The Masquerading Magician

by Gigi Pandian

  After spending the night in the basement fruitlessly rereading Not Untrue Alchemy from cover to cover, Tobias, Dorian, and I breakfasted on the misshapen leftovers Dorian brought back from the teashop kitchen before sunrise. Today it was a feast of chickpea-flour pancakes. Though his recipe was tasty, he decided pancakes didn’t work well for the teashop’s glass pastry display cabinet. Presentation was an important last step of Dorian’s culinary alchemy. A strong flame under a cast-iron skillet could transform flour, water, ground seeds, and a few herbs into a stack of blissful breakfast. But transformation wasn’t always pretty. Dorian didn’t think his pancakes were attractive enough to entice people from a display case.

  Tobias and I prepared breakfast plates in the kitchen. Tobias inhaled deeply as he fixed an espresso for Dorian, who was waiting impatiently in the attic, then made a pot of tea for himself. I was still drinking my restorative tea blend to combat the effects of creating Dorian’s Tea of Ashes and accidentally eating coffee-saturated cookies. This morning I had an extra cup, since I hadn’t slept a wink. My large solar infusion batch was nearly used up.

  “I wish I didn’t have to leave,” Tobias said as he lifted a tray of tea and coffee in one hand. “Rosa and the job need me. I’ll think about your problem, though. Maybe I’ll come up with something that’ll help you from afar. I keep thinking that the crumbling gold has to play into this puzzle.”

  “I’m glad we found each other again, Tobias.”

  “Even if it took a pickle of a mess to drive you to seek out other alchemists, I’m happy you did, too, Zoe. I’m happy you did too.”

  I scooped up the second tray, and we joined Dorian in the attic’s safe haven with his escape route in the slanted roof above.

  “You carry that tray with such alacrity, Monsieur Freeman,” Dorian said, “that I believe you must have been employed as a waiter in your past.” He took a sip of the espresso Tobias had fixed. “Oui. This espresso is très bon. I am correct, no?”

  “Guilty.”

  “You do not look pleased! Le garçon is a worthy profession. You help the chef present his creations.”

  “You’re an optimistic fellow for a Frenchman, Dorian.”

  “But of course.”

  “And a great chef. If only you weren’t a gargoyle, you could head any restaurant.”

  “You are a sly one, Monsieur Freeman. You are leaving momentarily for a flight, which will not provide edible food. I will prepare a basket of sandwiches and snacks to see you safely home.”

  Encumbered with enough food for Tobias and his wife to eat all week, I drove Tobias to the airport to see him off. As I drove, he looked through the assortment and chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked. “The amount of food?”

  “Dragon’s tongue, dragon carrots, and even dragon’s mugwort. There’s a pattern here.”

  “I doubt it. You’re the one who likes patterns, so that’s what you see.”

  “I’m not kidding, Zoe. He’s got them all in here.”

  “I’m sure he does. He loves using Tuscan kale, purple carrots, and tarragon. Texture, color, and flavor.”

  Tobias rewrapped a fragrant baguette sandwich in its parchment paper. “You’ve got a point. Gardeners might have even more vivid imaginations than alchemists.”

  The drive to the airport was far too short. After I saw Tobias off, I couldn’t help thinking more about him and his elderly wife. It was the right choice for them. Would I be able to have that for myself? Did I even deserve it? I wasn’t even sure I could save my closest friend from an unnatural fate trapped between life and death.

  I listened to “Accidental Life” on the drive home, keeping my old friend near me.

  When I got back to my house, two unexpected guests were waiting for me: the magicians. They’d made themselves comfortable on the porch in front of my Craftsman. Peter juggled d’Anjou pears that looked suspiciously like ones from a neighbor’s tree, and Penelope sat on the top step while twirling a cigar deftly between her long fingers.

  I slammed the truck’s door. “How did you find me?” Like Peter Silverman, I knew how to stay under the radar. I walked cautiously toward them.

