“You had a lucky escape from Malachi’s show, Adam,” Hayward said.

  “So people keep telling me, but I don’t believe it yet,” Adam said.

  “I’ll take a while before I believe what I’ve heard, too,” Simmons said. “After Hayward’s handed in his gun, you folks can leave the office. You’ll all stay in town until I’m satisfied you’ve told the truth.”

  As that last order had been directed at him as well as the other men, Adam headed out of the law office in a state of shock. He waited on the boardwalk for Hayward and Ralston to join him.

  “While you’re in town, look out for Derrick Fox,” Adam said. “He’s hell-bent on ruining Malachi’s show, if there’s still a show for him to ruin.”

  Adam sighed. Prior to Severin’s arrest, Malachi’s group had been in good spirits. After his failed attempt to kill Malachi, Derrick hadn’t made his presence known again. When they’d arrived in Prudence, everyone’s gloomy predictions about the aftermath of the events in Carmon hadn’t materialized.

  Walcott Quinn hadn’t passed on information to Prudence’s music hall owner Thaddeus Kemp. So they would enjoy two nights of sell-out performances ending with a large pay-out and the promise of more bookings elsewhere.

  That no longer seemed likely. When he’d left Malachi, he’d been trying to assure Thaddeus that even without Severin he could still put on a show.

  “Don’t waste time worrying about the show,” Hayward said. “You shouldn’t risk returning to Malachi.”

  “I have to tell him what’s happened so we can work out how we’ll prove Severin’s innocence.”

  Hayward snorted an incredulous laugh. “I applaud your loyalty to Malachi and Severin, but you have to accept the fact that wherever Malachi’s show goes, it leaves behind a trail of bodies.”

  “There could be plenty of explanations for that.” Adam waved his arms as he struggled to find one. “Malachi and his people are dedicated to performing magic. They’re careful and they get every detail right. Severin wouldn’t leave obvious clues that lead back to him.”

  Hayward sighed. “So you’re saying Derrick’s the culprit, not Severin?”

  “I can only tell you what I’ve seen. Derrick’s a violent drunkard who’s trying to kill Malachi while Severin’s always been friendly to me.”

  Hayward and Ralston turned to each other and both men nodded.

  “We understand what you’re saying. We’ll keep an open mind.”

  “Do that.” Adam shrugged and turned away. “While you do what you have to do, I have to find out if I still have a job.”

  “Be careful,” Hayward called after him, but as Derrick had offered such a sentiment last night Adam waved a dismissive hand and carried on walking.

  He took a long route back to the music hall letting him organize his thoughts, but he was no clearer about who to believe when he joined Malachi in the back room of the music hall. When he reported what he’d found out, everyone reacted with horror and bewilderment. Even though they earned a living through playacting, Adam accepted their reaction as being honest.

  “This is terrible,” Florence said while Katherine was so speechless she could only gulp. “Severin would never harm anyone. The killer has to be Derrick.”

  “I agree, but until he’s caught, the situation will look bad for Severin,” Adam said.

  The four people sat in silence with everyone facing Malachi, awaiting his response, but he kept his silence for several minutes before, with a cough, he spoke up.

  “Derrick couldn’t have expected Severin to be blamed for his crimes,” he said. “So he’ll strike again, either at me or at another woman. We have to draw him out before that happens, but it’ll be hard now we no longer have a show.”

  “Only the bullet catch showdown is affected,” Adam said. “The rest of the act can continue as normal.”

  “Except everything works around the showdown. Without it we have only card tricks and disappearances, and after the disastrous performance in Carmon, we can’t afford to present another weak act.”

  The group sat silently, this time for longer than before until Katherine spoke up for the first time.

  “The showdown could still continue,” she said, turning to Adam. “He knows the secret of the bullet catch now. He could take Severin’s place.”

  “You want me to catch a bullet with my teeth?” Adam murmured, his voice gaining in strength as the idea captured his imagination.

  “Only the bravest souls can survive the most dangerous act in the world,” Malachi said, leaning forward eagerly. “Are you one of them?”

  “Derrick warned me that if I went to Prudence, I would die.” Adam smiled. “I reckon I should prove him wrong.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Derrick’s not hiding behind the stage,” Ralston said when he joined Hayward.

  “He’s not at the sides either,” Hayward said. He pointed around the curtain at the gathering audience. “We’d have heard by now if he’d joined the audience.”

  Ralston nodded and returned to his position on the other side of the stage. Hayward folded his arms and leaned back against the wall to await Derrick’s ploy, assuming Adam had been correct and Derrick had followed the show to Prudence.

  This morning, when they’d tried to piece together the situation with Sheriff Simmons, Ralston remembered that Malachi’s female assistant Florence was in the act four years ago, but he hadn’t noticed Derrick. On the other hand Derrick’s role would have been anonymous and only Derrick appeared to have a grievance, even if they were unsure what it was.

  Although Simmons accepted their story that Derrick could have killed the women, he hadn’t released Severin. Throughout the day there had been no sign of Derrick so Simmons had posted Deputy Kennedy at the door while other deputies mingled in with the music hall audience.

  The promise of witnessing the most dangerous act ever performed had drawn the largest audience Hayward had ever seen. Prudence’s music hall was twice the size of Bear Creek’s, and thirty minutes before the performance most of the seats had been filled.

  Earlier, the only door at the back of the music hall had been barred ensuring the only way in was to accompany the audience through the front door. As Derrick wasn’t among them, his only other option, if he planned to kill Malachi tonight, was to have sneaked inside already.

  Hayward and Ralston had taken it upon themselves to help Simmons end this situation. Malachi hadn’t appreciated their endeavors, as they provided an unwanted distraction to an act that had already been dangerous before the recent hasty revision. Accordingly, Adam paced around nervously while Malachi listened to Hayward’s update on the situation without interest.

  “If everything is to your satisfaction, you can join the audience now,” Malachi said sarcastically when Hayward had finished.

  “It’d be safer if we were to stay back here.”

  “If you haven’t checked adequately, check again before you leave.” He tapped the safe at the side of the stage when Hayward returned his gaze impassively. “I have secrets to protect and they’re more important than my life.”

  “That’s your decision. If Derrick kills you, that’ll tell us where he is and he won’t get far.”

  Having gotten in a satisfying last word, Hayward walked across the stage and collected Ralston, who wasn’t concerned about them having to abandon the plan to stay backstage.

  “Unless Derrick can get through a barred door he won’t try anything tonight,” Ralston said.

  “Which begs the question, what will he do instead?”

  They both winced, acknowledging the alternatives were equally troubling. He might kill another woman, or he might flee and leave Severin to take the blame for the murders he’d committed.

  So in a more subdued frame of mind than that displayed by the excitable audience, they took up their seats on the end of the front row. After a few minutes, Simmons joined them and confirmed he’d checked with his deputies and Derrick wasn’t here.

  When Simmons returned to the back of the music hall, there was nothing left for them to do other than to wait. Thirty minutes later the show started. As it turned out, tonight there were two warm-up acts.

  Firstly a young woman wearing short petticoats sang campfire songs around a pile of wood coated in flimsy red paper to simulate flames. She got catcalls, which she rebuffed with bawdy jokes suggesting she was a regular.

  Afterward acrobats tumbled and rolled around the stage and although they generated less enthusiasm than the singer had done, Hayward was impressed with their athleticism. Then Malachi arrived.

  Despite having attended his performance in Bear Creek, Hayward enjoyed the way he entranced the audience with his dexterity and with his ready wit that built on the comments hecklers shouted out. So, when Malachi made Florence appear in a previously empty safe, Ralston leaned toward him.

