“Let me get this straight,” said Sanjay. “You’re attempting to get past the state-of-the-art security system of an internet celebrity to steal a book belonging to a dead man that your grandfather desperately wants but won’t tell the police about.”
“Pretty much.” Tempest was stretched out on the bean bag in her bedroom, on the phone with Sanjay as she looked up at the pinprick stars on the ceiling above that formed a skeleton-key constellation.
“You can’t do it alone. At least wait until I’m done with these shows and am back in town.”
“That’ll be days from now. Time I don’t have if I’m right that someone is framing Ash.”
Sanjay swore in Punjabi.
“Thanks for being a sounding board.” Tempest closed her eyes and imagined he was there with her for one last moment. “I know you need to get back to your rehearsal.”
“They can wait.”
“Break a leg.” Tempest clicked off, then slipped down her secret staircase and across the grounds to the tree house.
Her grandfather had invited his attorney, Vanessa, over for lunch, along with her wife, Dahlia, and their daughter Natalie. The idea was to have a practical meeting between Ash and his attorney, since he couldn’t leave Fiddler’s Folly, but sociable Ash couldn’t resist inviting the whole family. There would be no talk of legal matters during lunch, but Vanessa had driven separately from the rest of her family so she could stay for a private meeting with her client afterward.
“Ms. Raj!” six-year-old Natalie squealed from the open front door of the tree house. “Mamma V said I could ask you if you could get Abracadabra from his castle for me to play with.”
“I’ll get him in a minute,” Tempest said with a smile. Abra’s grand bunny hutch was indeed built with turrets to look like a fairy-tale castle. Not that Abra appreciated the castle motif, but he enjoyed the space, since he couldn’t roam free twenty-four hours a day. “Let me say hello to your parents first, and then I’ll go get him.”
The adults were gathered in the kitchen as Ash stirred the fragrant contents of a cast-iron skillet with a wooden spoon and Darius fixed a carafe of iced tea. Dahlia wrapped her arms around Tempest as soon as she spotted her behind her daughter. Tempest hugged her back.
“Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.” Dahlia gave her one last squeeze before letting go.
Dahlia was Ivy’s older sister, which is how they’d met Vanessa, though they’d never had need of her legal services until now. Dahlia shared the same naturally red hair as Ivy, and you could guess that they were sisters, but you’d never mistake one for the another. Contrasting Ivy’s petite frame and penchant for pink, Dahlia wore vibrant colors that showed off her numerous curves, sported thick-rimmed cat-eye glasses in bright yellow, and spoke with a loud and confident voice that matched.
Tempest grinned back at her. “You’ve already helped us get the best lawyer.”
Vanessa gave Tempest a much briefer hug, but a smile just as warm. “Good to see you, Tempest.”
Dahlia hooked her arm around Tempest’s elbow. “Nat wants to play with Tempest’s bear-size bunny. We’ll be back with him in a minute. Between the two of us, we should be able to carry him. Right, Tempest?”
Natalie giggled and waved goodbye.
“I can carry my bunny by myself, you know.” Tempest closed the door behind them.
Dahlia held a finger to her lips. “After you. I can’t tell which direction we’re supposed to walk.”
From this vantage point, in the thickest section of trees on the property, it was possible to imagine the tree house was the only dwelling for miles. If no traffic was passing on the residential street below, and if the wind blew in the right direction, the sound of the hidden creek that gave the town its name filled the air, sounding almost like a raging river after heavy rainfall. Tempest led the way to the Secret Fort with Abra’s hutch.
“She’ll come looking for us if we’re not back in ten minutes,” Dahlia said once they’d cleared the tree house. “That doesn’t give me long to convince you to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Vanessa is an amazing attorney and your grandfather is innocent. She’ll get him acquitted if it goes to trial. You don’t need to investigate.”
“Says the woman who writes about true crime.”
Dahlia’s glasses slipped down her nose as she stepped over a gnarled tree root. “Historical cold cases are totally different. Nobody is alive to come after me if I poke my nose in the wrong place.”
“Who says I’m investigating?” Tempest knew Ivy wouldn’t have ratted her out.
“Wow.” Dahlia stopped in front of the partially constructed stone tower. “That’s the most spectacular bunny house I’ve ever seen.”
“Come on in.” Tempest stepped through the doorway that lacked a door, into the stone structure without a roof. Abra’s castle-style hutch took up only a small corner of the tower, but the sprawling hutch gave Abracadabra a lot of room to explore. The gargantuan gray lop-eared rabbit came to the main door of the hutch to greet his visitors.
Dahlia knelt in front of the hutch. “I should have brought him some food so he’ll like me.”
“He’s eaten enough as it is.” Tempest scooped Abra into her arms. With so many people fussing over him, he’d gained several pounds since she’d moved home. “He likes being scratched between his ears.”
“Don’t distract me with a cute pet.”
