“I think the bad guys put the bi in with the other two magical artifacts in order to be able to track them,” Rachel said.
“Either to track the objects or to track Seymour.”
“Right,” Rachel agreed. “Now we have a problem. We have the bi, but I don’t want any bad guys following the homing beacon and popping up in the Goose. This is a dangerous situation. What do you think we should do?”
“I’ll show you,” I said. I reached into the back seat and got my magic bag. I took out the steel box, opened it, and handed Rachel her Mojo, which she hung back around her neck. Then I placed the bi in the steel box and closed it.
“That’s it?” Rachel asked.
“That’s it. I did some experimentation after we closed the Case of the Wizard’s Sphere. Remember how LeVester kept the Sphere in an iron box?”
“Sure. He did that to shield its magic from detection by the Dark Forces.”
“Exactly, so I wondered what else we could shield from magic. You know I’ve had a problem with the bad guys translocating into my apartment because I had a homing beacon they could follow.”
“They did that on more than one occasion,” Rachel said.
“Right, so I made a mental note to try to figure out a way to safely store homing beacons so that they can’t be used against us. I decided to try the ‘iron box’ technique.”
“The box in your bag is steel,” Rachel said.
“Yes, steel is almost completely iron. It just has some carbon added. LeVester used a pure iron box, because he’s a purist. Pure iron isn’t used much anymore, but it was pretty easy to find a couple of steel boxes.
“When I’m experimenting with translocation, I just translocate to my basement where I keep a test homing beacon. It’s just a torn photo with half in the basement and half in my apartment. I put the half photo in the basement inside a steel box, and then I tried translocating from my apartment using the other half. It didn’t work.”
“How did it not work?” Rachel asked.
“When I cast the Spell of Translocation, nothing happened. The spell couldn’t find the other half of the photo, so the spell didn’t take me anywhere.”
“That’s fantastic!” Rachel said. “You’re a genius, Professor, but I already knew that. I feel much, much safer now.”
“That’s why you keep me around, right?”
“There’s more than one reason I keep you around, Professor.”
I would have really loved to know what those reasons were, but it didn’t seem like the time to try to find out. I would just open myself up to some of Rachel’s famous teasing.
“Did you ask to take the bi to protect Mary Martingale?” I asked.
“That’s one reason, but also it’s the only physical lead we have. We may have to use the bi to translocate to wherever its missing piece is located.”
“That sounds dangerous,” I said.
“Very,” Rachel agreed. “We could end up in China surrounded by bad guys. We won’t use the bi unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
Chapter 16
When we got back to the Goose, we went up to my apartment to debrief. I took the bi out of the steel box and locked it in my home safe, which is also steel. Besides being a homing beacon, the bi might also be valuable, so it should be protected.
“It’s five o’clock,” I said. “We missed teatime, and it’s too early for dinner. How about a cup of coffee?”
“Sounds great. What’s brewing today?”
“How about Major Dickason’s blend from Peet’s?” I asked.
“Have I had that before?”
“Sure.”
“Then I like it. Let’s have the Major.”
I brewed a pot of coffee, and I couldn’t resist putting a few Oreos on a saucer. I poured two cups and added a little half-and-half to mine.
“What did we learn today?” I asked as we sat at my kitchen table to drink coffee and munch Oreos.
“I’m convinced that Mary is innocent,” Rachel said.
“Me too.”
“I’m also pretty sure that Seymour’s death has something to do with those Chinese jade artifacts.”
“I agree.”
“I think that we can also agree that the bi is a homing beacon,” Rachel said.
“Most likely,” I agreed.
“The question is, was the purpose of the bi homing beacon to kill Seymour, or is there another reason for it.”
“Good question,” I said. “Did the murderer leave the bi behind so that he could translocate in again, or did he leave it behind because he couldn’t find it.”
“If it hadn’t been hidden so well inside that book, then we would know the answer to that question,” Rachel said.
