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A dry laugh from Wanda. “ How Precious the Rain, How Sad the Sun , written by the only one of us with any real talent. John D. Ross, of course, would have none of it. He dismissed the novel as being ‘literary.’ A label of contempt in his eyes. A book without a plot? A book with artistic aspirations? Better to squash that at the onset. But the old fool must’ve known in his heart that it was good, even if he wouldn’t admit it.

Must have known it mattered. Both the book and the person who wrote it. ”

“Who was it?” Miranda asked. “Who was the one who squandered their talents?”

“Take your pick: I write children’s books, Penny writes cozies, Inez writes lurid erotica, Kane became a caricature of himself, trapped by his own persona, and Fairfax penned some of the world’s dumbest historical mysteries.

We are all of us glorified hacks in our own way.

Kane and Fairfax were working in tandem, planning to take over the franchise and share the name John D. Ross.”

“Who wanted that last page?” Ned needed to know. “And more importantly, who was willing to kill for it?”

Wanda Stobol sighed. “Could have been any one of us. Kane desperately needed the money. Fairfax DePoy wanted to become American again. He longed for that vernacular, was trapped in a flouncy world of romantic pap, was aching to return to who he really was, would’ve yearned to take over the John D.

Ross name. Student becomes the master, literally.

I certainly could have used the franchise, would have been happy to pass Compendium Cathy off to the next Wanda Stobol.

Penny Fenland and Inez Fonio are by far the most successful of the Idaho Seven, so I don’t see them wanting to take over the Trevor Lucas series, iconic as it is.

” She thought a moment. “But there was another member of our group, the only one who never made it as a writer. A young police officer. Idealistic, naive, even. Cepheus something-or-other.”

“That was him at the reception,” said Ned. “The fellow who asked Ray Valentine where he got his ideas from.”

“I thought I recognized him! Without the mustache, it was hard to tell.”

“Speaking of financial difficulties,” said Ned. “Mr. Valentine has faced multiple lawsuits over the years.”

“And won every one of them,” Wanda pointed out.

“Would still be ruinous. Legal fees and whatnot.”

“And lost sales,” Wanda conceded. “Feuds might move books, but accusations of plagiarism don’t.

Tends to erode a reader’s trust—even if it’s never proven in a court of law.

The accusation alone can be enough to undermine an author.

Listen. Cephus What’s-his-face never wrote a damn thing worth publishing.

He was a cop, not an author. Ray? He was the exact opposite: he was a wordsmith first and foremost, who reinvented himself as a police officer.

That badge he keeps flashing? Community volunteer. ”

“He stole Cephus’s life story,” Miranda insisted.

“He took inspiration,” Wanda shot back. “That’s what authors do. They plunder the world around them. Cephus had no cause to get so upset. His life was just sitting there , unused.”

“It was still his life,” said Miranda. “And it was still wrong, whether it was illegal or not. The law is the law—but not when it is above the law!” Then, before anyone could try to untangle that, Miranda leaned forward, leveled her gaze at Wanda Stobol.

“If you really are the murderer, you’ll know exactly how it was done.

Kane Hamady and Fairfax DePoy. If you are the killer, prove it. Tell me how you did it.”

“Who said I did?”

“You’re the one who asked to be arrested.”

“I asked to be put into protective custody.” Wanda Stobol closed her eyes, tilted her head back. “God. My ulcer is killing me. I think we’re done here.”

“I just have one more question,” said Miranda. “Where did you put it, the novel that matters most, the one that has the answer to everything?”

“ How Precious the Rain, How Sad the Sun ? I hid it in the one place no one would think to look, the one place no one would find it.” She laughed and refused to say more.

As they made their way to the front of the station, Miranda said, “Ned, she’s scared.” And then, catching sight of Holly, she rushed over. “Officer Holly! You have to protect her! Wanda Stobol is in mortal danger.”

Holly snorted at this. “Relax. She’s inside a jail cell, protected by an army of police officers. The front of the station is guarded, and the back door is locked. It’s as secure as you can get. I don’t think a killer is going to walk through walls or pass like smoke through the bars of a cell.”

But in this Officer Holly would be proven wrong. Dead wrong.

* * *

H IDING IN PLAIN sight.

The mind of Miranda Abbott, let loose at full gallop, was something to behold. As they passed by the front desk of the police station, where Officer Holly had managed to keep the Portlanders at bay, Miranda suddenly spun around, crying out, “I know where she hid the novel! We must make haste!”

