Page 13

Chapter Seven

The Penny Drops! (In for a Visit)

A s Miranda watched Kane leave the room in full snit, a voice behind her cried out joyfully, “Miranda!”

She turned with one of her patented pivots and a breathy “Yes! It is I.”

A statuesque woman in bright floral patterns was pushing through the crowd like the prow of a ship.

For a second, Miranda didn’t recognize her.

When she’d known her, Penny Fenland had been a socially awkward girl with aesthetically awkward glasses who’d been brought on to Pastor Fran Investigates as a “lady reader,” to give a much-needed female perspective on the scripts the all-male writing staff were churning out.

None of Penny Fenland’s suggestions had made it to air, though, and she soon left TV entirely, moving to Canada to pursue a career in writing fiction.

Her novels Over the Footlights and Behind the Backlights and Cast Up by the Sea!

were international bestsellers. The gawky string bean of yesteryear was gone.

The Penny of today radiated confidence. Acclaim, plus shoulder pads and laser eye surgery, will do that.

Even her stride was confident. Success became her!

“Penny, it’s been too long.”

“It has!”

She embraced Miranda, not in that fake mustn’t-smudge-one’s-makeup cocktail manner of Hollywood, but in a full bear hug. So tall, so strong, she almost lifted Miranda off her feet.

“So tell me,” said Penny Fenland. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m the co-owner. We’re hosting the reception.”

“I don’t mean the bookstore, I mean this town. It’s so quaint, it could be the setting of one of my novels.”

Miranda laughed. “I can’t imagine anyone setting a mystery series in Happy Rock.”

Smiling warmly, Penny said, “I never thought I’d see the day! The great Miranda Abbott, retiring from acting.”

“I haven’t. Not exactly. I’m taking a sabbatical, as it were, away from the hubbub.”

A gleam came to Penny’s eye. “So you could be tempted back?”

“I can resist anything,” said Miranda, quoting Wilde, “except temptation.”

Penny glanced around to make sure no one was listening.

“These other authors. What a circus of posers! I skipped out on the manure tour, and from the sounds of it, I made the right call. There was manure aplenty, in every sense.” She didn’t have patience for pretense.

“I took Edgar’s advice to heart: never take yourself too seriously.

Your work, yes, and your craft, certainly—but not yourself.

We make up fairy tales for a living. Hardly out there saving lives or making the world a measurably better place.

We’re scribblers, Miranda, even the best of us. ”

Penny Fenland was royalty among other authors, yet she seemed refreshingly down-to-earth.

“When you were young and working on our show, was I... was I kind?” Miranda asked, trying not to sound fretful. It was something that gnawed at her.

“You were a holy terror—with the men! The executives cowered at your ire. But for those few women on your show, especially the younger women, you were a ball-kicking ballerina.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” said Miranda. “You know, after my show was canceled, no one called. My so-called friends simply... evaporated.”

“Screw ’em,” said Penny. “If your friends weren’t there for you when times were bad, they weren’t your friends. I have something exciting to tell you! You know how my novels have always defied adaptation?”

Penny’s beloved detective, Knowlton Le Gnash, a gruff but caring French-Canadian investigator, had been optioned several times over the years by studios big and small, near and far, to no avail.

“I think this time it’s really going to happen!”

But before Penny could expand on this news, she was interrupted by the icy voice of a vampire.

“Penelope.”

Penny turned. “Hello, Inez,” she said, as pleasantly as possible under the circumstances.

* * *

S HE HAD MATERIALIZED out of the air, it seemed, the way frost might emerge on a window pane, the crystals an omen of coldness to come.

Raven-black hair and a stark white dress with black shawl, black lipstick, and powder-pale skin, she was a study in monochrome, with clothes so voluminous it was impossible to make out her actual location.

She seemed to float inside them. She had bird-like features and what looked like a teardrop tattooed under her left eye.

It was actually a tiny rendition of the Eye of Osiris, protection against evil, though it made her look like a gang member who’d shanked someone in prison—apt, considering the famously morbid interest Inez had in all things gory and morose.

Other writers trafficked in murder, but none with so glum an outlook as Inez Fonio, the anointed Maven of Malice. She, in turn, had dubbed Penny Fenland “the Queen of the Cozies,” in a backhanded manner, and the nickname had stuck.

“The Pastor and the Queen,” said Inez in a flat monotone, referring to Miranda and the stately Penny Fenland.

Penny, looking down on the petite, anemic figure in front of her, said, “We’ve known each other for years, Inez. You know I don’t care for that term. I write detective novels, not cozies.”

