The Magician's Secret

  Judge Nguyen nodded and told the locksmith, “Be more careful.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he agreed. He continued to search for an opening to the box.

  We all watched closely as time ticked away. Madeline Summers was getting impatient. By the way she was tapping her toe, I could tell she was ready to grab a hammer and open the box herself.

  The carvings on the box continued to mesmerize me, especially as the locksmith rotated it and sunlight began to stream in through the room’s window. The brightness of the light striking the wood was hypnotizing.

  That’s when I saw it.

  At an intersection where the two colors of wood met, there was a hole. It was smaller than the dart marks in Drake’s hotel room and too tiny for any of the locksmith’s tools, as far as I could tell.

  I nudged Bess. “Can I borrow an earring?” I whispered.

  She looked at me as if I was crazy. “This isn’t really the time to play dress up,” she hissed.

  “Please?” I held out my hand. She gave me a small pearl on a gold post. “Keep the back,” I said, pinching the pearl in my fingers.

  “Uh, can I have a try?” I asked Mr. Galloway.

  “If it’s okay with the judge,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never seen a box like this. Staring at it makes my head feel foggy.”

  “Mine too,” I told him. “But it also gave me some clarity.”

  “That’s because it’s a meditation mandala,” Drake said.

  “Stop right there,” his lawyer put up a hand. “Not another word.”

  “I think it’s in the interest of the court if he speaks. Go on, Mr. Lonestar,” the judge prodded.

  “The outside carving is for meditation. The ornate design is called a mandala. This particular design is meant to open one’s heart and allow for profound insight.”

  “Are you certain this box does not belong to you?” the judge said. “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  “The box is not mine,” Drake said in a calm voice.

  “I see,” the judge said. “Then you do not know how to open it?”

  Drake shook his head. “No. Each box is uniquely created for the person who purchased it.”

  Madeline Summers glared at him. Drake shut his mouth.

  “May I try?” I asked.

  “You seem quite certain, Miss Drew,” Judge Nguyen said. “Have you seen this box before?”

  “No.” I said. “But after staring at the box for so long, I felt an odd spark of insight, and then I saw the keyhole.”

  “Go ahead,” the judge told me.

  “Can you open the curtain a bit more?” I asked Bess. The sunlight had moved, and I wanted it to fully illuminate the carvings. I had lost the keyhole for a moment, but as the sun hit the box anew, that tiny hole became so prominent that I couldn’t believe no one had seen it before.

  I took the end of Bess’s earring and slowly pushed it into the pinhole. The box top opened along seam lines that had been previously invisible.

  I felt a heated rush as everybody in the room crowded around me. All eyes peered past my shoulders into the empty space within that ornate box.

  “Nothing,” Ned said with a sigh. “All this for nothing.”

  “There’s a false bottom,” Bess said.

  “How do you know?” I asked her.

  “There’s always a false bottom,” she replied, grinning at me. “Don’t you pay attention to your own mysteries, Nancy?”

  I laughed. It was true; whenever we came to a dead end, it was never really the end.

  I searched the interior, which was made out of the same wood as the outside, beautifully polished but not carved. I tipped the box toward the sunlight.

  “I don’t see—,” I began, when George reached over my shoulder. She tucked her finger into a groove I hadn’t noticed and lifted out a large piece of the wooden interior. Beneath that was, indeed, a hidden compartment.

  I gasped. Inside were three glittering red rubies.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Flawless

  THEY WERE BEAUTIFUL. THE PUREST red I’d ever seen. I had no doubt they were real. Bess reached in to touch one, but the judge stopped her.

  “Wait. We need a forensic specialist to take a look at that.”

  The judge told Officer Fernandez, “Officer, please bring Mr. Smallwood to the courthouse. We need to clear this up. The box was originally in John Smallwood’s room, then it disappeared, only to reappear in Drake Lonestar’s room. The resolution to this crime is somewhere between these two men.”

  “On my way.” Officer Fernandez rushed from the room.

