Cozy Case Files, Volume 17 by Ellie Alexander

Author:Ellie Alexander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Chapter 3

A raven,” Tempest repeated.

Lavinia’s face darkened. “I know Corbin’s supernatural thrillers aren’t real. But these last few months have messed with my sense of reality. That’s why I needed this space.”

A bird cawed from outside. Somewhere nearby. Tempest looked out the window, but no birds were in sight. She drummed her fingertips on the glass before spinning around. “What if Corbin isn’t quite that big a jerk?”

Lavinia scoffed.

“He could have simply hidden it,” Tempest said.

“I thought of that. I looked around. Didn’t find anything. I need to take care of some paperwork, but feel free to look for yourself. I thought there might be hidden nooks I hadn’t found yet, but I spoke to your father about it. He said I knew about everything you’d all built.”

“He’s at another job site today, otherwise I’m sure he would have come over as well.”

“That’s what he said. I’m glad you had time to stop by with how much the business is booming.”

It was going so well that Tempest hadn’t had time to catch her breath to plan all the other things she was supposed to be doing in her life. She was at the beginning stages of building her own house (so she wouldn’t be living in her childhood bedroom forever), was planning a farewell stage show her manager had arranged to be televised, and was still trying to find out what had really happened on two of the worst nights of her life.

Tempest began her search for the missing typewriter there on the riverboat. The steamer trunk coffee table was more than it seemed. It was their version of a “smuggler’s nook” on the boat—a place to hide things. There wasn’t room to build it below the faux boat without giving up too much storage space beneath it, so instead the steamer trunk coffee table was more than it seemed. When you first opened the lid of the trunk, you’d see what you believed was the bottom of an empty trunk. That was an optical illusion. The black velvet base was false. Tempest lifted it up. The real bottom of the trunk was empty as well.

“That was the first place I looked.” Lavinia took the false bottom from Tempest’s hands and put it back in place.

Tempest moved on to the Oxford high-street pub. She fed the merry-go-round horse a coin. A faint click sounded as the Oxford Comma pub’s door unlocked. Lavinia had already searched for the typewriter, so it couldn’t be hidden anywhere obvious. But Secret Staircase Construction’s architecture was anything but obvious. Around the central table, the two walls framing the door were lined with high bookcases. The oak shelves, built by her dad, were filled with a combination of books and bookish knickknacks, from pen-filled mugs with cute sayings like “happiness is pie and a good book” to candles with labels that noted the scent as “old books.”

The books on the shelves were old, but not like what Tempest thought of as “movie-set library” old. These weren’t leather-bound tomes with matching spines.

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