That seemed to stir some life in Wayne Tracey. He looked up and grinned. "Thanks. I needed that."
"What exactly did you do?" Temple asked carefully.
Wayne looked at her, but he didn't seem to recognize her. He was still walking through past emotions and present guilt. "I came in early to 'check lighting.' Nobody notices a cameraman, especially Crawford Buchanan's cameraman. The blades were already rigged to zip around on their almost-invisible lines, and I was supposed to stand on the sidelines. Once everyone was seated, I lengthened the line on the battle-ax, thinking it ought to come close enough to scare Gandolph. I didn't think it would cut him."
"It did, but it didn't kill him."
"Were you responsible for the fog?" Jeff Mangel asked. "That confused us."
Wayne shook his head.
"I--" Oscar Grant cleared his throat. "I came in hours early and rigged that. I needed effective footage for my show. I figured the murkier the better. I mean, the effects were here, why not use them?"
"And the chlorine?" Jeff Mangel sounded angry. "That made us all teary-eyed and confused."
"It was a screen." William Kohler's weak voice hit everyone like a clap of thunder, for he'd never spoken before in this room. "Mynah had me set up the projection of Houdini, and she didn't want anyone to see it too well."
"Shut up, you goddamn lump!" Mynah was not in the mood for confidences. Her face was the mask of a peeved Medusa and her silver hair fanned around that ugly expression as if it had been struck by heat lightning. "Can't you do anything right? Keep your mouth shut at least!"
"What about this latest Houdini tonight?" Temple asked William.
He suddenly grinned, his heavy face lightening. "Same photo, much better effects. I had nothing to do with it, and Mynah couldn't even thread a sewing machine to save her soul. I designed her whole setup at the house and made it work. Maybe poor old Gan-dolph had a hand in it. He was right; mediums are a bunch of lying fakes."
"Not all of them," D'Arlene Hendrix said from across the table where she held Agatha's hand on one side and kept her other hand on Wayne's forearm.
The gesture reminded Temple of something. "What about the handcuffs: Someone, or something, had to put Gandolph in irons and it had to be when he was already unconscious."
"A brilliant touch," Oscar conceded, "but not mine, alas. You were holding hands with the guy. Gal."
"True, and the cutlery flying around was distracting enough that I didn't notice Gandolph's hand slip from mine." She sighed.
Another silence.
"I thought she had just fainted," came a low, confessing voice.
"I should have known!" Temple turned on Crawford Buchanan like a watchdog. "Why did you even have the handcuffs with you? Planning a little S & M expedition after the seance, C.B.?"
"Don't excite yourself; we might have another untimely death to explain. No, they were a good prop. Television shows need visuals. I'd planned to throw 'em out on the table, so to speak, but when the old dame next to me keeled over I got the idea of cuffing her so it would look like Houdini had issued a challenge. Unfortunately she--he--was dead and it ruined the effect."
"Did you throw out the bullet Louie found too?"
Crawford shook his gel-slick black-haired head as soberly as the chief mourner at a mob funeral. " No, never thought of that. A bullet isn't big enough to show up well on camera."
"Then who contributed the bullet to the show-and-tell?" Temple asked the table at large.
No one 'fessed up to that particular red herring, and Midnight Louie certainly wasn't going to say where he found it.
Electra looked around like a lively white-haired robin. "Maybe the real Houdini was trying to take a shot at a lousy medium, and missed. So as far as phenomenon go, that only leaves the strange man we saw outside the windows unexplained."
"And the other smells," Jeff Mangel added. "The food, the wine--"
"The roses," Temple finished.
"Were you in on this?" Mynah suddenly demanded. "I always thought you were a treacherous bitch."
"No." D'Arlene answered for Temple with something very like righteous anger. "She honestly understood something the rest of us couldn't see, which makes her the only honorable medium in the room besides Agatha. You're projecting again, Mynah; you're trying to pass off your own dishonesty on someone else. It won't work anymore. Not after tonight. Word will get out. Here and Beyond. They don't call you the White Witch for nothing."
"I was going to say," Temple added, "that I've been called worse, but I don't think I have been. And it's true, I did think I saw someone outside the windows. I didn't get that word you all recognized from the likeness of Houdini, but from him, a tired old man, a kind of King Lear in a hat and cape."
"Maybe it was a prescient vision of Gandolph's spirit," Agatha said timidly. "I saw him too, and he looked much more like Gandolph than Houdini."
"So we've failed." Oscar Grant's voice was heavy. "I suppose tonight's footage was useless."
I'll take custody of that." Crawford stood and picked up Wayne's camera.
He almost dropped it again, being unaccustomed to the weight.
"What are you going to say about us, show about us on TV?" Mynah asked hysterically. "You can't believe a thing this so-called husband of mine says. Oscar is an utter fraud and Mangel's an academic fool and Agatha a neurotic and D'Arlene has pretensions of being some sort of head dorm-mother for helpless humanity--"
"You'll see. I may have something to sell to America's Most Wanted."
Crawford headed for the door, camcorder clutched like a babe to his chest.
Oscar stood up to shout at his departing back. "But nobody killed Gandolph, can't you see?
He just died. Maybe his heart was bad; maybe he was allergic to chlorine, maybe he got blood poisoning from the ax? There's no crime here."
Crawford was gone, only the pounding of his footsteps down the stairs echoing up. Temple listened hard, hoping maybe she'd hear a crash.
"Well," Electra said. "Oscar is right. I don't see what we could report to the police ... if any of us felt we ought to report to the police. But I must say that I am disappointed in many of you.
I can't help thinking that the spirit world is too, and showed its disappointment in what we saw tonight. Temple, I think we should leave. It's been a very trying seance."
Temple stood, glad that her knees still supported her. Clearly, although Gandolph had died, no one had directly killed him, or had really meant to. She had arrived at the same conclusion as the police, much later, and after much more personal turmoil.
With all she had heard, there was something she couldn't get out of her mind. She had a confession to make too, about her part in the evening's events, but this was not the audience for it. Maybe the only audience for it was, as she had said before, not truly meaning it, "out there."
She meant that now.
Chapter 39
Ghostwriter in the Sky
Max's voice on the phone reverberates as from an echo chamber; it sounds like a communication from a ghost. Temple hasn't heard him on the phone for months. He sounds like a stranger again.
"You never did get to wear your prize shoes at the Crystal Ball at the Phoenix after the Halloween seance," he begins.
"No," she agrees. "But who told--?"
Max is a man less worried by who than by what. "Why don't you dig them out"--[he knows her closet]--"and well go out for dinner tonight?"
"But--"
"I can make out-of-the-way personal appearances, and I assume you're not a wanted woman . . . yet."
"Where can I wear such elaborate shoes?"
"Wherever you want to. You didn't worry about that before."
"I didn't have these shoes before. Max, I need to know where we're going so I know what else to wear."
"A classy little out-of-the-way place. Wear whatever goes with the shoes. I'll come by at seven."