Illusions of Evil

  Adriana grinned like the Cheshire cat. She took off her hat and extended it to Dr. McGill. “Hungry?” she asked.

  Everybody laughed.

  “How’d she do that?” Ned whispered.

  “You’ll just have to ask her,” Nancy teased.

  After the show, as Adriana mingled with the audience, Nancy, George, and Ned approached her.

  “Hello,” the magician called to them. “Did you like my performance?”

  “It was wonderful,” George said sincerely.

  “Just how did you manage to get out of Nancy’s knots?” Ned asked.

  “It’s an old Houdini trick,” Adriana explained. “The secret is to grab a bit of slack while the knots are being tied. Nancy thought she had tied the bonds tight, but they were really loose from the start. As she tied them, I breathed in, expanding my chest, so that the loop you put around my body slipped when I relaxed. Then I wiggled until I could get my hands on a knot and started untying.”

  “Now that’s the sort of secret you can’t find in books,” Ned said appreciatively.

  Dr. McGill came over then and asked Adriana to sign autographs for the children.

  “Would you mind if I came around to their ward in a few minutes?” she asked. “I want to get out this costume.”

  Then she fixed her deep green eyes on Nancy. “And, I think that Nancy and I need to have a little talk—”

  Nancy raised her brows.

  When the doctor wandered away, Adriana touched her arm. “There’s a little lounge down the hall. Can you spare a few minutes?”

  “Of course,” she replied, smiling at Ned.

  “George and I will meet you in the front waiting area,” he said smoothly.

  Nancy nodded, then followed Adriana to an exit at the far end of the cafeteria. When they reached the lounge, Adriana gestured for her to sit down, then collapsed onto the sofa across from her.

  “Whew,” she said, taking a handkerchief out of her pocket and running it across her brow. “It was hot in there.”

  Despite the magician’s air of casualness, all of Nancy’s sense were on alert. Of course, she’d wanted to talk to her, but somehow she hadn’t expected Adriana to take the lead.

  Adriana twisted the handkerchief in her hand. Nancy could tell that she was having a hard time choosing her words. “What a surprise it was to see you at the restaurant last night,” she finally said.

  Nancy smiled. “Yes, it was.”

  “Your father is a wonderful man,” she went on quietly. “I’ve never met anyone quite like him.”

  Nancy’s expression softened. “He is wonderful. I’m very lucky to have him for a dad.”

  Then Adriana frowned. “This morning I had breakfast with another man,” she began. “Misha.”

  The two of them remained silent for a moment.

  “To be honest,” Nancy said, “I was wondering about that. You know, he threatened me in the parking lot at Riverfront yesterday. He really wants you to leave Conklin Falls.”

  Adriana sighed deeply. “Please forgive him. He has a volatile nature. And he’s quite . . . attached to me.”

  “So I gathered,” Nancy commented dryly. She crossed her legs and put her hands on one thigh. “I really don’t mean to pry,” she went on carefully, “but I need to know about the two of you—for the sake of the case.”

  Adriana shrugged. “What can I say? Misha loves me. He’s asked me to marry him more than once.” The magician began removing bobby pins from her hair and shaking it loose. “But to me, he is a dear friend, nothing more. Unfortunately, he won’t take no for an answer, and he is very possessive sometimes.”

  Relief flooded through Nancy. She was overjoyed to learn that Adriana wasn’t really involved with Grigov. But she kept her face impassive. “Can you imagine him feeling so strongly about getting you away from Riverfront that he’d sabotage the place?”

  “Oh,” Adriana half-cried out, shaking her head energetically, “absolutely not! He’d never do anything like that! First of all because he’d never hurt me, and second, because it would be illegal.”

  “But, Adriana,” Nancy said, “yesterday around six a man driving a black sports car very much like his just about ran me over the cliff on River Bluff Road. It was definitely intentional.”

  The magician gasped. “Thank heaven you’re all right. But it couldn’t have been Misha! He was with me at about that time, I think—and this morning he told me about something strange that happened to him last night—” She looked at Nancy. “Only now, it doesn’t seem so strange.”