  “Your young friend had a card for Blue Sky Teas in his pocket the other night,” Peter said. As he spoke, the pears vanished. They didn’t drop to the ground, but I didn’t see where they could have gone.

  “The young woman with bare feet was incredibly helpful,” Peter continued.

  I groaned to myself. He had to be referring to Brixton’s mom, Heather, the free spirit who would never entertain the notion that she was being conned.

  “She was so sorry to hear you’d left your locket at the theater,” Peter continued.

  My hand flew to my locket. It was there. He certainly had the skills to remove it without my noticing, so I was relieved he hadn’t actually lifted it as part of his ruse.

  “I didn’t mean to worry you,” he said. “Especially since I came here for help. May we come inside?”

  “Now’s not a good time.” I willed myself not to look toward the attic.

  The front and back doors to the house could be opened by a skilled lock-picker, but the attic and basement doors had extra locks on them, so I wasn’t too worried about whether they’d already let themselves into the house. Disturbed at the thought, yes; worried by it, no.

  “I’m sorry I butted in before,” I added. “I wish you luck on your quest, but I can’t help you.”

  “We were looking at your new website,” Penelope added.

  “My new website?” I said. I’d forgotten Veronica was working on that.

  “You’ve got some antique puzzle boxes for sale,” Peter said. From the small backpack I recognized from the theater, he pulled out a carved puzzle box made of sandalwood. It was smaller than the palm of my hand and the irregularly shaped flower carvings told me it had been hand carved. He handed it to me. The words “ashes to ashes” were carved on the bottom.

  Don’t engage, Zoe. The box is intriguing, but it’s not your problem.

  “What’s this?” I asked, running my fingertips over the soft wood. A raised rose was carved onto the box, with thorns circling the edges. I’d seen that image before.

  “I’m hoping you can help me open it,” Peter said. “It has nothing to do with the matter you came to see us about, but being back in Portland to clear my father’s name has made me sentimental. This box belonged to him. He made it in his toy studio, and he left it to me.”

  His father, Franklin Thorne, the supposed thief and murderer, had made the box.

  “I know what this is,” I said, a disturbing realization dawning on me.

  “That’s great,” Peter said. “I knew you’d know how to open it. Didn’t I tell you, Pen?”

  “Quite,” Penelope said, her eyes never leaving mine.

  “Could you show me?” Peter asked.

  “I didn’t mean that I know how to open it,” I said. “I doubt anyone besides the person who put it together could open it without breaking it.”

  Peter frowned.

  “I know that’s not the answer you were hoping for,” I said, “because I know you don’t want to break what’s inside.”

  “This is ridiculous.” The muscles of his lithe body tensed. “How do you possibly know what’s inside?”

  “I saw the Thorne family crypt at the cemetery,” I said. “The carvings on the mausoleum walls are etched into the stone. They’re carvings of roses and thorns that match this box. You think this puzzle box contains a key to the Thorne family crypt. But there’s only one reason you’d be secretive about your motives—”

  “There’s nothing secret about my motives,” Peter said with false calmness.

  “That’s where your father’s plunder is hidden, isn’t it, Peter?” I said. “You know he’s the thief—you’ve always known—but you haven’t been
able to get inside the stone mausoleum to get at his hidden loot.”

  Forty-Five

  Peter stared mutely at me.

  “Well,” Penelope said, “she’s certainly much more clever than we gave her credit for.” She stood up and walked down the porch steps, stopping uncomfortably close to me. She was taller than me, so I saw it for the power play that it was. “How did you know?”

  “At the time I didn’t realize what I’d seen at the cemetery.” I stepped away from Penelope and walked a few paces toward the barren elderberry bushes that lined the side fence. Simply being near the garden protector made me feel more in control. “But the Thorne mausoleum isn’t too far from the mudslide area.”

  “The police already searched it after he was killed,” Peter said. “The cemetery keeps a key.”

