Magician (23 page)
Authors: Timothy C. Phillips
I leafed through the mail.
The newspapers had dug out the file photos of Georgia Champion, I noted. Now there was a macabre new twist on the story. Fain’s face had been placed next to hers on the glaring front pages.
Little girl’s body never found,
the subtitle read. Of course, no one had ever proved she was dead, either. I walked slowly up the stairs, feeling several hundred years old.
What kind of morons would put a magician in handcuffs?
One editorialist wanted to know. Another called for an investigation. And then there were voices from the peanut gallery, recalling the lurid tabloid headlines of the past. Everyone, from psychics to bounty hunters, was being consulted. The old story was news again.
I shook my head incredulously. Georgia Champion had once again taken center stage in a media circus. This time there was a difference., Now she was sharing the spotlight with the man who had spirited her away. This new revelation had opened a whole new can of worms, to squirm grotesquely in the weird green light of television. It was all too dark and sick to contemplate.
I shut the door behind me and threw the paper on the coffee table. Suddenly I froze in my tracks. Something was protruding from underneath the newspaper, another piece of mail that I hadn’t noticed. I sat down heavily on the couch, and a strange feeling came over me. I wanted to laugh, but dared not. I picked it up slowly, and held it up to the light.
It was a post card.
On one side it had a picture of a sailboat, on beautiful crystalline water, beneath a tropical sun. In the distance one could discern a bungalow, on an invitingly vacant beach. There was no inscription telling where the card had come from.
I turned it over. On the other side, in a small, careful hand, was written:
Abracadabra.
– THE END –
Credits:
Loom of The Land, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; Copyright 1992 Mute Records, lyrics used by permission.
Magician,
1991
Lou Reed
Brigadoon,
1947
Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner
Send in the Clowns,
1973
Stephen Sondheim
The Philosopher’s Song
1982
(Immanuel Kant), Monty Python
Timothy C. Phillips was born in a small town at the foot of the Appalachians. Youngest of seven children, he attended colleges in Alabama and Louisiana, and holds degrees in English, Forensics and Political Science. He lives in Alabama, where he writes and dabbles in music.
To date there are seven titles in the
Roland Longville Mystery Series: