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Chapter Nine

The Locked Room

I t happened in a panic-stricken blur. Edgar pounding the door. Andrew scrambling about in the kitchen, unable to locate the key, and then running back breathlessly. “It’s gone! The key is gone.”

They could hear someone inside, trashing the reading room. Thumps and crashes and curses.

“Open the door!” Edgar shouted, as he began throwing his shoulder against it.

“It’s just me,” a muffled voice on the other side replied.

“Kane?” said Edgar. “Kane Hamady? What are you doing in there? Please, just open the door.”

They yelled back and forth as Miranda watched, pondering the publicist’s warning about the manuscript only moments before: You wouldn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands!

Finally, the commotion on the other side ended. The handle on the door began to turn and then—stopped. This was followed by a thwack and a gurgled voice. And then, silence.

Edgar flung himself at the door harder now.

Ned Buckley poked his head around the corner, asking, “What’s up? Some sort of hullabaloo?”

Happy Rock’s Chief of Police was not a fan of hullabaloos—or brouhahas, for that matter. And certainly not kerfuffles. And that’s what this was fast becoming: a veritable brouhaha of a hullabaloo of a kerfuffle.

“Quick! Fire a bullet through the lock!” said Andrew.

“I’m not firing my gun inside a building with somebody on the other side of a door,” said Ned. “What exactly is going on?”

Edgar, winded from flinging himself against the door to the reading room, gasped, “It’s Kane Hamady. He’s locked himself inside. I could hear books flying about. Those are first editions in there!”

“Andrew’s right,” said Miranda. “Ned, you should shoot out the lock. On Pastor Fran Investigates , police officers would often fire a round into a—”

“This isn’t a TV show, Miranda, and this certainly isn’t a gun-firing situation. Did you ask him to unlock the door?”

“Of course!” shouted Miranda and Edgar in unison.

“Did you ask him politely ?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, so he’s in there throwing some books around. If they’re damaged, you can charge him with vandalism. If not, no harm, no foul. You’ll just have to wait till he unlocks the door and comes out.”

“That’s just it,” said Edgar. “He started to. We could see the knob begin to turn, then there was a pause... followed by a thwack and an almighty awk! ”

This instantly raised Ned’s radar. “A thwack AND an awk ? In that order?”

Tanvir Singh had now appeared. “What is going on? Is this a kerfuffle?”

“We have someone trapped inside a locked room,” said Ned. “Perhaps in distress.”

Tanvir studied the brass plate below the handle. “That is a brass tumbler system. You do not see those in newer homes. It is a classic keyhole. You can peek through them just like in the movies.”

Miranda was on this instantly, her eye scrunched up to the opening. How many keyholes had she peered through during her time as Pastor Fran?

“I can’t see anything,” she said. “Something’s blocking it.”

“Most likely the key,” said Tanvir. “In these antique arrangements, the key can be used on either side of the door, can be used to lock it from the inside or outside. If it is locked from inside, there is not much one can do. Have you tried asking the person inside to turn the key?”

Edgar, exasperated, said, “Yes, I asked him to open the door.”

“But did you say ‘turn the key’?”

Edgar, trying not to snap at his friend, said, “That was implicit in the request. And now he’s not answering. Something’s happened to him.”

“Do you have a drill handy?” Tanvir asked.

“I do. Cordless. Under the sink.”

More and more people had gathered around the door to the reading room, crowding the corridor and offering such helpful comments as “What’s going on?” and “Is there a problem?” and “Have you tried the handle?”

“His voice,” said Miranda. “It changed.”

“Sure,” said Ned. “An awk .”

“Before that. When Edgar was pounding on the door, Kane yelled, ‘It’s just me.’ The more we pounded on the door, the more we heard him crashing about and the more frantic he became, shouting, ‘Won’t be but a minute! Terribly sorry!’ It was like... the timbre of his voice had changed .”

Miranda Abbott had studied voice and dialect, the stress, pitch, and rhythms—and something had shifted in Kane’s voice. It was still Kane, but it wasn’t.

“I’d imagine the door muffled much of it,” said Ned as Tanvir returned, drill in hand.

“Perhaps.” But she remained unconvinced.

The metallic sound of a drill going through the lock was the audible equivalent of chewing tinfoil.

