We went back out on Vine. Phil went over the list again and flipped his notebook closed.
“Unless we’re dealing with a conspiracy,” I said. “One of these guys is going to turn up missing from his seat when the lights went out.”
“Maybe,” said Phil with a familiar sigh, “but what will that give us? If he was switching the lights on and off, he couldn’t be killing Ott. He’ll have to give up whoever he was working with, whoever killed Ott.”
“Which we know wasn’t our client,” I said.
“Which we assume wasn’t our client,” said Phil. “Let’s get started.”
And start we did. We went to three apartments, a citrus warehouse, two offices, a golf club, and a bar before we made our way to the last person on our list, Leo Benz. Not one person on the list was a professional full-time magician. As Steele told us, there were only about sixty magicians in the entire country making a living from magic; most of them did kids’ birthdays or Kiwanis Club and Rotary Club dinners or dish nights at the local movie house.
“Best for last,” I said.
I rang the bell at the small freshly painted white house on a quiet side street in Van Nuys. We had chosen Leo Benz for last because he was closest to Phil’s house in North Hollywood.
“Just a minute. Just a minute,” came a woman’s voice. “Hurrying, hurrying.”
The door opened and a little heavy-set woman in her sixties stood before us. Her dyed blonde hair was wrapped in curlers and her blue dress covered with little yellow circles hung almost to the floor.
“You’re not the mail lady,” she said.
“We are not,” I agreed. “We’d like to talk to Leo Benz.”
“Why?”
“We have some questions,” Phil said.
“What questions?”
“Is he here?” I tried.
“I can answer whatever questions you’ve got,” she said.
“Not these,” I said before Phil could explode. “It’s about last night.”
Phil took a step forward. She put her rotund body between him and the inside.
“Last night Leo was at the movies,” she said. “He saw that new movie with Pat O’Brien. Marine Raiders. You want to know about the movie, ask me. I saw it.”
“Last night Leo was at a dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel,” I said. “A man was murdered. Your husband is a witness.”
“He’s my son,” she said. “And he … that lying little son-of-a-bitch. Are you cops?”
We didn’t answer.
She turned her head over her shoulder and screamed, “Leo, get your behind down here, you lying little twerp. The police are here.”
Someone whined something inside the house. I couldn’t tell what it was.
“He didn’t kill anybody,” she said. “Leo’s not capable. If he could kill someone, he would have killed me years ago.”
She turned her head again and screamed even louder, “L-E-O.”
And behind her came the clap of feet.
Leo Benz, in all his lack of glory, stood revealed when his mother stepped back from the door. He was barefoot, wearing white boxer shorts and an undershirt. He needed a shave.
“I know you,” he said, pointing at us and stepping behind his mother.
“Leo, we’ve got questions,” Phil said.
“I don’t have any answers,” he said.
Leo’s mother turned and thumped her son on the head with the palm of her right hand.
“Answer their questions,” she said. “And then you’ll answer to me.”
Leo Benz, sans tux, beard, and shoes, looked like the kind of fat kid other kids like to poke in the stomach in the schoolyard.
Phil and I walked in the house and Leo’s mother closed the door behind us.
Leo backed into the living room, his mother moving ahead of him to sit in a faded red padded chair with her arms folded. There wasn’t much furniture, just a few chairs like the one Leo’s mom was in and a sagging couch covered in what looked like blue fur with patches worn down to the skin surface of the imaginary animal it had been taken from.
Leo backed against the couch and sat. Phil and I stood over him.
“I didn’t do it,” he said.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Turn off the lights, kill Keller,” Leo bleated, looking at his mother for a mercy she had no intention of granting.
“Who did?” Phil asked.
“I don’t know,” Leo almost wept.
“You killed somebody?” Leo’s mother asked.
“Mrs.…” I said.
“Call me Cornelia,” she said.
“Cornelia,” I said. “Let us ask our questions. You’ll get your crack at junior when we leave.”
“That you don’t have to tell me,” she said, fixing her glare at Leo who looked away.
“I’m besieged,” he said. “All sides. This isn’t fair.”
“Do a trick,” said Phil. “Make us disappear.”
“What do you want?”
“One of you Dranabadurians got up before the lights went out,” I said. “Which one?”
I expected him to repeat the party line, say that everyone had been nailed to his seat when Ott was killed. Juanita’s warning came back to me. The man in the penguin suit. The lights on and off.
“He wasn’t sitting down,” Leo said.
“Who?” asked Phil.
“Melvin Rand.”
There was no Melvin Rand on Phil’s list.
“Who is Melvin Rand?” Phil asked.
Leo bit his lip. Cornelia shouted the same question loud enough to make me nearly jump. I think Leo did jump.
“He’s not really a Dranabadurian,” said Leo. “Believe me. Not yet. He’s new. Keller introduced him at the last meeting.”
“And he was at the Blackstone party last night?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Where was he sitting?” asked Phil
“He wasn’t,” said Leo.
“What was he doing, crawling around on the floor like you’re going to be doing?” Cornelia screamed.
Leo quivered and looked up to Phil and me for protection, which probably gives you an idea of who really scared him in this room.
“He was a waiter,” Leo said. “It was part of Keller’s plan I guess. He didn’t tell us. I just looked up when he brought the bread to the table and he winked at me. Like this. He was wearing a black wig and a fake mustache, but I recognized him.”
“Did the others at your table recognize him?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
Leo slumped back.
“Where was Rand when the lights went out?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” Leo whispered.
“Was he wearing red socks?” asked Phil.
“No. I looked,” Leo whispered even more quietly.
“Speak up,” Cornelia shouted.
“No,” Leo shouted back.
“Without the wig and the mustache is he blonde, thin?” I asked.
“That’s him,” said Leo.
“He was the waiter standing near the door who got us running after the kid,” Phil said.
Which meant he was nowhere near the table where Ott lay dead with a knife in his neck.
“Any idea of where we might find Melvin Rand?” I asked.
Leo shook his head “no.”
“Pathetic,” snorted Cornelia, getting up from her chair, arms still folded. She walked over to the couch as Leo slid away from her. She unfolded her arms and gently put his head against her ample chest. “Leo Benz, you are a pathetic creature.”
Phil and I left.
“Hotel Roosevelt?” I asked as we headed for the car.
“Stop at my house first,” Phil said.
We were only fifteen minutes from Phil’s. I parked on the street and started to get out.
“You’ve never had whooping cough,” he said, putting his hand on my arm. “Stay here.”
I stayed, tried to figure out what had happened when the lights went out last night, failed miserably and turned on the radio.
After I learned that Dewey had accepted the Republican nomination for President, Bing Crosby and I sang Don’t Fence Me In. Jo Stafford followed with Close As Pages In A Book, but I couldn’t keep up with her. Portia was about to face life when Phil came back and got in the car.
“Dave and Nate both have it,” he said.