“Then there’s that nagging question,” I said. “Why did they kill Seymour and not Mary?”
“I have two answers for that,” Mary said. “First, Seymour obviously knew something that Mary didn’t. Second, with Mary being the obvious murder suspect, the bad guys could literally get away with murder.”
“Do you think they planned to kill Seymour, or was it just something that happened while they were doing something else nefarious?”
“I can’t be sure, but I think they might have planned to kill him. Mary doesn’t remember what happened, so they could just as easily have wiped Seymour’s memory.”
“I’ll bet they have a Snoozer,” I said.
“What a coincidence,” Mary said.
“Don’t get me started on coincidences again,” I said. “Do you think Seymour was up to something illegal?”
“I think that a significant part of Seymour’s imports may have been more or less illegal. Once Seymour crossed the line, which I think he may have done some time ago, he may have been drawn deeper and deeper into the criminal world. His latest deal may have been the first one that was more than he could handle.”
“Do you think Mary was part of it?”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think that Seymour was keeping both Mary and Connie in the dark about exactly where his imports were coming from. I think that his new source, who he referred to as ‘Mr. Tsong,’ is some sort of Chinese mafia.”
“That’s a speculation not supported by the facts,” I remarked.
“I know. Let’s call it a working hypothesis. How about that?”
“Good enough,” I agreed. “I have an alternative hypothesis. What if Mr. Tsong is an innocent artifact hunter who accidentally discovered some magical artifacts that he sold to Seymour? What if Seymour’s murderer is someone like Seth who is trying to acquire all the magical devices that he can lay his hands on.”
“If you’re saying Seth is behind Seymour’s murder, you’re jumping further to conclusions than I am.”
“I said someone like Seth, and I agree that it’s a stretch. We’re just brainstorming here.”
“If Mr. Tsong is innocent, why did he sell Seymour a homing beacon?” Rachel asked.
“If he’s innocent, he wouldn’t know that it was a homing beacon.”
“That’s a big coincidence—Mr. Tsong discovers two artifacts and a homing beacon and sells them to Seymour as antiques.”
“It could happen, but I guess you think that Mr. Tsong is one of the bad guys.”
“Without more facts, that’s the best judgment of Mr. Tsong that I can come up with,” Rachel said.
“If Mr. Tsong knew that two of the objects were magical, why did he sell them to Seymour?”
“Maybe he didn’t know they were magical,” Rachel said.
“Then why did he include a homing beacon?”
“Damn, Professor, I just don’t know. I’m starting to doubt all our conclusions.”
“Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe we should just try to decide what to do next and postpone forming conclusions.”
“That’s good advice, so what do we do next?” Rachel asked.
“You’re asking me? That’s your department. I’m just the science guy, or the magic guy. You’re the lead inv
estigator.”
“I knew you would say that, but you’re the genius.”
“We’re both smart, Rachel. We just have different kinds of smarts. I’m an analyzer. I have book smarts. I’m logical, and I can work step by step through the facts. You’re more intuitive, and you’re a people person. You’re also the strategist and planner. You don’t need all the facts to formulate a plan of action. So what’s the plan?”
“Help me out here, Professor. Using your logical mind, just what do we know. What are the facts?”
“OK, the facts: Seymour was killed using a small Japanese sword, a wakizashi, that was already in the room. Also in the room was a non-magical Chinese bi that may have been a homing beacon. Mary was in the room when Seymour was killed, but she claims to have been unconscious and to have no memory of what happened. Seymour had obtained the bi and two magical artifacts from a new source he called Mr. Tsong. I think that those are the only hard facts that we have.”
“How about the translocations into the warehouse and Seymour’s office?”
“The translocation into the warehouse is just an assumption, but we tested Seymour’s office for magic yesterday, and it was positive. I think that we can say that the translocation into Seymour’s office is a fact.”
“We should have used the Coriolis to find out if Ernie’s ghost was actually a translocation,” Rachel said.
