Page 34

Chapter Nineteen

Return of the Idaho Seven

B ea had waited up for them.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said when Andrew and Miranda finally appeared through the back door. “I was so worried about—”

“We’re fine, Bea, thank you.”

“—Ned. With a murderer running loose in Happy Rock, I was so worried something might happen to him. He carries so much on his shoulders. I worry about him.”

Bea Maracle’s two-story-plus-an-attic clapboard home by the bay was considered a “cottage” in the Pacific Northwest. Where Miranda was from, cottages were rustic log arrangements hewed out of the forest by hermits and hunters.

Here, they were cozy arrangements. Andrew, meanwhile, had grown up in Silicon Valley, where cottages were industries, often boutique.

And, of course, the “cottages” of Hollywood stars such as George Clooney often included rustic helipads and indoor swimming pools.

Bea had pulled out the TV trays and poured a pot of chamomile tea. Everyone needed to unwind—or rewind, in this case.

“Do you think Ned will be okay?” Bea asked.

Miranda assured her he would. By tacit agreement, neither Andrew nor Miranda informed Bea that Kane’s suspected killer had purportedly committed suicide, let alone that it was the romance author Fairfax DePoy, whom Harpreet was such a fan of. Better to leave that news for the morning.

Something at the back of Miranda’s mind made her ask, “Bea, do you remember an episode of Pastor Fran Investigates with a grandfather clock?”

Of course she did. “‘The Case of the Clockwork Corpse’!” Bea found the tape and put it in. “A nice way to keep our mind off of things,” she said.

On a warble of VHS tracking, those famous opening lines began: Our Lady, who arts on the mean streets of Crime City! Hallowed be her fists.

“He was the nicest boy in middle school,” Bea said, apropos of nothing. “Bob adored him. They were the best of friends.”

“Ned?”

Bea nodded, eyes on the screen but mind elsewhere.

In ‘The Case of the Clockwork Corpse,’ the corpse in question had been hidden inside a clockwork; the title sort of gave it away. It was clearly one of Lachlan Todd’s offerings.

“Ah, Professor Nemesis, you seem to have forgotten the primary characteristics of a parabolic arc!” said Miranda’s younger self to the shiny-headed villain.

“When you set your pendulum of doom to cut the rope that released the dagger that pierced the container that contained the cyanide capsules, you failed to calculate the trajectory of the oscillation as adjusted for the downward force of gravity to the power of two. Any schoolchild knows that! As a church pastor, I have seen my share of incense swinging on the pendulum of a censure during the Rite of Holy Eucharist. Now, prepare to face the karate kick of justice!”

As always, Miranda watched the episodes with a mix of nostalgia and sadness.

She was so young, so full of energy back then, as she sprinted across a beach (harder than it looks, running on sand; she always gave the Baywatch crew credit for that) or kicked guns from the hands of scowling henchmen or outran a fireball or pirouetted to face the camera on a sudden zoom-in, her hands raised in pre-emptive karate stance. So young.

This episode featured an appearance by Pastor Fran’s rival detective, Lauren Morocco, the Gumshoe Debutante, as played by four or five different actresses over the years.

Not unlike Wanda Stobol. It felt strange to think of an author taking over someone else’s persona, and yet actors did that regularly.

“I still can’t believe they had her wearing actual gumshoes,” said Andrew as he watched the plucky Pastor Fran thwart her rival once again. “And in an evening gown, no less!”

“Well, she was a debutante detective,” Bea pointed out. “And debutantes do tend to wear gowns.”

“And what’s with the name Professor Nemesis for your actual nemesis? A bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

Bea was getting annoyed. “Just enjoy the show, dear.”

Miranda’s thoughts had wandered as well. “Bea, what’s that coin Ned has? The one he carries with him, tosses whenever he’s stuck and needs to make a choice.”

“His lucky quarter? I don’t rightfully know. He’s had it for as long as I’ve known him.”

With Professor Nemesis now grrrr -ing behind bars and Pastor Fran’s rival sleuth thwarted well and good, the episode ended as they always did, with Pastor Fran in her clerical collar hitchhiking down the road to the next town.

It was now three in the morning, and they were too tired to sleep, too tired even to get up from the couch.

Bea was looking into the middle distance. “What does the extra B stand for?”

“The extra B?” said Miranda.

“In that new bed-and-breakfast, the one in the old Hiram Henry House. What does the extra B stand for, do you know? Three B’s.

Seems unnecessary. After my Bob passed and I decided to rent out rooms, I considered naming it Bea Miranda hugged them and rubbed their backs and said “There, there.” Having never read any of DePoy’s novels and having only met him briefly the night he died, she was less stricken than she was determined.

Whoever had done this must be caught. Even as she rocked back and forth with Harpreet and Bea, Miranda’s mind was turning to the Opera House and its flinty-eyed, lip-denuded janitor, the one who’d demanded of Ray Valentine, Where do you get your ideas?

As innocuous as that question was, the enmity in the man’s voice had been evident—what a vocal coach might call “an undertone of violence.”

Time to confront him.

Bea Maracle was on the board of the Happy Rock Amalgamated & Consolidated Little Theater Society, which is to say she had a key to the Opera House.

(Its access was as strictly restricted as that of the lighthouse.) Ned Buckley was also on the local theater board, but Miranda thought it might be imprudent to ask him.

He was finicky about amateur sleuths joining an active police investigation in too robust a fashion.

Andrew was meeting with the detectives who’d arrived from the city, so Miranda went it alone, protected only by her sense of justice and finely honed TV fight skills (most of which were choreographed to avoid hurting the other person, but never mind).

She was focused on solving the case, which also allowed her to avoid the question that lay beyond it: whether to take Penny up on her offer or to stay here in Happy Rock. Murder was an excellent distraction.

When Miranda arrived at the Opera House, the poster in the community events board that had started all of this * now had a large CANCELED sign slapped across it, the First Annual Happy Rock Mystery Writers Festival having ended before it could begin.

The proposed venue for the festival stood in silence.

Using Bea’s key, Miranda let herself in through the stage door on the side, past the stillness of the auditorium to where the caretaker’s room was situated.

With a sharp intake of breath for courage, she rapped on the door. No answer. The door was unlocked, and the room inside was empty and murkily lit. Little more than a glorified broom closet, really. A work table. The sour smell of a mop bucket. And pinned on the wall—a photograph.

Miranda leaned in, squinting in the half-light.

A group of young people were sitting around a picnic table under clear skies, relaxed and beaming and, from their questionable fashion choices, twenty years out of date.

(Miranda had an eye for such things.) It would have been a pleasant memento were it not for the fact that three of the faces in the photograph had been X-ed out angrily. Faces Miranda now recognized.

Miranda gasped and stepped back—into the man she had come looking for. She spun to face him. He towered above her, face reedy, eyes reptilian.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Eschewing her TV karate skills, she pushed past him, mumbling something about “Looking for a mop.”

She was fearless, but she wasn’t foolhardy. The photo with X’s signified imminent danger should she stay, so Miranda fled, running through the backstage area, fumbling for her phone. She was dialing 911 when Ned appeared. In person.

“I was just calling you!” she cried.

“Miranda, what have I told you about using 911 to arrange rides?”

“The janitor! X’s on faces. A photograph!”