After the unexpected diversion, Tempest made good on her promise to show Natalie Abra’s house in the Secret Fort before going back to the main house to move forward with her plan to clear her grandfather. Sanjay was the rational choice for someone to help her with her wild idea, but he was performing out of town.
Ivy was still at work and Gideon wasn’t answering his landline, but she knew he often let it go through to his answering machine—a real live answering machine!—if he was working on a sculpture. Tempest sent Ivy a text and left Gideon a message. Ivy texted her back to say she was in, but after half an hour there was still no word from Gideon.
She drove to Gideon’s house in Oakland and let herself in through the side gate. His studio door was open and she spotted him in front of a slab of limestone with a tool in each hand. She’d been right. He was chiseling on a stone creature. She froze when she saw what it was.
A raven.
No, that was just her imagination. It was a bird with large eyes and a long beak. But not necessarily a raven. And its body wasn’t just a bird. The bird head blended into the body of an amphibious creature.
“Raven-lizard?” she asked.
He pulled an air filtration mask from his face. “Crow and salamander. A commission requested the combo. I’d never done one like it. It’s a challenge.”
Though he’d never carved this exact creature before, it still radiated the magical feeling that came through with every stone he touched. The expressions on the faces of his stone carvings made them seem like living, breathing creatures. It didn’t take a big stretch of the imagination to think of them climbing off their perches, stretching their necks, and walking or flying off into the wider world beyond Gideon’s backyard.
“I left you a message on your answering machine earlier.”
“The beak was tricky, so I’ve been here the whole time with Cas.”
“Cas?”
“Crow-and-salamander.” He wiped stone dust off his hands and led her to an answering machine as big as a shoebox. It looked like one she’d seen at the indoor section of a salvage yard she’d visited while looking for knickknacks for a house whose owners wanted multiple sliding bookcases—yet the owners weren’t readers. They wanted a certain vintage aesthetic.
He pushed a black plastic button as big as his thumb and played back the message before deleting it. “I’m in.”
“I didn’t even tell you the details of my plan in the message.”
He shrugged. “I figure that’s because it’s bad enough you didn’t want any evidence left behind.”
“Then why did you say you were in?”
“Because it’s bad enough that you need help. What do you need me to do?”
Gideon and Ivy were both in. A former stage magician, a librarian-in-training, and a stone carver planning a heist. What could possibly go wrong?
“Maybe we’re after a cipher,” Ivy said an hour later. She’d arrived at Gideon’s house after getting off work at the Locked Room Library, and Tempest had handed her the notes she’d compiled already. They were now sprawled in front of his stone fireplace shaped like the open mouth of a dragon, with both paper notebooks and electronic devices spread across the floor. “Corbin could have used that particular edition of And Then There Were None as the key to a coded message your grandfather needs to decipher.”
“Why would he do that?” Gideon asked.
Tempest shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about something that makes more sense. Agatha Christie loved to populate her novels with characters who all had something to hide. And Then There Were None especially. If my grandfather thinks Corbin wrote something important inside this book that could clear him—”
“The characters,” Ivy squealed.
“I have no idea what you two are talking about.” Gideon looked from Ivy to Tempest.
“Parallels.” Tempest stood and made sure there was room for her to spin. She pushed off into a pirouette. Then another. It all made sense. She came to a halt in front of the haunting fireplace. “Corbin Colt’s debut was so successful because of the creepy, well-written story, but people also noticed the subtle social commentary and real-world parallels. He loved doing that. It makes sense he’d scribble notes into the books of other authors.”
“You mean assigning the roles of real-life people to characters in that book?” Gideon asked.
“People,” said Tempest, “with something to hide.”
“Who were at the séance,” Ivy murmured.
“His killer,” Tempest said, “could be named inside the book.”
Nobody spoke for eleven seconds.
“I don’t know.” Gideon ran his fingers along the stone hearth he’d carved. “It’s a big leap.”
Tempest shrugged. “I know. I’m probably wrong. We have no idea what’s written inside that book. Which is why we need to get it.” She pointed back at the pile of papers and devices they’d been using to plan the break-in.
“Right,” Ivy said. “Back to work. It’s scary how much information about Hazel and her house is available online. I didn’t know Hazel wasn’t her real name.”
“She calls herself that because of her green-flecked hazel eyes,” Gideon said.
“No, really?” Ivy deadpanned. “The photos of her and her mom show they’ve got the same eyes.”
“The ones taken on an unnamed Caribbean island?” Tempest asked. “I think that’s her aunt, from the captions. She can’t decide how much she wants to share online versus how much to keep private. She was born on an undisclosed Caribbean island, where her family is from, then raised since elementary school somewhere in the U.S.”
Real estate photos of her house were publicly available from previous online listings, and Hazel shared enough snippets of her life online to get a good idea of what her living situation was. She’d lived alone before Corbin moved in. No pets or kids underfoot. Like Fleur had said, it was a house with an extensive security system. At least that’s what two signs stuck in her yard warned would-be burglars. Hazel wasn’t stupid. She was a minor internet celebrity living alone. Of course she’d have security.
“I brought these.” Ivy tossed a pile of Donald Westlake novels onto the coffee table. “Heist capers.”
“Don’t those heists always end badly?” Tempest asked.
“Hmm.” Ivy scooped the books back into her bag. “Maybe another time.”
“We’re doomed,” Gideon said half an hour later. “We can’t defeat a security system. We don’t even know if those little signs are really the company she uses.”
If they’d been a real crew of thieves, they could have disarmed an alarm. But that wasn’t in the cards.
“We also have to remember she could be involved in Corbin’s death,” Tempest added, “since she’s mixed up in the trick that had thousands of her fans seeing Corbin in two far-apart places within minutes. Dozens of fans would have had to fake their ‘live’ interaction with her and lied about it, which seems really risky. We don’t know what she’s capable of. We need to figure out how to defeat her security system and be careful around her.”
Gideon groaned.
“Gideon is right,” Ivy said. “It looks pretty hopeless.”
“Not if we stop trying to plan a heist,” Tempest said.
Ivy scowled at her. “You’re giving up?”
“No. I’m saying we use the skills at our disposal. We don’t plan a heist. We plan a trick.”