  “Everyone else, stay put,” the judge commanded.

  Bess pulled me away from the others. “Those stones are probably worth just enough to cover Gritty Grand’s debts. This doesn’t look good for Lonestar.”

  George joined us. “But what about the other gems? There is another two and a half million dollars’ worth of emeralds and rubies still missing.”

  Bess glanced over her shoulder at Drake, who was conferring with Madeline Summers. “I don’t think there’s any way to avoid him going to jail. Even if they never find the other stones, so much of what we’ve discovered points to Drake as the thief.”

  “I think that’s the point,” I said. “It seems like a setup to me. With Drake Lonestar in jail, no one will question where the other gems are. They’ll assume Drake took them, hid them, destroyed them, whatever.” I sighed. “Someone is planning to get away with the other stones . . . and knows it’s likely that part of the mystery will remain unsolved.”

  “Unless you solve it,” George said, putting her hand on my shoulder.

  My head was spinning. No matter how many times I reviewed the evidence, it all came back to Drake. What was I missing?

  There was one thing gnawing at me. . . . I hadn’t had time to look up Harry Houdini’s famous jail escape trick that George had mentioned at her house the previous day, and I wanted to know more. I asked George to tell me about it.

  “It was 1904,” she said. “Houdini was already known for his handcuff escapes but had added jail escapes to his show when he was on tour. Once, at Scotland Yard, the chief constable asked him to do a trick on the spot, without any preparation. They locked him in a cell and triple-locked the door. Then they locked the iron gate leading to the cell block. Five minutes later, he arrived in a public hallway!”

  “Amazing,” Bess said.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Are there theories of how he did it?”

  “No one knows for sure,” George told me. “But some say he might have visited the cell block earlier. Apparently, he had a kind of a wax that he could put in the locks, make a mold, then create a key to use later. The rumor is that he had a false sole on his shoe and hid the keys there.”

  “But no one knows for sure?” I asked.

  “There are guesses as to how he got the keys he needed, but they always come back to the fact that he had them,” George said.

  “Thanks.” I was considering George’s story when I heard a rattling sound and looked up to see Drake Lonestar staring directly at me, dangling a pair of handcuffs.

  Madeleine Summers had a look of horror on her face. “What are you doing?” she hissed at him.

  “Mr. Lonestar,” Judge Nguyen said sharply. “May I ask why you have a pair of handcuffs in your possession?”

  “A magician never leaves home without them,” he replied with a chuckle. He again fixed me with his intense stare.

  And just like that, I was certain that Drake Lonestar was not the jewel thief.

  “We gotta go,” I told Bess and George. “Hurry!”

  I gave the judge some lame excuse about parking in a tow-away zone and headed for the door.

  Suddenly the judge’s chamber door burst open.

  “I came as soon as I heard!” A woman quickly crossed the room and gave Drake Lonestar a huge hug. “Oh, darling! How can I help you?”

  Bess put a hand to her mouth and choked out, “That’s Grit
ty Grand!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lies Liars Tell

  “WILL A LIAR LIE ABOUT his own lie?” Bess asked as we piled into my car.

  “And if this liar is lying, which lie is he lying about?” George asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “The liar who lied is not the lying liar,” I said, feeling satisfied that I’d finally solved the case.

  It took a few phone calls to figure out where I needed to go. The twins were alone at the Riverview, and I knew who was at the courthouse. That left one person . . . and one place for that person to be, but time was running out.

  After a short drive, we pulled up to the Towering Heights Resort. I let the valet take my car. The guy’s eyes brightened when he saw Bess.

  “Oh, good grief,” George complained. “I think the magician here is Bess. She’s got all of River Heights under some spell.”

  “It’s not a spell,” Bess countered. “It’s my natural charm.”

  “What can I do for you ladies?” the valet asked as he helped Bess out of the backseat. His long hair was combed back, showing his deep-blue eyes. I had to admit, he was pretty cute.

  “Can you watch the car? We have to run.” I grabbed Bess’s arm. We’d be standing there all day if I didn’t take charge.

