Sanjay answered his door with wild hair sticking out at all angles and bare feet peeking out from beneath pajama pants. Tempest found herself slightly disappointed he’d taken time to pull on a T-shirt.
“Oh, goodie. You’re welcoming me home with death donuts.” Sanjay smoothed down his hair as he led her inside his loft apartment. It didn’t work and it sprang free as soon as he let go.
“These are store-bought.” Tempest placed the paper bag of donuts on his kitchen island. “One hundred percent free from chili pepper.”
He grinned as he peeked inside the bag. “You remembered my favorite was jelly-filled donuts.”
Tempest didn’t have the heart to tell him everyone’s favorite donuts were the jelly-filled kind. They hadn’t eaten enough donuts together for her to know his favorite.
“You were still asleep?”
He nodded. “Some of us still have nocturnal careers.”
“Then you haven’t heard the news.”
Sanjay paused with a donut inches from his mouth. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Sylvie was attacked.”
“Is she okay? God, you weren’t with her—”
“I wasn’t. I found out when a police officer showed up at my house. They don’t know if she’s okay. She’s missing.”
“But you said she was attacked.”
“They know that because there was blood.”
Sanjay eyed the donut oozing with crimson-colored raspberry filling. With a shudder, he abandoned the donut.
“When you’re not on stage,” he said, “you really have the worst timing. Since you’ve spoiled my jelly donut, go ahead and tell me what’s going on.”
While she told him what had happened at Lavinia’s Lair and what she’d learned about Sylvie investigating Corbin’s death, he got his espresso maker started.
“Lavinia is the one who attacked Sylvie?” His eyes bulged.
“Don’t interrupt. I’ve nearly got you caught up.” She concluded by telling him what she’d learned right after meeting with Sylvie’s neighbor, which was the reason she’d driven across the bridge in hopes of finding Sanjay at home. “After I left Sylvie’s apartment building, I got a call from Kumiko that the police had found Lavinia. She spent the night at Victor’s house. Which, if the timing holds up, gives her an alibi for the attack on Sylvie that took place at her house. The two of them are giving statements to the police now.”
“The attack took place inside Lavinia’s Lair?”
Tempest nodded.
“Was the door forced?”
“I don’t think so. You’re thinking someone had the key.” Tempest grimaced. “Which Lavinia just changed. Leaving Kumiko as the most viable suspect in the attack on Sylvie.”
Sanjay froze with his hand raised to take a bite of a donut with bright yellow lemon-curd filling. “I was right all along?”
“The more I think about it, the more it seems like you were right. Lavinia appears to have an alibi for Sylvie’s kidnapping or murder, so we overlooked the person who didn’t need an alibi. An elderly woman in a wheelchair.”
“You poked a hole in my theory earlier, saying her scuffed shoes were her pre-accident shoes. Did you learn they were new after all?”
“Who says someone needs to be able to walk to kill people? Have you noticed Kumiko’s arms?”
“Um, I’ll have to go with no.”
“They’re amazing. She used to be a rower when she taught at Oxford.”
Sanjay frowned at her as he thrust a tiny espresso cup into her hands. “You could have told me that fact before.”
“I didn’t realize it was relevant. It’s less relevant for Corbin’s murder than the attack on Sylvie. None of us at the séance have an alibi for his death, but if Kumiko is the only one without an alibi when Sylvie was attacked, that’s a different question.”
“Even if you’re right that Kumiko could have attacked Sylvie and dragged her body away with her badass rower’s arms, why? Why would she do it?”
“Maybe because she doesn’t want my grandfather to go to prison. She’s fond of him. If my grandfather hadn’t gotten himself a last-minute invitation so he could look for that damn manuscript—”
“Then a doctor wouldn’t have been there to insist on examining Corbin and getting blood on himself. It makes sense.… I just don’t know.” Sanjay ran a finger around the edge of his espresso cup.
“You’re the one who thought she was guilty in the first place.”
“I wasn’t exactly joking.”
Tempest glared at Sanjay, who was still looking delightfully rumpled with his unkempt hair. “Put on your shoes.” She tossed back the espresso shot.
“Why?”
“Because otherwise,” said Tempest with a wicked curl of her lip, “I’ll do something terribly inadvisable without you.”
“I can’t believe I’m letting you talk me into this.” Sanjay pulled his bowler hat more tightly around his head.
“You were mad I didn’t wait for you to break into Hazel’s house.”
“That was different.”
“How? How was that different?”
“Shh. Keep your voice down. I’m trying to concentrate.”
“If you want to be more conspicuous,” said Tempest, “you’re doing a great job. If anyone is watching, that security-blanket hat of yours is as distinctive a calling card as possible.”
