“I’m so sorry,” Tempest said to Nicodemus. “There was nothing we could do.”
Upon returning home after more than an hour of questioning, she woke up her dad and grandparents to give them the news of Brodie’s death and was now sitting with Nicodemus in the lounge of his guest room.
She stared into the crackling fire in the hearth. The flames were low and the wood noisy. It wasn’t chilly, the wood was damp, and the flue wasn’t cleaned as much as it should have been, but having a cozy fire going helped ease the shock. She knew Brodie had been up to something. Was there anything she could have done to prevent this?
Nicodemus joined her in front of the fire. “What you described sounds just like an illusion you’d create on the stage. Did Rinehart suspect you’d had a hand in Brodie’s death?” His voice tightened as he spoke Brodie’s name.
“I think it helped that I was with a former detective he respects. Detective Rinehart might not like either me or Blackburn right now, but I don’t think he questions our credibility. At least not Blackburn’s.”
“You were released, which is a good sign.”
“He’s more confused and angry than I’ve ever seen him. But I’m pretty sure that’s because we found Brodie on the Shadow Stage.”
“But you didn’t disturb anything.”
“That only makes it worse in his eyes. He can’t blame me and Blackburn for messing up the evidence. We didn’t go any farther than the doorway Blackburn sealed up five years ago, and it looked exactly the same inside. Exactly as you’d imagine it would after five years. Only spiders and dust mites in residence.”
“And Brodie’s body,” Nicodemus murmured.
Not only was Brodie dead, but how could Tempest have seen what she did? He’d been found on the stage, but the dust was unbroken.
How had he been dropped onto the stage dead?
There was no way from above, was there? How had someone managed to kill him like this—and why?
“I do know,” said Tempest, “that Rinehart has no choice but to look into other suspects besides Paloma Rhodes. If she’s really on the run, it’s not because she was guilty but because she was frightened.”
Unless Paloma was dead as well, and someone had taken her phone to confuse things. Not that Tempest shared that idea. She’d told Rinehart everything she’d seen when she found Brodie, but she didn’t trust him with her theories.
“What I like least about where this leaves us,” said Nicodemus, “is that you lied to me, and that you went into the theater at midnight. It’s like you to be headstrong, but not stupid.”
“I didn’t lie to you. I was the one who was lied to. Blackburn kept me in the dark until I met up with him. And I had him with me the whole time. I wasn’t alone.”
Nicodemus scoffed. “The murderer has killed two people already. Do you think that would stop them?”
“How could I do anything less? They nearly killed you too.”
He attempted a smile. “This scratch?” He sighed. “Well, at least it enabled me to hear the nice things people would have said about me upon my death. Haven’t you seen? The well-wishers have come out of the woodwork. Apparently, I’m one of the grandest performers of our time.”
Tempest kissed his forehead. “That’s no surprise to me.”
“How did they get him onto that blasted stage?” Nicodemus whispered.
“I’ve been thinking about how I’d do it if it had been a trick,” said Tempest. “And everything comes down to that catwalk above the stage.”
“A catwalk that doesn’t exist over the Shadow Stage.”
“But the walkway for lighting the stage used to be there. Blackburn wondered if the outer bracing might still be there. I think that’s what the police are looking into.”
Nicodemus shook his head. “Then you’re looking at a whole team of people to get it into place and remove it. This isn’t a grand conspiracy.”
Tempest sighed. He was right. She closed her eyes for only five seconds, and when she opened them, Nicodemus held a handmade book in his hands and unshed tears in his eyes. She took the book and pretended to give all her attention to it while he composed himself. That wasn’t quite true. She didn’t need to pretend. The slim book contained multiple pages of his paper pop-ups, and it was perhaps the most beautiful book she’d ever seen.
The first page opened with an empty theater stage. She tugged a tab on the left curtain, and a woman in a catsuit and cat ears appeared on the stage. A tug on the right curtain brought a man in a top hat to her side. On the next page, the strings of a puppet dangled over a similar stage, with only a shadow underneath. Brodie Frost’s shadow.
“Brodie,” said Nicodemus, “was the one who got me out of my aimlessness after Cat left.”
“I wish I could have seen your act with the Cat of Nine Lives.”
“You would have hated it.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
“Oh, our illusions were good, but our shows were incredibly misogynistic. Not that we ever thought about it like that at the time. But the whole story was incredibly violent. All against Cat, of course. I was merely the benevolent savior who brought her back to life each time. I brought her back to life after she was buried alive, shot in the heart with an arrow, and sliced in half.”
“Don’t forget falling to the bottom of the ocean after going overboard,” added Tempest. “I know that one inspired my mom and aunt’s Selkie Sisters show.”
Nicodemus gave her an odd look. “Your mom told you about that?”
“She left me all her journals.”
“She gave those to you? All of them?”
“Only a partial set. Why do you look so surprised?”
“Your mother was a very private person, even before she left Scotland for California.”
“She had a set of journals dedicated to magic. I think this was the set she always planned for me to have, just not under those particular circumstances.”
“So you know what I was like as a young man.” His voice wasn’t exactly wistful, but something Tempest couldn’t place.
“I don’t have to stretch my imagination much. I expect you never grew up.”
“Why do you think I chose this profession?” He smiled, but the grin became a grimace, and two tears escaped his eyes. He covered it up as best he could with a swipe of his good hand, but she saw it.
“I should go.”
“Don’t go.” His eyes were wild as he grabbed her hand. His grip was strong but shaky.
