Page 45

At eight o’clock, Tempest, Sanjay, and Gideon were gathered at the Fiddler’s Folly workshop. Tempest’s dad had insisted on attending, and for now, he was hovering at the barn door of the workshop, keeping an eye on arrivals.

The high-ceilinged barn had been transformed into the theatrical drawing room of Gray House. Using Gideon’s sketch of the crime scene furniture’s placement on the first night when the murder had occurred, and the diorama they’d made to be sure they got it right, they’d re-created the staging with other furniture on hand.

A desk chair served as Harold’s armchair, the couch from the corner of the workshop was carried over to represent the love seat, a wooden bench for the futon, Tempest’s own steamer trunk was used in place of Sanjay’s, which was being used as evidence, and four folding chairs represented the dozen they had for the audience at Gray House. It wasn’t perfect, but the items were placed with precision, so hopefully it was close enough.

The furniture re-created the scene from Gray House, but without Ivy and her trusty nail gun to build prop walls out of plywood, the walls here were only indicated by lines of blue painters’ tape on the concrete floor. Since the barn served as a workshop for large construction projects on a regular basis, they had plenty of room to map out the first floor’s main room, stairway, bathroom, kitchen, and dining room with the blue tape, leaving gaps for doorways and green tape to indicate the stairway and window openings.

It wasn’t only Enid who wasn’t available. Mrs. Hudson had declined the invitation, continuing her stakeout of Gray House, convinced that Harold was alive and up to something. Tempest was reserving judgment until she had all the facts, but so far, she didn’t see how a ninety-four-year-old man in poor health could be hiding out of sight. She couldn’t imagine what his motive could be either, but then again, the man had loved baffling puzzles.

The rest of the group would be arriving by nine o’clock, but there was one guest they’d invited with an earlier start time.

Milton arrived at 8:35. They’d called him back and asked him to come half an hour early, under the pretext of giving him some feedback on Kira’s role, which they hoped he could deliver to her in a more constructive way. It was a weak justification, and certainly not one that required a whole half hour, but Milton had a fatherly mentor relationship with Kira, so he accepted it.

Milton stepped through the barn door already dressed in costume in a tweed jacket with elbow patches and tweed trousers. In the bright lighting of the barn that Darius had insisted on, in contrast to the cozy, dim country-house lighting of Gray House, the costume looked like the cheap reproduction that it was.

“Sorry I’m late,” Milton said. “I drove past the gate twice before finding it. You’re on a dark stretch of road in the hills.”

“Glad you found us.” Tempest offered him a glass of water, which he accepted.

“I was surprised to hear this was happening after all, but I suppose the show must go on.” Milton took a sip and looked around the barn. “This is where the magic of your home renovation business happens?”

“It gives us space to try things out before implementing them.”

Milton walked over to the re-creation of the Gray House living room. “I hope you won’t be too hard on Kira about her overacting. We’re all amateurs, after all.”

“This isn’t about Kira,” said Tempest.

Milton frowned. “It’s not? Well, if you have notes about my own role as Dr. Locke, I’m happy to hear them.”

“We know you lied about what you do for a living,” Sanjay said.

Milton straightened his back and held on to the lapels of the cheap jacket. “I work for the Hidden Bookshop. You saw me there just this afternoon.”

“You told us you were their rare books expert,” Tempest said. “But you’re not. You’re their accountant—a guy who manages the money.”

Milton’s shoulder’s fell. “Please… I don’t want them to know.”

“Them?” Tempest asked.

“Both Kira and my daughter.”

“Your daughter?” Tempest blinked at him. “I think we’re missing something.”

“Accounting is a boring profession,” said Milton. “I thought it was honorable to have a stable job to support my family, just like I thought I could be straight if I just tried hard enough. So I married my high school sweetheart—a wonderful woman who deserved better—and got a job that made me that boring guy who nobody wants to talk to at parties. I finally stopped lying to both myself and my wife after I met the love of my life, but… With a new social circle and a new job in a new town… it was easy to keep up with a white lie about what I did for a living.”

“So you’re not lying because you’re embezzling money?” Sanjay asked.

Milton choked on his water. “Embezzling? God, no. I get nightmares about a single cent being out of place at the end of the month. My daughter already thought I was the most boring dad in the world, and she was a teenager when her mom and I divorced, so she still barely speaks to me. I wanted to sound like a cool guy she’d want to spend time with. Do people even say ‘cool’ anymore? I have no idea—and that’s the problem! I’m a fifty-two-year-old accountant for several small businesses who acts in amateur productions in my free time. I never would have lied if I hadn’t been trying to impress her.”

“So you made up a harmless lie to win your daughter back?” Gideon asked.

“I knew it wouldn’t get her back, exactly,” Milton said, “but Ellie majored in English in college and works at a small publishing house now. When I told her I’d started working for an antiquarian bookshop, I saw the first spark of interest I’d seen from her in years. She assumed I had a role involving the rare books themselves, not boring spreadsheets.” Milton’s face lit up with a sad smile.

