“Okay. I think that’s enough for now, unless you have some other questions, Peter, Roger?”
Dillon shook his head.
“I’m good,” Ragland said. Then he turned to the officer who had found the robe. “Put this robe, the clothes, the inhaler, and the cloth with the ether in evidence bags and give them to the lab techs. If we get lucky, there may be trace evidence on them.”
“We’re going to have a doctor check you out,” Anders told Nancy, “but we’ll need an official statement later.”
“Of course.” She shook her head again. “I can’t believe Bobby is dead.”
When they were headed back to the stage, Anders said, “One thing we can be sure of, whoever killed Chesterfield knew how the Chamber of Death worked.”
Dillon nodded. “He had to have seen it performed in order to know Porter’s role in the trick and her routine before each performance.”
“He also had to have been in the theater before today,” Ragland said. “The killer got Porter to stay in her dressing room whenSheila and Maria left by hiding her inhaler while she was onstage. Only someone who knew a lot about the assistants would know that Porter had asthma and had to have the inhaler when she worked on the Chamber of Death trick.”
Anders told Dillon and Ragland about her conversation with Robin Lockwood.
“We have to talk to everyone who works in the theater to find out if Turner, Madison, Samuels, and the men who attacked Chesterfield were seen in the theater during rehearsals,” Ragland said.
“Now that we’ve narrowed the list of possible suspects, solving this case should be a snap,” Dillon told Anders. “Maybe I’ll let you crack it, so you can get the credit. You should have it wrapped up in no time.”
“Yeah, if I were a magician.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Norman Chow was still pacing the stage when the trio approached and asked him if they could use his office for interviews. As soon as Chow agreed, Roger Dillon told Tamara Robinson to bring in Joe Samuels.
“I will,” Robinson said, “but he couldn’t have killed Chesterfield. I was standing near him during the performance. He never left his seat during the Chamber of Death illusion.”
“Okay. Good to know. I also want you to interview the stagehands and the guard at the stage door. Ask them if they noticed anyone at rehearsals who shouldn’t have been there. You might want to talk to them near the door to the office while we interview some of the people in the audience in case someone looks familiar.”
The interview with Joe Samuels went quickly. He admitted that he disliked the magician, but he swore he couldn’t have killed him since he never left his seat during the trick. He also said that he didn’t see anything during the Chamber of Death illusion that might help solve Chesterfield’s murder.
As soon as Samuels left, the detectives had Rafael Otero brought in.
“Am I under arrest?” Rafael asked as soon as he walked into the office.
“No,” Dillon said. “We’re interviewing everyone who was sitting close to the stage and may have seen something during the performance that will help us identify who killed Mr. Chesterfield. Did you see anything odd during the Chamber of Death trick?”
“The whole damn thing was odd.” Rafael shook his head. “Too bad Bobby is dead. I’d love to ask him how he was going to escape from that box.”
“So you knew him?” Ragland said.
Rafael smiled. “If I’m not under arrest, I’d like to leave. If I am under arrest, I want a lawyer present when you ask me questions.”
“We know Chesterfield stabbed you when you tried to rough him up because he owes your boss money,” Ragland said, “but that doesn’t interest us. We just want to find the person who killed Chesterfield.”
“Good luck with that,” Rafael said.
“There’s no need to play hardball,” Ragland said.
“Of course there is. This is a murder investigation. So, are you going to stop me from leaving?”
“No,” Ragland said when he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to get Otero to cooperate.
When Rafael opened the door, Tamara Robinson was outside, standing next to an elderly African American couple.
“You need to talk to the Atkinsons,” she told the detectives.