carol oconnell mallory 02 the man who lied to women

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exited the underside of the desk and looked up at Charles, tilting its head to one side as though the bandaged ear was weighting it that way.
Hello, said Charles, bending down to pet it. The cat wriggled out from under his hand. It only had eyes for Mallory. It rubbed up against her leg, and
she pushed it away.
The cat s a material witness. Now I ve already been through this with Riker. You laugh and I shoot you, it s like that.
What happened to the cat s ear?
I didn t do it. Can you keep the cat for one night? I m trading apartments with the Rosens today. I can t take it back to my place.
Of course.
Mallory pulled the cat s litter box out of the canvas bag, and then two tins of fish. His name is Nose. Just keep him out of my office. I don t want any
fur in my computers.
I ll take him back to my place.
Thanks. So, apart from the flying objects, how did the interview go? You know which one of them is doing it if it s not the boy?
I don t know.
She pulled a file out of the bag.
The first Mrs Riccalo died of a heart attack. But now that I ve seen her husband, I have to wonder how much stress she was under and how much it
would have taken to push her over the top. Here s the hospital file.
She handed it to him, and he hesitated for that moment when people are trying to decide how dirty an object might be before they touch it. Perhaps
he was wrong to believe that every computer printout she gave him might be purloined.
You stole it, right?
Right, she said. But not this one.
The second file she handed him had the NYPD stamp on the cover. He scanned the information which detailed the suicide report on the deceased
second wife of Robert Riccalo. He flipped through the three-page report. Well, the files list the suicide as a non-suspicious death.
I may change that.
Why?
When you go through the suicide files, you find most jumpers are men. Women are less messy. And there was no note. They usually like to get
even with their loved ones on the way out.
Did the first two Mrs Riccalos have anything in common?
They were both professionals and carried the normal amount of life insurance through their employers. But that doesn t mean there wasn t another
policy or two. I m still working on it. Sally Riccalo is also carrying insurance through the financial house where she works as a systems analyst.
According to her resum�, she and Robert Riccalo worked for the same company ten years ago when the first Mrs Riccalo was still alive.
Interesting?
We started out with a rather simple problem of flying objects. You don t think murder is a bit of a stretch this early on? I suppose the insurance
beneficiary was
Robert Riccalo. He s also the beneficiary of wife number three.
But isn t the spouse usually the beneficiary?
Yes, but it s usually the wife who collects. So now I ve got one heart attack, one suicide, and wife number three looks like she s ready to explode.
She wouldn t get that upset over one pencil. What else has been flying her way lately?
Oh, a pair of scissors, some bits of glass.
What s the father s take?
Anger, disbelief. Only the stepmother seems to be a believer.
He accused the boy of moving the vase. He sounds like a believer to me.
No. The stepmother is the only believer in the paranormal. Mr Riccalo probably thinks the boy is doing it by trickery.
One of them is. Are you sure it was your pencil that flew at her?
Excuse me?
Charles, you re a disgrace to Max Candle s memory.
The art of illusion is not genetic. Having a magician in the family tree doesn t vouch for talent in the rest of the bloodline.
You have a whole damn magic store in the basement. You could make an elephant fly with all that equipment.
Not really. Max had some brilliant illusions, but his specialty was defying death. It was Malakhai who could really make things move through the air,
and nothing as clumsy as a flying pencil. He was the greatest illusionist who ever lived.
Malakhai? The debunker?
Well, debunking the paranormal frauds came later in life, after he retired from the stage. Before you were born, Malakhai did an act with his dead
wife& You seem skeptical. No, really. She was his assistant.
His dead assistant?
Oh yes, it was only after she died that she went into the magic act with Malakhai. When she was alive, she was a composer and a musician.
What did he do, have her stuffed?
No, she never appeared to the audience in the flesh. It was always understood that she was there, and yet not there dead but not entirely gone, if
you follow me. Well, after the audience got comfortable with the idea that she was not only invisible but dead, things began to float through the air as
she handed him one thing and another. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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