  “To the main entrance, sure,” I said. “Not the hidden one.”

  Peter had a fit of coughing.

  “Little things you both said didn’t add up,” I continued. “You didn’t approach the police to access the records, but you spent time at the cemetery. The item you were protecting in a locked trunk wasn’t part of your research, but a child’s backpack containing a puzzle box given to you by your toy-maker father. No, your actions weren’t those of people researching historical facts to clear a man’s name. They were the actions of the treasure hunters. I didn’t put it together until a friend of mine talked to Julian Lake. He said there’s no way the guard was involved.”

  “Nice try,” Penelope said. “But Julian Lake is a recluse. He doesn’t talk to anyone.”

  “My friend is good at getting people to open up to him.”

  Penelope narrowed her eyes at me.

  “It’s not illegal to search for the Lake Loot,” Peter said, recovering his voice.

  “No, it’s not. You’re admitting that you knew your father was the thief all along?”

  “It’s not Peter’s fault his father was a criminal,” Penelope said.

  “Pen—”

  “Oh, do be quiet, Peter. Do you want to resolve this once and for all or not?”

  Peter gripped the railing of the porch but remained silent.

  “We already told you how Peter spent his whole life running from people’s assumptions about him,” Penelope continued. “Is it any wonder he wants to at least get something out of it? Returning the jewels to the Lake family and getting a reward will bring him closure.”

  “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” I asked.

  “After hiding his past for so long, I’m sure you can understand the desire to wrap things up out of the spotlight, so to speak.” She gave me an inscrutable smile. “In case he wasn’t able to find the hidden loot and return it to the Lake family to redeem himself, he didn’t want to reveal his identity and open himself up to mockery.”

  It did make sense. It was an impulse I often felt in my own life. I needed to conceal so many parts of my life that hiding became second nature. But after they’d lied repeatedly, how could I be sure Peter and Penelope’s intentions were pure?

  “I’m sure you won’t mind if the police accompany you to the crypt to open it.” I returned Penelope’s enigmatic smile.

  “Of course not,” she said. “But unfortunately, you yourself said there’s no way to open it. Without destroying whatever is inside.”

  “I didn’t exactly say that.”

  Peter dug his fingernails into the wooden railing, and the muscles on his neck looked as if they were going to pop out. “Anyone ever tell you that you like to speak in riddles?”

  “I’m not the one who wrote a clue on the box itself.”

  “It’s not a clue,” Peter seethed. “I tried every possible letter substitution. It doesn’t tell me how to open the box.”

  “To open a box like this,” I said, turning the box over in my hands, “the best way is to know the correct spots to push, in the right order, as you know. The person who built it would know how to do that. But without having a key, the box needs to be destroyed to get at what’s inside. Breaking or burning are your options, but if you don’t know what’s inside, it’s difficult to know which would ruin the protected item. If, however, you believe it to be a key, that key won’t burn. The box itself tells you that much.”

  “Ashes to ashes,” Peter whispered.

  “It was a simpler clue than you imagined. If you want to open the box without breaking the key inside, you have to burn it.”

  Peter groaned. Before I realized what was happening, the box disappeared from my hand.

  On the other side of the porch, Peter applied a putty-like substance to the rose carving on the box. With swiftly moving hands, he peeled it off and handed the putty to Penelope. He jumped over the porch railing, landing gracefully on the stone path, and with a snap of his fingers, a lighter appeared in his hand. He lit the box on fire.

  “Wait!” I cried. “It’s only a theory.”

  Peter gave me a devilish grin. “That’s why I made an impression of the box carving. Just in case you’re wrong.”

  The box smoldered and caught fire. When the flames extinguished, an iron key was left, its dark metal glowing in the ashes.

  “I need your help,” I told Max.

  I’d pushed aside all thoughts of how I’d shoved Max out the door, and called him. It was the best thing I could think to do.

  He sighed audibly at the other end of the line. “You mean you want a recommendation for a psychologist?”

