“It’s not a supernatural explanation,” said Tempest.
A strong emotion flashed in Hazel’s eyes. “Anything else is impossible. It had to be Lavinia, channeling something she learned about from Corbin’s research.”
“You told the police you saw him right before he showed up dead at the séance.” She had to tread carefully here. She didn’t want to muddle Hazel’s memories any more than they already were.
“I did. Because I did. I wasn’t lying. That beady-eyed detective asked me the same questions again and again, trying to get me to trip myself up. But he couldn’t find any holes in my story. Because I wasn’t lying. I saw him. My fans did, too. The only explanation—”
“Corbin wasn’t killed through a supernatural force, Hazel. Lavinia didn’t summon an evil spirit to kill your boyfriend.”
“She held a séance.” Hazel glared at her. “Séances call spirits from that realm into this one. She hired a medium. What the hell did Lavinia think would happen? Corbin knew she was doing it, you know. That’s why he was upset that day and wanted to spend all afternoon in his office writing. I’m sorry your grandfather has been blamed. I already told the police to look at Lavinia. She hired that medium—”
“Sanjay isn’t a medium,” Tempest explained. This conversation wasn’t going as she’d hoped. She needed to rein it in. “He’s a stage magician.”
Hazel blinked at her, truly surprised. “What, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat?”
Tempest wanted to say he’d never use a live animal in his act. But that wouldn’t help things at all. “He does large illusions on the stage. He’s performed all over the world. He’s good at creating illusions. Nothing supernatural involved. The séance was a trick. A show. Something to help Lavinia move on. What you saw that night was also a trick. Corbin’s trick.”
“Corbin isn’t—wasn’t—a magician.” Tears welled in Hazel’s eyes.
Tempest gave her a moment to compose herself. “You were filming in the room you always use for your livestreamed happy hours, right?”
When Tempest had previously visited Hazel’s house, her one mission had been to find the book that Ash wanted to get back. She hadn’t been paying attention to the layout of the house for its own sake, but she’d done it automatically. Paying attention to the layout of her surroundings was so important both to her stage shows and to her dad’s business.
They knew Hazel hadn’t been mistaken about the time, because she was livestreaming her happy-hour show when she saw Corbin. She couldn’t have recorded it ahead of time. Even if she had done so but hadn’t wanted to admit to it, she was interacting with her fans’ comments in real time. Tempest had previously speculated that it could have been a complicated trick. But it wasn’t. Hazel’s fans had heard Corbin leaving off camera. What they had seen was Hazel’s reaction. They had seen Hazel acting like she was talking to someone directly off camera, but they’d only heard Corbin. Just like Tempest had heard Sanjay on the phone. They didn’t see him. Nobody did.
Hazel said she’d seen him—but had she?
Hazel couldn’t have seen him. In the video, fans reported that she looked over her shoulder, as if she was looking at someone. But it’s natural to look in the direction from which you hear a voice. From the space where she filmed her show, there was no way for her to see the door to his office or the front door of the house. Unless he’d paused in the doorway of her filming room, she couldn’t have seen him.
“Yeah,” Hazel said. “I was filming in the same place I always do. That’s where I saw him.”
“Are you sure?”
“You think I don’t know what I saw? I know you’re trying to help clear your grandpa, but think it’s time for you to leave.”
“I’ll leave in just a minute. If you can show me your filming studio first. One minute.”
“Fine.” Hazel led Tempest to the room.
“Show me where you were filming,” Tempest said.
Hazel complied, stepping to a spot in front of a standing desk which had been covered with a farmhouse-style tabletop of mismatched wooden planks.
“You didn’t move from here while filming, right?”
Hazel pointed at a blue tape “X” on the floor at her feet. “I’m a professional.”
“Your door was open?”
“Yeah. The light is better. I didn’t expect Corbin to interrupt. He was working on a new book and often disappeared for hours. I thought he’d be a while.”
“Did Corbin stop in your doorway when he spoke to you?”
She hesitated. “Well, he knocked and looked in, but then didn’t want to disturb me when he saw I was filming, so he kept walking.”
“What was he wearing?”
She pressed her palms to her eyes. “I don’t know! He was interrupting. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“But did you actually see him?”
She didn’t answer.
“You can’t see the door to Corbin’s study, or the front door of your house, from where you’re standing here,” Tempest continued. “For you to see him, he would have needed to be standing directly in the doorway itself.”
Hazel swore under her breath.
Corbin’s new girlfriend wasn’t in on the trick, but like all humans, she was an unreliable eyewitness narrator. She’d been so convinced he was there with her, first writing in his study alone and then leaving on a walk, that it never occurred to her there was a trick. She wasn’t expecting a deception, so therefore she didn’t see one.
It was in character for Corbin to work without being disturbed. When questioned by the police, her statements were unreliable because she told them what she perceived, which was reasonable and what most people would have done, but not what had truly transpired. The livestreamed video backed that up, because she turned toward the sound of Corbin’s voice and the sound of a knock. Her reaction was genuine, not acting, because she truly believed she’d seen him. She was so convincing that even those who’d watched the video and heard his voice imagined he was really there.
The fact that she later said how thoughtful it was of him to reactivate the Stay setting on the home alarm should have been a red flag. He wasn’t usually that considerate. He wasn’t that day, either. He wasn’t physically there to disarm and rearm the security system.
Tempest had seen smart speakers in the house. He could have easily used one to play a recording, knowing a time when Hazel wouldn’t get up to see him in person. He knew he’d upset her, but he knew it would be worse if she knew he was going to see Lavinia.
It was reasonable that he wouldn’t have wanted his new girlfriend to know he was going to see his ex-wife, but was there more to it than that?
Tempest had debunked the supernatural theory for good. Corbin Colt had left Forestville for Hidden Creek long before Hazel’s livestream. But she couldn’t trust the detective assigned to the case as someone to turn to with this information.
Tempest thanked Hazel for her honesty and time.
“Here’s your last dose of honesty,” Hazel said from the front door as she showed Tempest out. “I bet we would have been friends in another life, but in this messy one with so much death and deception, I hope I don’t see you again. All I can do is wish you the best of luck clearing your grandpa and getting answers for all of us.”
Tempest’s hands shook as she started the engine. She was so close to solving this. The trick of Corbin getting himself to Hidden Creek on his own was the biggest piece of the puzzle. It was the one part of the trick that would cause the rest of the pieces to fall into place. She could almost see it. Almost.
On her drive home through the bewitching ancient trees that made this region both so special and so susceptible to burning down every so often, Tempest left the windows down, listening to the sounds of nature and breathing in its rich scents. Birds she couldn’t identify spoke to each other. Water trickled over smooth rocks in the nearby river. Branches of Douglas firs swayed in the wind.
Her phone rang from the passenger seat, startling her from forming her next steps. She’d set it to silent mode so that only emergency calls would come through while she met with Hazel and had forgotten to set it back. A photo of her grandfather flashed on the screen. His favorite fedora filled half the screen, and his joyful smile reminded Tempest of the day she’d taken the photo on the tree house deck while Grannie Mor was playing her fiddle during a small dinner party.
“I thought we’d have more time,” Ash said when Tempest answered. “I suppose it was narrow-minded to think that the police wouldn’t be big readers.”
“They found Corbin Colt’s manuscript?” She’d thought they’d have more time as well.
“A young policewoman cataloging the Agatha Christie book into evidence found the pages in the hollowed-out hiding spot and read them. The detective is talking with your father now. In light of the true facts twisted into that damn fool’s manuscript, Detective Rinehart wants to reopen your mother’s disappearance.”