08 The Magician's Secret (4 page)

I turned to Ned. We hadn't had time to talk about what was going on, and I was suddenly curious as to how he'd gotten into the magic show at all. I still had his ticket in my purse, and security at the magic show had been as tight as a vault.

Ned leaned over and whispered to me, “Mr. Walton
is going crazy because besides whatever is in that missing box, the only real evidence he has against Smallwood are the store's security tapes. And those only show that
Mr. Smallwood was the last man in the jewelry shop on the night it was robbed.” He took my hand and led me out of the locker so we could have a minute alone. “If he hadn't been previously convicted of burglary, I don't think he'd be a suspect at all.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“As it is, he got out of prison last month after serving a year for armed robbery,” Ned continued.

“What did he steal?” I asked.

“Diamonds,” Ned replied. “Two millions dollars' worth of them from a shop in Switzerland.”

“Really?” I inhaled sharply. “What was missing from the shop here?”

“Emeralds.” Ned pinched his lips together and wrinkled his forehead. “And rubies.”

“No diamonds?” I considered that.

“No. It's something in your dad's favor for the defense. Your dad might be able to say that Mr. Smallwood was only interested in diamonds, so he couldn't possibly be the thief.” He quickly added, “Plus, Smallwood just got out of prison. Why would he want to risk going back there?”

“Is he the only suspect in the burglary?” I asked.

“So far.” Ned frowned. He pointed at the storage locker. “That's why they took everything from his hotel room. He'd been staying there a week and was supposed to leave tomorrow. He's not being held in jail, but he's not allowed to leave town yet either. So he's staying with a friend in River Heights.”

I nodded. The police couldn't keep Mr. Smallwood in town indefinitely. They were going to have to either file charges against him or let him leave River Heights.

Ned motioned toward the crates against the wall. “Every scrap of paper from Smallwood's trash, the book he was reading, even his toothbrush is in one of those boxes. They are going to investigate him down to the hairs on his head.”

We moved back to where the police were now
showing Mr. Walton the lock to the storage room. My dad was hanging at the back of the group.

“There's no sign of forced entry,” Officer Collins was saying. “And Judge Nguyen has the only key.”

As I got closer, my father raised his shoulder at me, just a tiny bit, and tilted his head. It was his way of asking me to move in closer. I could tell that he wanted me to take a look around, so I gave him the smallest of nods.

Then, with a silent signal of my own, I brought in George. If anyone could figure out how that locker had been opened, she was the one.

George had been standing with Bess, chatting with Hugo and the two assistants. I had no doubt Bess was asking about their designer skirts. The speed with which George came over to me confirmed it. Skirts were definitely not a topic she enjoyed. All I had to do was look at her, then glance at the locker, and she came rushing across the room.

“You saved me,” George said gratefully. “Apparently Hugo is dating that designer . . . Gritty Grand.” She made a face. “Who names a child that?”

As George stepped away to check out the storage room lock, a second officer, a woman whose name tag read
FERNANDEZ
, approached me.

“Got a minute, Nancy?” she asked. Her dark hair was pulled back in a dancer's tight bun.

“Sure,” I said. I was confident that George would find out anything I might want to know about the lock, and Bess was probably gathering important information by speaking to Lonestar's staff.

“We suspect that Drake Lonestar had something to do with the box's disappearance,” Officer Fernandez told me. “Did you see anything onstage that might have indicated he was up to no good?”

“Up to no good?” I repeated. “No.”

“You didn't see him disappear during the trick or stash something or . . .” She fumbled for the right question before settling on a direct approach. “In your opinion, is there any chance he slipped away during the trick, snuck into the courthouse, and stole the box?”

I considered the question. Lonestar had told me
not to think too much about how the trick worked, so I intentionally hadn't concentrated on details. As far as I could remember, he was onstage the whole time. He did disappear at the end, but only for a second, and then he disappeared again with his assistants. Would that have been enough time to get into the courthouse and take a box? I didn't think so, but in this world of magic, nothing seemed certain.

“No,” I admitted, then asked Officer Fernandez a question of my own. “Have you talked to Mr. Lonestar?”

“We would if we could find him,” she said. “It seems that the magician has disappeared.”

“No one has seen him since the show?” I asked, glancing over at Bess with Lonestar's staff. They were all laughing at something Bess had said.

“No,” the officer reported. “When he vanished from the stage that last time, he never reappeared. We have a team of officers searching River Heights. They'll track him down.”

“Can you excuse me for a moment?” I asked. I hurried over to Lonestar's assistants.

“Hi,” I said, noticing that they weren't much older than me.

Bess introduced us. “This is Ayela.” She indicated the one on her right. “And Ariana.” The other one smiled. “They're twins. And their aunt is fashion designer Gritty Grand.”

“Ah.” If Hugo was dating Gritty, it stood to reason that he would hire her nieces as Lonestar's helpers. I shook hands with each of them, then asked, “So, where is Mr. Lonestar?”

They didn't know.

“But you performed the last trick with him,” I said. “You vanished together from the stage.”