  “I’ll explain everything later, Max, but I need you to meet me at River View Cemetery. At the Thorne family mausoleum. It’s near where the mudslides took place.”

  Now it sounded like he was choking.

  From my front lawn, I explained that I wasn’t going hiking in a dangerous area as he feared, but that the magicians had come to me with help on their puzzle box because I had several of them for sale through Elixir. And I told him about Peter’s connection to Franklin Thorne and the Lake Loot. I managed to convince Max that since the information wasn’t directly related to the murder investigation that another detective was handling, he had every right to accompany me to River View Cemetery to check out my crazy idea.

  “He’s coming?” Penelope asked.

  “He’ll be there as soon as he can.”

  “Good,” Peter said. “We’ll meet you there.”

  “We go together.” There was no way I was letting the magicians out of my sight. “Your SUV is big enough for all of us.”

  They exchanged a quick look that confirmed my suspicions that they were up to something. But I’d called someone who knew I was with them, so surely they wouldn’t do anything to harm me. At least not here. Not today.

  That was the logical conclusion, but people don’t always behave in a rational manner. My heart skipped a beat when Peter reached into the backseat before stepping into the driver’s seat. It turned out he was grabbing a coat.

  Though it was a warm spring day after the rains of the previous night, Peter bundled in the puffy snow coat. That was odd. Perhaps he was getting sick. In spite of the situation, I found myself thinking through the simple herbal remedies from my backyard garden that might help at the onset of a cold, such as one of my mints.

  I was more worried about a different danger. A glimpse in the side mirror confirmed that my health was getting worse. I feared that might be the case, but I’d pushed the thought from my mind because I didn’t want it to be true. The effects of making Dorian’s Tea of Ashes were catching up with me. I had to find a real solution soon.

  We parked in the main lot next to the chapel and walked from there.

  I was unsurprised to see Earl Rasputin on the steep hillside adjacent to the cemetery, walking methodically with his metal detector in hand. Peter, Penelope, and I continued to the Thorne mausoleum.

  Earl must have seen us, too, because as soon as we reached the maus
oleum, he wandered over.

  “Afternoon,” he said, tipping the rim of the baseball cap shielding his eyes from the sun. Peter and Penelope gave no indication of recognizing him. Was their reaction genuine? Earl had remained in the audience on opening night, while his friend volunteered on stage. So if the magicians were telling the truth that they had nothing to do with Wallace Mason’s murder, it made sense they wouldn’t recognize Earl.

  “Let me give you each a flyer.” Earl pressed a flyer into my hands: Baby Bigfoot. Have you seen this creature?

  It was a more detailed flyer than the one he had the day I met him. In addition to the text, this one included a sketch of a hairless gray creature with horns and wings.

  Oh, God. Baby Bigfoot was Dorian. He’d been outed by the conspiracy theorists. I groaned to myself, but forced myself to smile as I took the flyer. It was a rudimentary sketch, lacking incriminating details, but it was clearly Dorian, as if seen from a distance.

  A normal life, Zoe. You really thought you could have a normal life?

  “Do you want me to help pass out your flyers?” I offered. Perhaps if I was enthusiastic enough about the cause he’d give me all of his flyers, and then I could destroy them.

  “That’s a great idea,” Penelope said. “I’d love to help too.”

  That threw me. Had she seen Dorian moving, too? Was that why she’d been fascinated when I showed her his stone statue?

  Earl grabbed a stack of flyers and started to hand them to Penelope. But as he did so, a gust of wind picked up, and the Baby Bigfoot flyers scattered. Penelope and I knelt down to pick them up. The wind didn’t make it easy. Moisture from the grass damaged a few of them, but most were no worse off.

  The treasure hunter gave his thanks, but lingered even after we retrieved all of them.

  “Do I know you?” Peter asked.

  “Earl Rasputin. I attended your performance on Friday night. I could tell how you did the ghost trick, you know.”