“You were desperate to help me investigate last time—”
“Which was a terrible, terrible idea. Can I hold him? Hey there, little guy. Oh my God, he’s heavy! I stopped picking up Nat before she got this big. No, I’ve got him. Forget about what my past self told you. I’m an older, wiser woman than I was last year. I have gray hair now. Look.” She tilted her head toward Tempest, revealing not even a hint of gray. “Gray. Hair.”
“There’s no gray.”
“Really?” She swore. “I thought I spotted a couple the other day. Van says I need to act older for some of my sources to take me more seriously. Good thing my next interview is with a guy my age. But still, gray hair or not, I’m older and wiser than I was when I tried get involved.”
“It was only a few months ago.”
“Different calendar year.” Dahlia straightened and adjusted Abra in her arms. “One of my New Year’s resolutions is to stop giving friends bad advice.”
“That’s a strangely specific resolution.”
“You haven’t been home long enough to know you should never listen to my advice. I convinced one of my girlfriends to dye her hair white. It looks really stylish on a lot of people. On her? Not so much. People kept thinking she was her daughter’s grandmother.”
“Ouch.”
“I told another friend she should do the wasabi challenge at a restaurant, to eat a whole rice ball filled with wasabi, to make the restaurant’s wall of fame.”
“No.” Tempest’s throat and stomach ached psychosomatically when she thought about eating such a large amount of spicy Japanese horseradish.
Dahlia bit her lip. “I’m afraid so. She’s still not speaking to me.”
“But you’re telling me not to investigate on my own. By your logic, that means I should.”
“But my gut is telling me you should investigate. What I’m saying out loud is the opposite of my real advice.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I think I’m going to fall over.”
Tempest took Abra back from Dahlia. “Did Vanessa ask you to talk with me?”
“God, no. Vanessa is the most professional of professional professionals. Did I mention she’s a professional? I know absolutely nothing about the case. It’s not like on TV how everyone tells everyone else their legally protected business. How is every single TV lawyer not disbarred? My sister didn’t give you up, either. I’ve known you since I was a kid.”
“I’ve been gone a long time. A lot has happened.”
“Life happens to all of us. Just because I haven’t known you in years, doesn’t mean I don’t know you.” Dahlia ran her fingertips over one of the rough stones of the unfinished tower. “Whatever you do, please be safe.”
“I will.”
Abra squirmed in Tempest’s arms as they made their way back to the tree house, as if he could sense the fact that she was lying.
“Sometimes I hate how smart you are,” Tempest whispered to the bunny.
Natalie played with Abra on the deck, which was effectively an extension of the kitchen. Ash had grown up with a traditional South Indian kitchen, with no real distinction between the outdoor and indoor spaces of the kitchen, and he’d created the same feeling here. The sliding door to the deck was almost always open, even when the weather was bad. Between the awning and the protection of the sprawling oak tree, there was plenty of protection from the rain.
“When do we make the pizza?” Natalie asked.
Ash chuckled. “Do you want to help?”
She scrambled up from her spot sitting cross-legged with Abra on her lap and joined them inside.
“I’m making the jackfruit topping for the pizza,” Ash said, “but I need someone who can roll out the turmeric pizza dough.”
He scooped a ball of orange-tinted dough that had been rising on the counter, set Natalie up at the breakfast-nook table, and showed her how to roll out the dough into two pizzas after she washed her hands. They topped the two pizzas with a tomato-jackfruit sauce and mozzarella.
“It’s like magic,” Natalie said as she watched the crust rise and the toppings bubble through the oven’s glass door as the pizzas baked. “I want to be a baker.”
“Not a writer like Mommy D?” Vanessa asked.
“Both.” Natalie grinned.
They ate the pizzas at the deck’s dining table, talking about food, movies, and a new clothing shop that had opened downtown that carried amazing shoes, according to Dahlia—basically anything except for the case. Natalie was riveted by the conversation about how large a jackfruit grows once Ash explained that they often weighed more than fifteen pounds—heavier than Abra.
“Can we plant a jackfruit tree next to my lemon tree?” Natalie asked after she’d had a second slice of pizza.
“I don’t think they grow in this climate, Nat,” Vanessa said.
“It’s true,” Ash confirmed. “But I have a secret.” He disappeared into the kitchen and returned a few seconds later holding an empty can with a label showing green jackfruit. “Shh. Don’t tell my secret.”
“Want to see Abra’s house before you leave?” Tempest asked Natalie.
“His castle!” she squealed. “Come on, Abra. I’ll take you home.” He came when she called him and hopped down the stairs at her side.
On the way to the Secret Fort, a whirring noise came from the Secret Staircase workshop, the last of four structures on the property. Her dad and grandfather were still at the tree house with Natalie’s parents, but someone was making noise inside the workshop.
“Why are you stopping?” Natalie asked. “Are you tired from carrying Abra?”
“That’s either your aunt Ivy or my friend Gideon, who I want to talk to. Let’s take a detour.”
Hoping it might be Gideon, who was hard to track down due to his lack of cell phone, Tempest moved Abra into the crook of her left arm and slid open the barn doors with her free hand.
It wasn’t Gideon.
This was a much larger person. One hiding behind a mask.