The Magician's Secret (Nancy Drew Diaries #8)(10)

“I hear you,” George agreed. “We need some hard facts.” She turned her computer screen to face me.

“Ack, the light!” Bess whimpered from the other bed. “It’s coming into my head through the back of my skull.”

“Oh, good grief,” George moaned. She packed up the computer and led me into the bathroom. She sat on the closed toilet lid. I shut the door so we wouldn’t bug Bess anymore and sat on the edge of the bathtub.

“I wasn’t searching for connections between the suspects,” George told me, typing on her laptop. “I was thinking more about the trick.” She showed me a site and scrolled down the page. “I was right about the helicopters. They are an old military model that’s been retired. Anyone can hire them for air shows . . . or magic shows.”

“Do you think the helicopters have a connection to the missing box?” I asked.

“No,” George admitted. “But I am obsessed with figuring out how the trick worked. Right now I have two theories: One is that the audience was hypnotized, and the other is that somehow we were still watching a video even after Lonestar dropped the hoop. So we weren’t seeing the actual building, but a screen with doctored images of the empty space. The helicopters were there to throw us off.”

“I guess both are possible.” A big part of me wanted to have George figure it out, but Lonestar’s voice in my head told me to let it be. As much as I wanted to ask more about her theories, especially the mass hypnosis, I let it drop.

Instead I asked George, “Do you have any idea how the locker was opened in the courthouse? Or when? We need to know if Lonestar had enough time during the trick to get into the evidence locker and take that box.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” she told me. “There are many different kinds of magic, but most magicians specialize in one or two and hone their craft. From everything I’ve read about Lonestar, he’s what one would call an illusionist. That means he does big, showy tricks that seem impossible, like cutting people in half, levitating, and making things disappear.”

George had done her homework. She went on, “Illusions take a lot of planning. Not that this is set in stone, but if an illusionist was the one to open the lock, he’d probably have manipulated it earlier—like sawed off part of the barrel or wedged something inside to prevent it from really closing all the way.” She bit a fingernail thoughtfully.

“And?” I prodded.

“When I looked at the lock, nothing seemed altered. I looked for markings, like scratches from picking tools; I searched the floor for rubber bands or cork or gum that might have held the locking mechanism open. Nothing.”

“So what’s your verdict?” I asked.

George leaned back on the toilet tank and closed her eyes. “Officer Fernandez told me that the police have two theories. Either someone had keys to the evidence locker and stole that box or an accomplice let the thief into the locker while the show was going on. I think there is another possibility. . . .”

“Magic?” I asked.

“Yes. But not Lonestar’s kind of magic. He’s a showy guy with big costumes and setups. I just don’t see this as his kind of trick.” She went on. “This is essentially an escape. Someone opened the lock and then escaped from the sealed evidence room with the box. When I think about it like that, it fits in with the kind of magic that’s about picking locks and getting out of tight spaces, which is called escapism. Harry Houdini was the most famous escape artist. He once did a trick where he was locked in a jail cell and managed to get out in less than twenty minutes.”

“That’s amazing!” I was going to have to look up that one later. I asked George, “So, from everything you know about magic, it sounds like you think Drake Lonestar isn’t our number one suspect.”

“I’ve searched the Internet to see if he’s ever done any escapes from boxes or secure rooms, but can’t find anything. He might know how to do some of those tricks, but from everything I can see, he doesn’t. He’s all illusion all the time.” George shook her head. “From a magic point of view, he simply doesn’t make sense.”

I slipped down into the empty bathtub and put my head against the cool tile wall. It seemed like we’d hit a dead end. Usually I had a list of suspects and clues. But this case was filled with suspects without clues and clues without suspects.

What I did have was a previously convicted thief who denied he stole anything, missing gems, the cast of a magic show, a locked door, and a mysterious box that had disappeared—all pieces of a puzzle that didn’t fit together.

“What do we do next?” George asked me.

“I don’t—,” I started.

“You two are so loud!” Bess stomped into the bathroom. “I’ll tell you what we do next. John Smallwood was staying at a hotel for the week, right? The Drake Lonestar magic show team has been here a week too. They’re also at a hotel. That might be a place to start searching for connections.”

George’s face lit up. “You’re right! There aren’t that many hotels in town. It’s possible they’re staying in the same place.”

So we weren’t going to figure out how Drake Lonestar made the courthouse disappear, and we weren’t going to figure out how the box vanished from the evidence locker, but we were back on track with my initial burning question: Was Smallwood in any way connected to Lonestar?