Carol O’Connell - Shell Game

„Kathy, that’s enough!“ said the rabbi, breaking the spell she had cast over the room. „This is his wife’s death you’re discussing. It’s – “

„Very rude,“ said Dr. Slope. „And presumptuous. I can think of three fast poisons that would’ve produced froth and retinal hemorrhage.“

„Poison is unreliable,“ said Mallory, as if she were exchanging cookie recipes with the medical examiner. „Smothering is better – no obvious marks on the throat, no chemical residue in the body.“ She spoke to the empty seat at the table. „Who killed you, Louisa?“

Malakhai slowly turned his head toward the phantom. „She declines to answer.“

Mallory smiled. „I thought she might. Did she tell you to call a lawyer?“ The rabbi slammed his hand flat on the table. „Kathy!“ Mallory feigned surprise, but not well. „I didn’t accuse him.“ Dr. Slope folded his arms across his chest, completely disengaged from the game. „What did the local coroner say?“

Malakhai shrugged. „There was no autopsy, no investigation.“ Mallory nodded. „It was easier for the local police to write up the death as accidental, less paperwork – as long as no one protested the finding. And I’m betting you didn’t. What a lucky break for the killer.“ She pushed her chair back from the table. „I think I’ve made my point on accidental death.“

„But not proved it,“ said Malakhai. „If you can prove murder more than fifty years after the fact, I’ll tell you how Max Candle did the Lost Illusion.“

The weight of personality was dipping back toward Malakhai’s side of the table. He was calling her out.

All eyes were turned on Mallory.

„I told you, Malakhai – I don’t need your help. And I don’t need incentive either. Oliver dedicated his last trick to your wife. Maybe he was feeling guilty. Maybe you were angry. If I find out he’s the one who killed Louisa, you’re going to need a good criminal lawyer.“

„The detective in charge said the matter was closed – accidental death. The key was an old one. He said it was clear – “

She raised one hand to cut him off. „Oliver did restoration work on old buildings. Not just the woodwork – old screws, pipes, rails. The old man had a lot of experience with metal fatigue. He didn’t risk his life on a fifty-year-old cuff key.“

„That’s your opinion.“

„That’s a fact,“ said Mallory. „He ordered new keys from a machine shop he did business with. I checked that out three hours ago.“

But if Charles recalled the events of the day – and he did – she was still eating pizza in his kitchen only two hours ago.

„The new keys were a better grade of steel – stronger,“ said Mallory.

Malakhai waved a hand to dismiss her argument – her lie. „So Oliver confused a new key with an old one.“

„Sorry,“ said Mallory, not at all sorry. „The machinist still has the old one. He kept it for a reorder. Oliver wanted ten keys. According to the shop foreman, he used a new one for every rehearsal. Now that was a little extreme, wasn’t it? Unnecessary, even with his life on the line. I suppose you could say he was paranoid about metal fatigue.“

Had she gone too far that time? Charles remembered Oliver as a trusting soul who had done business contracts on a handshake, hardly a paranoid personality. But a great many years had passed since Oliver and Malakhai had met. And Mallory was such a confident deceiver, the magician appeared to believe her, electing not to argue the point. „Perhaps he had more than one old key?“

„Wrong again,“ said Mallory. „Oliver told the machinist to keep it safe. Said it was his only key, a souvenir from Faustine’s Magic Theater. You performed there, too. I’d bet even money you had a key just like it. Still got yours?“

„You seriously – “

„I know you’re part of this, Malakhai. You’re just too damn helpful in showing me the error of my ways.“

Malakhai smiled with just a trace of condescension.

„No,“ she said. „You only think I tipped my hand by accident. Wherever you go, keep looking over your shoulder. I’ll be right behind you – and that should worry you. Just ask anyone at this table how twisted I really am.“

Robin Duffy looked up with great surprise, as though she had shot him in the heart.

Mallory turned to the rabbi, who knew her better than all the rest of this company. Her face was an open challenge, defying David Kaplan to deny it – waiting for him to contradict her. And now she must realize that she would wait forever.

The rabbi turned away from her.

While Charles was casting about for words to say in her favor, it was Edward Slope who came gallantly riding to Mallory’s defense.

The doctor put one arm around her shoulders and slowly shook his head in denial of her twistedness. Then he leaned toward Malakhai. „Watch your back. You’ve seen what she does to puppies.“

At the back of Charles Butler’s building, the private office was sheltered from the noise and the tourist hustle of SoHo streets. It overlooked a city garden of monster weeds, trash cans and their attendant rats, but high-pitched squeals and the scrabbles of tiny nails did not penetrate the closed windows of the second floor. The room was furnished with cold metal and decorated with extreme order and death. Mallory never saw this as metaphor, but seriously believed that these environs gave no clue to her personality.

Three computer monitors were perfectly aligned on their separate workstations, soldiers in formation, and each machine had one glowing blue eye. They reported in silent scrolls of text rolling down their screens. One wall of shelves held peripheral electronics, boxes of disks, tools and manuals. The adjacent wall was clear of obstruction from the floorboards to the ceiling molding. Tonight it served as a giant video screen for the taped homicide in Central Park, and Oliver Tree was performing his final act. Mallory set the projection to loop endlessly, to murder the old man, then resurrect him and kill him again and again.

Charles Butler had offered her the warmth of wooden antiques to replace her steel file cabinets, desk and chairs. He had suggested drapes to kill the coldness of the institutional window blinds. And he thought a painting or two might break the monotony of the wall where Oliver Tree was bleeding from four sharp arrows, hanging dead in his chains.

But she preferred her own simple furnishings. They could be reassembled within any set of stark white walls, and she would feel instantly at home in familiar, albeit sterile, surroundings. The surface of the metal workstation was cold to the touch. In deference to her machines, she kept the room temperature several degrees below the range of human comfort.

In the next loop of the projected magic show, Oliver was alive again on the wall, screaming for help and only bleeding from the wound to his neck.

Her chair rolled back from a monitor. After a few quiet hours of research, some of it legal, she had found no trace of Louisa Malakhai. One after another, archivists had lamented that there were no portraits, no certificates of birth or death, no tangible proof that the young composer had ever existed – except for the music, opus number one and only, Louisa’s Concerto.

Mallory reached into the pocket of her blazer and pulled out Louisa Malakhai’s passport. She stared at the mutilated black-and-white photograph inside the cover. Around the scratched-out face were long waving tresses. The light shade must have been the color of bright fire, for Emile St. John had alluded to a red-haired woman.

The passport was Czechoslovakian, but the Interpol connection had turned up no record of Czech citizenship. She flipped through the pages to the last customs stamp. It dated Louisa’s arrival in France to August of 1942. Mallory turned back to the previous stamps and examined them more closely.