“Exactly,” Tempest said, “like you wanted, Ellery.”
Ellery gaped at her. “You can’t be serious. Why? Why would I kill Corbin?”
“You didn’t know Corbin revealed your secret in a manuscript he was writing, did you? That’s what gave it away.”
Ellery narrowed her eyes as all eyes turned to her. “What secret? I suppose in a twisted way it’s flattering you think I could stage such a baffling crime. I didn’t, you know. Is your suspicion because I love puzzling mysteries?”
“No,” said Tempest. “Corbin was writing a book loosely based on my mom’s disappearance. In it, he features a book club. A character based on you is having an affair with the spouse of another member of the book club. Don’t bother denying your affair. A private investigator is already working on finding evidence. It’s only a matter of time.”
“I’m almost disappointed,” said Ellery, “that I don’t get to remain a suspect for longer. If that’s your reasoning, I have to disappoint you. I wasn’t having an affair with Corbin. More importantly, I’m a caregiver for my father. He had a turn for the worse last night. I spent the entire night, until about ten o’clock this morning, at the hospital. I couldn’t have harmed Sylvie. You think the two crimes were committed by the same person, right? At least half a dozen people can verify where I was when someone kidnapped Sylvie.”
Tempest had been so sure. She’d eliminated everyone else. Hadn’t she? She would stake her life on the innocence of Sanjay and her grandfather. Lavinia and Victor had alibis for Sylvie’s disappearance, and Tempest was pretty sure the police had interviewed additional witnesses. That just left Kumiko, the woman who’d come to her for help. Which didn’t make any sense … Did it? How could she have gotten Sylvie upstairs? Even if her arms were that strong, surely Sylvie’s body would be covered in bruises from being dragged upstairs. And what about the blood?
Was Lavinia and Victor’s alibi a trick? Ellery’s couldn’t be. Not if she was telling the truth, which could be easily verified. The trick wasn’t completely solved. Yet.
“Nice try, kiddo,” Blackburn said as he escorted her to her jeep.
“You weren’t just being polite to insist you walk everyone to their cars.”
“Something strange is going on. Until we know what it is, I don’t like thinking about any of you out there on your own. Especially not after midnight.”
Tempest raised an eyebrow. It was too dark to make out much of Blackburn’s expression, but she heard the worry in his voice. “You think one of them is a killer.”
“Of course.”
“Not my grandfather.”
“Rinehart doesn’t, either. He must know something isn’t right. That’s why he’s still investigating.”
“He won’t figure it out.”
In the shadows, Blackburn’s face would have looked menacing if she hadn’t known him for so long. He took his time reading her face before speaking. “Rinehart is a good man, from what I’ve seen. I admit I wouldn’t have made the same decision to arrest your grandfather, but the evidence was there and I don’t know what kind of pressure he was under. In spite of that, he’s still investigating. Why won’t you trust him?”
“He didn’t exist until ten years ago.”
Blackburn stared at her. Then he broke into a whoop of laughter. “That’s why you don’t trust him? Because you think he’s a con artist? You don’t think a police department would do a little research—
“He. Didn’t. Exist.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I’m still friends with people in the department. Not Rinehart, but I hear things. He’s from a family that shares a surname with a serial killer. It was wrecking people’s perception of him—both on and off the force. He had some distant familial connection to a mystery novelist by the name of Robert Rinehart. He wrote a book about a staircase.”
Tempest groaned. “Not Robert Rinehart. Mary Roberts Rinehart. The Circular Staircase is her most famous novel. She was known as the American Agatha Christie.”
“That’s it. When Austin was getting grief for his family connection, he changed his name to that more distant relation. All above board.”
“Oh.”
“You make things too hard sometimes, Tempest. Be safe.” He knocked on the top of the jeep. Why did men so often do that?
The sound must have startled a bird in a nearby nest. After a gentle rustling in a tree, a large bird swooped so low overhead and onto the roof of Lavinia’s house that they ducked.
“That’s all I can take.” Tempest nearly screamed the words. “I’m solving at least one mystery right now. Do you have a ladder?”
“In my sedan? No.”
Tempest marched up to Lavinia’s front door and knocked. “Can I borrow your ladder?”
Lavinia was too shocked to object. She opened the garage. Tempest hauled out the ladder and rested it against the roof. They were at the back of the house, where the roof was closest to the ground on the sloping hillside.
“Hold this,” she said to both Lavinia and Blackburn, then climbed the rungs. When she reached the top, she shone the light of her phone toward the area where they’d seen birds. She climbed down. Two rungs from the bottom, she jumped to the ground.
“I don’t suppose you placed a bird feeder on your roof and filled it with a colossal bag of birdseed?”
Lavinia stared at her like she’d gone mad. “Why would I do that?”
“Someone,” Tempest said, “installed a bird feeder sure to attract a lot of birds.”
“Why?”
“My guess? Because they knew it would make you turn off your video camera. The person who kidnapped Sylvie wanted to make sure they weren’t captured on camera when they came to the house this morning.”