And before anyone could say anything, she was sailing out the front door with Ned chugging behind her, calling out, “To where?”

“The Murder Store!”

As he scrambled into the patrol car, up front next to the chief, Andrew asked, eyes gleaming, “This counts as siren-worthy, no?”

“No!”

“Toss a coin?”

With a tired exhalation, Ned said, “One whoop. That’s it.”

“Yes!”

One whoop and a quick drive up Beacon Hill brought them back to the bookstore, where Edgar was still struggling to re-reorganize the shelves. The out-of-town investigators had finished with the reading room, were now in the basement.

“They haven’t found the weapon,” Edgar said. “But they agree that the arrow was fired from below.”

Miranda wasn’t interested in the furnace room, however. She was interested in the very books Edgar was sorting.

“You haven’t reached G, I see!” It was a statement that only made sense to her.

“What are you on about now?” Edgar asked.

“Hiding in plain sight!” she said. “Edgar, dear, what did you say to me after I selflessly spent my free time carefully revising our system of shelving? You said, How is any customer supposed to find a specific book they’re looking for now? ”

And there it was, filed under G (right next to Carolyn G. Hart, naturally): How Precious the Rain, How Sad the Sun, by one Gertrude Gyilkos, that strange novel with the mauve cover and the cursive font.

A sudden intake of breath from Ned and Edgar, and a cheer from Andrew greeted the discovery. “Go Miranda!” He’d almost said Pastor Fran.

She flipped through to the last page, found the handwritten message. A personal note from John D. Ross.

To the one that mattered most, but was treated the worst. A gift to whoever finds this:

And below it, the missing dialogue from the final John D. Ross manuscript:

“You want to know who was behind it? Every one of the killings? Every one of them, right from the start? I’ll tell you who, and I’ll tell you now.

It was—me, Trevor Lucas! I killed them all, every one of them, and then systematically ‘solved’ each case by framing someone else.

Innocent people were convicted in my place and sent to the gas chamber, were sentenced to life without parole, to the gallows, to the firing squad—thereby doubling my kill rate.

I remain the greatest murderer who never got caught: Trevor Lucas! ”

It was written in the same scratchy penmanship, the same sharp lines and harsh angles, as the message that Fairfax DePoy had died trying to swallow.

“But is it his handwriting?” Miranda wondered.

“It is,” said a low voice from across the room.

Startled, they looked up and saw Sheryl Youngblut standing in the hallway.

She was staring at the book in Miranda’s hands with a sadness so deep it was almost anger.

Christmas cards and birthday letters and postcards from Rio.

Even from across the room, she recognized it. “That’s my grandfather’s handwriting.”

It was Edgar who first understood the enormity of what had been revealed by John D. Ross’s note. “If the hero, Trevor Lucas, was the killer all along...?”

A grim nod from Sheryl. “It would sink the series. I’d heard rumors at family gatherings. My grandma had hinted as much, that that was Pawpaw’s intention: to bury the franchise with him, make it impossible for anyone else to take over.”

“Why would that make it impossible?” Andrew asked.

“Don’t you see?” asked Miranda, imagining the impact such a revelation would have on future movie sequels.

“It’s a twist ending,” said Andrew. “So? Books are full of twists.”

“It’s not merely a plot twist,” said Sheryl softly. “It’s the twist of a blade, ensuring that no one would ever profit from his work ever again.”

“Agatha Christie wrote her final Miss Marple mystery, Sleeping Murder , back in 1941,” Edgar explained, “to be published upon her death as ‘Miss Marple’s Last Case.’ Her request was honored, and the novel wasn’t released until 1976, thirty-five years after it had been written.

Now, imagine if that final novel revealed Miss Marple to have secretly been a serial killer, playing readers and Scotland Yard for fools from the start, that every single death she’d ever solved had in fact been committed by her own hand.

Imagine what would happen to the entire Miss Marple series.

It would collapse. The backlist sales would plummet.

Fans would be enraged. It would, as Ms. Youngblut so correctly puts it, sink the entire franchise. ”

A heavy silence filled the room.

“That handwritten paragraph marks the end of Trevor Lucas,” said Edgar. “The end of an icon.”

“My grandfather’s parting gift to the world,” Sheryl Youngblut said. “A giant middle finger to his readers, his publishers—to all of us.”