As Tanvir drilled, the dessert trays appeared, right on time, and the crowds followed them down the hall excitedly, swooping onto the trays as soon as Geri put them down.

(Gerry was apparently busy back in the kitchen, loading the next tray.) Ned looked wistfully down the hall, but duty beckoned and he stayed at the door instead of grabbing a china saucer and making a beeline for the peach cobbler.

On a final shriek of metal on metal, the door to the reading room popped open.

It swung inward, revealing Kane Hamady with his overcoat fanning out behind him like a cape, jaw slack, eyes gaping.

He was flopped back in the swivel chair, facing the glass cabinet.

The John D. Ross first editions Edgar had so carefully stacked on the end table and shelves had been flung about violently, in a rage, as though he’d been searching frantically through their pages.

More gruesome still was the open book that was now skewered to Kane’s chest—by an arrow.

The standing lamp was no longer standing, having been knocked over, and the bulb overhead cast a yellow glow over this macabre tableau de la mort .

Ned stepped into the room, hand on his holster.

Edgar, faced with a dead body, reeled to one side, almost as though he were trying to hide behind the door, looking like he might get sick.

Miranda, however, was drawn to the corpse.

She leaned in, peered closer—not into the dead man’s eyes, not even at the shaft buried in his chest, but at the open book pierced by the arrow.

The title at the top of the opened page revealed that it wasn’t a John D.

Ross novel that had been speared into Kane Hamady’s heart, but one of his own books: Me, the Judgment.

You, the dead , thought Miranda.

* * *

H APPY R OCK ’ S C HIEF OF P OLICE , hands on his snug utility belt, stood in the middle of a baffling crime scene alongside the owners of the property, Edgar and Miranda Abbott. Everyone else, aside from Doc Meadows, had been pushed back.

Doc was checking for vitals, even though they knew Kane Hamady was dead. Ned had shouted to Officer Holly to “secure the perimeter!”

“From inside, sir?”

“Yes. From the inside. No one leaves this building.”

Ned had squeezed past the body to check the window. The window itself couldn’t open—the panes were set in place—but the transom above it could. But the latch on the transom was down partway, meaning it was effectively locked from the inside.

Doc noticed Ned looking through the glass of the window to the dark yard beyond and said, “Good idea. Guy might’ve left tracks.

Get on it, Ned. You’re a regular bloodhound.

’Member when we were kids playing hide-and-seek in the bush?

You always were the best one at finding us.

Man, the number of times you spotted me hiding behind a twig. ”

“Well, you were six feet tall by the time you were twelve, so it wasn’t that difficult.

You were easy enough to spot. And anyway, that arrow couldn’t have come from outside.

The window is sealed shut and the transom above it is closed and latched.

Musta been a booby trap, but I don’t see how.

The killer had to have been inside the room with Kane, but if he was, where’d he go? ”

“Vanished?” said Doc.

“Like a ghost,” said Ned.

Andrew, giddy with excitement, was hopping back and forth in the doorway like a kid needing to go to the bathroom, asking repeatedly, “Can I come in? Please? I can help with the investigation.”

“Just stay back, okay?” said Ned.

“Actually, there is something you can do, Andrew,” said Miranda as she marched out of the room. “Come with me.” Then, under her breath, “Doc may be on to something.”

Miranda and Andrew passed Officer Holly in the hall as she was trying to corral everyone into the main room.

“On orders from Ned!” said Miranda, and Holly waved them past. It wasn’t entirely a lie. Ned had told them to “stay back.” And the backyard was as back as you could go.

“C’mon, you bunch of lookie-loos!” Officer Holly was shouting. “You bunch of Yertle-the-turtles. Stop stackin’ up. Into the main room of the bookstore, all of you! And stay there!”

Outside in the crisp night air, Miranda and Andrew circled around the building, across the grass, toward the square of light that marked the reading room window. Through the window, they could see Ned and Doc inside with the dead body and Edgar off to one side, looking queasy.

“Don’t!” said Miranda, before Andrew could step any closer. “Don’t tread on my flower bed.”

Wet soil, smooth and undisturbed, lay directly beneath the window.

“Your hypothetical flower bed, you mean to say.”

“A flower bed is a flower bed regardless,” she said.

“But—it’s just dirt. You didn’t plant anything. You said you were going to plant petunias and poppies and peonies, but you never did.”

