Magicide (14 page)

CHAPTER 34

Wednesday, August 10, 7:30 p.m.

While the District Court judge reviewed their request for a subpoena of Maxwell’s records, Cheri and Pizzarelli decided early evening was a good time to interview Dayan Franklyn’s parents. She had noticed a framed photo of the couple in Dayan’s apartment and recognized the background as an old trailer park on Boulder Highway, just outside of town.

She was flipping through the Yellow Pages searching for a heading like “trailer parks” when she heard Pizza exclaim, “Got it!” He grinned and wrote on a piece of paper. “Abel and Mollie Franklyn. 19032 Boulder Highway, Henderson. From the book.”

“The telephone book?”

“Yup.”

“I didn’t think anyone listed their address in there anymore,” she said, closing the Yellow Pages.

* * *

Boulder Highway had long been the route between downtown Las Vegas and the outlying towns of Henderson and the home of Hoover Dam, Boulder City.

From there travelers crossed the Colorado River to get to Phoenix. The highway, now cutting through a major section of modern Las Vegas, was populated with shabby motels that rented by the hour, funky bars featuring slots or topless dancers or both, three old west-themed casino/hotels, the occasional pawnshop, and run-down trailer parks such as the Lone Pine.

Its original sign had been painted white on green, with the green long since faded. The only light at the main entrance came from a frame of bulbs outlining the sign, as if the only people who came there already lived there, so no need to advertise the place. Behind the graffitied front pony wall grew Chinese Elms that might have known Bugsy Siegel, and now hid a few dozen aged trailers in various stages of decay.

At one time the owner had stuccoed the office in a half-hearted attempt to create an adobe look. They knocked on the door and the Pakistani-looking man who answered pointed them to a trailer. “They live there forty-two years,” he said.

“Dayan must have grown up here,” Pizzarelli said, eyeing next to the office a faded tricycle mangled under a stand-jacked car with no wheels.

Cheri took out her flashlight. Several of the lights atop the poles were either burned out or broken. The assortment of trailers with their lean-tos, added-on storage sheds, parked vehicles, and trash left pockets of black shadows.

“Naturally the Franklyn trailer’s in the back of the place,” he mumbled.

A screech pierced the air. Cheri jerked her flashlight beam toward the sound.

“Shit!” he exclaimed.

An enormous black cat rolled in front of her, leaped to its feet, hissed at the light, and disappeared.

She laughed. “You stepped on him, Pizza.”

“Jeez. The thing otta watch where it’s goin’.” He ran a hand over his bald spot.

Her smile was gone by the time they reached the Franklyn trailer. No outside lights. Through the window in the front door she could see the blue light of a television screen. She knocked, heard shuffling sounds, and a man’s voice called, “Who’s there?”

“Police detectives. We want to ask you a few questions.”

“Abel, you be careful,” called a woman inside. “Make them show you identification.”

The porch light came on. When he saw their badges, Abel Franklyn opened the door just wide enough to talk. Reading glasses perched on a nose too small for the width of his face. His skin had a pallor that had nothing to do with age. Through the interior haze of cigarette smoke, Cheri noted soda cans and chips on a TV table next to a woman in a recliner chair wearing purples fuzzy slippers. No invitation to come inside.

“We think your son, Dayan Franklyn, might have some information about a case we’re working on—” she began.

The old man snorted. “Dayan. He doesn’t live here. We haven’t heard from him since he moved in with that magician. Is he in trouble? What do you want with him?”

“We just need to talk to him.”

The woman had risen from the recliner and now appeared behind Abel Franklyn. Of indeterminate age, she squinted watery eyes at the two detectives and one bony hand fingered a pin of pink rhinestone flowers at her chest. Abel Franklyn introduced her as Dayan’s mother.

“Molly’s heartsick,” he said. “She’d like to see her son. Maybe now that that magician’s dead, Dayan will remember he has parents. It’s not our fault we couldn’t do more for him. You go over to that magician’s mansion and you tell Dayan—“

“That we love him,” Mrs. Franklyn interrupted in a subdued voice. “Abel, tell them to tell him we’re not mad at him.” She began to cough, and Cheri took a step back from this new wave of cigarette air.

