“I don’t think so,” Tammy says. “They weren’t like… historical.” She brightens. “They did go to see Harry Potter…”
I ask Tammy’s opinion: What does she think happened to them?
Tammy shivers and looks at Jaime. “I don’t know. Some psycho. I mean, what else? It has to be. Someone who followed them from the Parrot. Found out where they lived. Stalked them.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “Gives me the creeps.”
Jaime agrees. “I wouldn’t let Tammy go near her apartment – not after she found the cats abandoned like that. Even before the cops discovered the bodies, Tammy knew something terrible happened. She just knew.”
“That was sad, too,” Tammy says, turning her woeful gaze toward Jaime, “about the cats. I tried to find a home for them, but they had to go to the shelter.”
“Clay Riggins mentioned some kind of audition,” I tell her. “You know anything about that?”
“Yeah! And that’s soooo sad, too, you know? They were so stoked about that. They worked their butts off – speech classes, dance, Pilates, got their teeth whitened. And it looked like it was all about to pay off. And then…”
“What kind of audition was it? I mean, what was it for?”
Tammy shrugs. “Some kind of magic show.”
“A magic show? Hunh. You know anything else about it?”
Tammy shakes her head. “This is just like… like two days after I met Jaime. Clara told me about it when I called to tell her where I was – because I knew they’d worry, you know? She said she thought they really had a shot. She was excited, but… I was on my cell, at work. I didn’t get any details.”
Ezme (“with a z”) Brewster, the owner and resident manager of the Palomar Apartments, greets me with a “Howdy.” She’s sixty, or maybe even seventy. Reading glasses suspended from a rhinestone chain rest on her chest. In one hand, she holds a TV remote; in the other, a lit cigarette. She gestures with the cigarette toward the color TV in the corner. “Come on in, honey, but hold your fire for a minute. I’m watching something.”
From the television, Maury Povich says: “Let’s find out right now!” The camera flips to a black teenager, head hanging to reveal intricate cornrows, then to a shot of a smiling toddler.
“In the case of two-year-old Devon,” Maury says, opening an envelope, “Donnell – you are the father.”
An overweight woman jumps up and does a kind of victory dance, then shakes her fist, cursing out the kid with the cornrows – who now wears a kind of shit-eating grin. Little bursts of pixilated fog cover the woman’s mouth as she shouts expletives.
Ezme hits the power button. “Rotting my damn brain,” she says, stubbing out her cigarette. “But what the hell. I’m not gonna solve the conflict in the Middle East at my age. So you’re here about the Gabler girls?” She makes a sad face, shakes her head. “How can I help?”
“I’m not sure.” I explain to her who I am and that I’m checking out murders involving twins.
“Oh, my God, of course. You poor man. Those little boys. I saw you on TV. Terrible thing. And you think there’s some connection with Clara and Carla? Good Lord… Well, they were some of the best damn tenants I ever had. A real damned shame. Paid on time, kept the place neat as a pin, no male visitors. I was in the hospital when they disappeared. Electrolytes out of balance or some damned thing. If I’d been here, I damn sure would have reported them missing a lot sooner than happened.”
“So you saw them regularly.”
“Every single day. They were homebodies, those two. Rare in this town.”
I ask her the usual set of questions about tall men, skinny dogs, medieval fancies. She shakes her head: no, no, and no, not so far as she knew.
“Did you know anything about an audition for a magic show?”
She nods. “That was another damned shame. They worked like dogs improving themselves, spending all their hard-earned money on this kind of lesson and that kind of lesson. They finally get a shot, and then-” She heaves a sigh, which turns into a prolonged coughing fit.
“Who was the audition for?”
She taps her head. “It was a new act, just getting started. There was to be some weeks of rehearsal. Clara did tell me the name of it.” She sighs, looks at the ceiling. “But I don’t really remember. The Meressa Show? Marassa? Malessa? Some kind of name like that – reminded me of molasses. The audition was at the Luxor, I think – or maybe it was the Mandalay Bay.”
I ask for her take on what happened.
She lights a cigarette. “Some wacko lured ’em out to Red Rock, killed ’em for fun. That’s what I think.”
“I guess that’s the theory.”
“What else could it be? The police dug back into their high school days and their hometown and all, and they didn’t find a thing. It didn’t seem to be personal, either, know what I mean?”
“You don’t think so?”
“I don’t. Nobody claimed it. No sexual motive. What I think is they were killed more or less for fun.”
“Maybe.”
“Watching television as much as I do,” Ezme says, “you get a good idea what people can get themselves up to. Between the reality shows and the news, I’d say we’re closing in on the Romans. Except – when we get to the gladiator stage, Barbara WaWa will interview the guy before he heads out into the ring. And the gladiator will thank everybody in creation who got him the chance to die on television. His manager. His hair stylist. His personal trainer.”
“Can I see the apartment?”
“Oh, honey, there’s nothing to see. A couple with a baby lives there now.”
“What about the girls’ belongings?”
“I left the apartment right like it was for three or four months. The girls didn’t have much stuff and what they had wasn’t worth a bean, but I couldn’t bring myself to clear it out. Police finally tracked down some cousin out in North Dakota. This cousin – she didn’t want nothing. Not one thing. Kinda sad, isn’t it? Didn’t really know the girls. Didn’t want to bury her kin, neither. The girls are planted here, courtesy of the state. I finally gave what was useful to the Purple Heart. They came and fetched it, see.”
I’m out of questions. I thank Mrs. Brewster and turn toward the door.
She stops me with a hand on my arm. “Oh, Lord. And them in their little costumes. You think it was this audition, don’t you?” She sucks in a breath.
“The audition? What do you mean?”
“Isn’t that what you’re thinking? That some crazeball lured them, used their hopes and dreams to suck them in – had them put on their costumes, speak their lines, and go through their routines, and then… like he had them try out for their own murder.” She sucks in her breath, which launches another spate of coughing. Mrs. Brewster’s eyes close briefly, as if she might be uttering a silent prayer. “That’s dark,” she says. “That’s downright evil.”
When the skin on the back of my neck stops crawling, I squeeze out a thank-you to Mrs. Brewster for her time.
Standing next to the car as I wait for it to cool down, I think Ezme Brewster is probably right. The Gablers auditioned for their murderer. But the thing is: So what? I can’t see how it has anything to do with Sean and Kevin.
Back at the Tropicana, I have two messages. The first is from Liz. “Alex, what are you doing in Las Vegas?” Her voice is shrill and disapproving. Then she’s all business: “Please give me a call.”
The second is from Barry Chisworth, the medical examiner. He says he’ll be happy to talk to me and leaves a string of numbers.
Liz is not easy to talk to these days. She knows it’s unfair, she’s trying to work it through with her therapist – but she can’t get past focusing all her negative feelings on me. She feels guilty for letting the boys come to stay with me – and indulges in endless versions of the what-if game. So whatever remnant of blame that’s not on me, rests on her. Whoever abducted the boys doesn’t even fit into her picture. She let the boys come. If she’d refused… if only she’d let me take them on the trip to the beach…