“Ernie saw the ghost on Friday. Today is Tuesday; that’s more than two days later. The Coriolis wouldn’t have detected anything.”
“We’re on a roll, Professor. What else do we know?”
“If there was a translocation into Seymour’s study, then at least one magician was there. I’m willing to say that it’s a fact that Mary was the victim of a sleeping spell.”
“Is Mary’s innocence a fact, then?”
“Since we’re working on Mary’s defense, I think that we should declare that Mary’s innocence is a fact. It isn’t proven yet, but were working as if it were a fact.”
“Is it a fact that the bi is a homing beacon?” Rachel asked.
“No, it’s an assumption. Mr. Tsong’s guilt is also an assumption. We’re also assuming that the two magical artifacts have something to do with Seymour’s death. Do you think that Seymour knew that the artifacts are magical?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Rachel admitted. “Here’s another question, why did Seymour take the bi out of the box at the warehouse and bring it to his home office?”
“I may not be very intuitive,” I said, “but my gut tells me that you’ve just uncovered a pivotal question. Why did Seymour only take one of the three artifacts to his home office?”
“Mary said that the bi was the artifact she doubted the most, but Seymour didn’t tell her that he had it in the office. If they were arguing about authenticity before he was killed, you would think that he would have used it in his argument—Unless of course, he had realized that he was wrong. Maybe he, himself, was doubting the bi’s authenticity, so it wouldn’t have helped his argument to reveal it.”
“I think you’re onto something,” I said. “What if Seymour said something to Mr. Tsong about the bi’s questionable authenticity.”
“Then Mr. Tsong might kill Seymour. We should find out if Seymour contacted Mr. Tsong recently.”
“We could check his email and phone records,” I suggested.
“I doubt that Seymour would be calling China or Singapore on his land line or even his cell phone. He might use Skype, but he most likely used email. It’s too bad the police took his laptop.”
“If he used a web-based email service like Gmail rather than an email client like Outlook, then all his undeleted messages are still in the cloud. All we need is his email address and his password.”
“Let me see if Mary has it,” Rachel said as she pulled out her phone and the index card Charlene had given her. Rachel chatted with Mary for a couple of minutes, wrote something on the index card, and then hung up.
“It turns out that Mary and Seymour have separate email accounts on Yahoo mail. That’s web-based, right?”
“Right.”
“Mary gave me both addresses and both passwords. Would you take a look and see what you can find out?”
“Sure. Let me get my laptop.”
I got my laptop out of my office and opened it up on the kitchen table. I logged in to Seymour’s Yahoo mail account and started looking at his messages. Like most people, Seymour didn’t organize his email into folders. All the messages were just in a chronological list with the unread messages at the top. There were three days of unread messages, forty-two to be exact. There were pages and pages of messages that had been read. I scanned through the past week’s messages without finding anything that I thought was relevant.
I checked Seymour’s “Sent” folder to read the messages that he had sent to other people. I immediately noticed a couple of recent messages he had sent to “Tsong.” The first was an email sent on Tuesday of the previous week. In it, Seymour said that he had arrived back in Portland with the three artifacts safely in hand. He promised to keep Mr. Tsong updated on the selling process.
The next message was sent on Thursday evening, three days before Seymour’s death. Seymour wrote to Mr. Tsong that he had some doubts about the authenticity of the jade bi. He said that he still had confidence that the other two artifacts would sell for good prices, but he wanted to return the bi, unsold, to Mr. Tsong.
I hadn’t seen any response to this from Mr. Tsong in the inbox, but I noticed that Seymour had fifty-eight messages in his “Trash” folder. These messages proved to be more interesting. An email received from Mr. Tsong on Friday morning requested that Seymour keep the bi. Mr. Tsong was fine with Seymour only selling the other two artifacts now, but Seymour should hold on to the bi until more information could be discovered about it.
“It looks like Mr. Tsong was intent on Seymour keeping the bi in his possession,” I said.