  “See you later,” the valet said.

  “Okay,” Bess replied, looking back at him over her shoulder.

  “Yuck,” George gagged. “He wasn’t asking you on a date, you know.”

  “How do you know? Maybe he was,” Bess said.

  It wasn’t hard to find Lonestar’s hotel room. The gaggle of reporters on the thirteenth floor gave away the exact spot. I couldn’t believe that the Towering Heights even had a thirteenth floor. I knew from years of detective work that most hotels don’t have them. Through the crowd I could see that yellow plastic police tape blocked off both Lonestar’s room and the one across the hall where Smallwood had been staying.

  “Thirteen is the bad-luck floor,” Bess said. “Of course they are both being accused of theft. If they had stayed on twelve or fourteen, none of this would have happened.”

  George stared at Bess as if she was nuts. “What are you talking about?”

  Bess shrugged. “Just saying.”

  “Ridiculous,” George countered. “Superstition is contrary to science.”

  “And being a Virgo rising in the house of Aries, you’d say exactly that,” Bess replied.

  To calm things down, I stepped between Bess and George, just like someone whose intellect is ruled by Sagittarius would; at least that’s what Bess told me.

  We made our way down the hall and immediately discovered why Lonestar and Smallwood had stayed away from the resort.

  Microphones and cameras were thrust in our faces.

  “Nancy!”

  “Nancy Drew!”

  Several people were calling my name at once. There must have been twenty reporters plus their film crews gathered.

  “Is Drake Lonestar the gem thief ?” a woman shouted at me.

  “I was told by my sources that it’s that woman from the jewelry store! I hear you went there to accuse her.”

  “The nieces!” someone said, but a man corrected her, “You mean the daughters.”

  “Ariana,” someone furnished a name.

  “Ayela,” another called out.

  “That other guy!”

  I wasn’t sure exactly who the reporter was talking about, so I asked. “Hugo?” I wrinkled my brow.

  “No! John Smallwood! He was caught on tape!”

  The voices and accusations swirled around me. It seemed that the city was suddenly filled with a lot of amateur detectives, all with different suspects to accuse.

  “I hear it’s Gritty Grand! Rumor is that she and that boyfriend singer of hers are in town in disguise.”

  Wow. They’d found that out fast. Gritty was for sure in town. But the boyfriend? From the way she’d greeted Drake Lonestar, I wasn’t convinced she had a boyfriend.

  “Where’s Lonestar now?” When a reporter asked me that, I knew my hunch had been correct. These reporters didn’t know that Drake had been arrested. Otherwise they’d have left the hotel and headed to the courthouse. They were still hoping he’d show up here.

  “Nancy! Who stole the jewels? Do you know?” a man at the back of the pack yelled to me.

  I’d had enough. Even if I had known, I wasn’t going to tell the tall guy from Channel Four before I told the judge, the police, my dad, or Ned. “Let’s go,” I told my friends.

  Knocking on the hotel suite door would have started a huge media frenzy, ruining my subtle approach, so we turned around and headed back toward the elevators. The reporters continued to shout out at me, but luckily, no one followed. They weren’t leaving the hallway, just in case someone more interesting than me happened by.

  We went back outside to the valet.

  “Hey! We can go get a coffee now if you want. It’s almost time for my break.” In a blink he moved from behind the valet stand to Bess’s side.

  She smiled at George with an I told you so grin.

  I checked his name tag. “Look, Sawyer, we have a problem. I need to get to the thirteenth floor, past the reporters, and into Drake Lonestar’s hotel room. Can you help?”

  I knew it was a lot to ask, but I was desperate. There was something in that room that would solve this case once and for all. I was sure of it.

  “Hmm,” Sawyer said. “The thirteenth, you say?”

  “Yes.” I explained the reporter problem.

  He pursed his lips and said, “Look, I know who you are, Nancy Drew. You’re famous.”

  I blushed. “Not really.”

