Page 46 of Killer on the First Page

“Wait,” said Miranda. “Harpreet, I need to ask you about Fairfax. I don’t see him anywhere.”

Tanvir rolled his eyes, almost audibly. “That fellow,” he muttered. “Very rude. He did not even try my wife’s chai, and her chai is the best chai of all the chais in the Tri-Rock Area.”

Miranda stumbled on this. “Chai?”

Harpreet tried to brush it aside, but her feelings had clearly been hurt. “His chai went cold.”

“Cold?” This was beyond venial. Letting your chai get cold was a mortal sin.

“The chai I prepared. I made it especially for Mr. DePoy. He left it on the counter in the kitchen and never even tasted it. I wanted him to try it with Bea’s cobbler. A good combination. But it was not to be.”

“You haven’t seen him since?”

“It is fine,” she said. “I do not need his praise. I have something better than Mr. DePoy. I have Tanvir.”

With beaming hubby in tow, Harpreet departed into the night.

“Why do I think it’s going to be a romantic night at the Singh house tonight?” Miranda mused.

Bea Maracle was now pulling on her own down-filled jacket.

“Bea, have you seen Fairfax DePoy tonight?”

“Only from across the room earlier. Harpreet kept telling me ‘You’re the secretary-general of our fan club, Bea. You should bring him a serving of your peach cobbler in person!’ But I couldn’t find him anywhere. He had already gone.”

“Gone by 8:16 p.m.?” Miranda said. Right when the murder occurred. Had a literary feud finally turned deadly?

Bea pulled on her mittens. “Do you have your keys?” she asked, ever the concerned landlady.

“We do, thank you. Andrew and I may be back late, so please don’t wait up for us.”

Bea looked past Miranda to try to catch Ned’s eye to say good night, but he was preoccupied with the investigation.

“I won’t bother him,” she said. “Thank you, Miranda. It was a lovely evening. Except for the dying.”

That single footprint across the yard, facingaway from the house. Miranda needed to confront Fairfax DePoy. But where was he?

She asked everyone she passed if they’d seen him. No one had.

“I think he was talking to Ray Valentine,” the publicist suggested, but Ray denied that.

“I didn’t see him. Ask Wanda.”

But Wanda sent her to Penny, and Penny sent her to Inez, and Inez sent her back to Sheryl Youngblut.

The mood in the bookstore was growing crankier by the moment.

“How long you gonna keep us cooped up here?” Wanda wanted to know as she shoved ever more antacids into her mouth, chasing them with a fistful of pink pills, which she then washed down with a glug of booze from the bar table.

She’d practically polished off an entire bottle of ouzo on her own, was now fighting with the cotton wad in a freshly opened pill container. Miranda deftly slid the liquor out of her reach, felt a tingle on the nape of her neck. Was Wanda as drunk as she seemed, or only as drunk as she pretended to be? There was something going on here beyond ulcers. Fear, perhaps. Or knowledge. Guilty knowledge.

Happy Rock’s Chief of Police, meanwhile, was deep in discussion with his newly appointed deputy over the quality of the statements his deputy was providing.

“Andrew, you have to be objective. No editorializing. Just write up what they said and have them review it and sign off. It’s not rocket science.”

“Who’s editorializing?” Andrew wanted to know. “Everything in those statements is true.”

“Come on, man. Look at this:STATEMENT: ‘I did not see Mr. Hamady exit the main room. I was waiting for the peach cobbler. Then I was eating the peach cobbler,’ he said nervously, his small, beadyeyes darting back and forth, lips twitching suspiciously. VERDICT: HE’S LYING!That’s called embellishing. You can’t do that, Andrew.”