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points. When that didn’t work, I felt around the edges with my fingertips, hunting for a concealed hinge.
    ‘But your friend was in the closet.’
    ‘Yeah, but there could be a rear section too. It’s a perspective thing.’ I slapped my palm against the wood. ‘You can come out now, Masters. We know you’re in there.’
    There was no response. I sighed and, moving around to the front, stepped inside the closet on top of the sand. I prodded at the rear of the beach mural, searching for a loose board or a catch.
    ‘Where’d you get the drink?’ I asked Victoria.
    ‘The daiquiri? There was a cubby-hole near my shoulder. It had a sliding door. He told me to feel for it.’
    I looked to where Victoria was pointing and noticed an inlaid panel that had been painted to match the rest of the mural. It was around the size of a hardback book and I slid it aside and found a small cavity. There was nothing inside it.
    ‘And the sunhat?’
    ‘A panel above my head.’
    I checked up there too. The space was easy to access but it was completely empty.
    ‘And the mural? Where did that come from?’
    ‘The whole thing was covered by black roller blinds. He released them quite early on.’
    ‘And the sand?’
    ‘I have no idea. He didn’t warn me about it.’
    I turned to the stagehand. ‘Are there any trapdoors?’
    He shifted uncomfortably, then glanced sideways at the twins. It seemed the habit was catching.
    ‘You’re saying he went through a trapdoor?’ the twin with the radio said.
    ‘I’m not saying anything. I don’t even know if you have trapdoors. But if you do, it makes a lot of sense. He can’t have just vanished. He’s not that good a magician.’
    The twin pressed the radio antenna against his bottom lip as he considered my words.
    ‘Okay. You need to come with us now.’
    ‘Come with you where?’
    ‘Just get moving already.’
    It seemed like I was all out of options. Stepping down from the closet, I shook the sand from the bottom of my jeans, then squinted at Victoria.
    ‘I’m really sorry about this. I’ll see you later, okay?’
    ‘Not so fast,’ the twin told me. ‘She’s coming too. You’re both going to run through every detail of your plan.’

EIGHT
    Plan? What plan? I didn’t know of any plan besides the hasty get-away-themed one I’d been working on since I’d found the dead woman in Masters’ bathroom.
    Now, don’t get me wrong, plans are mighty useful things and I have a lot of time for a well-developed scheme. But I hadn’t the faintest idea what details our hosts were so intent on hearing. And I was pretty sure that wasn’t something they’d be altogether thrilled about.
    Speaking of not being altogether thrilled, I was becoming less and less enamoured with the route we’d been following since we’d left the theatre. To begin with, we’d been taken to a small dressing room so that Victoria could reclaim her handbag, and after that we’d been led through a door marked Restricted Access and down a flight of stairs into a basement level. The endless service corridors we were walking along featured bare concrete floors and whitewashed walls. Dusty pipes ran along the ceiling above our heads. Honestly, it was almost as if all the investment had been spent on the hotel tower and the casino floor.
    The Fisher Twins marched in front of us and two male security guards followed from behind. The uniformed guards were Hispanic-looking, and they were of around the same height and build – their height being significant and their build rating somewhere beyond substantial. It occurred to me that Victoria and I must have looked out of place, as if we were on our way to some latterday Noah’s Ark and hadn’t got the memo about coming in pairs.
    Eventually, we were instructed to wait outside an unremarkable white door. There was no sign telling us what to expect on the other side. I suppose I could have crossed my fingers (the healthy ones at least) and wished for something cosy