Page 11 of The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Oliver gave her a politely quizzical look. “If my guests choose to assume that I will keep all of their secrets, that’s up to them.”

“But you allow them to think that you will protect them.”

“My services do not extend to protecting a killer.”

She gripped the lapels of her robe. “I want to go back to the Cove Inn now, Mr. Ward. I need to think about this.”

“If you insist.” He pushed himself to his feet and gripped his cane. “You said you left your car on a side road behind the hotel?”

She leaped to her feet. “Yes. I didn’t want to ask one of the valets to park it for me.”

“In case you decided to leave in a hurry and didn’t want to have to wait while the valet fetched your vehicle? Never mind. You don’t have to answer that question. I’ll walk you to your car.”

“That’s not necessary, really.”

“It’s going on two o’clock in the morning, Miss Glasson, and if you are telling the truth, there is a murderer on the loose. He or she may still be on the grounds of this hotel. I insist on seeing you safely off the premises.”

He had a point, she thought. The one thing she knew for certain tonight was that Oliver Ward was not the person she had encountered in the spa chamber. The killer had not limped or used a cane.

There was another reason she was sure that Ward was not the murderer. She had a feeling that if he wanted to get rid of someone, he would handle the business with efficiency and finesse. He would have created a convincing illusion of an accident.

But not even the most practiced killer could plan for every detail, she reminded herself. Sometimes things went wrong, even for one of the world’s greatest magicians.

Oliver Ward, after all, was in a new line of work because two years ago things had gone very, very wrong for him.

Chapter 6

The shrill screech of the printing machine hurt Oliver’s ears and made conversation in a normal tone of voice impossible.

He looked at his uncle, who was watching the stylus move slowly back and forth across the paper with the air of an alchemist observing the results of his latest attempt to transmute lead into gold.

“Can you shut that damned thing down?” Oliver said, projecting his voice the way he had once done onstage.

“Almost finished with the test run,” Chester yelled back. “I’m telling you, Oliver, this machine is the future of newspapers. All you need is a radio equipped with a printing device like this one.”

With his wild mane of gray hair, round gold-rimmed spectacles, and faded coveralls, Chester Ward looked like a cross between an absentminded professor and an eccentric mechanic. The reality was that he was a combination of both. He was an inventor.

Chester loved to take machines apart to see how they worked. When he was satisfied that he understood the design of a particular instrument or device, he invariably made some modifications and reassembled it ina way that made it function faster or more efficiently or even perform an entirely different task. He currently held a number of patents on everything from slot machines to hydrofoil engines. Unfortunately, the hydrofoil design had failed to catch the attention of the military, so there was no income from that source.

The slot machine patent was a very different story. Chester had licensed his design to a man with extensive interests in the gaming industry. Luther Pell had recently installed the Ches. J. Ward Gaming Machines in his Reno casino and his offshore gambling ship anchored in Santa Monica Bay. It was hard to go broke in the gaming business, Oliver reflected. Chester might never have another moneymaking patent, but he wouldn’t need one. The steady income from the slot machines guaranteed him the cash he needed to finance his endless projects.

It was Chester’s innovative machines and devices that had elevated the Amazing Oliver Ward Show to a level never before seen in the world of magic. Until disaster had struck, Oliver had been well on his way to joining the ranks of Houdini and Blackstone, and Chester had been his secret weapon.

Chester could design and build anything that Oliver had been able to imagine. Audiences had left the theater thrilled by a flawless performance of magic and convinced that they had witnessed working prototypes of exotic, highly advanced technology.

Self-driving speedsters, one-man submarines, robots, ovens that cooked entire meals at the touch of a button—the Amazing Oliver Ward Show invited people to “See the Future.” It had been a great publicity hook. The advance press releases had played up the educational aspect of the performances, which inspired parents to take their children to the show. Science teachers across the country had encouraged their students to attend. Afterward, there were invariably front-page stories in the local papers rhapsodizing about the futuristic engineering marvels witnessed onstage.

Of course, after the disaster, the press had taken a different tack. The mystery of what went wrong with Oliver Ward’s final performance had made headlines for weeks. Eventually the reporters moved on to other sensational stories, but the questions surrounding the bloody end of one of the world’s most famous magic acts had achieved something close to legendary status. It was his own fault, Oliver thought. Speculation had run wild primarily because he flatly refused to discuss the subject. In addition, he forbade his employees to talk about the disaster.

“You know, in the length of time it will take you to print out just the front page of one of those radio newspapers, you can read theBurning Cove Heraldand several L.A. papers as well,” Oliver said. He held up the copy ofHollywoodWhispersthat he had picked up at the front desk. “This was delivered to the hotel fifteen minutes ago, for example.”

“Old technology,” Chester shouted. He patted the massive, waist-high radio with its screeching printer. “In the future you won’t have to wait for the news to be printed and distributed. It will be delivered directly into every home and office by one of these babies.”

The shill screech ended abruptly. Oliver exhaled in relief. He watched Chester remove the freshly printed page.

“Here you go.” Beaming like a proud father showing off his firstborn, Chester held out the printed page. “This just in from a small radio station a few miles up the coast. They’ve agreed to work with me on the testing phase.”

Oliver looked at the page. The headline readTest.The story was short.Weather sunny and warm.

---