Page 83 of Killer on the First Page
“A rather complex way to die.”
“Ma’am, the deceased was alone inside the lighthouse, with the door locked. It was bolted shutfrom the inside.The windows were barred, no access to the floor above, no hidden trapdoor in the floor below. The room was entirely sealed off. If that isn’t suicide, what is?”
“And the grandfather clock? Explain that!”
Unaccustomed to the sudden breathtaking leaps Miranda was capable of, the detective turned to the others for help. “What is she talking about? The clock in the lighthouse? The one that fell over?”
Andrew answered for her: “The pieces seemed scattered.”
The detective’s brow furrowed. “A toppled grandfather clock will do that. How is that an issue?”
“It isn’t an issue until it is! And then itisan issue!” she declared, to a deepening of the furl on the detective’s brow.
“Ma’am, I don’t follow...”
“It’s ‘The Case of the Clockwork Corpse’! But the opposite of it.”
Leaning in, Andrew whispered, “He may not be as knowledgeable about the Pastor Fran canon as some of us.”
“A body hidden inside a standing clock!” she said. The pieces of the puzzle were moving, were snapping into place—almost literally.
“A body? Inside a clock? Where?!” said the detective.
“On TV!” she cried.
If sighs could kill... “Ma’am, I really don’t have time for this.”
“In that episode, the nefarious villain Professor Nemesis—”
“Wait,” said the detective. “The nemesis on your show was actually named Nemesis?”
“He had to make room for the body, so he removed the internal mechanisms—when the clock didn’t chime, that was the clue that solved the case. But here we have something quite different. The question isn’t ‘How do the clues fit together?’ in thefigurativesense, but how they fit together in theactualsense. The pieces of the lighthouse clock were scattered far and wide. How do they fit together?Dothey fit together? Andrew, darling!”
She yelled as though summoning him from a great distance, even though he was standing right next her.
“Yes?”
“You are still deputized, I believe. That should grant you access to the lighthouse. I want you to go through and put that clock back together again, the inner workings, in its entirety, see if everything fits.”
“You want me to reassemble a grandfather clock? That would take ages. And how would I even know where everything belongs? Who would know how to put it back together? What, am I supposed to call up my ‘clock guy,’ see what he says?”
“Excellent idea! Yes, do call him. That’s the spirit.”
“I don’t have a ‘clock guy.’ I was being sardonic.”
“Oh? Well, don’t. It doesn’t suit you.”
“And what would I even be looking for? Missing pieces?”
“Not missing pieces,extrapieces. One in particular. Something about this long”—she held her hands a foot or so apart—“And this wide.” She held up her thumb and finger in an OK sign. Not the most accurate measurements ever given, but enough to go by, she was sure.
“The assignment seems both incredibly vague and impossibly specific,” said Andrew, his heart sinking. He could see what was coming. “You want me to put a clockback togetherjust to see if there are any extra bits left over?”
“Precisely! I want you to look for something that could be squeezed into the barrel of a door bolt,” she explained.
“The barrel of a bolt?”
“The tubular shaft that the bolt slides into when the door is unlocked. Look for something—a spring, perhaps—that could be pushed into it so that, as it slowly expanded, it would push the bolt back into place, locking the door after the fact.”
