Page 74 of Killer on the First Page
“Well, she was adebutantedetective,” Bea pointed out. “And debutantes do tend to wear gowns.”
“And what’s with the name Professor Nemesis for your actual nemesis? A bit on the nose, don’t you think?”
Bea was getting annoyed. “Just enjoy the show, dear.”
Miranda’s thoughts had wandered as well. “Bea, what’s that coin Ned has? The one he carries with him, tosses whenever he’s stuck and needs to make a choice.”
“His lucky quarter? I don’t rightfully know. He’s had it for as long as I’ve known him.”
With Professor Nemesis nowgrrrr-ing behind bars and Pastor Fran’s rival sleuth thwarted well and good, the episode ended as they always did, with Pastor Fran in her clerical collar hitchhiking down the road to the next town. It was now three in the morning, and they were too tired to sleep, too tired even to get up from the couch.
Bea was looking into the middle distance. “What does the extra B stand for?”
“The extra B?” said Miranda.
“In that new bed-and-breakfast, the one in the old Hiram Henry House. What does the extra B stand for, do you know? Three B’s. Seems unnecessary. After my Bob passed and I decided to rent out rooms, I considered naming it Bea & Bob’s Bed & Breakfast in his memory, but B&B’s B&B might have been confusing. I wonder what the extra B in their name stands for.”
Miranda dodged the question. “Let me clean up.” She cleared the plates. She never cleared the plates.
“Better,” said Bea fretfully. “That’s what it stands for, doesn’t it? TheBetterB&B. Do you think it really is better?”
Parquet floors and glass-cut chandeliers. Antiques and a sweeping stairwell. “Not in the least,” said Miranda. And she meant it.
* * *
MIRANDAABBOTT HADpromised herself she would go to the Opera House to speak with the janitor “first thing in the morning.” But she’d been up till three and didn’t wake till one in the afternoon the next day, which is to say, at her usual time.
She was awakened from her slumber in the Miranda Abbott Suite (aka the attic) by a frantic pounding on the door, and when she traipsed down the narrow stairs in her satiny green pajamas, Bea was staring at her, distraught.
“Is it true? Is Mr. DePoy really dead?”
“Bea, I’m so sorry.”
“No more romantic Fairfax DePoy mysteries? No more Jack Stryker riding into battle, a crossbow in each hand and the reins between his teeth? What is Harpreet going to do?”
“There are 148 books in the series, give or take, so I imagine she will still have many a tale to keep her warm on long winter nights.”
“But how will we know whether Jack Stryker and Lady Gray will finally join forces to defeat the armies of Queen Boudicca?”
Harpreet Singh showed up soon after, eyes raw, voice trembling, and the three of them had a good cry. Or rather, Bea and Harpreet had a good cry; Miranda hugged them and rubbed their backs and said “There, there.” Having never read any of DePoy’s novels and having only met him briefly the night he died, she was less stricken than she was determined. Whoever had done this must be caught. Even as she rocked back and forth with Harpreet and Bea, Miranda’s mind was turning to the Opera House and its flinty-eyed, lip-denuded janitor, the one who’d demanded of Ray Valentine,Where do you get your ideas?As innocuous as that question was, the enmity in the man’s voice had been evident—what a vocal coach might call “an undertone of violence.”
Time to confront him.
Bea Maracle was on the board of the Happy Rock Amalgamated & Consolidated Little Theater Society, which is to say she had a key to the Opera House. (Its access was as strictly restricted as that of the lighthouse.) Ned Buckley was also on the local theater board, but Miranda thought it might be imprudent to ask him. He was finicky about amateur sleuths joining an active police investigation in too robust a fashion.
Andrew was meeting with the detectives who’d arrived from the city, so Miranda went it alone, protected only by her sense of justice and finely honed TV fight skills (most of which were choreographed toavoidhurting the other person, but never mind). She was focused on solving the case, which also allowed her to avoid the question that lay beyond it: whether to take Penny up on her offer or to stay here in Happy Rock. Murder was an excellent distraction.
When Miranda arrived at the Opera House, the poster in thecommunity events board that had started all of this*now had a largeCANCELEDsign slapped across it, the First Annual Happy Rock Mystery Writers Festival having ended before it could begin. The proposed venue for the festival stood in silence. Using Bea’s key, Miranda let herself in through the stage door on the side, past the stillness of the auditorium to where the caretaker’s room was situated.
With a sharp intake of breath for courage, she rapped on the door. No answer. The door was unlocked, and the room inside was empty and murkily lit. Little more than a glorified broom closet, really. A work table. The sour smell of a mop bucket. And pinned on the wall—a photograph.
Miranda leaned in, squinting in the half-light. A group of young people were sitting around a picnic table under clear skies, relaxed and beaming and, from their questionable fashion choices, twenty years out of date. (Miranda had an eye for such things.) It would have been a pleasant memento were it not for the fact that three of the faces in the photograph had been X-ed out angrily. Faces Miranda now recognized.
Miranda gasped and stepped back—into the man she had come looking for. She spun to face him. He towered above her, face reedy, eyes reptilian.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
Eschewing her TV karate skills, she pushed past him, mumbling something about “Looking for a mop.”
