Chapter 54

“I’m glad you’re settled about help with the magic performance,” I said, “but we can’t forget about Casper Van Asch’s diary and Akira’s killer.”

“Why not?” Sanjay said.

“Hiro didn’t give the police the pawnshop receipt,” I said. “We have something the killer needs.”

Hiro handed me the receipt.

“Hey,” Sanjay said. “Don’t put Jaya in danger.” Before I noticed his movement, he’d plucked the receipt from my hand.

“I don’t think that’s how she sees it,” Hiro said, deftly lifting the receipt from Sanjay and handing it back to me. “She wants to find it. Her face makes that clear. As do the many articles I’ve read about her.”

I cringed. Both at Hiro’s description of me, and also at the fact that their casual handling of the centuries-old receipt was contaminating it with the oils from their fingertips. I looked around the trailer for something that could protect the receipt. Sanjay handed me a plastic sheet-protector. He knew me well. I took out the magnifying glass I always carried in my bag and looked over the faded paper. A zing of excitement passed through me as I looked at the soft fibers of the paper, the deft strokes of ink, and the imprint of the stamp that was still visible with a vibrant red that had barely faded. It was a feeling I always got when holding a piece of history.

Hiro was right that I wanted to see this through. With my friends around me, I felt as if I could do anything. But there was a problem. One of us was missing.

“You didn’t see Sébastien when you made your way past security, did you?” I asked Hiro.

His lips parted in surprise. “You don’t know where he is?”

“He’s got to be around here somewhere,” Sanjay said.

“You didn’t notice when he left?” I asked.

“I’ve been concentrating. But you’re overreacting. Even if the killer knows about this pawnshop ticket, he stole the diary from Hiro so he’ll go back to Hiro’s house to look for it. That’s what we need to tell the police.”

I swore. “The police. That’s what’s still bothering me. Hiro, the message you had the police relay to us said the killer was a madman. Why did you insist the police tell us that before you’d talk to them?”

Hiro hesitated. “I was feeling helpless, which made me more worried than I should have been. I heard the police speaking about Akira’s body disappearing…I apologize for worrying you.”

“There’s got to be a reason you said that,” I pressed. I couldn’t tell if he was being polite or holding something back.

Sanjay groaned. “You’re a psychiatrist now? Can we finally get back to practicing? You’re reading too much into things, Jaya.”

“No,” Hiro said. “Jaya-san is right.”

Sanjay groaned even more loudly.

“I know I must be wrong…” Hiro let his words trail off and adjusted his glasses.

“About what?” I asked.

“I was shaken,” he said slowly, “that someone had gotten into my home to take the diary. My home is secure. I no longer have a separate workshop. My house holds many secrets of my magic.”

“No broken lock?” I thought about Yoko’s sloppily broken door. Since traditional Japanese houses were constructed with thinner sliding doors inside, I hadn’t thought it would be difficult to break into Hiro’s home. But that had been an arrogant Western assumption. Though the inside doors were less sturdy than I was used to, that didn’t apply to the outside.

“That’s what worried me most,” Hiro said. “That the person who stole the diary was someone who was in my home. Someone who has looked me in the eye, yet I could not see his malice. This is why I knew he must be a madman.”

I shivered. “Do you have a lot of visitors?”

“No,” Hiro said. “That’s my worry. That the thief could have been one of you who was at my home last night.”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t one of us who stole the diary.” Me. Sanjay. Sébastien. Tamarind. We were the four people who’d been at Hiro’s home. But I was done doubting my friends.

Tamarind bit her lip and raised her hand. “My bad.”

“This isn’t a joke,” I snapped. “You didn’t steal the diary.”

“I’m not joking,” Tamarind said. “I’m pretty sure I accidentally left open a window when Hiro was showing me around the house. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know how to close the latch, and Hiro had already left the room. Then I forgot to ask…I’m so sorry.”

“There,” Sanjay said. “Simple explanation. And no harm done.”

