Page 12

Following Ray in, and diminutive to the point of diminishment, was Fairfax Hughes DePoy III.

He wore tweed and an ascot, with traditionally cuffed trousers.

Only a pipe was missing, or maybe a monocle, to complete the picture.

His sartorial sangfroid aside, there was something clammy and uncertain about him, Miranda felt.

He had mouse-like features, with eyebrows too thick and a chin too weak, and had brushed what little remained of his hair back and upward in a (failed) attempt at appearing taller.

Miranda had recognized it in his gait as soon as he entered: he was wearing lifts.

She had been the right height for most of Hollywood’s leading men, meaning not tall enough to make them feel insecure.

But several of them were still shorter than her, and they’d be forced to wear, ahem, “height-enhancing insoles.” Their gait when wearing them was heavy, yet tentative.

Fairfax had that gait. Even in his lifts, he could barely look Miranda in the eye.

Harpreet Singh swept in as soon as Mr. DePoy entered, eyelashes fluttering from forty paces. She latched herself onto the romance writer with a beaming “Mr. DePoy, so wonderful to meet you. I am the president and CEO of the local Jack Stryker Fan Club.”

Left unsaid was the fact that there were exactly two members of the Happy Rock Jack Stryker Fan Club: Harpreet, CEO and president for life, and Bea, secretary-general in charge of snacks when the two of them had their book club meetings. Peach cobbler, chai—and romance.

“I have consumed all of your books,” Harpreet said, and then, voice dropping, “I keep them by the bedside table.” And the way she said it, it sounded naughty.

Edgar would later ask Tanvir, “Does it bother you? The way Harpreet rushed in as soon as Fairfax DePoy entered, smiling and sashaying like that?”

“Not in the least,” said Tanvir, with a cheerful equanimity. “Truly, Mr. DePoy may be famous and wealthy and pursued by fans. But I have something he doesn’t.”

“Oh, what’s that?”

A smile. “I have Harpreet.”

* * *

A S H ARPREET ’ S ONE-WOMAN appreciation society continued to lavish adulation on an inattentive and agitated Fairfax DePoy, Miranda remembered: “Mr. DePoy, my dear friend Bea Maracle is an avid and abiding fan of your work as well. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to make it tonight, but I was wondering if you might perchance sign a copy of your latest Jack Stryker novel, Boudoir of the Bourbons , to her. ”

Harpreet threw a look Miranda’s way. “ Duvet of the Plantagenets , you mean to say. Boudoir of the Bourbons was the previous one.” A true fan would know such things. Then, fluttering her gaze back in Fairfax’s direction, Harpreet sighed, “ Coverlet of the Capulets was my favorite.”

But the celebrated historical romance mystery maestro was barely listening. He kept throwing nervous looks over Harpreet’s shoulder, watching the front door like a skittish rabbit awaiting a fox. Keeping an eye out for the dreaded two-fisted Kane Hamady, Miranda realized.

His feud with Kane Hamady may have sold a lot of books, and may well have raised the profile of both authors, but it hardly seemed a fair fight to Miranda.

Fairfax DePoy’s door-stopping novels, which Miranda hadn’t read but had been told about in great length and detail by Harpreet, were bodice-ripping tales of murder set in fifteenth-century England, featuring Jack Stryker, known to friend and foe alike as “Jack the Striker,” a veritable giant of a man who could smite these aforementioned foes with a single blow of his enormous fist, a man who rode into battle with a crossbow in each hand and the reins between his teeth, regardless of the implausibility or impracticality of this, a hero who was always described as “towering above other men.” Oh, and he was chronically short of buttons, to go by the open-shirted garb featured on the covers.

And fifteenth-century rovers also waxed their chests, apparently.

“First time in Happy Rock?” Miranda asked.

