Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online

up. Jimmy Clark, the freckled kid with the limp, stood next to him.
    I reached down to be sure I was intact and dry. I was.
    “Come,” said Jeremy, turning and leading me away. Beyond the curtain, from where I had tumbled onto the mattress, the crowd was applauding.
    “What happened?”
    “Blackstone turned you into a lion,” Jimmy said. “We’ve got to hurry so he can turn the lion back into you.”
    The three of us dodged props, went through a small pack of heavily made-up girls with spangled blue swimsuits, evaded two men in Babes in Toyland uniforms like mine and headed up a steel staircase. The kid was in the lead, then Jeremy, then me.
    The staircase rattled. Someone in the wings below gave a loud “shush,” which could probably be heard in the first half dozen rows of the theater.
    At the top of the stairs, the kid went to a door, opened it and stepped back. I entered a large dressing room lined with mirrored dressing tables.
    There was only one person in the bulb-lit room, a man at the third table on my left. He was leaning forward, his face pressed against the mirror, eyes open as if he were astonished by his own image and trying to get a closer look.
    He was dead. No doubt. The giveaway was not just the open eyes and mouth, but the hole in the side of his head and the thick stream of blood making its way down his cheek.
    “Who found him?” I asked.
    “Marie,” said Jimmy.
    “Marie?”
    “This is her dressing room and the other girls’,” the kid said, unable to take his eyes off of the dead man. “She came back for … and she found him.”
    I moved forward toward the body.
    “Get Marie,” I said.
    “She won’t come in here,” said Jimmy. “I know her. She’ll start screaming and all. He’s dead, right?”
    People were gathering in the open doorway.
    “Most sincerely dead,” I said, leaning over to look at the dead man’s face in the mirror. “And call the police.”
    Outside the open door, people were gathering, looking, not quite taking in what was happening.
    “Jeremy, close the door.”
    Before he could close the door, my brother Phil and Pete Bouton stepped in. Phil looked at the body. He’d seen dozens before, but this one he recognized.
    “Robert R. Cunningham,” he said.
    “Who?”
    “Blackmailer, con man, blackmail, posed as a cop sometimes, or an insurance investigator,” said Phil, moving in for a closer look at the dead man. “Had a private detective license. We took it away.”
    Phil touched Cunningham’s cheek.
    “Couldn’t have gotten it more than a few minutes ago. Who heard the shot? Saw someone?”
    “The buzz saw,” said Pete Bouton. “The sound of the buzz saw probably drowned out the shot.”
    “Which means,” I said. “The killer waited for the saw to start making noise.”
    “Or he …,” Phil began.
    “Or she,” I amended, “just got lucky.”
    A knock. The door opened, and Jimmy Clark stuck his head in.
    “Called the cops,” he said. “Marie’s out here.”
    “Thanks,” I said, and then to Phil. “She found the body.”
    Phil and Bouton stayed with the dead man. The kid and I went out onto the landing and through a small crowd of people. Voices in the crowd asked, “What happened? Someone hurt? Shouldn’t we call an ambulance? Who …?”
    Jimmy guided me into a room three or four doors down. The room was crowded with boxes of rabbits, quacking ducks, fluttering and frightened cooing doves. Sitting with her back to a mirror was a pretty girl with short dark hair in bangs, very red lips and one-piece green bathing suit covered with glitter that caught the light and shimmered with each sob.
    I ushered Jimmy outside, closed the door and turned to the girl.
    “Marie,” I said.
    No response.
    “Marie,” I repeated.
    This time her head jerked and she looked at or through me.
    “You found the body.”
    It wasn’t a question, but she answered with a nod.
    “You hear a shot?”
    This time, the nod was a negative shake of the