Edgar’s Jeep pulled up, rolled alongside them. “Miranda,” he called through the open passenger window. “Come on. Get in. I’ll drive you there.”
“Never!”
“If you get in, I’ll apologize.”
“Done!”
She climbed into the back seat, gave Andrew the front.
Edgar followed Beacon Hill Road down to the harbor. The air was misted with frost. It was as though the very landscape were exhaling.
“Well?” she said, arms crossed. “I’m waiting.”
“Miranda, I’m sorry that you are upset by facts.”
“Apology accepted!”
Chapter Nineteen
Return of the Idaho Seven
Bea had waited up for them.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said when Andrew and Miranda finally appeared through the back door. “I was so worried about—”
“We’re fine, Bea, thank you.”
“—Ned. With a murderer running loose in Happy Rock, I was so worried something might happen to him. He carries so much on his shoulders. I worry about him.”
Bea Maracle’s two-story-plus-an-attic clapboard home by the bay was considered a “cottage” in the Pacific Northwest. Where Miranda was from, cottages were rustic log arrangements hewed out of the forest by hermits and hunters. Here, they were cozy arrangements. Andrew, meanwhile, had grown up in Silicon Valley, where cottages were industries, often boutique. And, of course, the “cottages” of Hollywood stars such as George Clooney often included rustic helipads and indoor swimming pools.
Bea had pulled out the TV trays and poured a pot of chamomile tea. Everyone needed to unwind—or rewind, in this case.
“Do you think Ned will be okay?” Bea asked.
Miranda assured her he would. By tacit agreement, neither Andrew nor Miranda informed Bea that Kane’s suspected killer hadpurportedly committed suicide, let alone that it was the romance author Fairfax DePoy, whom Harpreet was such a fan of. Better to leave that news for the morning.
Something at the back of Miranda’s mind made her ask, “Bea, do you remember an episode ofPastor Fran Investigateswith a grandfather clock?”
Of course she did. “‘The Case of the Clockwork Corpse’!” Bea found the tape and put it in. “A nice way to keep our mind off of things,” she said.
On a warble of VHS tracking, those famous opening lines began:Our Lady, who arts on the mean streets of Crime City! Hallowed be her fists.
“He was the nicest boy in middle school,” Bea said, apropos of nothing. “Bob adored him. They were the best of friends.”
“Ned?”
Bea nodded, eyes on the screen but mind elsewhere.
In ‘The Case of the Clockwork Corpse,’ the corpse in question had been hidden inside a clockwork; the title sort of gave it away. It was clearly one of Lachlan Todd’s offerings.
“Ah, Professor Nemesis, you seem to have forgotten the primary characteristics of a parabolic arc!”said Miranda’s younger self to the shiny-headed villain.“When you set your pendulum of doom to cut the rope that released the dagger that pierced the container that contained the cyanide capsules, you failed to calculate the trajectory of the oscillation as adjusted for the downward force of gravity to the power of two. Any schoolchild knows that! As a church pastor, I have seen my share of incense swinging on the pendulum of a censure during the Rite of Holy Eucharist. Now, prepare to face the karate kick of justice!”
As always, Miranda watched the episodes with a mix of nostalgia and sadness. She was so young, so full of energy back then, as shesprinted across a beach (harder than it looks, running on sand; she always gave theBaywatchcrew credit for that) or kicked guns from the hands of scowling henchmen or outran a fireball or pirouetted to face the camera on a sudden zoom-in, her hands raised in pre-emptive karate stance. So young.
This episode featured an appearance by Pastor Fran’s rival detective, Lâuren Morocco, the Gumshoe Debutante, as played by four or five different actresses over the years. Not unlike Wanda Stobol. It felt strange to think of an author taking over someone else’s persona, and yet actors did that regularly.
“I still can’t believe they had her wearing actual gumshoes,” said Andrew as he watched the plucky Pastor Fran thwart her rival once again. “And in an evening gown, no less!”