“What? Oh. Right.” Addled and no doubt distracted by the impending arrival of his archnemesis, Fairfax, barely able to keep up his end of the conversation, said something about the “cutthroats of Tillamook Bay,” which Miranda construed to be a reference to the cutthroats in his novels. But Tillamook Bay? How did that fit in?

“A record. I was there for that,” he murmured by way of explanation, which only added to her confusion.

The bell above the front door jangled, and Fairfax DePoy locked sights on the figure coming down the hall toward them: Kane Hamady.

“Keep me away from him,” Fairfax whispered to Harpreet.

* * *

F AIRFAX NEEDN ’ T HAVE worried. Scoop Banister intercepted Kane before he could get halfway across the room, and Fairfax shrank away like a violet in a John D. Ross novel. ( The Shrinking Violet of Cowardice , perhaps. Or Vile is the Violet of Violence) .

“I don’t readily fraternize with the ink-stained crowd, sweet cheeks,” Kane told the reporter.

“The, uh, ink-stained crowd?”

“Newshounds and their ilk, the scandal merchants and tabloid trash such as yerself.”

“It’s not really a tabloid,” said Scoop. “It’s our local paper. The Weekly Picayune ?” She said it as though he might have heard of it.

He hadn’t.

“The Weekly Whatchamacallit? What’s a smart cookie like you doin’ in a boondock burg like this? But if you got questions, shoot. Can’t stand here flappin’ gums and crackin’ wise the livelong day, toots.”

“It’s not ‘toots,’ Mr. Hamady. The name is—”

“Call me Kane, hon, as in ‘raising’ or ‘candy’ or ‘six of the best on the backside.’ All the gals do.”

Cookie, toots, gals . She took a deep breath. Better to start over. “I’m Scoop Bannister. I’m with The Weekly —”

“Your name is Scoop?”

“Uh, that’s what’s on my byline.”

“You know what? I love that. Can’t be your real name, though, right, Chuckles?”

Chuckles? “No. It’s not Toots or Chuckles or—”

“Don’t bust my chops, dollface. I’m just razzin’, see. No need for a rhubarb. You got moxie, kiddo. I’ll give you that. Can see you’re on the level.”

“Jane. My actual name is Jane.”

“I love that, too: Jane Bannister, ‘Plain Jane,’ girl reporter gettin’ the scoop. Great idea for a character.” He patted his pockets, looking for a piece of paper and a writing implement of some kind. “I should write that down... Nah, I’ll remember.”

“Now then, Mr. Hamady, before I get to the gist of the matter—whether or not you think a good time is being had by all—I wanted to ask about your ongoing issues with Fairfax DePoy and whether—”

And again he cut her off. Did he ever let a single woman finish a single sentence?

“Better youse talk to that toffee-nosed tosspot yourself,” he said, with a snide nod to the corner of the room where Fairfax was now cowering behind a fern.

Changing tack, Scoop said, “I noticed your latest Mick Hardy novel, uh”—she checked her notes for the title—“ Me, the Judgment , is quite a bit shorter than the previous seventy-five books in the series.”

“Is it?”

“Oh yes. The first one you wrote”—back to her notes—“ I, the Vengeance, was almost four hundred pages long. The latest one is barely two hundred, and the plot is not as complicated, so I was wondering if this is because Mick Hardy has suffered marked cognitive decline over time due to TBI.”

“TBI?”

“Traumatic brain injury. I’ve noticed he’s always getting hit on the head and knocked unconscious. Once or twice a novel, in fact. The ability to withstand repeated head injuries without suffering any apparent ill effects seems to—”

“Interview is over, Snoop.”

“Uh, it’s Scoop.”

“Right, a skirt named Scoop...” He patted his pockets absentmindedly. “I really should write that down.”

“Also, he seems to get shot in the shoulder an awful lot. By my count, he has at least fourteen bullets in his left shoulder alone. Does he have really broad shoulders, or are the villains just really bad shots?”

But by that point Kane Hamady, toughest writer in the room, had stomped off in a pouty snit. A hard-boiled hissy fit.