“Without thinking,” he continued, “I said I was trying something new and had learned about books—even though the Hidden Bookshop is just one of the small businesses I do accounting for. When she came to see me acting in a show shortly after that, it was the first one I was in with Kira. Ellie went out with us afterward, and my profession came up when people ordered drinks… I didn’t mean for the lie to get out of hand.”

“Lies have a way of doing that,” said Tempest.

“You brought me here early because you thought I killed Lucas over that lie?” Milton tugged nervously at his beard.

Tempest shrugged. “Lies have a way of getting out of hand, like you said. We didn’t know what was going on, so when Sanjay found out about your lie this afternoon, we had to see how it fit.”

“I’m just an accountant.” Milton shook his head. “I thought it was a noble profession.”

“It is,” said Gideon. “I wouldn’t have a clue how to manage my taxes with the income I make with my sculptures without my CPA.”

“Do you like yours?” Sanjay asked him. “Mine is retiring, and I need to find—”

“Can we focus, please?” Tempest cut in, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Milton—”

“Kira’s at the gate,” Darius said as he slid open the barn door, causing Milton to jump. “I’m buzzing her in, so you’ve got less than a minute to wrap up whatever you want to say without her here.”

“Is it too much to ask for you to keep it from her that I embellished my job?” Milton asked. “I’d hate to go from being cool dad to cringe dad.”

“As long as you didn’t lie to us about why you lied,” said Tempest, “we won’t tell anyone.”

“Knock, knock.” Kira’s voice sounded from outside the sliding barn door.

“Thanks for coming,” Tempest said. “We’re pretty sure the show will be on this weekend, so we thought it would be a good idea to finally get a full rehearsal.”

Kira looked around the room with wonder. “The kids I read to would love this place! Maybe I could take the kids from the library on a field trip here?” She plopped an oversize purse down on one of the empty worktables.

“Normally, it’s filled with dangerous equipment,” Tempest said. “It’s packed up right now, but that’s probably not a good idea.”

“Good point. Who else are we waiting for before we get started?”

“Cameron and Ivy should be here soon,” Tempest said.

“This barn is truly lit.” Kira stepped farther into the workshop. “And you even re-created the living room so we can practice our blocking, too!”

“Is that the original trunk?” Milton squatted in front of it. “It looks smaller, but maybe that’s because we’re in this big barn?”

“Different trunk,” said Sanjay. “This one is Tempest’s. The detective confiscated my bigger one.”

“I could fit inside this,” Kira joked, but her smile fell away halfway through the sentence. “Sorry. I didn’t mean… It’s just so weird, what happened.”

“If another dead body falls out of this one,” said Sanjay, “I’m going to scream.”

Tempest stared at him. It wasn’t possible… was it?

He staggered backward under her sharp gaze. “Dear God, Tempest. You don’t really think another dead body is going to fall out of another trunk, do you?”

“Of course not.” Tempest couldn’t resist peeking inside, though. “No body.”

“We re-created the set as closely as we could,” said Gideon, steering them back on track. “We—”

“This set looks amazing,” said Ivy as she stepped through the barn door. “Sorry I’m late. Family dinner ran long.”

“You’re not the last one here,” Tempest said. “Cameron should be here soon. But Mrs. Hudson opted out. So did Enid. She has an event at the Locked Room Library tonight.”

“What event?” Ivy frowned.

“She said there was a literary event happening tonight.”

“There aren’t any events happening tonight at the library,” said Ivy. “I’d know. I keep our events calendar.”

“Enid lied?” Tempest hadn’t even considered that.

“Why would she lie about something like that?” Gideon asked.

“She’s been behaving oddly,” Ivy said. “I don’t know how to describe it except that she’s looked frazzled lately.”

“We’re trying to solve a murder,” said Sanjay, “and you didn’t think to mention Enid has been acting strangely?”

“Wait,” said Kira. “You’re trying to solve the murder? You gathered us here tonight like we’re in an Agatha Christie novel and you’re going to reveal the killer? There’s no way I’m going to be a part of—”

“Hang on,” Tempest said as she knelt at a line of blue tape. That blue tape represented walls because Ivy wasn’t there when they were building the set. There was something about the lines that was bugging her.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket as she was tracing the tape. It was a message from her grandfather. Her breath caught as she read it.

Enid is the executor and trustee appointed in Harold’s will , his message said.

That was it. The information she needed to solve one of the biggest puzzles that confused things this week. It gave her the answer to why .

“Rehearsal is canceled,” she said.

“Uh, Tempest needs a moment.” Sanjay knelt at her side and lowered his voice. “Since when do you back down? You’re the Tempest , for God’s sake.”

“I’m not backing down,” she said. “I figured it out. Well, almost . I know where we really need to be tonight to get answers.”

Sanjay grinned at her. “We’re going after the last piece of the puzzle? I’m in.”