Tempest repeated to her dad what she’d told her grandfather about Corbin’s manuscript, in more detail this time.
“I would have killed him myself if I’d known just how damning his manuscript was,” Darius said.
Ash clicked his tongue. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s just an expression.” His eyes said otherwise.
“It was awful.” Tempest couldn’t help shivering as she remembered those words scrawled in the hand of a dead man. “How did he know about the grave robbers?” she whispered.
“It can’t have been a coincidence.” Darius paced across the kitchen floor. “He knew Emma’s sister’s grave was one of the ones desecrated.”
“It wasn’t a difficult secret to figure out,” Ash said as he stirred a pot on the stove. “The press simply didn’t ask the right questions to discover the full list of names of the graves disturbed. The story the media told was of university students running wild and student clubs with initiations that went too far.”
“Corbin made up the part about her grave being specifically targeted,” Tempest said. “Right?”
“Of course,” her grandfather said quickly. “Sensationalist fiction. Along with his nonsense about it being a supernatural entity collecting body parts.” He visibly shivered.
“It’s kind of good how bad it is,” Darius said.
Ash grunted.
“I’m serious, Dad. Angel Diablo? It’s like a cartoon-character supervillain name. Nobody who reads that will take it seriously. The cops can’t possibly think I did the things that character did.” Darius’s voice didn’t sound as confident as his words.
“I wish I’d had a chance to read everything,” Tempest said. “The pages got mixed up so I saw the end before I’d read them all.”
“The damage is done,” said Ash. “How much worse could it get?”
Tempest brought Abra in from his hutch to keep them company as the continued their tense discussion, because it’s a scientifically proven fact that it’s impossible to be entirely devoid of hope with a curmudgeonly lop-eared rabbit hopping around at your feet.
In the cozy kitchen, they ate a dinner of spicy chana dal and cucumber and red-onion raita, using the already-baked sourdough as dipping bread. The tart sourdough flavor worked surprisingly well to complement the spicy lentils.
They hadn’t reached Morag yet, which added additional stress to an already anxious meal, which they ate with their cell phones face-up on the table—something both Ash and Darius usually frowned on. Tempest declined a call from her business manager, Winston Kapoor, who wanted on update on how show planning was going. She’d ignored his texts and emails, so he was resorting to actual phone calls now. She knew she’d have to get back to him at some point.
After scooping second helpings onto plates to make sure his family was well fed, Ash got down to business. “Darius, why don’t you give us a report from that private investigator of yours. Since you hired them without my knowledge, at least you can tell me what you’ve learned.”
“None of Corbin’s fans have serious criminal records. Not that she’s found so far. At least none of the ones who’ve said things about him online.”
“Lavinia said she gave his paper fan mail to the police,” Tempest cut in.
Darius nodded. “I’m told they’re looking into it, but our own investigation can’t hurt. Vanessa thinks focusing on the fans is the way to go.”
“It wasn’t a fan,” Tempest snapped. Then it dawned on her. “Reasonable doubt for the jury? But we’re nowhere close to a trial. We need to stop things from getting that far. Is the PI looking into the people at the séance?”
He shook his head. “Like I said, she’s focusing on other angles. You have any specific questions?”
“A couple hundred. But for the PI, two. First, was Ellery having an affair with Corbin?”
“The purple-haired woman?” Ash asked.
“In Corbin’s manuscript,” Tempest explained, “there’s a character named Alice with dyed hair who’s named after Lewis Carol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In real life, Ellery is named after literary character Ellery Queen and obviously her purple hair isn’t natural. Alice is having an affair with the husband of one of the other book club members. Since there are so many parallels to our family, I bet there are other parallels as well.”
“That manuscript is filled with lies.” Darius flexed his jaw and arm muscles as he spoke. Tempest doubted he was aware of the action, and she hoped if he ever had to testify in court, he’d get a good coach first. He looked as if he was ready to bring Corbin Colt back from the dead to murder him once more. A jury could easily believe such a muscular man was more than capable of tossing a dead body onto an encircled table without making a noise or breaking a sweat. Especially with the anger that contorted his face when he spoke of Corbin Colt.
“You’ll still ask her to look into Ellery,” Tempest asked, “to see if there’s any evidence she was having an affair with Corbin?”
Her dad gave her a single curt nod.
