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

“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?





CHAPTER FIVE





No Coincidence


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.