The Magician's Grift by DeAnna Knippling

Author:DeAnna Knippling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 20th century, heist, con artist, paranormal, financial, mystery, urban
Publisher: Wonderland Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

3. Before the Fall

The offices of Edwin Kumpke, Attorney at Law, were shortly thereafter closed for the afternoon. I don’t think anybody noticed.

I tried to check the bank but the guards had been instructed to be remove me on sight; they were worried that I would try to call a run on the bank or something. After all the threats I had made earlier that day, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. I did get inside long enough to see that Zuber wasn’t waiting in line to cash the check. Zuber was a big man, peculiarly enough dressed that I couldn’t have missed him—barring some kind of magic trick.

I am positive that Mr. Kumpke had arrived at the bank ahead of me to try to stop the check from being cashed. But of course he was too late. Zuber would have positively flown there from the law office.

The hat shop that was really a café was even easier to get into this time, with only a brief flutter of hatbands as I crossed the threshold. The facade had vanished entirely, leaving a plain window.

Zuber wasn’t at the café, either.

I marched right up to the counterman and said, “Zuber’s got my money and my boss’s money. He swindled us right up, and I need that money back. If you see Zuber,” and I could feel every ear in the place pointing toward my back, “tell him to give that money back before I cause him more problems than he can handle.”

“He will not do that,” the counterman said. He put a cup of coffee in front of me.

“I know,” I said. Oh, I was angry, so angry that I was shaking the counter and making the cup rattle in its saucer. “But at least if you tell him, he won’t be able to say later that he wasn’t warned.”

· · ·

The next step was to obtain myself some calm. I returned to the Spanish Armada and checked the apartment for some in the cupboard, but as it turned out, I was all out. My best efforts to beg, borrow, steal, or make some calm resulted in one smashed flower-vase full of flowers that one of Betty’s admirers had sent her, one startled neighbor who came to check on my shouting, and more cookies than a neighborhood Christmas party. I had to go knocking around the floor to get enough sugar to finish the last batch. I had a feeling that I would be calling in some favors soon.

Thursday was Betty’s night to go to the pictures with one of her admirers, I forget which. Not the one whose flower vase I had just broken, fortunately. She walked into the apartment, took one sniff, and said, “If you need me to cancel with Pat tonight, all you had to do was say so.”

“I’m going to kill that man!”

“Who, Mr. Kumpke?”

“No, Professor Zuber!”

The whole story came out. At first the story was not completely truthful—I was embarrassed about getting swindled—but soon enough

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