  “Perhaps I was wrong to suspect these people,” he said, speaking loudly over the applause. “I thought Florence was in the act four years ago, but I don’t reckon she’s the same woman now.”

  Hayward nodded. “Which means we only know for sure that Severin was in Bear Creek when Mary was killed.”

  “So why is Derrick trying to kill Malachi?”

  “I don’t know.” Hayward frowned. “If he has a reason, it makes me wonder whose life we should be trying to save.”

  When Malachi reached Adam’s part of the act, underneath the mask, Adam’s face was roasting. Even though he was standing in a cool spot beside the stage, droplets of sweat dripped down his neck and pooled against his collar.

  He was still determined to complete the performance even though they’d practiced it only twice. Now he understood the procedure, he knew the risks he would take and they relied on trusting that care had been taken over the preparation.

  So he was relieved that Malachi had kept a tight control over this process. Earlier he’d recruited Simmons to be the witness, ensuring there were no unpredictable elements. So when Malachi called for the sheriff to come up on stage and verify the bullets were real, the lawman accepted with a world-weary sigh.

  While Katherine brought out the guns, the lawman played along with the required responses while keeping one eye on the audience. With Simmons’s devotion to duty giving him additional confidence, Adam stopped worrying about trouble breaking out and concentrated on his role.

  That still didn’t stop the sweat from slicking his face. When Malachi gave him his cue to come on stage, he raised the mask and wiped his cheeks. Then, with a deep breath, he slipped the flattened slug into his mouth and tucked it under his tongue before he went out.

  Severin’s role had been to stand quietly and enigmatically to build up tension while Malachi acted in a more animated manner. So Adam was thankful he had only to pick out the mark Malachi had made for him and stand still.

  He ignored the audience, which was easy to do with the mask restricting his vision, and tried to instill the feeling this was another rehearsal. During their practice runs, they hadn’t fired the guns as the wax slugs were hard to make and Malachi had only enough for the two-night performance.

  The cold lump of metal in his mouth felt larger than it had felt in his hand and he swirled it around his mouth as he tried to find a comfortable position. His ministrations sent it to the back of his throat where a gag reflex made him swallow and he had to cough which almost made the bullet fly from his lips.

  He winced, feeling concerned that someone had spotted his discomfort, but Malachi was checking the hoop was in the right position. Adam took the near disaster as a warning for him to pay attention to what was happening rather than trying to still his nerves.

  He checked he was in the right position and with the slug trapped between his teeth he stood tall. He ensured the safe was behind the hoop where it could safely deal with any residue from the bullet, if it reached that far.

  “Do you accept my solemn declaration that if I kill the other man, no crime will have been committed?” Malachi asked Simmons.

  “I do,” Simmons said.

  Adam provided the same declaration, although the bullet in his mouth made him struggle to speak. While he resolved to practice speaking with something in his mouth before tomorrow, Simmons joined Katherine at the back of the stage.

  With the audience silencing, Malachi took up his position. During the aborted rehearsal yesterday, Malachi and Severin had increased tension by adopting their positions and seemingly changing their minds several times.

  As this was his first performance, Malachi had agreed they would fire at the first opportunity, which would come when Katherine tapped a finger against the brand for the fifth time. Accordingly, Katherine lit the rope and stood back, holding the brand with her index finger raised.

  Behind Malachi and off stage in a position where she was out of sight from everyone else, Florence appeared in the shadows. She gave him a cheery wave before she adopted a serious posture and took a pace sideways to move herself out of his firing range, even if he aimed badly.

  A few moments later the flames spread around the rope providing, Adam now knew, an eye-catching distraction. That was his cue to cock the six-shooter and raise his arm to take aim through the hoop.

  He picked out his target of a rose-shaped decoration on the safe, which was a point four feet away from Malachi’s left shoulder. This position was far enough away from his apparent target to be safe, but close enough to make it appear from the audience as if they were facing each other in a showdown.

