Page 31

Chapter Seventeen

The Fallen Clock

Designated a Site of Minor Historical Interest, the lighthouse at Laurel Point had been carefully preserved by the town, although the outside had been painted over in a candy stripe of red and white to help “spruce up the view.”

The windows of the keeper’s quarters on the first floor were akin to cubbyholes, with embedded bars protecting thick panes of glass that were too high up to look through.

The heavy door, which opened inward, into the quarters, was a solid slab of oak secured out front by a large padlock.

The keys to this padlock were strictly controlled: only the local museum, its director, its summer students, the elementary school staff (for field trips), the local high school (ditto), the Gold ’n Silver Seniors Club (ditto), the owner of Klips ’N Kurls (because her dad used to work at the museum), the Tillamook Sailing Club, the Happy Rock Little Theater, the Duchess Hotel, the town council, and any tour companies, such as Melvin’s, had copies of the key.

Oh, and also the local visitors center, in case visitors wanted to pop in and have a look around while they were in town.

They had a couple of keys, too. Maybe three?

Four? No one else had access to the lighthouse.

Given this strict guidance, how could Fairfax DePoy have gained entry?

As Miranda roared up in Edgar’s Jeep, the glare of her headlights revealed Ned Buckley struggling with a crowbar at the door to the lighthouse, as Officer Holly stood back, hand on holster.

The two officers turned, Ned squinting into the light.

When Miranda killed the engine and turned off the headlights, Ned recognized the Jeep and waved them in.

“Andrew, hurry! Give me a hand!” he yelled.

They crossed the gravel, up the stairs to the oak door.

“You don’t have a key?” Miranda asked. “I thought everyone had a key!”

Puffing and out of breath, Ned said, “Don’t need a key. Padlock was removed.” He pointed to where it had been tossed aside on the stairs. “The door is locked from the inside.”

“Shoot the handle!” Andrew urged. “Shoot the handle, Chief.”

“I’m not firing my sidearm,” Ned said, stopping to wipe his forehead. “The door is bolted shut on the other side. A service revolver wouldn’t do it—and neither would a shotgun!” he hastened to add. “So don’t ask.” The cruiser had a shotgun in the trunk.

“Want me to give it a try?” Holly asked, and Ned nodded, stepping back to switch places with her.

A light was on inside; they could see the murky glow through the window.

But the door was watertight, sinking below the stoop to be essentially sealed off by the door frame.

Holly wedged the crowbar into the narrow space Ned had gouged out between the jamb and the metal plate that held the door’s rudimentary handle: an old-fashioned lever that lifted the latch on the other side.

The entire arrangement was simple, clunky, and impossible to get through.

With Andrew helping, Holly managed to splinter some of the jamb and partly bend the plate free, but the door itself wouldn’t budge.

“Should I give Tanvir a call, Chief?”

“Try the other side first, away from the handle. Maybe we can worm the edge of the crowbar in that way, pop off the hinges.”

This approach proved effective. Stubborn and difficult and shoulder-socket-aching, but effective.

With every wrench from Andrew and Officer Holly, a gap grew until the crowbar was firmly in place.

All four of them now leaned into it, and with a satisfying crack of metal giving way, the door lurched inward as first one hinge then the other buckled and broke, until finally they were able to push the door open just wide enough for Holly to peer through the gap.

“Is he in there?” Ned asked.

“Yeah. He’s in there.”

They pushed more until the gap was big enough for Holly to squeeze through. She entered, weapon drawn.

A pause, and then: “All clear.” Her voice sounded grim.

“Anyone else in there?” Ned shouted.

“Just him.”

From the other side, Holly pushed the door back into place.

This was followed by the scraping sound of a deadbolt being pulled back.

A moment later, the entire door fell inward, landing with a sharp thud as Holly stepped to one side.

It revealed a terrible sight: in the thick light inside the lighthouse keeper’s quarters, Fairfax Hughes DePoy III, celebrated author of historical romantic mysteries, loved by many, envied by others, was hanging from an overhead beam.

His face was swollen and distorted, eyes gaping in horror, tongue distended, body slack above an overturned chair.

They entered in silence. Stood staring at the tableau before them.

“Well, that solves the Case of the Missing Rope,” said Holly. The rough cord could only have come from Owen’s.

“Better get an axe, cut him down,” said Ned, his voice hoarse.

Officer Holly went to fetch one from her patrol car, sidestepping the loose metal and debris scattered across the wooden floor.