“Molly, go back and sit down. I’ll handle this.” Dayan’s father lowered his rattily voice. “Woman doesn’t take care of herself,” he muttered. “It’s all we can do to get by here, see? The wife’s medication takes most of our social security checks. I don’t care what Dayan’s doing with that man for money, but he could send a little this way, don’tcha think? It’s that magician’s fault. Dayan was always a good boy till he hooked up with”—he spat the word—“
Maxwell
.”

Mr. Franklyn was willing to talk, but most of what he had to say were derisive judgments against the man he believed had corrupted his son.

Cheri realized they weren’t going to get much further here and cut him off in the middle of his diatribe, thanking him for his time.

Pizzarelli handed him a business card, which the man took before he closed the door. At the same time the porch light snapped off, leaving the two detectives to pick their way carefully down the porch stairs in the dark.

“Not much new there,” she said, clicking on her flashlight. “Notice we have yet to find anybody with something nice to say about Maxwell. Dayan may be the only person.”

“It would take some magic to get a kid a life better than this,” Pizzarelli said. “So why would he kill his golden goose?”

She hit the key pad that unlocked the Explorer and they got inside. “That’ll be our first question when we find him.”

CHAPTER 35

Wednesday, August 10, 10 p.m.

Cheri frowned as she turned into her driveway. No lights on in the house. She hit the clicker to open the garage door and pulled the Explorer inside. She collected her duty bag and keys and got out. Not even a whisper of rap or any other kind of music in the house. She let herself into the kitchen and called, “Tom?”

No answer. Okay, Tom was sixteen and driving, but they’d agreed that on a school night he’d be in by ten p.m. A quick search of the house confirmed what she’d suspected. She scanned the counters and tabletops—no note from Tom saying where he’d gone, or note from Bon that he may have called and left a message.

She hadn’t realized she’d been slamming doors and making so much noise until Bonni poked her head out of her bedroom with a quizzical expression. “What’s happ’nin?”

She didn’t bother to apologize. “Where’s Tom?”

Bonni, wearing nothing but bikini panties, yawned. “How would I know? I was sleeping—in fact sleeping just fine until you came home. I set my alarm for two.”

“Was he here when you went to bed?”

“Nope. Came home from school, let’s see…early, got a phone call, left.”

“I suppose it’s too much to ask you to remember if he said where he was going?”

“Hey, I’m not his mother,” Bonni snapped.

Cheri clasped her arms tightly around her chest as if to hold in her exasperation. “Bon, we had a deal. When I let you move down from Seattle, you said you’d help me around the house, you’d help me with Tom. Kind of help me look after him. The hours I keep—“

“Are your own choice. Just like I have to work graveyard because I chose to take the first job I could get so I could pay you rent.”

This argument was going nowhere Cheri wanted to go. She let her arms relax and sighed. “I’m sorry, hon. I’m just so worried about Tom. He’s not keeping his end of our cell phone bargain, and I don’t know what to do. I know I can’t keep track of him every minute, but this fascination with magicians has me totally off center.”

The hurtful expression on Bonni’s face softened. “He’s a big guy, kiddo. He can take care of himself. When I was his age—”

Cheri held up both palms. “No, no, don’t tell me. Too much info.”

“You worry too much.” Bonni smiled. “And you know why the magic thing bothers you so much.”

Cheri couldn’t bear to have that conversation again, and especially not right now. “Go back to sleep, Bon,” she said, turning away. She couldn’t even tell her own sister that her new fear was that her son might be keeping company with a killer.

CHAPTER 36

Thursday, August 11, 7:30 a.m.

After a restless sleep—she’d lain awake until she heard Tom come home at 12:30 a.m.—Cheri awoke with a headache.

A shower and two aspirin helped, and by the time she was dressed and in the kitchen she was ready to confront her son about his late previous-night activity.

When she started to make coffee, she discovered the canister empty. Didn’t anybody in this house keep track of anything? When something ran out, Bon should either buy it or tell her.

She thought the noise she’d made in the kitchen would draw Tom down from his room, but now she realized the house was quiet. She leaned her head to her shoulder, ear upward, but could hear no sounds of running water from his bathroom or overhead footsteps in his room.

