Page 44

When Tempest, Gideon, and Sanjay got back to Fiddler’s Folly, the guys showed Tempest the diorama of the living room scene from the first night at Gray House.

Gideon had cut paper to cover the blocks to represent the furniture placement of the first night. Sanjay had cut the cardboard for the exterior walls with door and window openings to scale. Their attention to detail with the architectural details brought the room to life.

They’d each brought their skills to the task—but Tempest was keenly aware that Ivy’s perspective was missing. Ivy would know the details of the furniture itself.

“Sanjay, do you agree this is what you saw the first night?” Tempest asked.

“I do.”

Bookcases and a low cabinet serving as a bar lined the walls. The central furniture was arranged in a U shape around the fireplace performance area. Harold’s armchair and the love seat were on the right and left side, respectively, with Sanjay’s trunk in the center, and the rental futon and folding chairs behind it. The wooden figure lay on the floor between the trunk and the futon. It was a large room, so there was plenty of room to walk around the trunk—and to put a body inside it. Why was it necessary to move the furniture?

“Nicely done with the paper cutout folding chairs made of a continuous sheet of paper.” Sanjay tipped his hat to Gideon. “Our furniture needs just one more thing.”

Sanjay rummaged through a drawer of gouache paints before settling on tubes of burnt sienna, black, and metallic gray, which he used to paint the paper rectangle representing his magic trunk. “Now it’s perfect.”

Tempest raised an eyebrow. The trunk really did look perfect, down to its steel bolts, but it hadn’t been necessary. “My grandmother will kill you if you don’t clean that brush. There’s brush-cleaning soap over there.”

“We have more important things to worry about right now than a sacrificed paintbrush.”

“I’ll do it.” Gideon took the brush and wiped the excess paint on a rag before cleaning it in the farmhouse sink. “You realize that now we have to wait for that paint to dry.”

“We’re not playing with a dollhouse.” Sanjay pointed at the wooden figure dead body. “We’re simply looking at this to remember what we saw.”

Tempest snapped two photos of the scene from above. “Let’s move things to how they were when we found Lucas the second night.”

None of the shelving against the walls had been moved. The trunk was much closer to the fireplace and sliding bookcase, and the love seat and futon had switched places. The wooden figure representing Lucas Cruz was no longer behind the trunk, but now to its left.

“Look right?” Tempest asked Gideon.

He nodded as he pulled a graphite pencil from his pocket, then leaned over the sketch he’d made of the room’s second night.

“I didn’t think about this until seeing our 3D model,” he said, “but look.” He drew two straight lines away from the body. The first line reached the bookcase without bumping into anything. The second was a straight shot to the front door. Next, he drew two more lines, this time from the trunk. The same was true.

“You’re looking at where people could see the trunk unobstructed?” Sanjay asked.

“No,” said Tempest. She understood why Sanjay had asked: stage magicians needed to be conscious of what the audience could see. But that’s not what Gideon had drawn. “Those lines Gideon drew represent where the body could have been dragged in a straight line.”

“Someone small could have moved his body,” Gideon said. “But the front door was under observation the whole time.”

Tempest shook her head. “It was recorded last night when we were trapped in the library upstairs. But the house wasn’t under observation the whole time since Lucas was killed. Mrs. Hudson and her sister were watching it the first night, but she didn’t get a security camera until the next morning. She and her sister weren’t keeping vigil all night.”

“I wish she had been.” Sanjay knelt in front of the diorama and looked in through the window with a crisscross detail he’d created. “Then it would be proven I didn’t sneak back into the house with a body I’d stolen for some unknown reason. So… we thinking Kira? Gideon, you won me over with your theory that someone small needed room to drag the body. My money’s on Kira at this point. How do we catch her?”

“That wasn’t my theory,” Gideon pointed out. “It was only an observation about space.”

“A person dragging a body can also change direction.” Tempest took two paintbrushes and set the first one on the diorama between the wooden figure and the sliding bookcase, and the second one between the trunk and the same bookcase. “But it’s a straight shot for a trick wire hidden in the sliding bookcase to have pulled the trunk and dumped his body out. It’s a piece of furniture that already has tricks up its sleeve.”

“I’ll call the detective and tell him to look for a mechanical device in the bookcase.” Sanjay was already dialing.

Tempest swiped his phone and hung up the call before anyone at the police station answered. “You do realize that if there is a trick mechanism anywhere in this room, you’ll be even more of a suspect.”

Sanjay groaned. “I can’t be even more of a suspect. I’m most likely their number one suspect now that you figured out I wasn’t the intended victim!”

Tempest raised an eyebrow. “Are you seriously blaming me for figuring out the truth of when Lucas was really killed?”

“Someone’s got to be framing me.” He gripped the brim of his hat.

“Nobody’s framing you.”

“Why did you even have us make this diorama if it was only going to implicate me even more?”

“The best way we can help you is to figure out who really—” Tempest broke off as she spotted a movement at the base of the stairs. A fluffy movement. She walked over and scooped Abra into her arms. “Did you want to help us solve the case, Abra?” She turned back to Sanjay as Abra nuzzled her hand. “Our diorama experiment doesn’t implicate you. So far, it only shows that we’re a great team. Isn’t that right, Abra?”

“If you say it’s because we’re the incarnations of a 1970s TV show, I’m out,” said Sanjay as he eyed the bunny.

“I was just pointing out that by working together, we figured out something important.”

“We don’t actually know for certain that it was a trick,” said Sanjay. “And if it was, it points a finger at me. Since I no longer need a babysitter, I’m going to take a walk to clear my head before we set up for this evening.”

“We don’t have much time,” Tempest called after him. Abra squirmed in her arms, sensing her discomfort. “We meet up in the barn in half an hour.”

Sanjay waved without turning around as he left through the tree house front door.

Tempest locked it behind him and leaned against it. She closed her eyes and scratched behind Abra’s ears.

“Abra knows something is wrong,” Gideon said. “What aren’t you saying?”

“I don’t like the fact that Enid isn’t available to come tonight. We still don’t know what happened at her library last week. We have two impossible crimes. An invisible burglar and an invisible killer.”

Gideon took Abra from her and set him on the floor. He took her hands in his. “I don’t think that’s the only thing bothering you.”

His hands were calloused from his work with stone, but felt so right . Their faces were inches apart, so Tempest could see more clearly how thin his face had gotten.

“When you’re in France,” she said, “who’s going to remind you to stop working with stone to eat ?”

He grinned. “You’re worried about me eating enough in France ?”

“No. I’m worried that you’ll be more than five thousand miles away.”

“Maybe I need to give you something to remember me by.”

“You already gave me Devil Bunny.”

“I was thinking of something even better.” Gideon leaned in and kissed her.

He slipped one of his hands out of hers and wrapped it around her waist. His body was strong and warm and delicious.

Tempest Raj, the queen of knowing how to keep time, had no idea if ten seconds or ten minutes had passed. All she knew was that she wished she could stay there in the tree house with Gideon indefinitely. But they had a killer to catch.