“Yes, yes. Since you were in middle school together. I know, I know. I’m only saying, between the two of them, Geri and Gerry practically had the run of the place this afternoon. No one was trackingtheirmovements.”
His eyes narrowed. “What are you saying, Miranda?”
“It’s probably nothing,” she assured him. “Unless it isn’t.”
Ned changed the subject. “Here’s a question. Ifyouwere on the run, at night, in a town you didn’t know, where would you go? What would be your first instinct?”
“Where would I go? That’s an excellent question, Ned. I imagine the first place I would head to would be my room, to gather up my belongings and run.”
And now it was Ned who was running, or as close to that gait as he ever came. He barreled down the hall, hollering, “Officer Holly!”
“What is it, Ned?”
Having fingerprinted everyone, Holly was now taping a large X across the closed door to the reading room. The room—and the body inside—were now officially off-limits until further notice.
“Grab yer gear,” said Ned. “We gotta go!”
As they swerved out from the bookstore in their patrol cars, lights flashing, Andrew Nguyen—Deputy Andrew Nguyen!—unexpectedly found himself in charge.
The vacuum of silence that followed was palpable.
The locals had mostly gone. Mabel, Bea, Harpreet and Tanvir. DocMeadows had left for the morgue, to fill in paperwork and arrange for collection of the body. Owen had departed with a vaudevillian wink and eyebrow-bobbing grin thrown Inez’s way. As subtle as a bag of cement dropped from the fourth floor, our Owen. But Geri and Gerry were still there, cleaning up. Scoop Bannister was hanging back, notepad at the ready, and the tongue-tied attorney Atticus lingered on.
The rest were out-of-towners: the four remaining authors from the festival (the macabre Inez Fonio, the professorial Ray Valentine, the statuesque Penny Fenland, and the formidable—and formidably drunk—Wanda Stobol), plus the gate-crashing Lachlan Todd and the perpetually frazzled publicist Sheryl Youngblut.
Trouble began almost immediately.
“Where’s Fairfax DePoy?” Ray demanded. “How come we’re stuck here and he’s not?”
“Yes,” said Penny. “WhereisFairfax?”
“Who knows, who cares?” mumbled Wanda.
Inez asked, “Can we see the body?”
Andrew: “No.”
“Not even a peek?”
“Why would you want to see the body?” Andrew asked.
“To read his dying aura,” she explained, as though this were the most natural thing on earth. Why else would one want to see a dead body? “Perhaps clues to his death are present in the shimmering afterglow of his soul’s departure.”
“No one is reading anyone’s aura,” Andrew insisted. “You heard what Ned said.”
Before he’d left, Happy Rock’s police chief had told everyone to sit tight. “Any questions, Deputy Nguyen will handle them.” But as a whispered aside to Andrew, he’d added, “We can’t hold them here indefinitely. If they get querulous, stall.”
“Deputy, are you detaining us?” Ray Valentine wanted to know.
“Don’t have to answer that,” said Andrew, erroneously.
“I’m sorry, but that is a fair question,” said Penny Fenland. “Are we being detained?”
Channeling his inner Miranda, Andrew straightened his shoulders, raised his chin, and said with abject confidence, “We are notnotdetaining you. And you are most certainly un-free to not go.”
Miranda beamed at her protégé. “You are doing wonderfully well, Andrew.”
Wanda, loud on medication and martinis, said with a raw guffaw, “Get Compendium Cathy on the case!”