“How can you say no harm done?” Tamarind asked. “I let this happen—”

“Sanjay is right,” I said. “If you hadn’t left the window open, the killer would have found another way in, like he did with Sanjay and Yoko.”

“Good,” Sanjay said, tapping his foot impatiently. “We’re in agreement. We can let this go now. We’re all friends, and a bad guy is off in search of a treasure. We’ll all look after each other. We’ll be safe.”

“Except for Sébastien,” I said. “I can’t believe you let him go off on his own.”

“What was I supposed to do?” Sanjay said.

“Not that.” I grabbed my phone and tried calling Sébastien.

I should have done that in the first place. He picked up after one ring. But the deep voice that answered wasn’t Sébastien’s.

“Jones.”

It was the voice that never failed to make me melt inside.

I looked at the screen of my phone. Had I accidentally hit Lane’s contact information? No, it was Sébastien’s number I’d called.

“Lane?” I croaked. “Is that really you?”

“I’m with Sébastien.”

“He’s okay? And how is it possible that you’re with him?”

“Sébastien is fine, except he had the crazy idea I was lurking around Japan to look after you,” Lane said.

“I’m not crazy,” I heard a soft French-accented voice say in the background.

I looked at the wide-eyed group surrounding me, then covered the receiver of the phone and said, “Sébastien is fine. I’m going to step outside to take this.”

“Sébastien said something about a foreigner being sighted?” Lane was saying as I jumped down onto the field. “Why didn’t you tell me everything that was going on?”

“It was kind of difficult from across the world.”

“I could have come sooner,” Lane said. “When Sébastien reached me in my San Francisco hotel room on a video call yesterday, he made me call him back and step outside to convince him I wasn’t simply in a hotel room in Japan. But the fact that I really was in San Francisco like I’d said, seemed to make him more worried, not less.”

Because he knew you weren’t the foreigner, I thought to myself.

“I wondered why he was so concerned,” Lane said, “so I asked a friend from Nagoya to translate more of the news about Akira. There’s a lot more being reported in Japan than here. Akira’s body was stolen?”

“His fans are hardcore.”

“They also say the Hindi Houdini is going on with the show, and that he’s in danger of suffering Akira’s fate.”

I shuddered. If we didn’t figure out who was after Casper Van Asch’s treasure before the show, that was a real possibility.

“Sébastien’s crazy idea made me realize I could be here in less than a day,” Lane said. “I couldn’t stand feeling helpless on the other side of the world, once I knew what was going on. I got on the first flight I could catch.”

“I didn’t know what he’d do,” Sébastien’s voice said faintly in the background.

“Where are you now?” I asked.

“My flight landed this afternoon,” Lane said. “Sébastien is taking me to you.”

  

An hour later, I found myself sitting in front of a traditional tea service at a Ryokan inn, waiting for Lane to walk through the door.

Sanjay had insisted he couldn’t take any more time away from practicing. Hiro had emailed me his photos of the diary and was now working with him and Yoko, and Sébastien would go straight to the site after he dropped Lane off with me. Tamarind had pleaded that she desperately wanted to go back to the manga museum. I knew she was, in truth, trying to avoid being a third wheel. I can’t say I was disappointed that I’d get Lane all to myself.

Sébastien had called his Ryokan and gotten Lane a room, and I’d caught a cab back from the magic show Arashiyama site to wait for him there.

I arrived before Lane at the inn. I wasn’t surprised to find that Sébastien had requested a room for two, or that he’d insisted a full tea service would be waiting for us on our arrival.

The sweet scents of chestnut and mochi pastries mingled with another one. Sandalwood. Lane was here.

I got up from the tatami mat and met Lane at the thick sliding door of the room. At six feet tall, he had to duck his head to enter. I never knew which Lane Peters to expect. In light brown khakis, a white dress shirt, and heather gray pea coat, he was every inch himself. He dropped a leather duffle bag at his feet and swept me up in his arms. By the time he let me go, his glasses were foggy and the tea had gone cold.