Page 101 of Killer on the First Page

“The case, yes. But that’s not the end of the story, is it, Miranda?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

He placed his napkin to one side. “Andrew told me about the job offer. In Hollywood.”

“Blabbermouth.”

“We’re going to miss you,” he said.

Taken aback, Miranda said, “You think I should go?”

“Don’t want you to, but I think you have to. You’d always regret it if you didn’t try. Life is too short for regret. Bea will miss you fiercely, of course, but getting to watch you on the screen again, battling the forces of evil, setting the world to rights—that would be even better.”

“I’m not so sure. They hired Lachlan Todd as the head writer!”

“The smarmy guy with the outlandish theories?”

“The same. A nuanced literary series set in Quebec’s Eastern Townships will now be adapted by a Hollywood hack, the Master of the Locked-Room Mystery.”

“King,” he said.

“King, pontiff, imperial pooh-bah. However you slice it, it’s still cheese. When I found out about the deal—oh, how he crowed about it before he left town!—my first thought was to back out of the project entirely. But then I thought, no. I will go down there and I will duke it out with him, not giving an inch. I won’t let him win. A feeble and petty reason to go, I admit.”

“Sometimes we make the right decisions for the wrong reasons.”

“Hollywood or Happy Rock?” A smile surfaced. “It’s not the kind of thing that can be decided on the toss of a coin.”

He either missed this reference or chose to. He put down his fork and shook his head, pushed his plate away from him. “See? This is good—this is fine—but it’s nowhere near as good as Bea’s. I’ve been telling her, open a bakery.”

“Doc told me about that quarter you carry with you, the story behind it.”

“He did, did he?”

“Indeed.”

“Blabbermouth.”

“He told me about the fateful coin toss when you were young. He said you lost.”

“I did. In every conceivable way.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Miranda, “is why you keep telling everyone it’s a lucky coin.”

“I said it was a lucky coin. I didn’t say it was lucky for me.”

“You know, when the killer was on the loose, Bea worried about you so much she couldn’t sleep.”

“Aw, that’s just Bea being Bea. She worries. It’s what she does.”

“Does she, though? Bea Maracle is the world’s greatest Pastor Fran fan; she knows that character better than I do. And yet, it wasn’t me she was worried about. It wasyou. A wise person recently told me,It’s the people we worry about who we love the most. Bea worries about you, Ned.”

“And Edgar worries about you,” he countered.

“No. He doesn’t. No one worries about me.”

“Andrew,” said Ned. “Andrew worries about you.”

There was a pause.