“Puzzles,” said Inez. “Puzzles with no realistic depictions of violence. Puzzles that shy from showing the cruel finality of death. That’s the very definition of a cozy.”

But Penny refused to take the bait. “The consequences of murder are portrayed in my novels, too. I don’t shy away from it, even if I don’t revel in it like some.”

Thrust and parry.

As majority co-host of the party, Miranda decided to temper the rising tempers. “Ms. Fonio, your latest novel, The Frankenstein of Murder , is very clever. Where do you get your ideas from?”

Edgar had warned her that this was a question that irked authors, though Miranda couldn’t fathom why.

Ideas had to come from somewhere, no? Truth be told, when she’d tried to read it, Miranda had thought Inez’s novel a hodgepodge of previous works.

The hero was a monster sewed together from other sleuths: it had the brain of Sherlock Holmes, the eagle eyes of Auguste Dupin, the artful fingers of Arsène Lupin, the girth of Dr. Gideon Fell, the mustache of Hercule Poirot.

.. basically any attributes of public-domain detectives.

When there was no immediate response, Miranda went for a compliment. Always a safe move in moments such as this. “I like your pendant,” Miranda said, referring to the small glass cylinder hanging around Inez Fonio’s neck. “Is that topaz?”

“Blood,” said Inez. “It’s a vial of human blood. A reminder of our mortality.”

Miranda swallowed. “Blood? Whose?”

“Mine, of course. Why would I wear someone else’s blood around my neck? What an odd woman you are.”

And with that, Inez floated off to haunt other conversations.

“Do you think...” said Penny, after the ethereal Inez had departed.

“You know how authors will do something unusual at their signings. Fairfax DePoy, for instance, signs his books with a wax seal instead of a signature, as befits his historical bent. Ray Valentine draws the shape of a police badge around his signature. Well, I wonder if... Do you suppose Inez signs her books with her own blood?”

With anyone else, it would have been a preposterous suggestion. But Inez?

“Who knows?” said Miranda with a laugh. But inside, she was seething: Edgar, what were you thinking?! Inviting a ghoul like that into our home. Er, store.

* * *

I T WOULD LATER become known as the Reception of Death, but before the murders began it had been a fairly pleasant, if somewhat mundane, evening.

Pulled away from Penny, Miranda had moved about, topping up glasses and encouraging people to eat.

Many of the guests seemed reluctant to, intimidated by G&G’s bravura culinary arrangements—it would have been like plundering a work of art.

And as she moved through the crowd with feigned laughter and air-kiss greetings, Miranda spotted a vaguely familiar face among the crowd.

It was the bookstore customer from earlier, the one with the weirdly pale upper lip, the one who’d purchased the Pastor Fran novelizations.

Oh joy! A fan! But his demeanor had changed.

His eyes had grown flinty. His expression, cold.

Miranda now received only a terse nod, barely perceptible, to her warm “Yes! It is I!” greeting.

Who invited him? thought Miranda.

Officer Holly Hinton, meanwhile, usually sardonic and tough as nuts, had been reduced to a giggling schoolgirl by the presence of the Great Wanda Stobol.

“Compendium Cathy was my hero! Honest!” Holly was clutching her cloth bag of books, waiting for the right moment to ask. “Nancy Drew and Pippi Longstocking, but especially Compendium Cathy. They were my inspirations— are my inspirations. Honest!”

A weary sigh from Wanda. “Yeah, you mentioned that. More than once.”

She was eyeing the rest of the room, looking for an exit.

Of the authors there that evening, Stobol was the one who fit in the best, fashion-wise, with the aesthetic of Oregon’s Pacific Coast. She sported 501 jeans, a red checked flannel shirt, and Blundstone boots.

What would be considered semiformal wear in Happy Rock.

As wide as she was tall, Wanda Stobol had two deep lines etched on either side of her mouth, like parentheses of disapproval.

“Honest! At Halloween, I always went as Compendium Cathy!” gurgled Officer Holly. “Granted, that mainly meant carrying around a magnifying glass and saying, ‘Aha! It all fits together now!’”

This was Compendium Cathy’s catchphrase, and the author must have heard it quoted to her many times, because she held up a hand as if to say “Enough.”

Miranda parlayed that into an offer to top up their wineglasses, as Wanda stuffed handfuls of antacids into her mouth. She chewed them noisily.

“Stomach issues?” asked Miranda.

“Ulcers. From worrying.”

“Worrying?”