She went upstairs and discovered that while his bed had been slept in, Tom was not in the house. He had apparently risen early and already departed for school. A good sign or a bad sign? A bad sign, she decided, annoyed that now she’d have to put off their talk until evening.

* * *

In the break room at South Central, Cheri regarded the coffee carafe with its quarter inch of coffee, boiled to mud. On the cupboard above the hotplate was a hand-written sign that read, “Clean up after yourself. Your mother doesn’t live here.” One thing police guys sure couldn’t do was make coffee. She dumped the pot, rinsed it out, and began to brew a fresh one.

She thought about why she hadn’t slept well. Her mind had been busy rehashing the matter of who was responsible for the deaths of Maxwell and the six roller coaster committee members. Why did this case bother her so? Because it involved magicians? Because she sensed Tom was in danger? But what danger could he really be in? So many questions with answers she couldn’t grasp. Why couldn’t everything in her life be balanced on the easy side for a change?

Pizzarelli was seated in his swivel chair when she walked into the office. He leaned forward and she cocked her head. No familiar squeak.

“W-D Forty?”

He nodded. “Desk sergeant Adams did it. Said the squeak drove him nuts.”

“So where are we this morning?”

“Who’s your favorite suspect on the Maxwell case?”

Tom’s comment about Robert the Great being a mentor came to mind, and she didn’t immediately answer. She started to sit down and then changed her mind.

“Off the top of your head,” Pizzarelli said, tapping his pen against the desk with impatience.

Arms crossed, she walked to the window and stared beyond a vacant expanse of the desert to the I-15 freeway. “Okay, off the top of my head—Dayan Franklyn. Where is he, anyway? If he’s not guilty, why has he disappeared?”

“My pick, too.”

“He’s definitely a subject needed for questioning in this investigation. Let’s put out an ATL for him.” An attempt-to-locate could sometimes produce results faster than footwork.

“I think some people know more than they’re telling. Digbee and Meiner, for two.”

“And Peter and his mother for three and four. Then there’s the girl friend, Regine.”

Pizzarelli shook his head. “Still can’t get over that operation thing. I’ll never look at red hair the same again.”

She turned and circled his desk, too restless to sit. “All of them were present the night of the performance. They all have motive, not to mention opportunity, intent and capability.”

“That’s what bothers me.” He patted a tiny piece of paper on his chin where he’d cut himself shaving. “Dayan Franklyn—what’s his motive? Maxwell was good to him, supported him financially, taught him everything, even did his teeth. A young magician couldn’t possibly have a better tutor. Why would Franklyn want him out of the way?”

“It’s kind of a stretch, but maybe he thought he was ready to take Maxwell’s place as a master illusionist.”

Pizzarelli shook his head. “Don’t think so. He could’ve left him, gone off on his own. I don’t see intent there. Peter was going to inherit everything—no money there for Franklyn. He’s the only magician without a decent motive.”

“Except that Dayan filmed the ritual and made the DVD. Maybe he wanted something on Maxwell so that if Maxwell found out about his relationship with Peter, he couldn’t drop him. But why kill him?” She walked to her desk and finally sat down. “You’re right. He does seem to be the only magician without motive.”

“That we’ve found
yet
—he’s also the only one
missing
. Now it looks like we have a missing person in addition to a homicide. And the money missing from Maxwell’s accounts isn’t in Edmund Meiner’s account.”

She fingered the corners of some papers on her desk. “Let’s not forget, according to Peter, Dayan had the incriminating video. He could have held it over Maxwell’s head to get whatever he wanted. He could have blackmailed him. He and Peter were lovers—maybe the two of them were in on it together and quarreled over what to do with it.”

“My coffee’s cold,” Pizzarelli said. “And you haven’t had any yet.” He rose from the swivel chair, cup in hand, and she followed him to the break room. He took a fresh mug from the cupboard, set it on the counter next to his own and poured coffee from the fresh pot.

“Thanks,” she said, “How about we all chip in and buy a new coffee pot with some gourmet coffee that isn’t over-roasted to go with our new offices?” She raised her mug, considering their next move. “Let’s go talk to Robert the Great. He was technical advisor. Let’s see if he has more to shed on what happened.”

Pizzarelli took a cautious sip of the hot coffee. “Both good ideas. Good-bye, Fourbucks.”