  “What?” Nancy asked.

  “When he left his room at the motel to go for his supper, his car wasn’t in the lot where he’d left it,” Adriana explained.

  Nancy’s eyes widened with astonishment.

  “He got very upset, as you can imagine, went to the police, and filed a report,” she went on a little breathlessly. “But when he got back to the motel later, the car was there!”

  “Amazing,” Nancy said.

  However, it did occur to her that the car-theft business could have been an elaborate ploy to give Grigov an alibi. He could have tried to run her off the road around six, then ditched his car and reported it stolen. It would have been easy enough to pick up the car later and let the police know that it had miraculously reappeared.

  “So, you see,” the magician said happily, as if positive that she’d proven her point, “it couldn’t have been Misha who tried to hurt you yesterday.”

  “Uh-huh,” Nancy replied, only half listening to Adriana. She said, “I still want to talk to your friend.”

  “That’s easy enough,” the magician replied. “He’s staying at the Conklin Falls Motel, just across from the golf course on the north side of town.”

  “Okay.” Nancy focused on Adriana and smiled slightly. “And thank you for being so open with me. It was a great help.”

  • • •

  After her talk with Adriana, Nancy met Ned and George again. They decided to get some lunch before launching into the day’s investigations and stopped at a deli. The guy who made their sandwiches told them about a small park where they could eat.

  They found the park easily. While they ate, Nancy told George and Ned everything that Adriana had said.

  “Do you believe her?” Ned asked.

  “Frankly, I do—or else she’s the best liar I ever ran into.” She took a bite of her pastrami hero. “It’s Grigov I doubt,” she said, then went on to explain her theory about how the knife thrower could have staged the disappearance of his car. “I wonder if Sheriff Pulaski ever questioned him.”

  “You’d think he would have, since Grigov must have run into Pulaski when he reported that his car had been stolen,” George speculated.

  Nancy gave her friend a skeptical look. “I wouldn’t count on it. The sheriff treated us like we were crazy yesterday. I can just imagine the way Grigov could have snowed him.”

  “Right,” George replied. “So now the sheriff’s searching for a car thief instead of a saboteur.”

  “Anyway, I want to talk to Grigov myself,” Nancy said.

  “And track down Benny Gotnick,” George added.

  “And have a chat with that realtor,” Ned said. A few minutes later he checked his watch. “It’s close to two,” he said, taking their garbage to a bin. “I don’t know how you’re going to do it all.”

  “It’s not going to be easy,” Nancy replied.

  “Look,” Ned said, “I’ve got a racquetball date with my dad at four. But why don’t I stop in at Matthews Realty on my way back to Mapleton? If I get a lead on who Matthews’s secret client is, I’ll leave a message on your machine at home.”

  Nancy grinned at him. “That sounds great. I really appreciate it. That means George and I can head straight over to Gotnick’s.”

  • • •

  Half an hour later George and Nancy pulled up in front of Benny Gotnick’s run-down house. “Here we are,” Nancy said, shutting off the car engine. “He?
??s probably at work, which means that I should be able to check out the inside.”

  Nancy and George got out of the car and walked through the weeds toward the side of the ramshackle house. Through a window, Nancy peered inside.

  She gasped at what she saw.

  George joined her at the window.

  Amid the threadbare furnishings, a man lay on the floor, facedown in a pool of blood. A large knife was embedded in his back. The knife had a pearl handle, just like the one that belonged to Mikhail Grigov.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  BENNY GOTNICK,” George guessed.

  “Worse than that, George,” Nancy said, falling back against the house, “he’s got Mikhail Grigov’s knife in his back.”

  George let out a low whistle. “Grigov’s in real trouble now.”

  “You bet he is.” Nancy shook her head, trying to erase the image of Benny Gotnick from her eyes. “We’d better call Pulaski. I don’t want him complaining that we disturbed a crime scene.”

