Page 43 of Killer on the First Page
The Maven of Malice’s eyes did indeed shine, though Miranda wondered if it may have been something else that was making Inez glow. Her Pale Highness even had a touch of color in her pallid cheeks. Stranger still, Owen McCune sported a soot-like smear acrosshis lips. Coal dust? No. Oil from his garage? Not that, no. It was lipstick. Black lipstick.
Inez brushed her hand along Owen’s shoulders as she passed, turning as she went. Miranda could see two distinct handprints planted on the backside of Inez’s white dress. One on each cheek.
Well, thought Miranda, if nothing else, that was one set of prints Ned wouldn’t need to take.
News of the murder might have electrified the crowd, but Inez handled it easily enough. Owen, however, was dumbfounded.
“A murder?” he said. “In the Murder Store?”
Okay, when he put it that way, it didn’t sound quite so improbable, Miranda acknowledged.
Owen turned to Inez. “That musta happened after we, uh, snuck upstairs.”
Inez said, loudly, “Of course it did. We were nowhere near that room when he died.” She fired a look Miranda’s way. “We are each other’s alibi.”
“Who said anything about an alibi?” Miranda asked sweetly.
“I write murder for a living,” Inez replied with a haughty sniff. “And alibis arede rigueurin such situations.”
Alibis... alibis... Miranda turned this over in her head.
From her days as Pastor Fran, Miranda knew that alibis could be chronological or physical. That is, an alibi via eyewitness accounts could place a suspect away from the scene of a crime at thetimeit occurred. If, at the moment of the murder, one were hobnobbing with supermodels, say, as was often the case with the villains onPastor Fran Investigates(nice guys never hobnobbed with supermodels, only bad guys did; that was a fundamental rule of network TV; ditto with champagne glasses: anyone seen swirling a champagne glass at a reception was a de facto villain), it precluded one from having taken part in said murder. Likewise, if someone were attending an auctionfor orphans (not auctioning off orphans; an auctionfororphans), as the wrongly accused so often were on her show (to go byPastor Fran Investigates, there were more charity auctions per orphanage than there were actual orphanages), that fact might allow them to elude false arrest. Those were examples of chronological alibis. But physical clues could also provide either an alibi or proof of guilt. A parking ticket in one’s jacket, time-stamped miles away while the murder was occurring, for example. Or if one’s leg were in a cast and the murder required leaping from a building. These were examples ofphysicalevidence providing an alibi. Of course, such evidence could also incriminate a person. How many telltale discarded matchbooks had Pastor Fran come upon over the years? Half the suspects on her show seemed to be either exonerated or incriminated by discarded matchbook covers. (Men of that era were just dropping matchbooks everywhere, apparently.) But could alackof physical evidence provide an alibi? A lack of footprints, for example. Could that eliminate a suspect?
The absence of evidence did not prove evidence of absence! Miranda Abbott knew this (it was practically axiomatic), but just as equally, absence of evidence did not indicate absent evidence by its lack of presence! And if the absent was present, then the presence itself was not!
Where was Andrew, anyway? He really should be writing this down, she thought.
Oh, right. Her newly deputized personal assistant was taking statements from the locals and then ushering them toward the front door, where they gathered their jackets and assorted accoutrements.
How can you shoot an arrow through a closed window?
The answer? You can’t.
Pastor Fran Investigateshad employed its fair share of locked-room mysteries over the years. Were any of those applicable? PennyFenland had waded through many of those scripts during her time as a reader for the show. Perhaps she would recall something similar.
Miranda waited until Penny had finished giving Andrew her statement, then called her to one side. “Penny, dear. About the show...”
Penny’s eyes widened. “You know?”
“Know what?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise. I was going to tell you after the reception, just the two of us toasting our good fortune over a bottle of wine, but then—well, this incident does put a damper on things. Is it wrong that I’m excited anyway? Should I still be excited when one of my fellow writers has just been killed? Am I a bad person?”
“Whatever are you talking about?” Miranda asked.
“The show.”
“Yes.Pastor Fran Investigates. My show.”
“Oh, I thought you meant...myshow.”
And that was how the news came out, inadvertently and suddenly, like an avalanche. Earlier, Miranda Abbott had been searching for a sign, an omen, and one had just been delivered.
“Netflix is all in. They’re going to mount a full production of the Eastern Township Mysteries! But we’re swapping out the genders of the two lead characters this time, making Inspector Le Gnash a woman and Sergeant La Flamme a man. Le Gnash was always my alter ego, and you know how stumped I’ve been, trying to adapt him for the screen. Once I swapped that out, everything made sense. Everything worked.”
“How wonderful!” said Miranda, missing the point.
Penny gave her aDon’t you see?look, and when Miranda still didn’t clue in, she said, “We want you to play the lead. A female Inspector Le Gnash. You’d be perfect for the role.”