The grandfather clock had toppled and lay shattered on the floor, its mechanical parts radiating outward.

Other than the chair Fairfax had kicked aside when he hanged himself, everything else seemed to be in place.

“Clock fell over,” said Ned. “It musta been pushed. Darned heavy; can’t see how it would ‘accidentally’ fall.

And the pieces seem to have been, well, kicked away from it, across the floor.

How else would these metal parts—these rods and weights, the various cogs and gears, that pendulum over there—have been flung so far?

You’d think they would’ve stayed mostly in place. ”

“The rope is shiny,” Miranda noted.

Fairfax’s body was turning slowly on a creak. And the stretch of rope over the beam was indeed inky wet.

“And that will explain the Case of the Missing Grease,” Ned said, with a nod to the tub of the stuff sitting next to the fallen chair. “Though I don’t imagine Owen will want either one returned.”

The other end of the rope was looped around the cast-iron leg of the heavy stove. Why lubricate the middle of the rope? It had a coarse, hemp-like texture, but surely grease wasn’t needed to toss a rope over a beam and pull it across?

Here’s what they knew: Windows with thick glass and iron bars.

A single door, bolted from the inside. A stairwell to the second floor that had been sealed off and walled in.

No trapdoor below, either. Very few furnishings, and nowhere for someone to hide.

Fairfax DePoy had been alone inside a locked room. Clearly a suicide.

And yet... it didn’t add up.

Officer Holly came back with a small hatchet. It would have been unfair to ask Andrew to support a dead body as it dropped, so he was given the task of cutting the rope while Ned and Holly held onto the legs, bracing themselves for the moment Fairfax would fall free.

“Wait!” Miranda cried before they could begin.

Something was wrong.

It was the shoes! And the space below them. Hanging in midair like that, the lifts Fairfax was wearing were evident—as was the height between Fairfax’s feet and the floor.

Miranda turned the chair back upright, slid it under Fairfax’s dangling feet. The two didn’t touch.

“How do you suppose he would have managed that?” she asked.

Ned, who had been holding one of Fairfax’s legs, let go. Looked at the gap between chair and shoe. “Tell me this isn’t happening.” But it was. Another impossible crime had been committed in Happy Rock.

* * *

I T WAS ALMOST two in the morning by the time they laid poor Fairfax on the floor of the lighthouse. Ned called Doc Meadows, who had only just finished transporting Kane’s body to the morgue, to tell him “We got another one.”

As they waited for Doc to arrive, Miranda and Andrew stood outside the lighthouse, looking across the water to the other side of the bay. A single point at the far end marked their home.

“Bea left a light on for us,” Andrew said.

Although part of a saltwater inlet, protected as it was from the full brunt of the Pacific by a network of wooded islands and the arm of this peninsula, Tillamook Bay always felt more like a lake to Miranda, with waves lapping in on cat tongues of water and dark forests encircling it.

Happy Rock’s Duchess Hotel and the Opera House lay at the deepest curve of the bay, in the innermost reaches of the inner harbor.

“I’ll miss this,” said Miranda, feeling wistful.

Andrew chose to say nothing (wisely).

A lonely pair of headlights moved down the road toward them. It was Doc’s SUV. He pulled in and got out with a stiff-legged gait, carrying his satchel. He looked tired.

“Ned inside?” he asked.

Miranda and Andrew followed him up the stairs and into the round room where the door lay fallen, the grandfather clock lay scattered, and the body lay cold on the bare floor.

“Hello, Doc,” said Ned.

“Busy night for the both of us,” said Doc. “Hey, Holly. Busy night for you, too. How are the twins?”

“At my mom’s.”

“You know you’ve got to get them in for their rubella, right?”

“I know.”

Doc placed his leather satchel on the table, looked down at the body on the floor. “I know this guy. One of the writers, right?”

“Fairfax DePoy,” said Ned. “Though his ID gives a different name.”

Miranda perked up at this. “A different name?”

Ned had placed the man’s wallet on the table. “Like Kane, Fairfax must’ve been using a pseudonym. His real name was Francis—Frank, I’m guessing. Or even Frankie, given he was born in Jersey.”

“Jersey, England? ” Miranda asked. He was supposedly British, after all.

“What? No. Jersey Jersey , as in New Jersey. Is there a Jersey in England, too?”

“Indeed there is,” said Miranda. “Hence the appellation ‘New’ affixed to the American one.”

“No kidding! Next you’ll be telling me there’s an Old York.”

Andrew was confused. “But Fairfax is—was—from the English landed gentry.”