  Nancy and George got back in the Mustang and drove until they found a pay phone. They reached the sheriff and reported the information about Gotnick. The sheriff told her he’d be over right away, and Nancy hung up the phone.

  “There’s just one thing I don’t get,” George said as she and Nancy headed back to Gotnick’s place.

  “What’s that?” Nancy asked.

  George pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “Why would Grigov want to kill Benny? If Gotnick really was the saboteur, there wouldn’t be any reason for Grigov to want him dead. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Nancy pulled to a stop in front of Gotnick’s house. “You’re right, George. But with Grigov’s temper, it’s hard to be sure. Maybe they were accomplices, and they had a falling out. Who knows? When Pulaski gets here, we can find out what he made of the car theft thing yesterday. Also we can’t be sure Grigov did this until the lab checks the knife for fingerprints.”

  Within minutes Benny Gotnick’s house was swarming with police. An ambulance arrived, then a van from the coroner’s office. Sheriff Pulaski was among the first on the scene. He spent a few moments directing his deputies, then called Nancy and George over to talk.

  After hearing how they had discovered the body, as well as Nancy’s suspicions about who the knife belonged to, the sheriff said, “Well, the victim still had his wallet, and his license confirms that he’s Gotnick. What do you know about this guy?”

  “Virtually nothing, except that he used to work at Riverfront Park and had some gambling debts,” Nancy answered.

  “Not a bad start,” the sheriff said. “The question is—how did he know Grigov?”

  “That’s what we were wondering,” Nancy countered. “We heard all about his stolen car,” Nancy went on.

  “Yes,” Pulaski replied, running a hand through his graying hair. He looked decidedly chagrined. “When the squad car brought him into the station to file a report, I talked to him. What can I say? I believed him.”

  “And you didn’t believe us,” George suggested.

  The sheriff shook his head. “It wasn’t that, exactly. I just figured that whoever stole the car was the one who cut too close to you on River Bluff. I never suspected Grigov. I had no reason to,” he insisted.

  Nancy smiled slightly.

  “Of course, I thought it was strange when his car turned up back in the parking lot later that night. But you know, there are kids who like to ‘borrow’ cool-looking cars and go for joy rides.”

  Nancy knew that what he said was true. Still, there was no way the sheriff could keep doubting her about Grigov now.

  Nancy glanced back into Benny’s living room. To her trained eyes, the Conklin Falls Police Department seemed to be doing an adequate job of sealing off the area and taking photographs. But so far her confidence in their abilities wasn’t running high. She decided to do a little investigating herself, just in case they missed something in Gotnick’s apartment. Fortunately, Sheriff Pulaski had no objections.

  By now the coroner had removed the body, and there was a grisly chalk outline of the spot where Benny had fallen. Nancy stepped around the marks, her eyes searching the room for clues.

  The living room was a jumble of magazines, newspapers, and books, and there was trash everywhere.

  “Benny Gotnick sure wasn’t very neat,” George said, surveying the mess.

  “It’s going to make it hard to find clues,” said Nancy. “Look for scraps of paper with phone numbers on them. That sort of thing. Just don’t disturb anything.”

  “I’ll try not to,” said George. “But who’d know anyway?”

  While George searched the living room, Nancy went into the bedroom. Chaos reigned there, too. Drawers were open, with clothes spilling out of them. The closet door was ajar, and Nancy gingerly tugged it open the rest of the way with a pencil she dug out of her purse.

  On the floor of Gotnick’s closet, half covered by an old T-shirt, Nancy spotted something metallic. She bent over and looked at it closely. It was a large, greasy pin, about the diameter of a knitting needle.

  “Bingo!” she cried.

  “Find something?” George asked, appearing at the door to the bedroom.

  “Get Pulaski,” Nancy urged.

  A few moments later the sheriff came into the room along with one of his men. Nancy pointed to the floor of the closet. “That’s the missing evidence from the roller coaster ride,” she told them. “It’s the cotter pin that connected the wheel block to the bottom of the car. It proves that the Typhoon accident was rigged.”