  “I was at the magic show. Drake Lonestar is fantastic. I’ve always loved magic. In fact, I’m a card-carrying member of the River Heights Magic Club.”

  I didn’t even know there was a River Heights Magic Club. “We are going to prove he didn’t steal the gems,” I said.

  Bess flashed a toothy grin. “And we’d appreciate your help,” she added.

  “I’ll do it for Drake,” he said, winking at Bess.

  Exactly three minutes later we were getting off the staff elevator on the thirteenth floor.

  “I could have gotten a key,” Sawyer said, “but as far as I can tell, there’s no way around the reporters.”

  “We need to bypass them,” I confirmed.

  “We could have pulled the fire alarm,” George suggested. “Chased them out and cleared the hall.”

  “Or climbed in over the balcony,” Bess said.

  “Nah, this is safer,” Sawyer told us. He opened a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. “My dad works on the maintenance crew at this hotel. I’ve been hanging out here since I was a kid. I know every nook and cranny by heart. When I got old enough, they let me bus tables in the café; now I park cars. I’ll do maintenance with my dad this summer.” He grinned. “I’m working my way up.”

  “Couldn’t you get in trouble for this?” George asked, following Bess up a ladder in the maintenance closet. “I’d hate for us to get you fired.”

  “Ah, it’s okay. It’s an adventure,” he chuckled. “I like adventures.” Sawyer scooted into the crawl space below a heat duct. We climbed in behind him. He was in the lead, with Bess and George in the middle, while I brought up the rear. “When I was a kid,” he continued, “I used to come up here all the time. The owners of this hotel used the highest-rated titanium alloys in construction. Not only are the vents—”

  “—strong and light, but they are also incredibly heat resistant,” George finished. There was just enough room to crawl on our knees, but not enough to move comfortably around.

  Unable to turn his body, Sawyer looked back, past Bess, to George. He’d brought a flashlight and shone it in her face. “What are you, an astrophysicist?”

  George laughed. “Maybe someday.”

  “Well, I’m studying to be one,” Sawyer said. “The university here has a great program for students who hope to become
astronauts. I can’t imagine a greater adventure than visiting the stars!” He twisted around and continued to lead us down the vents. When the vents split in two directions, we went left.

  Our leader stopped so suddenly, Bess ran into him, which meant George bumped Bess and I ran into George. We were a tangled mess of arms and legs.

  “Shhh,” Sawyer said. “We’re here.” He spun his flashlight around and this time pointed it at me. “Where do you want to go in? We could drop into the bedroom or the living room.”

  “Is there an opening in the bathroom?” That seemed like a safe place. We didn’t have a ladder on this end, so it might be easier to step down to the sink or tub instead of risking broken bones by jumping out onto the cold floor.

  “One bathroom, coming right up,” Sawyer said as he moved slightly to the right and removed a panel from the vent. He reached out and took a tile from the ceiling before lowering himself out of the vent.

  I heard him land, then say, “Okay, Bess—”

  “What on earth?!” A man’s deep voice, low and threatening, came from below. I heard Sawyer squeal.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” The man’s voice rattled the vents.

  Smashed up behind Bess and George, and now without the flashlight, I couldn’t see anything. But I knew that voice.

  We’d found our jewel thief.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  All the Answers

  SAWYER’S NECK WAS FIRMLY IN Hugo’s grasp.

  “Let him go!” I cried from the ceiling. When I’d realized what was happening below, I’d thrown myself over Bess and George, flattening them so I could slither like a snake to the front.

  From where I was, I could see that Sawyer was turning blue.

  “Please, Hugo.” I wasn’t sure he could even hear me. As a bodyguard, he was trained to act first, think later.

  “Hugo!” I raised my voice. “I’m coming down.”

  There was no way to turn my body around, so Bess and George each took one of my legs and lowered me to the sink counter. I grabbed the towel bar to slow my decent, but ended up ripping it off the wall as I tumbled into a heap at Hugo’s feet, knocking over the trash can; little bits of wood and used sugar packets tumbled out and littered the floor.