Sanjay reddened. “Exaggeration does not become you. Do you want my help breaking into Victor’s house or not?”
She’d meant to practice lock picking, not for this explicit purpose but to keep her skills sharp and to never stop learning ways to improve her craft as an illusionist. But it hadn’t happened yet. Her understanding of pins, keyways, and tension wrenches was still mostly theoretical.
This was her reason for surprising Sanjay with donuts. From Kumiko, she’d learned that Lavinia was on her way to Hidden Creek with Victor. Kumiko didn’t know what Tempest planned to do with this information.
“You’re sure he doesn’t have an alarm?” Sanjay asked. For the fourth time.
“Ninety-five percent sure.”
“Ninety-five? What kind of answer is that?”
“A truthful one. I’ve been here before. I didn’t see an alarm.”
The lock clicked open. They held their breaths. No alarm. At least not one that made noise.
She’d previously gone to Victor’s house to see some of the models he’d built in his home office. They were going over ideas for the small house she wanted to build on the Fiddler’s Folly property using the Secret Fort built by her mom as the main structure.
“What are we looking for?” Sanjay asked as he peeked out from behind a closed curtain.
“Anything suspicious.”
“No way.” Sanjay gripped the curtain.
“Is someone coming?”
Sanjay turned slowly around. “No. I meant no way. I can’t believe there’s nothing in particular you’re looking for. Nothing! Why did we even break in?”
“I told you—”
“Right. To look for ‘something suspicious.’ Like a handwritten confession he wrote on the walls of his workshop.”
“Let’s go.” Tempest led the way to Victor’s home office on the second floor.
“I was joking!” Sanjay called after her.
“I know,” she called back from the top of the stairs. “But his home office is the best place to start.”
On a large drafting table, they found dozens of sheets of graph paper with ideas for a mechanism that could hide and then drop a body.
“Oh my God,” Sanjay whispered, picking up an especially complex drawing.
“These aren’t what they look like. He was working on trying to figure out how someone outside of the séance could have hidden Corbin’s body to drop during the séance.”
Sanjay glared at her. “You never tell me anything.”
“I’m telling you now.” She snatched the paper. “Don’t wrinkle that. We don’t want him to know we were here.”
“This room is a mess. How would he know if we moved anything?” He spun a wooden model of an airplane between his hands, the same motion he used to spin his bowler hat. The plane’s wings spanned the same width as his hat, so Tempest wasn’t worried he’d break it. His gentle and adept fingers worked mechanically without him needing to think about what he was doing.
“I don’t know him well enough to know how his mind works. He’s smart. He could be a genius who knows the exact placement of everything.”
“A method to his madness…”
“I hope you remember where you found that airplane.”
Sanjay put it back and switched to spinning his bowler hat between his fingers. “I don’t know what I’m looking for here. We also don’t know when he’ll be back. You stay in here and I’ll search the rest of the house.”
Tempest spent the next ten minutes looking through Victor’s office. She learned more about his love of Gothic Revival houses, but nothing that screamed that he was guilty of anything beyond being bad at taking care of house plants.
A feeling of dread came over her as she came down the stairs and heard voices. How would Sanjay explain himself to Victor?
She decided instantly what she had to do. She’d take the blame, just like Gideon had done for her earlier that week. No question. She’d first try to talk them out of the situation. Would Victor believe she’d forgotten something at his house when she’d been there a month before, and that his door happened to be open?
Probably not.
She took a deep breath and stepped into the living room.
Sanjay was alone. His phone was set on speaker, and the voice of the person on the phone came through loud and clear.
“Now really isn’t a good time,” Sanjay answered. “I’ll call you back later this afternoon.” He clicked off and slid the phone back into his pocket. “Sorry about that. I don’t have my headphones with me. Why do you look so upset? I doubt he has his own house bugged. We’ve already been talking to each other anyway—”
Tempest stopped his words with her lips. The quick, intense kiss came out of nowhere. She hadn’t planned on that, but her whole body was buzzing with excitement she couldn’t contain. Sanjay just happened to be the closest thing for her to quiet her overloading brain.
“Sanjay,” she said to the shocked man standing before her. “You’ve solved it. I know how it was done. The whole trick.”
“I did?” Sanjay blinked at her. “You do?”
“I think so. There’s just one thing I need to check to make sure.”
She’d been so focused on the pages she found implicating her father, Moriarty getting close to Grannie Mor and helping figure out what happened to her mom and aunt, and now Sylvie’s kidnapping, she hadn’t stopped to properly think about what she’d missed. She hadn’t stopped to realize she’d fallen into a trap, the likes of which magicians set. She’d been misdirected.
Tempest Raj now saw through the spotlight that had guided her field of view to the wrong spot. The Tempest was ready to pull back the curtain.