Page 70 of Killer on the First Page
“That’s what I thought,” said Miranda. “You wouldn’t go shopping for shoes on Rodeo Drive with someone you passionately disliked, any more than you would go fishing with an enemy, sworn or otherwise.”
A possible explanation was taking shape...
Chapter Eighteen
The Book That Matters Most
They stuffed Lachlan into the back of Edgar’s Jeep, hoping they wouldn’t have to talk to him on the drive, but he leaned forward, shoving his big face in between them to ask gauche questions about Miranda’s marriage and Andrew’s salary—or lack thereof (in both cases).
“What, are you scared to go back to LA?” he asked.
Miranda ground both the gears and her teeth, following the road past Hiram Henry House, where the lights were still on, and then onto the forested road out of town. If only Lachlan Todd had been eaten by a bear!
“You’d think Edgar would have offered to put me up,” Lachlan griped. “It’s the least he could do, with everything I’ve done for him.”
When Miranda didn’t take the bait, he added, “Edgar owes me. Big time.”
“What could Edgar possibly owe you?” she snapped, pushing harder on the accelerator.
“I was his designated fall guy. On your TV show. Whenever Your Highness got angry over a given scene or bit of dialogue, he would blame me. Remember when Pastor Fran gave in to the temptations of the flesh and kissed that priest, Father McKenzie—what a lush thatactor was! Didn’t you catch him in your dressing room trailer once, trying on your undergarments?—and you were worried that it was out of character, even though Fran and Father McKenzie were locked in a vault with a time bomb about to go off and Pastor Fran, thinking her life was about to end, revealed her true feelings in a moment of weakness?”
“What about it? Although savaged by critics, it remains one of our most popular episodes. The whole, ‘will-they-won’t-they?’ aspect of it.”
“But you threw a fit over one of the lines:Father, your lips are like the Holy Water of Christ tempered with a secular love, but, alas, I am and shall remain a woman of the cloth; my calling, like my heart, is clear, and I must not—may not! shall not!—accede to these baser instincts.Then you karate-chopped the clock on the bomb, thereby disabling the timing mechanism. Remember that?”
“How could I not? It was voted worst dialogue at that year’s Razzie Awards—along with my performance of that same dialogue.” The memory of it still stung. She’d shown up thinking it was an actual awards show. She’d fired her agent over that. (Technically, she had already fired him; she’d rehired and then refired him, but the effect was the same.)
“I didn’t write that dialogue,” Lachlan revealed. “Edgar did. He inserted those lines into my script at the last moment. He was always doing that, trying to give you these dramatic emotional scenes, showcase your talent, I guess. Half the time, it fell flat—and I took the blame because you were his wife and he begged me to.”
“Edgar would never beg!”
“Okay, so he slipped me a couple of bucks to take the fall.”
That sounded more like him.
“The point being,” said Lachlan, “Edgar owes me at least a couch to crash on after I helped maintain his matrimonial harmony. Not that it did a lot of good. Are you guys divorced now or what? No one can give me a straight answer on that.”
With an angry yank of the wheel, Miranda veered off the main road toward Happy Rock’s Hideaway Motel, circa 1972, where the sun-faded sign out front promisedColor TV!andAir Conditioning!with icicles hanging off thebrrrrletters of the latter.
“Let me out down here,” Lachlan said. “I’ll walk in. Motel manager has been yappin’ at me about ‘bounced checks’ and ‘expired credit cards,’ blah blah. So suspicious, these small towns.”
Lachlan closed the door of the Jeep as quietly as possible and then hiked in as Miranda spun the Jeep around, kicking up gravel, not caring about the noise and muttering invective under her breath. “I ought to lean on the horn, really wake up the manager.”
Instead, she flew back into Happy Rock, past the Duchess Hotel, gunning the motor. Rather than follow the road along the shore, however, she turned up Beacon Hill.
“I thought we were going to Bea’s,” said Andrew.
“We are... eventually.”
* * *
MIRANDA PULLED INat the I Only Read Murder bookstore and marched up to the front door, fully expecting to enter unimpeded—but the door was locked.
“It took a dead body in the bookstore to finally make him take security seriously.” She turned to Andrew. “Key!”
“Key?”
“To the front door. As cashier, you must have one on you.”
