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Chapter Twenty

Melvin “J”

N ed Buckley escorted Miranda out of the Opera House via the main doors, securing the lock behind them and then stepping out into the clear, cold sunlight of the inner harbor.

The air had the crispness of an apple being bitten.

Miranda took a deep, satisfying breath. But before she could put her thoughts in order, she was accosted.

“Wait! I need to speak to you.” Scoop Bannister, jaywalking with impunity, ran across Harbor Road toward them, waving her notepad like a semaphore.

Damn paparazzi!

“No comment!” said Miranda, striding away, chin up.

But Scoop wasn’t interested in her. Unbeknownst to Miranda, the publicist Sheryl Youngblut was cutting across from the opposite direction. That was who the reporter was trying to intercept.

“I just came from the police station,” Sheryl said, stomping past. “I have nothing more to say.” With a glare in Ned’s direction, she added, “I already gave a statement to your local deputy last night, but had to go through it all over again this morning with those annoying detectives from Portland.”

Scoop stopped her anyway. “ The Weekly Picayune . I only need a moment.”

“No time,” Sheryl snapped, pushing past.

As the publicist blew by, Scoop called out to her, “Just one question! Please, Ms. Ross!”

Sheryl froze. Turned slowly. “I think you have the wrong person.”

“You are Sheryl Ross, yes? Youngblut is your professional name, derived from the German, ‘young blood,’ to distinguish you from—”

“Enough!”

Ah! Miranda thought. Young Blood vs. Old Blood.

Sheryl’s eyes were blazing with ire. “What do you want from me?”

“You are John D. Ross’s granddaughter, yes?”

“How did you...?”

“Nothing fancy. I just ran a basic reverse image search on your LinkedIn photo. You’re not exactly in witness protection or anything.”

With a distinct chill in her voice, Sheryl Ross/Youngblut said, “One question, that’s it. I will answer exactly one question and no more. And if it’s about the death of Kane Hamady or Fairfax DePoy, this interview is over.”

“Oh, nothing like that. You’re a successful entrepreneurial young woman. Our readers will want to know: What are your impressions of Happy Rock?”

“Happy Rock? It’s... it’s a nice town.”

Gold!

Scoop thanked her and let her pass. A moment later, Andrew arrived. Seeing the reporter, he asked, “What’s up?”

Ned shrugged, but Scoop, giddy with excitement, said, “Got an exclusive!”

Before Scoop could run off to file her story, Miranda, suddenly inspired, stopped her.

“Ms. Bannister, you work for the paper. You must have microfiche files. There was a record for largest cutthroat trout set a few years ago when Kane Hamady was on the river. I think he said 38 pounds, or maybe it was 138.”

Ned chuckled. “Would hardly be one hundred and thirty-eight.”

Whatever. Men and their fish. Sheesh.

“Sure,” said Scoop. “I can find that for you, text you the link.”

Andrew interceded. “Maybe text it to me instead.”

Miranda was not known for her technological savvy. The fact that she’d referenced microfiche files underlined this.

“Do you have my number?” Andrew asked.

“I do, under—” She caught herself. She had jokingly listed Andrew as “future boyfriend,” only to find out later that he was playing for the other team. “Um, sure, I can send that.” And she left, more flustered than when she’d arrived.

On Scoop’s departure, Miranda pivoted. “Ned, Andrew! To the Murder Store! We have a fallen toothpick and an open transom to explain!”

To which Ned replied, “Miranda, how many times have we gone over this? I’m not your personal chauffeur. I’ve got to get to the station, type up my notes from my talk with the janitor, confer with my colleagues from Portland. I’m not running you up to the bookstore. Capiche ?”

Having once again lost a coin toss to himself, Ned Buckley drove them to the bookstore. Miranda insisted he accompany them inside.

“You will want to be present for this!” she declaimed in full performance mode. Employing the finely honed deductive skills she’d developed as TV’s Pastor Fran, Miranda Abbott had solved the first impossible crime. “A locked room above, a single toothpick below. It fits together!”

She swept into I Only Read Murder, with Andrew and Ned scurrying to keep up.

On hearing the jingle of the front door opening, Edgar, who was ensconced behind a stack of mis-alphabetized books, shouted, “We’re not open today.” Then, on seeing it was Miranda charging in, followed by Andrew and the Chief of Police, he said, “Oh. Didn’t realize it was you.”

“We’re closed?” said Miranda.

“Not by choice. Entire joint is crawling with feds, as they might say in a Kane Hamady hard-boil.”

The bookstore was indeed busy with detectives from the Criminal Investigation Division of the Oregon State Police and white-clad forensic investigators from Portland’s Investigative Support Unit, who were coming and going like extras on a movie set.

Before she got any ideas, Ned said, “Miranda, this a crime scene investigation. You can’t interfere.”

“Can’t I?” she said, arching an eyebrow perfectly. “Or can’t I not not interfere?”

While Ned—and Edgar—attempted to untangle the byzantine syntax of Miranda Logic, she stood scanning the disheveled shelves of the main room.

Edgar had emptied some of the shelves, tackled others haphazardly as he tried to untangle the similarly complex syntax of Miranda’s organizational approach to authors’ names.

“Drat! You shouldn’t have moved the books around, Edgar. You’ve covered up one of the key clues.”