“That’s the point! It’s the lack of flowers we must protect.” She crouched down to examine the soil. “Hmm,” she said. “No footprints.” Miranda looked across the yard to the shed on the other side. “Do you think someone could have shot an arrow from on top of that?” she asked.

“Across the yard and in through the window?” asked Andrew. “I don’t see how. The arrow would have had to pass through solid glass. The transom above the window was closed, remember.”

“I thought perhaps the killer might have fired the arrow when the transom was open, and then used fishing wire or something to pull down the latch from the outside afterwards. Alas, there are no footprints in the flower bed, and no fishing wire dangling from the transom. Which is to say, there was no one lurking outside the window. At least, no one corporeal. Perhaps Ned and Doc are right. Perhaps it was a ghost that killed Kane Hamady... Don’t blanch like that, Andrew. I was probably kidding.”

The two of them went back inside, past the kitchen and down the hall to the reading room. Along the way, Miranda snatched the serving schedule that G&G had posted on the front of the fridge. “Exhibit A!” she said, and Andrew had absolutely no idea what she meant.

“Where’d you two go?” said Ned as they came back into the room.

“I was checking for footprints in my flower bed,” said Miranda. “Alas, no such clues were revealed.”

“The transom was locked from the inside . Look right there. You can plainly see the latch is halfway down. That latch can only be turned from this side, and only Kane was in here.”

Doc Meadows stood above the body, palms up. He recited a Salish prayer, one that ended with “L’a’ma’thut cun,” meaning “safe journey.”

Ned waited till his friend had finished the rites, then asked, “So what do you figure, Doc? Time of death?”

“Lemme see.” Doc checked his phone, which he’d been using as a dictating device.

“Death was pronounced at 8:21 p.m., by my watch. Actual time of death was before that, but not by much. Five or ten minutes. He had no pulse, pupils were dilating, but the body was still warm, blood still flowing from the wound, not yet coagulating.”

“Cause of death?”

“What do you think, Ned? I’ll give you three guesses. First two don’t count.”

“C’mon, I’ll need it for my report.”

“Okay. If you want to get all CSI on us, my initial conclusion: rapid exterior myocardial rupture . What we in the medical profession call ‘an arrow through the heart.’”

Ned took out his notepad, jotted this down. He turned to Edgar next. “And when did you first notice that Mr. Hamady had entered the room?”

“No idea,” Edgar croaked.

“He entered the reading room at 7:59 and was killed at 8:14 p.m.,” said Miranda.

The others—Ned, Doc, Edgar, and Andrew—stared at her.

“That seems very specific,” said Ned.

She held up the paper she’d taken from the front of the fridge.

“Kane left the reception just as the crepes were being served—that was at 7:59, by Geri’s schedule—and he was already dead by the time Bea’s cobbler was brought out, to judge by the loud thwack of an arrow we heard a few minutes before that.

Bea’s cobbler was served at 8:16, so I would put the time of death at 8:14 p.m., give or take thirty seconds either way. ”

“A fifteen-minute window,” said Ned. “Someone had to move fast.”

“That tells us when,” said Andrew, who had successfully sidled his way in next to the police chief and was standing beside him with arms suitably crossed and face all frowny, “but it does not tell us how.”

“The latch!” Miranda cried. “I distinctly recall Edgar turning it all the way. I heard a loud click! But now the latch is only turned halfway. It’s still locked, but not as tightly or in the same manner as before.”

“Edgar, is that true?” asked Ned. “Did you turn the latch down farther than it is now?”

“I dunno. Maybe?” He was still avoiding looking at the corpse. Considering the number of murders Edgar had written—and sold—over the years, he was unusually skittish in its actual presence, the way some people were with love.

Miranda was puzzled. “So Kane started to unlock the transom... but then changed his mind, stopped halfway. Why?”

“Maybe he saw the killer standing outside the window?” said Andrew.

“But that doesn’t really solve the main conundrum,” said Ned.

“Even if the killer was outside looking in—while somehow leaving no footprints in the flower bed—the transom above the window was still closed, whether the latch was halfway down or not, and the window itself doesn’t open.

So how does an arrow pass through solid glass to hit someone on the other side?

” Ned looked to Miranda. “You know what this means.”

She knew what this means.

“We appear to have an impossible crime on our hands,” said Ned.