With Abra at her feet, Tempest lifted the dragon’s wing, which activated the secret staircase leading to her bedroom. It was nearly three a.m. Her feet dragged as she climbed the steps. Her rabbit hopped to the top step before Tempest reached it.
“What do you think, Abra?” Tempest sat cross-legged on the floor next to the bunny. “Is it a good idea to go to bed?”
Abra wriggled his nose and bumped up against Tempest’s hand.
“I agree. There’s way too much to do. That’s what caffeine is for.” Tempest texted Ivy: I need your help.
Twenty minutes later, she and Ivy were in the secret turret above her bedroom.
“Are you okay?” Ivy scooped Abra into her arms and curled up on a bean bag underneath the Hindi Houdini magic show poster. “And Nicodemus?”
Tempest shrugged. “He’s as good as can be expected. He’s devastated that someone he’s so close to was killed. He said he was going to take a sleeping pill to get some sleep. I’m sorry if my text pinging woke you up.”
“It didn’t. Rinehart woke me. He questioned me about the alibi you gave him for all of us for lunchtime. At first I thought he was just checking up on you, but it sounds like he suspects us all. I guess I’m flattered to be a suspect.”
“You should be worried. He’s not stupid, but he’s also not going to let this case go unsolved for too much longer.”
Ivy gaped at her. “You don’t think he … What do you think he’s up to?”
“He’s no longer considering Paloma Rhodes the main suspect.”
“That’s good, right?”
Tempest considered the question. “Yesterday, I would have said yes, but now…”
“Why did you say it like that? Wait, back up. What exactly did you see last night? Brodie, I mean. Are the details true about how you found Brodie?”
“Rinehart told you?”
“Not exactly. Just enough to gauge if I knew anything. Was it horrible?”
“Yes and no. It wasn’t gruesome. It looked rather like he was sleeping on the stage. Except for the fact that his eyes were open.”
Ivy shivered.
“Did Rinehart tell you,” Tempest continued, “that not only did I see him walking on the hallway-to-nowhere hours after Brodie was dead, but he was in the middle of a stage that hadn’t been disturbed in years? The layer of dust was still there, exactly as it was before, but there were no footprints.”
“Our earlier discussion is out the window,” said Ivy. “This murder is an impossible crime.”
“I know. There’s no catwalk. No way for him to have climbed there or been dumped there. What disturbs me most is that there’s no question it was staged to look impossible.”
“Why would someone do that?”
“To confuse me?” Tempest closed her eyes. So many scenes, both real and imagined, flashed through her mind. It was as if her brain was spinning faster and faster. She opened her eyes, stepped into the center of the small turret room, and spun into three pirouettes. She came to a stop in front of the poster for her show, The Tempest.
On paper, in an illustrated poster, The Tempest was bold, strong, and fearless. Someone who couldn’t be rattled by creepy, impossible situations. In real life, who was Tempest Raj? Right now, it felt like the closest she came to her stage persona was her incredible hair. Which admittedly looked great on a poster and on stage if the wind machines were positioned just right, but in real life did her little good beyond giving her a boost of confidence she could have found elsewhere.
That stage persona was a vehicle, not an end goal. Whatever Tempest did with her life, she wanted to bring magic into people’s lives, give them a sense of wonder. When her dad hired her after her career in Vegas fell apart, Tempest worried he was doing it out of pity. But it turned out he’d been right. Her brand of architectural misdirection, which was accompanied by the stories she wrote for each client to accompany their unique renovations, was helping turn the business around. After her mom vanished five years ago, the business suffered, but it was finally getting back on track—or at least it was before Julian Rhodes’s lawsuit and now these murders.
“It’s all falling apart,” said Tempest. “All of it. Why is someone doing this to me?”
“The killer couldn’t have known you and Blackburn would hear Brodie’s cell phone and follow him—or rather, the killer—into the theater right then.”
“You don’t think this is all related to me?”
“I didn’t say that. I said Brodie’s death wasn’t staged for you in particular. It definitely confuses everything, but what do you want to bet it mainly just adds fuel to the fire of online social media rumors about the theater being haunted?”
“Great,” Tempest grumbled. “A new round of people throwing iced tea at me.”
“Who’s throwing iced tea at you?” Abra wriggled his nose as Ivy’s arms tightened around him.
“See? I can’t even keep you caught up with everything that’s going on. At least there isn’t a video of that fan of Nicky’s throwing her drink all over me.”
“I think we’ve gotten way off track from why you invited me over here. You said you need my help.”
“Right. It’s about Paloma, who clearly isn’t the killer. I think.”
“So you think she’s dead?”
“I hope not. And I don’t think she is. I have a suspicion I want to test. And I need your help to do it.”
Ivy zipped up her pink vest until the collar hid half her face. Only her eyes peeked out over the top. “What do you need?” Her voice was muffled through the fabric, and Abra squirmed in her arms, sensing her unease.
“Help me think through the best platform to reach Paloma.”
“Platform?”
Abra hopped off Ivy’s lap, and Tempest made sure the door was closed so the curious bunny wouldn’t tumble down the steep stairs. Sometimes Tempest felt like the rabbit had nine lives, like a cat, but she didn’t want to test that theory.
“Paloma’s phone is part of this game.” Tempest twirled her own phone in her hand after securing the turret’s narrow door. “It’s been off but pinged a few times in the Midwest. I don’t think she’s the one with her phone.”
“But you said you didn’t think she was dead.”
“She could be in hiding. If she’s nearby, she’d want people to think she’s elsewhere. Her phone could do that. We already talked about how, if she believed Julian tried to kill her, she might leave the hospital without contacting him. That’s much less suspicious than everyone made it out to be.”
“Then why not come out as soon as she heard he was dead?” Ivy asked. “She has to be following the news somehow.”
“Enough to know she’s the main suspect. Would you come out of hiding under those circumstances?”
“What are you proposing?” Ivy asked.
“If I were her, I’d be obsessively following the news, as well as any online discussions about Julian’s murder. I hate that it’s come to this, but I want to do an interview or something else public that Paloma will see, so I can get her a coded message that I want to meet with her.”
“It’s not like you’re practicing a magic show with her and can tell her your secret code words in advance.”
“No, but I talked with Paloma during the construction project about the sliding bookcase she would have loved. The one Julian vetoed.”
“How did we put up with that guy for so long?” Ivy’s hands flew to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be happy he’s dead.”
“You didn’t kill him, so you have no reason to feel bad.”
“You were talking about Paloma’s dream bookcase.”
“If I reference her favorite book that she wanted to use as the lever to her secret library, which I told her I’d never read, hopefully she’ll understand I’m talking to her. If she’s in hiding, and she sees me reference that—”
“She might understand that it’s a secret message for her.”
“That’s my hope.” Tempest scooped Abra into her arms. “Abra thought it was a good idea.”
“Abra is your subconscious.”
“Obvs.”
“Wherever she is, she’s gotta be monitoring everything that’s happening here. But you can’t post a cryptic social media message since you deleted all your accounts last year, and it’s not like she’d see a post from me.”
“I was thinking of messaging one of the paranormal investigators who was hanging around the theater.”
“The ghost hunters?”
“One in particular.” She lifted the card with roses coming out of a skull that she’d been given two nights ago. “Alejandro Arkady gets hundreds of thousands of views for everything he posts.”
“You hate doing media. Especially that kind.”
“This is worth it.”