap imitations. But it wasn’t. I was there.”

“More coffee anyone?” Mrs. Plaut asked, rising with her cup and saucer in hand.

In the hundreds of pages of Mrs. Plaut’s family history, there had not been a mention of anyone named Adaire, had not been a word about Adaire, whom she must have been married to before she married “The Mister” who had died about fifteen years ago.

“Amazing,” said Blackstone. “The wonders of the world of magic are nothing compared to the tricks of fate that God plays on us. To find you after all this time, after all the hands of women I have looked at, all the … forgive me.”

“I’m having more coffee,” said Mrs. Plaut, moving toward the kitchen.

“Mrs. Adaire,” Blackstone said. “You are almost certainly the only living person who knows the secret of the Woman in the Sphere.”

“Drat,” Mrs. Plaut said with a sigh, returning to her seat.

Blackstone laughed, a deep laugh showing even, white teeth.

“I thought when I found you I would beg you to tell me the secret, offer you whatever amount you wanted, tell you that I would forever attribute the illusion to Simon Adaire whenever I performed it,” said Blackstone. “And now …”

“You don’t want to know,” said Mrs. Plaut.

“That’s right,” said Blackstone. “How did you …?”

“That’s just what Thurston said when he found me,” she said. “He used a private detective named Richard Olin who charged him a sincere sum. Thurston never even asked me to tell him. Mr. Thurston said, ‘Even magicians need some magic in their lives.’”

“Especially
magicians,” said Blackstone.

“I’ve written the secret in a letter,” said Mrs. Plaut. “The letter is in the safe of my lawyer, Mr. Leib. When I depart this vale of woes, good food, and Eddie Cantor on the radio, Mr. Leib will give the letter to Mr. Peelers who can do with it as he believes best.”

She looked at me and added “Accompanying the letter is a chapter of my family history about Simon. I have no more to say.”

“And I have no more to ask,” said Blackstone.

“Well, does anyone want more coffee or not?” she asked.

“I’ll have some,” said Bidwell.

“And I,” said Gunther.

Mrs. Plaut nodded, looked at Blackstone and said, “You do the buzz saw better than Simon. You do it all better than Simon, except for the girl in the ball. That’s all he really had.”

Mrs. Plaut disappeared into the kitchen.

“Amazing,” said Blackstone. “To find Irene Adaire on the same day … Mr. Peters, can we go in another room?”

We could and we did move into the parlor on the other side of the hall beyond Mrs. Plaut’s rooms.

“I’m sorry I didn’t wait till you got to your office, but I thought you or your brother should know immediately. You were closer to the hotel.”

Phil lived in the Valley, North Hollywood, across the hills.

“I got a call at the hotel at five this morning,” Blackstone said. “A man. He said that at the testimonial dinner for me tonight the audience would be watching the death of a magician. He said, his exact words, ‘And that will be the finish of Harry Blackstone.’ And then he hung up.”

“Was it Ott?”

“Perhaps.”

“Why would he warn you?” I asked.

“It wasn’t a warning,” said Blackstone. “It was a challenge, a challenge I intend to accept.”

        
Place two identical glass bottles on a table. Borrow a dollar. Put the dollar over the middle of the mouth of one of the bottles. Turn the other bottle upside down and balance it on the mouth of the other bottle with the dollar between them. Announce that you can remove the dollar without disturbing or even touching the bottles. Challenge your audience to do it. Let them try if they wish. Solution; When you place the dollar between the two bottles, do not put the bottles on the center of the bill. Take the long end of the bill, draw it taut. Holding the end of the bill, raise the other hand above the dollar. Hit it in the middle and out comes the dollar
.

From the
Blackstone, The Magic Detective
radio show

“A
RE WE READY
?”
Phil asked, running his thick palm over his short-cropped steel gray hair.

I knew Phil was controlling his lack of approval of the group of misfits who sat around the round conference table in the new office of the new firm of Pevsner and Peters.

The office was large, one of the largest in the building. It wasn’t, however, a suite, just one big room whose last renter was now in prison.

Jeremy Butler, our landlord, was seated at the table, and had set up a blackboard against the wall. Phil rolled a fresh piece of chalk in his hand and looked at us before he began.

I sat on Phil’s left. Next to me was Jeremy, large, bald, and serene. I was afraid he had written a poem for the occasion. I was reasonably sure he had or would. Jeremy, the ex-wrestler, was a poet for all seasons and reasons. I hoped he didn’t decide to read his latest work for this more-or-less captive audience.

Next to Jeremy sat Gunther, nattily dressed, tiny, erect, dignified, and ready with pencil in hand and pad of paper in front of him.

On Gunther’s left sat Shelly Minck, fidgeting with his thick glasses, wearing a fresh white dental smock, gnawing on an unlit cigar.

The last person at the table was the one neither Phil nor I wanted there. His name was Pancho Vanderhoff. Pancho was thin, old, wearing a long-sleeved purple shirt and what looked like a thin red scarf draped around his neck. Pancho’s face was unlined, his badly dyed black hair thick.

Shelly had introduced Pancho as a screenwriter “with lots of great credits.”

Shelly—now in the chips with money from a company that had bought one of his dental hygiene inventions, money from his recently dead wife Mildred, and money from the sale of his house at a hefty profit—had hired Pancho to write a movie about Shelly’s life, a movie which Shelly would produce.

“Pancho’s just going to observe,” Shelly had told me in the hall when I told him about the meeting. “This will be a great chance for him to see me in action as a detective. That’s what he’s going to concentrate on. You know, respected dentist by day, fearless private investigator by night, and on weekends.”