“When did Claudette vanish?”

“Soon after the second show started. Rita says she got the first show’s take from Claudette and took it back to her safe, and that Claudette was still sitting there when she left. But Rita hates Claudette, because Claudette was about to leave Hooligans for Foxes, and I was going with her.”

“Foxes is another club?” Claude nodded. “Why were you leaving?”

“Better pay, larger dressing rooms.”

“Okay, that would be Rita’s motivation. What about Jeff ’s?”

“Jeff and I had a thing,” Claude said. (My pirate-ship fantasy sank.) “Claudette told me I had to break up with him, that I could do better.”

“And you listened to her advice about your love life?”

“She was the oldest, by several minutes,” he said simply. “But I lo-I am very fond of him.”

“What about you, Barry?”

“She ruined my act,” Barry said sullenly.

“How’d she do that?”

“She yelled, ‘Too bad your nightstick’s not bigger!’ as I was finishing up.”

It seemed that Claudette had been determined to die.

“Okay,” I said, marshaling my plan of action. I knelt before Barry. I laid my hand on his arm, and he twitched. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five,” he said, but his mind provided me with a different answer.

“That’s not right, is it?” I asked, keeping my voice gentle.

He had a gorgeous tan, almost as good as mine, but he paled underneath it. “No,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’m thirty.”

“I had no idea,” Claude said, and Claudine told him to hush.

“And why didn’t you like Claudette?”

“She insulted me in front of an audience,” he said. “I told you.”

The image from his mind was quite different. “In private? Did she say something to you in private?” After all, reading minds isn’t like watching television. People don’t relate things in their own brains the way they would if they were telling a story to another person.