Page 80 of Killer on the First Page
“And how long is this agreement for?” Edgar wanted to know.
“In perpetuity,” said Melvin. “That means—”
“I know what that means.” Under his breath, Edgar muttered, “I’ll get Atticus on that.”
“Atticus is the one who drafted the agreements,” Melvin said. “Now, about those grates. Pretty simple, really. You go underneath them, where the duct is. You reach up, there’s a latch. Turn that, and the last panel flaps down on a pin hinge. It opens up like that so you can clean out the inside of the duct. It’s an old design from before people used those giant vacuum-hose, rattle-bang machines to suck out the dust. Me, I’m old-school. I use a hand brush. I could use aregular vacuum, I suppose, but that would require an upgrade. Our Mega Super Elite™ package.”
Although she already knew the answer, Miranda asked, “Anyone could open those trays?”
“Yup. If you do, though, be careful. It can shower you with dust.”
“Dust—and toothpicks!” cried Miranda. “Gentlemen, to the basement!”
But before they could head downstairs, an irate woman from the Portland team shooed Melvin away. “Out! Your presence alone is contaminating the crime scene.”
“Will do.” With the snap of a business card, he said, “You need anything, call.”
“Um, okay. Sure.” She took the card in a daze.
These Happy Rock men were musky, Miranda noted, but not without their appeal. Case in point: Owen McCune’s wooing of the uber-gothic Inez Fonio.
“Melvin, before you go,” Miranda said. “You took the authors on a tour of Tillamook Bay. And the lighthouse?”
“Highlight of our Premium Tour package,” he said. “No trademark on that one. Thomas Cook beat us to it. Don’t know who this Cook guy is, but he’s always one step ahead of us.”
“Which is to say, they would have known they would be going to the lighthouse at Laurel Point, would be visiting the keeper’s quarters, with the grandfather clock and the heavy beams overhead?”
“For sure. We have it on our website. A full 360 of the interior.”
The young forensics investigator had regained her composure and was now hustling Melvin down the hall to the front door.
He called back to Edgar as the officer closed the front door on him, “With our Mega Super Elite™ Furnace Cleaning Service, we also check for boa constrictors in the—”
“I’m going to kill Atticus,” said Edgar. He was going to kill a lot of people; the list was long, but the name Atticus Lawson figured prominently on it.
“Time enough to kill Atticus later!” Miranda said. “We have a murder to solve.”
Chapter Twenty-One
A Kill Shot from Below
Miranda led the way, through the hall, past the kitchen, and down the stairs to the furnace room, with Ned, Deputy Andrew, and Edgar in tow.
In the dim light, they followed the overhead ducts in the basement. Edgar reached up and found the latch Melvin had told them about. The metal panel under the floor grate swung loose, and they found themselves peering up directly into the reading room. Through the curlicue gaps in the grate, they could see figures moving about amid the heavy trod of footsteps and the muffled sound of voices. An ornamental pattern. But space enough to fire an arrow through.
“If only he’d been wearing his hat,” said Miranda. “It would have fallen on top of the grate, revealing where the arrow had come from. Alas, Kane had stuffed his trilby into his overcoat pocket, and when he toppled backwards into the chair, he took his hat with him. But not his toothpick. That fell though the grate into the basement.”
Miranda looked at the crates stacked against the wall. “The dust on those crates,” she said. “Undisturbed. What does that tell you?”
The others had no idea.
“It tells us that Fairfax DePoy did not kill Kane Hamady!”
“You can tell that from dust?” said Ned.
“The challenge the killer faced was how to get Kane to come to the grate. In the room above, Kane was growing frantic. He needed to know how that final John D. Ross story ended. He’d turned the manuscript over, found a handwritten note at the bottom of the last page: the answer to the riddle would be at the end ofthe book that matters most. But which book? He began flinging hardcovers around, flipping them to the last page, tossing them aside. Defeated, he came over to unlock the door and let us in, and what did he spot? The one thing no author can resist:a copy of his own book. It was lying open, face down on top of the grate. Planted earlier by someone who knew Kane’s plan. Someone who knew he was going to sneak back into the room and lock himself in it until he had retrieved the manuscript and uncovered its secrets. The killer was familiar with the blueprints to the bookstore, had studied them online. Knew the vanity of authors, and Kane Hamady in particular. Knew he would stop to pick up his book when he saw it there. I imagine, when everyone else was crowding in to stare into the cabinet at the manuscript, our killer casually laid a copy of Kane’s novel on the grate behind the open door.”
“It also explains why the book was open at exactly mid-point,” said Ned. “Page one hundred out of two. That’s how a book would naturally fall open, I’d guess.”
