Page 17 of Killer on the First Page

“Which is locked away in a secure room,” Miranda quickly added. Edgar was always so lax about these things. What if itwasa lost work?Shouldn’t it be better protected than in a cabinet with a glass front and a key that was leftin the lock.

“What’s this about a manuscript?” said a hard-boiled voice from behind.

He’d snuck up behind them like a gorilla in soft-shoe (to use his sort of phrasing). Kane Hamady, freshly toothpicked, was considering Ms. Youngblut with a sardonic gaze. “Hello, dollface.”

“You!” said Sheryl, not even attempting to disguise her hostility. “You were supposed to be on the lighthouse tour with the others. What are you doing here?”

“Avoiding my fellow scribes, mainly,” he said. “What’s it to ya, dollface?”

“You call me ‘dollface’ one more time...” she said, a flare of anger behind her ice-blue eyes. “I’m your publicist, not your moll.”

“Notmypublicist,” he said, shifting his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. He looked at Edgar. “A manuscript, you say? An unpublished John D. Ross, is it? What’s the lowdown, the inside track?”

“I’m returning it to Helen.”

A pause. “Helen?” Kane said. “Who’s Helen?”

“His widow,” said Edgar. “I thought you knew John D. Ross.”

“Oh, right. His wife. Helen, was it? Yeah. We knew each other, John D. Ross and I, back in the day.”

Kane Hamady looked away. Far away.

You’ve got to toughen up your prose, Kane. You’re too sensitive. Try writing from your gut, not your heart.

“Yeah, we knew each other. Back in the day.” He shot a stabbing glance Sheryl Youngblut’s way. “This book festival of yours is practically a class reunion, I see.”

A class reunion from hell, as it turned out.

Chapter Five

Case of the Missing Rope!

Back in the kitchen, Gerry was bustling about among the various pots and pans and a horn o’ plenty’s worth of ingredients spilling across the counter that they must have brought with them. (Edgar owned an electric kettle, an array of mismatched utensils, a couple of coffee mugs, pre-chipped, and an aluminum frying pan. Miranda had installed a cappuccino machine with espresso cups in the back, and even then Edgar had complained about her “gentrifying” the place.)

Andrew was attempting to mince mint leaves on a cutting board, much to Geri’s disapproval.

“Small chopping motions,” she said with a rictus smile. “If you saw the blade back and forth like that, you’llshredthe leaves. We don’t wantshreddedleaves, we want minced leaves.”

She was relieved when Miranda interrupted.

“Andrew, darling, I must pull you away from here, I’m afraid. I need to get back to my suite at Bea’s to ready myself for tonight’s performance.”

“Not a performance,” said Edgar as he entered the kitchen. “A reception.”

“One and the same, Edgar. Life is a performance!”

Edgar hung the key to the reading room on the hook in the kitchen.

“You locked the door to the reading room?” said Miranda, impressed.

“With the overly enthusiastic interest Kane and that publicist showed in John D. Ross’s lost manuscript, I figured, yeah, maybe it’s more valuable than I thought. Figured I should keep it locked up until I can get it back to Helen Ross, especially when all the guests get here.”

Andrew was wiping his hands, having thoroughly shredded the mint into a pulpy, wet mulch. “All done!”

“Andrew, please call Ned Buckley and arrange a ride for us back to Bea’s.”

Edgar intervened. “No. Don’t. Miranda, you have to stop using 911 for that. Here.” He tossed Andrew the keys to his Jeep. “You can run her nibs down.”