“I had no choice, seeing as how you’d reorganized our entire inventory according to your own inscrutable whim.”

“Kane Hamady’s books. The covers were facing out before.”

“Because he turned them that way. Remember?”

“Oh, I do. As I said, it’s the crux of the case. Kane Hamady kept compulsively rearranging his books, did he not?”

Edgar, dryly: “Yeah, turning them around so they were face-out, an author’s magic trick to push their books onto the New York Times bestseller list.”

“ Any author worth their salt can spy one of their books from a hundred paces across a crowded room . That’s what you said.

Across a crowded room—or tucked in behind a door.

Or lying open on the floor, I imagine. Authors zero in on their own works.

Their own covers draw them in like a moth to a flame, like an actress to a waiting audience. ”

Ned could almost see where she was going with this. “Meaning?”

“The toothpick! Don’t you see, Ned? Kane Hamady was never in the basement.

His toothpick was. The grate in the floor of the reading room is covered by air ducts below.

These ducts are made of tin, too weak and too narrow for anyone to climb through, and the heavy floor grate above was painted shut.

The grate never moved. But surely the tray directly below it can slide aside.

Otherwise, how would you sweep it clear of dust? ”

“Melvin is the guy who cleans the furnace and ducts,” said Edgar, and Ned nodded.

Andrew, who was still bewildered by Happy Rock after all this time, said, his voice agog, “Melvin Jacobson runs a manure supply/tour company and furnace cleaning service?”

“And bakery,” said Edgar. “Don’t forget the bakery. Those shortbread cookies he sells at the farmers market, the ones with the distinct tang.”

“It’s not the cookies but the cleaning I am interested in,” said Miranda. “Ned, get his Royal Pungency down here at once!”

* * *

H E ENTERED ON a waft of pheromones, with a John Travolta strut, to the rhythm of “ Staying Alive ,” snapping business cards left and right the way a magician might show you the jack of diamonds or the king of hearts, a gangly kid in a retro 1980s ski jacket (retro because he had pulled it out of the dumpster behind the Duchess Hotel).

The dumbfounded investigators he passed in the hall accepted his card before they fully processed what was happening.

Melvin “J” (as he liked to be known) gave Miranda a wink and a nod. Fresh out of high school, he’d once played her love interest in the Happy Rock amateur theater production of Death Is the Dickens , which he assumed had created an eternal bond between them. It hadn’t.

With a satisfied smile, he looked around the interior of the bookstore. “Ah yes. The Sieve, we call her. This building leaks heat like it was made of Swiss cheese, furnace constantly straining. You know, when the time comes, I also install new furnaces.”

Always trying to upsell, this guy.

“The ducts and grates in the floor,” Miranda said. “You clean those?”

He did indeed. He emptied the dust trays under the grates as part of his Super Elite? Service.

Edgar: “I signed up for the super elite service?”

Melvin: “Yup. Your signature is on the form, so it’s too late now. It’s why I tightened the light bulbs and checked your wall sockets for obstructions. Part of the service.”

“And how long is this agreement for?” Edgar wanted to know.

“In perpetuity,” said Melvin. “That means—”

“I know what that means.” Under his breath, Edgar muttered, “I’ll get Atticus on that.”

“Atticus is the one who drafted the agreements,” Melvin said.

“Now, about those grates. Pretty simple, really. You go underneath them, where the duct is. You reach up, there’s a latch.

Turn that, and the last panel flaps down on a pin hinge.

It opens up like that so you can clean out the inside of the duct.

It’s an old design from before people used those giant vacuum-hose, rattle-bang machines to suck out the dust. Me, I’m old-school.

I use a hand brush. I could use a regular vacuum, I suppose, but that would require an upgrade. Our Mega Super Elite? package.”

Although she already knew the answer, Miranda asked, “Anyone could open those trays?”

“Yup. If you do, though, be careful. It can shower you with dust.”

“Dust—and toothpicks!” cried Miranda. “Gentlemen, to the basement!”

But before they could head downstairs, an irate woman from the Portland team shooed Melvin away. “Out! Your presence alone is contaminating the crime scene.”

“Will do.” With the snap of a business card, he said, “You need anything, call.”

“Um, okay. Sure.” She took the card in a daze.

These Happy Rock men were musky, Miranda noted, but not without their appeal. Case in point: Owen McCune’s wooing of the uber-gothic Inez Fonio.

“Melvin, before you go,” Miranda said. “You took the authors on a tour of Tillamook Bay. And the lighthouse?”

“Highlight of our Premium Tour package,” he said. “No trademark on that one. Thomas Cook beat us to it. Don’t know who this Cook guy is, but he’s always one step ahead of us.”

“Which is to say, they would have known they would be going to the lighthouse at Laurel Point, would be visiting the keeper’s quarters, with the grandfather clock and the heavy beams overhead?”

“For sure. We have it on our website. A full 360 of the interior.”

The young forensics investigator had regained her composure and was now hustling Melvin down the hall to the front door.

He called back to Edgar as the officer closed the front door on him, “With our Mega Super Elite? Furnace Cleaning Service, we also check for boa constrictors in the—”

“I’m going to kill Atticus,” said Edgar. He was going to kill a lot of people; the list was long, but the name Atticus Lawson figured prominently on it.

“Time enough to kill Atticus later!” Miranda said. “We have a murder to solve.”