Page 91 of The Girl Who Knew Too Much

He seemed a little amused by the certainty in her voice.

“I was a magician, not a con artist,” he said. “But as I told you, a lot of the techniques used in both careers are the same.”

“So, what do you see when you look out at your audience tonight?”

He surveyed the dining room. “A lot of people with too much money and too much time on their hands. A lot of people trying desperately to have fun. A lot of people pretending to be someone else, at least for a night. But here and there, I see people who wish they were somewhere else.”

“Or with someone else?”

“Oh, yeah,” Oliver said. “A lot of those people. I also see some who are trying to reinvent themselves.”

“Such as?”

Oliver swallowed some of his martini and angled his head very casually toward a booth down below.

“See the two women sitting together in the corner?”

Irene followed his glance and spotted an attractive blonde dressed in a yellow-gold gown with a cowl neck cut very deep. The woman with her was a brunette dressed in violet. Both were drinking martinis and watching the room like a pair of hawks sizing up the local pigeon population.

“What about them?” Irene asked.

“They both checked in today. They spent the last six weeks in Reno at a divorce ranch and now they’re free.”

Irene picked up her pink lady. “We in the gossip paper business call it taking the Reno cure.”

The notorious quickie divorces available in Nevada were simple enough from a legal point of view, and they had certainly made things much easier for women, especially, to escape an unhappy marriage. In other states the process often took a year or longer, and the laws strongly favored the husbands.

But obtaining a Nevada divorce was not cheap, Irene reflected. For starters, you had to be able to afford to move to Nevada and establish residency for six weeks. The Reno cure carried with it a strong whiff of scandal, of course, as did any other kind of divorce. But there was no denying that the state of Nevada was doing a booming business. Peoplewho were killing time waiting for the legal process to play out spent a lot of money at hotels, restaurants, and casinos.

“What about the two women fresh in from Reno?” she asked.

“They’re looking for rich husbands to replace the ones they just got rid of. My manager informed me that the blonde asked to have her room switched to one that is closer to that bald man sitting at the table with the bored-looking young woman in blue. Both he and his companion have had enough of each other. She’s got her eye on another man and he’s looking for someone even younger.”

Irene blinked, a little shocked in spite of herself.

“And here I thought that those of us in the gossip business had a somewhat cynical view of human nature,” she said.

“I’m not the one who concluded that a fast-rising movie star might be a murderer. Talk about cynical.”

“Point taken. So, Mr. Magic, do you see a killer down there in the dining room?”

He contemplated the scene for a long moment. “If I’m right, we’re watching for a man who checked in recently and who is traveling alone. I got the list of new guests here at the Burning Cove from the front desk. There are only a handful of names on it.”

“But he might not be staying here.”

“That is one of the unknowns,” Oliver admitted.

“You’re probably right that regardless of where he’s staying he will be alone. I suppose the last thing a killer would want is a traveling companion.”

“I still believe that the odds are very good that the killer is also from the East Coast,” Oliver continued. “He’ll have an accent and a certain style of dress. And he’s rich.”

“You say that because he left that necklace behind in Helen’s safe?”

Oliver’s smile was ice-cold. “A common thief would have been unable to resist such a tempting valuable.”

“I think I’m beginning to see how you go about building up a profile of an individual you’ve never even met.”

“Like I said, it’s not that hard once you learn to pay attention to the details. Bartenders do it on a regular basis. Take Willie, for instance.”