Anyway, old Doyly is having an out-of-the-body heart attack right in front of everybody, and all they can do is stare at this circular clump of fog, which strikes me as mighty suspicious.
Then suddenly something is thrown down hard on the smooth wood tabletop.
Everybody screams, and even I jump, because the object comes rolling right for me, nothing of human construction being purely level, I* jump too, because I do not know if the object will explode or something, but it is as dead as a dud dumdum, which is what it is, sort of.
Anyway, I know a bullet when I see one, and I gently pat and spin it for a 3-D examination.
At this someone waxes hysterical--I think it is the doll with the spasmodic eyelids--and the long-haired dude springs up to wrest the bullet away from me like I was playing with it or something. I hate to be underestimated. I was trying to calculate the caliber, but it is an older piece of ammunition, and hard to categorize. I would have to sleep on it (via an arms encyclopedia) to be sure.
Anyway, the fog has made the rounds back to the fireplace and is drifting away like smoke. I see that Doyly is long gone; not so. Karma, unfortunately.
Now the knickknacks on the wall start flying around, but I am not too alarmed, having dodged my share of hurled objects in my time. But the seance crowd is more than somewhat shook up. Even Miss Temple Barr looks a little pale as she tries to attend to the lady on her left, who has apparently fainted during the knife-throwing act.
So I look closer and I see that "fainted" is something more fatal.
Karma's little light is buzzing like a hyperactive mosquito back at the window, and the dumdums at the table are standing and frowning.
I understand immediately that this is a job for Lieutenant Molina of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. So does my little doll, for she gets a very wan and woebegone expression on her face, seeing as she was sitting next to and holding hands with the victim.
The bright side is that Crawford Buchanan was pinching pinkies with the victim's other hand, so who is to say he is not the likeliest suspect.
The other people around the table are turning up their headlights and beginning to realize that the hat-head was done in.
And they are beginning to say that Houdini did it.
I do not know. I would not know Houdini if he dove off the Circle Ritz roof into a teacup. I can definitely say, however, that Elvis Presley, Mae West, Amelia Earhart and the English Doyly dude did not do it. Too bad I am not allowed to testify.
Chapter 16
Postmortem
"At least Lieutenant Molina didn't get the case."
Temple sat on her living room sofa at six in the morning, Midnight Louie on her lap. Or on Electra's muumuu's lap.
Electra herself sat at the sofa's other end, patting vaguely at her scarlet hair. "Days like these, I thank God I'm self-employed. You can take a nice nap, dear."
"I don't think so. Since Molina's not on the case, how am I going to find out how the poor . . .
victim was killed?"
"Do you really need to know?"
"Don't you want to know if a ghost did it, or not?"
"No. I have always regarded ghosts as friendly spirits. Oh, perhaps a touch misunderstood, at their worst. I do not believe that anyone who has embraced the afterlife would wish ill on the living."
"Ever heard of demons and devils?"
Electra shook an adamant head. "No. The agency was human."
"What was all that yelling about it being Houdini for sure when that bullet hit the table?"
"The professor explained that to me while we were waiting for the police. As a boy, when he was wandering far from home for a few years, Houdini was shot somehow. He never explained, but all his life he carried the bullet in the palm of his hand."
"Why? Why not have it removed?"
"Perhaps it was safer to leave it in place."
"Perhaps. We should hold another seance and interrogate Houdini instead of gawking at him as if he were a walking White Sale advertisement."
"You don't believe that manifestation was Houdini."
Temple stroked Midnight Louie's satiny ears. He blinked contentment. "And how did Louie get out of this place, and get to the haunted house?"
"You're not suggesting that Louie--?"
"I'm not suggesting anything, except that while we searched after eternal truths we missed a lot of what happened last night."
Louie gave a burst of loud purr, then stretched to knead his front paws on Temple's thigh, still upholstered in the floral muumuu.
She shuddered in recollection as she eyed her thigh. "I never realized muumuus were so suspicious. That search by the woman officer in the haunted-house kitchen--"
"I had to do it too, dear. Everyone did. Face it, anybody participating in a seance is likely to be suspected of concealing some trickery, at least by the police."
"Were they looking for a weapon? I didn't get that impression. I don't think they know yet what killed Edwina Mayfair."
"Natural causes," Electra said with the authority of a justice of the peace. "Trust me. Wild Blue Pike and Eightball O'Rourke say that the bloody battle-ax only nicked her shoulder. I'm sure the poor thing's heart overheated at all the excitement. The police will have red faces by tomorrow morning, and you'll have missed the Crystal Ball for nothing."
"Oh, thanks for calling the Phoenix and explaining why I wasn't there while I was being ...
examined in the kitchen."
"I never did see what you were wearing. Or the Midnight Louie shoes."
"Kind of moot." Temple pulled a pair of individual shoe bags from her tote bag. "You should have seen the going-over these got from the authorities. You'd think I was smuggling Austrian crystals."
"Off with the muumuu. Let Mama see."
Temple was happy to stand and shrug out of the enveloping cotton tent for the last time.
She had worn a black stretch-velvet ankle-length dress, all the better to show off the shoes.
"Very classic, but... well. You certainly couldn't conceal much in that dress."
"So the police intimated. At least I'm cleared of fiddling with the seance."
"I'm not sure that any of us are. This unfortunate death throws the results into question.
What a pity! This was such an outstanding manifestation. It's not Houdini's fault that someone should collapse at his first big show in seventy years. This might scare him away for good."
"You really think it was Houdini in that cloud of obfuscation?"
"Oh, yes, dear. I have seen photographs of the man. The hunched posture, the nearly bare body to prove no tricks, the chains and locks. Absolutely prime-time Houdini. And then the bullet."
"I suppose he has no use for it now," Temple said slowly. "Still, that figure could have been projected."
"That's what all ghostly phenomena are, projections of the living essence of death."
"I mean photographically projected."
Electra looked hurt. "Oh, ye of little faith. How or who? Why?"
"Any one of the psychics might have wanted to boost his or her reputation. You can bet this will be the lead story on tonight's Hot Heads, with panting teasers run at commercial breaks all day. And then there's the local angle: the haunted-house organizers might have rigged their effects to go a bit berserk for the Hot Heads camera, and now that someone's dead, they're not about to admit it."