  Pulaski turned to his officer. “Get the photographer in here,” he said.

  “Good work, Nan,” said George. “Now we know Gotnick was involved in the sabotage.”

  “It sure appears that way,” Pulaski agreed. “Thanks for your help, Nancy. I’ve already sent a man out to Grigov’s motel to bring him in for questioning. I’ll let you know what develops.”

  “What next, Nan?” George asked as they got into the Mustang several minutes later.

  Nancy checked her watch, then started the car. “It’s close to five. The police will take care of Grigov for the moment. Right now I want to talk to my father about how Gotnick’s death and the fact that I found the missing pin from the ride affect the case. Remember, the hearing about closing the park is tomorrow morning.”

  “Right,” George replied.

  “I’ll drop you off at home on my way to my dad’s office,” Nancy said.

  During the drive down the parkway, Nancy mulled over the latest turn of events. George was right—if Gotnick was behind the sabotage, it didn’t make sense for Grigov to want him dead. But that would be true of anyone who might have teamed up with Gotnick to sabotage the park—like Vince Garraty and Freda Clarke and whoever had put in the bid to buy Riverfront.

  Nancy wondered whether Ned had had any success with the realtor, Larry Matthews. She definitely wanted to know who the secret buyer was.

  The scenery passed by in a blur as Nancy tried to come up with a theory that might make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. She had no success.

  By now Nancy was pulling into George’s driveway. She stopped the car and gave her friend a quick hug. “You’re the best, George Fayne. Thanks for coming along. I’ll give you a call when I get home.”

  She smiled fondly as she watched George clump up the walk in her cast, then put the car in gear and pulled out.

  It was almost six by the time she reached Carson Drew’s office. Most of the nine-to-fivers had cleared out, and the area around Courthouse Square was deserted as was the lobby of her father’s building.

  Nancy dashed into the elevator and hit the button for her father’s floor. When she got off, she found the large glass door to the office closed and the lights off. She felt fairly certain that she’d find her father still there, because he often worked late. She reached into her purse for the magnetic card he had given her to open the front door.

  She unlocked it and strode purp
osefully across the reception area, then down the hall to her father’s office. His door was half open, and she saw light coming from inside. Without breaking stride, Nancy pushed open the door, calling out, “Hey, Dad.”

  One peek inside made Nancy freeze in her tracks. Carson Drew was there, but so was Adriana Polidori.

  The two of them were standing in front of his large window, locked in an embrace!

  Chapter

  Twelve

  CARSON AND ADRIANA gaped at Nancy.

  Then the beautiful magician edged herself out of Carson’s arms, and Nancy’s father stepped back.

  Nancy’s gaze ricocheted between them. She felt her face flush with embarrassment.

  “Nancy—” her father began.

  “It isn’t what you think—” Adriana explained at the same time.

  Suddenly Nancy laughed, and they both stopped. Nancy couldn’t help herself. Somehow she felt like a parent, and that was ridiculous. They were the adults. Besides, she liked Adriana—especially now that she knew she wasn’t involved with Grigov.

  She grinned at them. “Will you two stop acting like kids?” she said with a twinkle.

  An expression of relief passed across her father’s face.

  Adriana regained her poise and stepped toward her. “It really wasn’t what you’re thinking,” she said, touching Nancy on the arm. “You see, Misha called me from the Conklin Falls Police Station and told me he’d been arrested on suspicion of murdering Benny Gotnick. I was extremely upset and rushed right here to talk to your father.” She glanced back at Carson. “He was only comforting me.”

  Nancy noticed that Adriana held a crumpled tissue in her hand.

  “Grigov is a very old friend of Adriana’s,” Carson added.

  “Friend is right, but I know he couldn’t have killed Gotnick. I simply can’t sit by and see him put in jail for something he couldn’t do. It would be all my fault.”

  “So let’s sit down and discuss this calmly,” Carson said, suddenly all business. “I need to know everything you discovered at Gotnick’s, Nancy, because I’m going to be defending Grigov at his bail hearing tomorrow afternoon.”