Probably best to change the subject away from the manuscript. “One more thing I’m curious about. It would be good to know if Lavinia and Victor—?”
“That question I can answer already,” her dad said. “They’re dating. But their relationship started after Lavinia filed for divorce. They met when we began working on the plans for her renovation.”
“I wondered why he was at the séance,” Ash said. “He could have helped Lavinia commit the murder.”
Darius swore. “A conspiracy?”
“Two people is a partnership, not a conspiracy,” Tempest pointed out as her thoughts began to spin. Would any of the impossibilities be answered if it was two people working together? “If their secret—”
“It’s not a secret. Lots of people know. My guess is they’re being kinda private about it since they don’t know where it’s going.”
“We’ve had too many separate conversations,” Ash said as he brought mugs of coffee and a platter of cookies to the table. “Let’s go over what we know once more.”
“Starting with you.” Tempest pointed a shortbread cookie at him. “You’ve had at least a dozen people visiting you during your tree house confinement.”
Ash chuckled. “All but one really were social visits. I truly believe Lavinia will confess.”
“If it’s her.” The cookie in her fingers snapped in two. “Even if two people were working together, I don’t know what that tells us. It still looks impossible. I’ve tried to figure it out with Sanjay and Ivy, but I’m still missing something.”
Tempest abandoned the cookie and explained in more detail what she and her friends had thought through about the four impossibilities so far. The Raven’s impossibly quick flight from Forestville to Hidden Creek being a trick she hadn’t yet figured out, the fake knife placed into a real stab wound as misdirection with a purpose they didn’t yet know, no hiding spot big enough for Corbin to have been tied up in Lavinia’s Lair, and no mechanisms to have moved Corbin’s body onto the table while the séance circle remained an unbroken chain of hands.
Ash clicked his tongue. “You should have included me in your misdirection conversations with Ivy and Sanjay.”
“You were indisposed at the time.” Tempest was glad her grandfather hadn’t noticed how little she’d eaten. She’d employed dinner-plate misdirection, moving her food enough to disguise that much of it was still on the plate.
“Those cookies are cold. Let me make something fresh for dessert—”
“It’s fine, Dad.” Darius put a hand on his father-in-law’s shoulder.
Ash frowned, but a moment later he gave them a sly grin and showed them his open palm. A fraction of a second later, a quarter appeared between his thumb and forefinger. “Why is this coin in my hand?”
“Because you’re doing a coin trick,” Tempest answered.
“False.” He tossed the coin into the air. He didn’t even make a move to catch it in his hand.
Tempest followed the arc of where the coin would have landed. An oversize paper version of a coin appeared on Abra’s fluffy gray back. The bunny shook himself and the paper fluttered to the kitchen floor.
“Where did you come from?” Tempest asked the bunny as she scooped him up. “I thought you were napping under the table.”
“You didn’t notice Abracadabra wake up because you weren’t looking in the right place. You know better than that. You should focus on what you know. Not following leads you should not have followed.” Ash cupped her cheeks in his hands and leaned over Abra to kiss her forehead. “You have a brilliant mind, but it doesn’t always take you where it should. You understand misdirection from stage magic, and your oldest friend is an expert on impossible crime novels. This is what you should be doing.”
“Armchair detecting?” She couldn’t resist a smile.
“Exactly.” Ash grinned. “Armchair being the key word.”
“I thought you didn’t want me helping at all.”
“You’re my granddaughter. You’re going to help whether I like it or not, so at least I can keep an eye on you.”
Ash’s phone rang, startling all three of them. It was after ten o’clock already. Who could be—
“Morag!” he cried.
Tempest and her dad cleaned up the dishes in the kitchen, giving them time to catch up privately.
Ash came inside as they were finishing up and reported that Morag was well and that ferries were starting up. She’d be on the first one and Nicodemus would meet her and get her onto a flight home.
Was it true that Grannie Mor had been looking into her daughter Elspeth’s death in Edinburgh, which was tied to Emma’s disappearance in California five years later, rather than going on an artist’s retreat?
Now that Tempest had read Corbin Colt’s manuscript, she didn’t believe for a moment that her dad had desecrated her aunt’s grave and killed her mom as Corbin’s story had posited—but Corbin had known more than a casual observer should have. How did he know so much about the body snatching? Could Corbin Colt could have been involved with her mom vanishing?