“Oh, we can't reveal how it's done,” Ayela said.

“We'd be fired,” Ariana added.

“I don't need to know how it's done,” I said, though I
was
curious. “I just wondered where Lonestar went afterward.”

“The police already asked them,” Hugo told me. “They don't know.”

He moved toward me in a way that almost
seemed threatening. I stepped back to give myself some space from the burly bodyguard and looked to Ayela and Ariana. “Where did you reappear?”

Ayela and Hugo exchanged glances before she replied, “In the dressing-room tent.”

“But Drake wasn't with us,” Ariana said. “I guess you could say he dropped us off.” She smiled.

“You don't know where he went?” I asked.

“No,” they said at the same time.

“Who can ever guess what that man is up to? Drake Lonestar's got kangaroos loose in the top paddock,” Ayela said with a giggle.

I decided to give the girls a rest. I wouldn't get anywhere by badgering them with the same question over and over.

The facts were clear:

• Drake Lonestar was missing.

• A box that had been in evidence storage was missing.

• More than a million dollars' worth of gems were missing.

I was standing in the middle of a major mystery with a lot of unanswered questions. Still, one question loomed over the entire scene, bigger than the rest: What did any of this have to do with my dad's client, John Smallwood?

A HALF HOUR LATER THE
same crowd from the basement had moved to just outside the courthouse. Officer Fernandez continued to question Lonestar's staff, while the rest of the police investigated the evidence locker. The sun was bright in the sky. Bess absentmindedly fanned herself with one of Lonestar's programs.

“Whew, it sure warmed up out here,” Hugo muttered, removing his jacket. As he swung his coat over his arm, a stack of small white cards fell out of the pocket.

He leaped forward to pick them up, but Officer Fernandez stopped him.

“Can that wait? I have a question for you,” she said, putting her hand on his chest.

His eyes went to the cards. “Give me one minute. I need to—”

“Mr. LaBlanca, please. This is important,” she said firmly.

My curiosity was piqued. What was on those cards? And why did he need to gather them so badly? I kneeled down to pick up the cards myself, but before I could find out what was on them, Bess dropped to her knees next to me.

“Nancy,” she whispered. “I've got something to tell you.”

Bess picked up a few white cards. “While I was speaking to Ariana and Ayela, I suddenly remembered an article I read recently about Gritty Grand. If the report is accurate, she's broke. According to a rival designer, her company is shutting down.”

“Do you think it's true?” I asked.

“Probably. Bad news often is,” Bess said. “The thing is that Gritty Grand's response to the report was that this rival designer ‘has kangaroos loose in the top paddock.' I thought it was such a strange thing to say that I remembered it.”

“I'm guessing it's simply Australian slang,” I suggested. “It's possible that it's just one of those phrases everyone says, like ‘she's got a screw loose.' ”

“I'm not sure.” Bess pinched her lips together. “I mean, we are looking for a jewel thief, and there's the possibility that Gritty Grand, who we've now connected to Drake Lonestar through her boyfriend and nieces, might be broke.”

The wheels started turning in my head. “I get what you're saying,” I told Bess. “If she needed money to save her business, she might be interested in gems. That could be the connection we need to attach Lonestar to Smallwood.”

“While you're thinking about that,” Bess said, “I have something else for you to consider.”

She handed me two of the cards we'd picked up from
the floor. “They all say 5A on one side and 5B on the other,” Bess pointed out.

They were the white cards from the barrel that Lonestar had used to choose his onstage guest! Me.

So it wasn't a coincidence that I was onstage for the performance. My dad had given me two tickets: seats 5A and 5B. Whichever seat I chose, I'd have been selected.

The moment Hugo and Officer Fernandez ended their conversation, I leaped forward.

“Hugo,” I said, thrusting out my hands filled with the white cards. “Care to explain?”

He laughed as he took them from my hands and tossed them into a nearby trash can. There was distinct humor in his eyes and a smile on his face.

“It was part of the marketing plan,” Hugo explained easily. “Drake heard about you, Nancy Drew. You're famous around here.”

I wrinkled my nose. Sure, I'd solved a few mysteries, but I would never consider myself famous. Not like Drake Lonestar. He had fans screaming his name, jumping fences for him, and begging for autographs. I
had a couple of articles in the local paper. There was no comparison.

“Drake decided he wanted you onstage. So he sent the tickets to your dad under the name of a past client that he'd read about in the news.”

“How did you know my father wouldn't give them to our housekeeper, or take someone else himself ?”

“It was a risk,” Hugo admitted. “But Drake's a magician, Nancy. He'd have found a way to get you to the show, and anywhere you'd have sat, he would have picked you.”

I nodded.

“Drake figured that it would be much more impressive to have a known detective onstage, watching the trick with eagle eyes.” He added, “He also made sure that the ticket desk let your boyfriend in when he showed up. Just another pair of eyes confirming the wonder created by Drake Lonestar.”

My conversation with Hugo answered the question of how Ned got to his seat without a ticket. And it answered how my dad got tickets to the show. The problem was, there were so many questions still left unanswered.