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Chapter Twelve

Motives for Murder

W hen your mind is vexed by questions imponderable—questions such as “Should I return to Hollywood in triumph to become a celebrated TV star, working in the craft I love and longed for, to resounding acclaim and adulation, or should I run a bookstore in Happy Rock, Oregon?”—sometimes the best thing to do is to distract yourself with other, equally perplexing questions, such as “How can someone be killed by an arrow inside a locked room?”

Miranda’s thoughts returned to the shed on the far side of the yard. The transom in the reading room could have been rigged to close after the fact, some sort of time-release mechanism, no doubt. But that didn’t answer the problem of the flower bed and the lack of footprints outside the window.

Unless...

“Edgar, dear,” she said. “Andrew is busy and I need an assistant.”

Edgar, still shaken by the body in the reading room, said no, until she explained that this would involve going outside.

“I’ll clear it with Ned,” he said, grabbing his corduroy jacket.

I swear to god, thought Miranda, that man is single-handedly keeping the corduroy industry afloat.

The air outside was a balm, cooling and calm and clean. You won’t get air like this in LA! But Miranda shook the thought free, focused on the task on hand instead.

“Shed is locked,” said Edgar as they crossed the yard. “I locked it today, in fact. After Owen’s rope went missing, Ned put out an emergency alert warning of a possible serial stealer on the loose. Of course, if he knew murder was on the menu... ”

“‘The Case of the Counterfeit Chef’!” she cried. “I loved that episode. We spent five days at a culinary school shooting that one. Oh, the desserts!” Not as good as Bea’s, though! But again she shook her mind clear.

The shed was very much still locked. No ladder lying about. No sign someone had climbed onto the roof with a crossbow.

“Edgar,” said Miranda. “Look.”

There, in a muddy patch in front of the shed, was a single footprint. A man’s shoe. Size: small. A man’s shoe with a heavy, unnatural heel, the type of print made by someone wearing lifts.

“I do believe our diminutive mystery author, Mr. Fairfax Hughes DePoy III, has been creeping around our backyard,” said Miranda. “I shall need to speak with Mr. DePoy to find out why.”

“Ask Harpreet,” Edgar said. “She was mooning over him all night, barely let him out of her sight.”

Miranda hurried back inside, catching up to Harpreet just in time. Harpreet was at the front door, pulling on a quilted coat with the help of her husband, Tanvir.

“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, facing away 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, beady eyes darting back and forth, lips twitching suspiciously. VERDICT: HE’S LYING!

That’s called embellishing. You can’t do that, Andrew. ”

“But he was nervous!” Andrew protested. “And his eyes were darting back and forth.”

“You know full well that Atticus gets anxious in any situation that involves questioning. Plus, police witness statements don’t normally include a verdict at the end.”

Andrew’s voice dropped. “He’s hiding something. I know it. He was perspiring.”

“He’s always perspiring! It’s Atticus. Have you ever seen him in court? It’s even money whether he faints.”

Miranda pulled Ned away. “You have to come quickly. Fairfax DePoy has escaped.”

“Escaped?” said Ned.

“He has fled! Pursued by the most dogged hunter of them all.”

“Someone is hunting him? Who?”

“Guilt!” she cried. “He is being harried by his own conscience! Fleeing a veritable miasma of remorse over the murder of Kane Hamady.”

Ned looked at her blankly.

“A veritable miasma of remorse! I don’t know how I can put it any more clearly. Come, come. I will show you.”

She dragged Ned out the back door and across the yard to that single footprint in the mud.

“Whoever it was, looks like they were heading to the lane behind the shed,” said Ned. “Maybe down the hill, into town.”

“The guilty flee when none pursue!” said Miranda. “Fairfax’s flight is an admission, Ned.”

“If it was Fairfax.”

“The heavy heel, the small shoe size, the fact that Fairfax is the only author now unaccounted for. Who else would it be, Ned?”

He rubbed his neck. “You got me there. Let’s see if he went skulking anywhere else.”

They circled the bookstore slowly, entering from the front this time, having seen no other footprints on the perimeter. Not that it told them much: the yard was grass; the lane was packed gravel. If Fairfax hadn’t cut past the shed, he might have disappeared undetected.

“I could take one of our cruisers,” said Ned. “Search for him, try to flush him out. Problem is, this town of ours is a rabbit warren of lanes. And at this time of night, the headlights will tip him off. It would be like playing hide-and-seek blindfolded.”

As they entered the bookstore, Mabel Greene was departing, jacket on and accordion in hand.

She growled to Ned as she passed, “Rein in yer deputy, captain. He all but accused me of covering up the screams of a dying man with—in his words—‘the unworldly wail’ of my instrument. Harrumph. Next time he stops by the Cozy Café, I’m charging him double and giving him half. ”

“Andrew is just a bit keen,” Ned said as Mabel stormed past them into the night.

An interesting word, keen . It could cover up a myriad of other motives. Geri was keen; so was Gerry.

“How well do you know them?” Miranda asked. “That new couple from Portland, the ones who run the B she knew about existential questions.

Whether she was playing Irina Prozorova in Chekhov’s Three Sisters or a karate-chopping, bikini-wearing church pastor on network TV, existential questions spoke to the crux of a character’s motivation.

“It would appear that the overtly gregarious Geri and Gerry have inserted themselves into this author festival rather forcefully.”

“Naw. They’re just enthusiastic.”

“Keen?”

“Exactly so. The same way Andrew is keen to help me, they’re keen to be part of the community.”

“You do know they are Bea’s competition?”

Ned turned and looked at Miranda. “Competition? No one is Bea’s competition. Bea is one of a kind. I’ve known her since—”