“Of course,” Rachel agreed. “What good is a homing beacon if your target sends it back to you?”
“It looks like you may be right about Mr. Tsong being a bad guy,” I said.
“Yes, and I’ll bet that he has accomplices. Ernie said that the ‘ghost’ he saw was pale and had white hair. That doesn’t sound like a man named Tsong.”
“Right, and we think there were two magicians that translocated into Seymour’s home office.”
“It’s a good thing Ernie’s ghost didn’t have a Snoozer. If he had put Ernie to sleep, he wouldn’t have remembered anything.”
“Maybe the bad guys wised up and started carrying a Snoozer,” I said. “I just thought of something. If the magicians had planned to kill Seymour, why did they have to use the wakizashi that was in Seymour’s office. Why didn’t they plan ahead and bring a ceramic knife?” I asked.
“Because they wanted to frame Mary. They had to leave the murder weapon behind, and if some extraneous knife was in Seymour’s chest, it would be suspicious.”
“How did they know that there would be a wakizashi in Seymour’s office?”
“I’ll bet they had scouted out his office ahead of time.”
“How could they do that if the bi was in Connie’s file cabinet?”
“Connie just assumed that Seymour had come in on the weekend to pick up the bi,” Rachel said. “We don’t know when Connie last saw the bi in the file cabinet prior to our visit.”
“I guess you’re right,” I agreed, “but if the bi was in the file cabinet, it would have been shielded and useless as a homing beacon.”
“In that last email you read, Mr. Tsong asked Seymour to hold on to the bi. That was Friday morning. Ernie said he saw the ghost around closing time, five o’clock. Seymour could have had the bi in his pocket at the warehouse at five and then taken the bi home with him on Friday night.”
“You’re right again,” I said. “Maybe Ernie’s ghost tried again later Friday night and found himself in the Martingale’s home office. Maybe he had a partner who left
him to search the office and then came back to pick him up. Now that I have the bi locked up in my safe, the bad guys shouldn’t be able to translocate into the Martingale’s house anymore.”
“Unless,” Rachel said, “the bad guys were thinking ahead like we were in Moshi’s house. We carved off a piece of Moshi’s desk so that we would still have a homing beacon even after the beacon we sent home with Moshi was destroyed.”
“Drat! You’re so smart. I hope the bad guys aren’t as smart as you are,” I said.
“It’s never a good idea to underestimate the intelligence of your opponent,” Rachel said. “Look through Seymour’s ‘sent’ emails and see if he ever mentions that Mary is the one who doubted the authenticity of the artifacts.”
I followed Rachel’s suggestion and looked through all of the ‘sent’ emails for the past month. In none of them was Mary identified as having offered an opinion on the value of the artifacts.
“That’s one reason why they didn’t kill Mary,” Rachel said. They thought Seymour was the doubter. They really want the artifacts to be sold.”
“Why are they so intent on selling the two magical jade artifacts?” I asked. “Are they desperate for money? Seth is expending lots of energy trying to acquire artifacts. These guys are trying to get rid of them.”
“Maybe we can just broker a deal between Seth and these guys and get everybody off our backs,” Rachel suggested.
“Now that is thinking ‘outside of the box,’” I said. “It sounds outrageous, and maybe it really is, but just considering the idea could change our whole approach to this case.”
“You know, Professor, all this speculation is getting us off track. Our mission is to prove Mary’s innocence. That’s what we need to concentrate on.”
“Right, you’re absolutely right. Once again I was getting lost in ideas and losing sight of our goal. It’s a good thing you’re so grounded. What’s our next move?”
“Unfortunately,” Rachel said, “the only clue we have to go on is the broken bi. We can follow that homing beacon to find out where the intruders, and probably Seymour’s killers, are coming from.”
“We could take the bi out of my safe and let the intruders come to us,” I suggested.
Crimes of Magic: The Yard Sale Wand Page 12