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

head.
    “You see anyone near the dressing room?”
    Positive nod this time.
    “Who?”
    She tried to speak, caught her breath and said, “A man. Came running out. I was going in to get …”
    “What did he look like?”
    “Suit, tie I think. Had a beard like the devil always has in pictures and movies you know?”
    “I know.”
    “And he was wearing a what-do-you-call it? Thing you wrap around your head?”
    “Turban,” I said.
    “Yeah, with this green piece of glass right in the middle, here.” She pointed to a spot just over his forehead, and added, “He’s dead. Cunningham. I could tell, right?”
    “He is,” I confirmed. “You know why he was in the women’s dressing room?”
    “Gwen’s boyfriend,” she said.
    “Gwen?”
    “She’s the tiger lady, the one in the tiger costume,” Marie said.
    I remembered her. She was very pretty and very young.
    “Dead man is about forty-five, overweight, and looks a lot like Charles Laughton,” I said.
    “He’s also rich,” she said. “Gives … gave her lots of stuff, you know?”
    That explained a few things. Cunningham was seeing a girl in the show. Cunningham used a false name. Cunningham pretended he was wealthy. Now Cunningham was dead. The police were on the way. I wanted to find Gwen.
    “Police will be here soon,” I said. “Stay here. You want company?”
    The “yes” nod.
    “I’ll send someone in.”
    I went out the door. The pack was waiting for me. Jeremy was on the landing now, protecting the door of the dressing room where Phil was looking for whatever he could find.
    I motioned for Jeremy. He pressed his way through the crowd on the narrow landing, and I told him to sit inside with Marie till the police came. He went through the door and I asked, “Which of you is Gwen?”
    No one answered. People looked around at each other.
    “The girl in the tiger costume?” I tried.
    “Gone,” came a voice from the stage level below.
    I looked over the railing and down at an old man with an open white shirt and a pair of wide suspenders.
    “Gone? Where?”
    “Out there,” said the man, pointing a pipe toward the stage door. “You went up the stairs,” he said, pointing the pipe at the stairs, “and she went flying out, running like a banshee was snapping at her heels.” He was pointing toward the stage door again.
    On cue, the stage door opened and two uniformed cops came in.
    “What is going on?” said Blackstone, stepping off the stage and looking at the cops and then up at me. “I need Peters back on the roller right now. I have a very impatient lion and more impatient audience, and I need something that resembles silence.”
    “Man’s been murdered,” I said to the cops and Blackstone.
    The backstage crowd went silent.
    Blackstone said, “Who?”
    One of the cops said, “Where’s the body?”
    “In there,” I said, pointing at the dressing room door and then to Blackstone, “A man named Cunningham.”
    “Why? Who did it?”
    The cops were hurrying up the clanging stairs, muscling past performers and stagehands. The cop in the lead was florid and heavy, one of the wartime retreads. The kid behind him looked like my fourteen-year-old nephew.
    Blackstone’s questions were good ones.
    I didn’t have the answers.
    “Did anyone see a guy with a beard wearing a turban with a green stone in it?” I asked.
    “I did,” said Jimmy Clark. “He was up on the landing next to the dressing rooms right before the buzz saw act.”
    “Went out that door,” said the old man with the pipe, pointing once again at the stage door. “Couple of minutes ago right behind the tiger lady.”
    “Sara,” Blackstone called in a loud whisper and pointed to a blonde girl in a Little Bow Peep costume. “You’ll appear instead of Mr. Peters. Now all I need is some new patter.”
    “The double whoops,” Pete said, leaning over the rail.
    Blackstone raised a finger, nodded, motioned for Little Bow Peep to move behind the curtains, and went back