“You’re scaring me, Nicky.”
“I hope so. Because I don’t want anything to happen to you. I know you’re a capable woman. But Brodie is—was—incredibly strong, and smarter than he let on. And he was killed. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
Tempest couldn’t decide if she was touched or annoyed by the patronizing concern. “Brodie was arrogant and alone. I’m humble and have my friends.” All right. Perhaps she wasn’t exactly humble. But she’d definitely lost the Sanjay-level ego she’d had before her spectacularly public fall from grace last year.
“Tempest, you’re splitting hairs. Please. I don’t know how much more I can take of any of this. Brodie wasn’t killed randomly.”
“I know. I wonder if he was looking into Julian Rhodes’s murder.”
Nicodemus narrowed his eyes. “Why do you say that?”
“I caught him talking to someone at the back gate before dawn, the day he was killed. He said he was looking to sell off some of your more expensive props, since you didn’t need them anymore and he was going to be out of a job.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“He still had the prop with him after talking to the person. Said he’d had second thoughts—and he also tried to convince me that you’d be crushed if you found out the truth. Since he didn’t go through with it, I went ahead and kept it to myself. But now I think I didn’t actually get a confession out of him. What if that’s not what he was doing at all? What if he was asking questions about Julian’s death?”
Nicodemus barked out a harsh laugh. “You had it right the first time. It would be far more like Brodie to sell expensive props he knew would be useless in the future than to try to solve a murder.”
“Maybe to avenge your ruined career?” Tempest nodded toward his hand.
“Even less likely. Do you know why I’ve kept Brodie on for all these years?”
“As you said, because he was strong and smart. Plus he fit your creepy vibe.”
“Also a smidge of blackmail.”
Tempest gaped at him. “Brodie was blackmailing you?”
Nicodemus waved away the comment with his uninjured hand. “A grain of blackmail. A pinch. No, I’d say it’s as small as a molecule. That’s all.”
“For what?”
Nicodemus didn’t respond for a moment. “Someone accused me once, long ago, of stealing one of their illusions.”
“That’s a serious accusation.”
Stage performers and magic builders weren’t necessarily the same person, though they often were. In close-up magic like cardistry, they were often one and the same, with practitioners learning the classics then branching out with their own adaptations and routines. But with larger stage illusions, it wasn’t always the case. The creator of an illusion could choose to patent their invention to protect their intellectual property in court, but then the secret would be public record, available to unscrupulous people.
It was a dilemma. Keep your secret but fear imitation you can’t defend against, or legally protect it by letting go of the secret. Most magicians Tempest had met were honest and respected both the magician’s code of not revealing secrets and the expectation that they would not steal from each other, only using illusions they’d purchased, invented, or that were now in the public domain. But like any profession, it included a handful of malicious people.
“The accusation wasn’t founded.” Nicodemus’s voice was raw with indignation. “But I was young and I simply wanted the accusation to go away so I could get on with my life. So I made up a rumor about the accuser in return. It wasn’t true, but neither was theirs. An eye for an eye.”
“Brodie knew.”
“As I said, it wasn’t anything illegal. But it would have damaged my reputation if it got out that I was the person who discredited my accuser. I was still growing my career at the time. Brodie gets—got—a salary from me, with bonuses when a tour went well, rather than simply a share of the profits. I had enough to pay him well, so it was a good agreement for both of us. Perhaps I was being overly dramatic when I said blackmail was why we continued to work together. But it was how our payment arrangement began. He’s always good at hiding in the shadows and picking things up. One sees a lot from the wings of a theater.”
Nicodemus opened one more page of the pop-up book. In this one, a tall figure helped a figure meant to be Nicodemus back onto the stage, with an even taller and ganglier figure in the wings.
“He was always watching,” he whispered.
“He could have seen something that spooked the murderer.”
“Why didn’t the fool say something?”
“Maybe he did.”
“He’s not especially fond of the police. I doubt he would have—”
“That’s not what I mean. You just admitted he was a blackmailer. Being out of a job, would he try another spot of blackmail?”
“If he saw the killer up to something…”
“Instead of telling the police what he knew,” said Tempest, “Brodie might have tried to blackmail the killer.”
“Bloody fool,” Nicodemus murmured.
Tempest added another log to the fire and adjusted their feeble fire with a poker.
“You need to stop investigating,” Nicodemus said to her back. “I know you’ve been looking into not only the murder of Julian Rhodes but also that of your mother.”
Tempest spun around. “You knew?”
“I might be old, injured, busy sorting out my canceled tour, fighting with insurance companies, and now also mourning the loss of someone I considered a friend, in spite of our complicated relationship. But I am not daft.”
“I wanted to tell you, but there was never a good time since you arrived. I wanted to catch up with you at first, and then—”
“And then we walked into that murder scene.”
“Nicky.” Tempest took his uninjured hand between her hands as another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Nicodemus had been with her when they found Julian, but they hadn’t been together all night. He was used to adjusting to different time zones, so there was no good reason for him to have had jet lag. “Do you know anything that could tell me what’s happening? Anything at all? If you were protecting Brodie, now’s the time to tell me—”
“I wasn’t. And I’m not.” He squeezed her hand and looked into her eyes. “I swear to you I have no idea who lured Julian Rhodes to that theater or how he was killed by that blade. You don’t think I—”
“No. I know you didn’t kill him.” She wasn’t lying to him, and she hoped more than anything that she wasn’t lying to herself.