“And you don’t mind sitting on your exhibits?” Paige said.
“I like to think it’s what Angelique and Katrina would have wanted.” He said it as if he’d known them personally. Perhaps he had. Paige really didn’t have much of an idea of who any of these people were, even if the museum owner made it sound as if everyone should have heard of them.
“Now,” he said. “What can I do for you? If you’re looking for information about murderers, I’m afraid that while the magical community can be close knit, it isn’t likely that anyone has just come out and admitted something like that.”
Paige got the impression that he was a man who liked to talk. A lot.
“I’m looking for a specific magic act,” Paige said. “One I don’t have a name for. Do you think you might be able to identify them?”
“Perhaps,” Herman said. “It will depend on what you can tell me about them. Some acts have signature effects, for example, or particular quirks to their act.”
“This one would have featured an assistant with a beauty mark on her face.”
She saw Herman frown. “That… isn’t much to go on. A beauty mark? Is that all?”
Paige nodded, feeling her hope ebb away. She’d been so excited when she found the connection between the women. It had seemed like the thing that was finally going to lead her to the murderer, but if it wasn’t enough to identify a potential killer, then she’d just wasted time she didn’t have.
“Hmm…” Herman said. “It does ring a faint bell though.”
The embers of Paige’s hope flickered back into life.
“Can you remember what?” she asked. She needed answers, and she needed them fast.
“It was something in the archives, I think. Follow me.”
Herman stood and headed deeper into the museum, with Paige following in his wake, hoping that it would lead to something that she could use. He led the way past exhibits that included an overlarge milk churn and a bed of nails, to a spot where several file cabinets stood in a row against a wall. Herman opened one of them, rooting through it.
“It was… let’s see, a few years ago now. There was an act. The Amazing Stupendo, or the Stupendous Amazo, or some such. No, that wasn’t it, was it? I remember though that there was an assistant who always dressed like some eighteenth-century court lady, to highlight her beauty spot.”
He kept working his way through the cabinet, until finally he pulled out a poster for a show with the same flourish he might have used to pull a rabbit from a hat. He unfolded it carefully.
“The Great Supremus!” Herman said. “That was it. Real name Henry Booth, I believe. He didn’t think it had the same ring, although I’ve always admired magicians with the courage to perform under their own names.”
“What happened to him?” Paige asked.
“Oh, he was never terribly successful. Didn’t really do anything original, and his whole act was quite cliché. He died a few years ago. From what I understand, his son went off to become some kind of businessman. While his assistant… Antoinette Couchon, that was her name, she hung around on the fringes of the business a little while longer.”
“Thank you,” Paige said, barely able to contain her excitement. She all but ran for the door. “You might just have helped to save someone’s life!”
Paige ran out to the car, where she looked up the names she’d just gotten on her laptop. Sure enough Henry Booth had been a magician, and Antoinette Couchon had been his assistant. He’d died almost ten years ago, when his son Stephen had been fourteen.
Fourteen. The same age Paige had been when she lost her father. She knew how much the pain of losing a father at that age could cause, how much of an impact it could have on a life.
She looked up Stephen. He had a record, for assaulting another kid in a foster home. Yet after he’d gotten out, it appeared that he’d gone straight, starting a business that had rapidly become successful.
Paige quickly found records for it, along with the ones that said he’d divorced a year ago. The DMV’s records suggested that he’d moved back to Las Vegas then.
Was he the one killing people now? Had the sudden return to the city brought back whatever hurtful memories he had? Had it pushed him over the edge?
If so, it seemed that he was fixating on women who looked like Antoinette. She had to be in danger, if he hadn’t gotten to her already. Somehow, this was all about her, and Paige needed to get to her, to make sure that she was safe, before Stephen managed to kill her.