  He ignored everything but his target and Katherine’s finger, knowing a mistake could cost him his life and trusting Malachi was being equally careful. Katherine tapped her finger, making him tense his trigger finger.

  She tapped again as something moved at the corner of his vision. He ignored the movement, but as she tapped for a third time, the movement came again. This time he flicked his gaze away, but he only noted that Florence was no longer visible.

  Katherine tapped again while Adam struggled to overcome his nervousness by examining his target of the safe. Then Katherine tapped for the final time and, with him concentrating intensely, he fired.

  Gunfire rattled and a hammer blow slammed against his chest, making him drop to his knees, his breath stolen away and his chest feeling as if it’d been cracked in two. His confused senses told him there had been a flash of light off stage, but the pain was too much for him to even think about it.

  His head thudded against the stage floor as he fell on to his side. Simmons was nodding with a knowing expression that said he’d worked out how they’d performed the trick. On the other side of the stage, Malachi was also lying in a crumpled heap. He wasn’t moving as, seemingly from a great distance, the audience roared with consternation.

  “It’s not a trick,” Adam gasped. “I’ve been shot.”

  He wasn’t sure if he’d spoken aloud. The stage was darkening and the people on the stage were no longer visible. He felt more alone than he’d ever done.

  Chapter Eleven

  “He’s dead,” Simmons declared.

  Malachi nodded, his expression shocked, and everybody else on stage lowered their heads while the audience chatter grew louder as they jostled for a better view of the scene. The doors were guarded after Simmons had ordered the music hall to remain closed, but so far nobody had wanted to leave.

  “Was it an accident?” Ralston asked, leaning toward Hayward.

  “Either that or a murder made to look like an accident,” Hayward said. “But I don’t know how the trick was supposed to work to know for sure.”

  Ralston nodded, while Simmons gestured for them to join him on stage. When they’d clambered up, Deputy Kennedy returned to report the door at the back was still barred on the inside.

  Ralston and Hayward kneeled beside Adam’s body. He had spent only a few minutes with this man, but his death had shocked him almost as much as Sheriff Washington’s had. Adam had joined the act in Bear Creek and he had appeared a decent man who perhaps knew more than he was aware of about the activities within the magic show.

  Although as this incident didn’t help to prove Severin’s innocence, he presumed Simmons would keep him locked up, so it was likely the show was no more as Malachi no longer had enough help to continue. Accordingly, when Florence joined him and kneeled on the other side of Adam’s body, her shocked expression registered she knew the show was over.

  “Malachi showed him what to do,” she said. “I don’t know what went wrong.”

  Hayward shrugged. “I guess this proves nobody can catch a bullet with their teeth.”

  She removed Adam’s mask. Protruding through his lips was a slug, seemingly having been fired and caught.

  “Except he did.” Her voice caught and she had to stifle a sob. She turned away to stand with her shoulders heaving before she scurried off the stage.

  “That clarifies one part of the trick, but it doesn’t explain how it went so badly wrong,” Ralston said.

  “The only thing we know for sure is that was no accident,” Simmons said, coming over to join them.

  “Why are you so sure?”

  Simmons pointed at the body and then at the hoop in the center of the stage.

  “From where I was standing, I could see they weren’t aiming at each other, which means Malachi didn’t shoot Adam.”

  Simmons waited until both men nodded. Then he moved to the front of the stage, and when he beckoned Deputy Kennedy to let the audience leave, Hayward reckoned they were free to find out what else they could learn.

  He and Ralston examined the props. They found nothing of interest until they reached the safe behind Malachi, which was flimsier than it appeared to be with a small door at the back. With the first inkling of an idea coming to him, Hayward stood in the safe.

  He gestured for Ralston to close the door. Light still filtered inside and he soon located several holes including one that was large enough to accommodate a gun barrel.

  “I’m still keeping Severin under arrest,” Simmons said when Hayward and Ralston visited him in the morning.

 

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