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Chapter Twenty-Three

And Then There Were Four...

“ I ’ll run you and Andrew back to Bea’s,” said Ned, after handing off the copy of How Precious the Rain, How Sad the Sun to the CID detective.

With the motive for the murders coming into focus, the investigation would be zeroing in on the Idaho Seven—or what was left of them. Miranda thought of the janitor at the Opera House, those angry X’s drawn over faces. His dire yet gleeful prediction: Penny is next .

They climbed into the patrol car to Ned’s pre-emptive admonishment to Andrew: “No sirens this time. So don’t even ask.”

“You confirmed his alibi for last night?” Miranda asked.

Ned pulled out from the bookstore as Andrew pouted, and headed down the hill to the harbor and the hotel. The afternoon sun was lighting up the town in an autumnal glow.

“Whose alibi?” Ned asked.

“Cephus. The phantom of the Opera House.”

“I did, and he was indeed on custodial duty at the local Ladies Cultural Society shindig. Mind you, many of those ladies were several sheets to whatever wind was blowing, so I will be going over their testimony carefully to make sure he couldn’t have slipped away, fired an arrow into Kane and hoisted Fairfax over the rafters by the neck before beating it back in time to lock up and chase out the last of the ladies. Seems unlikely, though.”

“You won’t come in?” she asked when Ned dropped them off.

“Can’t. It’s gonna be another long night in Happy Rock. Give Bea my best.”

“I shall,” said Miranda.

“What does that button do?” Andrew asked disingenuously. Whoop-whoop!

“Out! Now.”

They entered Bea’s to find Ray Valentine cornered at the kitchen table by a cluster of well-meaning fans who were intent on giving him “ideas” for his next novel. This is something authors really enjoy.

Doc Meadows was there, as were Tanvir Singh and Owen McCune. They were finishing off the last of the peach cobbler.

“I have this terrific idea for a mystery,” Doc said, crowding in to Ray.

“The hero is this handsome Salish man” (Doc Meadows was Salish) “who’s also a doctor” (ditto) “and the villain is his annoying brother-in-law, who works for a lab.” (Doc’s brother-in-law worked for a lab.) “And the twist—wait till you hear this!—is that the villain secretly requisitioned a preventive cardiac catheterization for a coronary microvascular, instead of a functional coronary angiography.” Doc grinned.

“Pretty darn clever, no? You can use that if you want.”

A wan smile from Ray. “Ah. Thank you.”

Tanvir Singh said, “I myself have always thought a splendid hero would be that of a handsome hardware store owner whose friend, a mechanic, is continuously mooching off him, and one day...”

On it went. Miranda and Andrew watched, bemused.

“And what about you?” Ray said with weary resignation, turning to Owen of the oil-stained coveralls. “What do you figure would be a good idea for my next novel? Some sort of mechanic-centered story, I imagine?”

Owen thought a moment and said, “I figure a good one would be about a fellow who’s friendly and smiling on the outside but is filled with a clawing emptiness inside, doubting the choices he’s made in life, who has trouble getting out of bed some days because he’s so overwhelmed by the gnawing lonely nature of his existence. ”

There was a pause.

“What is the, uh, mystery?” Doc asked.

“I guess the mystery would be, What is the point of any of it? ”

A beat.

“You okay, Owen?”

“Couldn’t be better. Why?”

Bea Maracle, meanwhile, had an idea of her own: “It’s silly, I suppose, but I always thought a good murder mystery would be about an innocent-looking lady no one suspects, who poisons her guests with peach cobbler.”

Everyone stopped eating.

Miranda squeezed in next to Doc Meadows— He’s a married man! she reminded herself—as Andrew took up a spot on one of Bea’s kitchen stools.

“Hey there, deputy,” said Doc Meadows. Andrew beamed.

“Any word on the culprit?” asked Tanvir. “I have it on good authority that they arrested the children’s author.”

“Not arrested. She surrendered to authorities,” said Andrew.

Ray Valentine nodded as though he’d been expecting it. “I heard the same thing over at the Better B&B. Word was, Wanda Stobol was going to spill the proverbial beans. Though it was not clear which beans, exactly, or how many would be spilled.”

Miranda tilted her head and looked at the author/faux police officer. “What brings you to this side of the harbor, Mr. Valentine?” Looking for another life’s story to steal? Perhaps Inez is not the real vampire amongst us. Perhaps it’s you.

She smiled sweetly, but her teeth were showing. She did not care for Mr. Valentine, no matter how much the men of Happy Rock gushed over this self-proclaimed Prince of the Police Procedural.

“Truth be told, I was looking for the police chief. Mr. Buckley, I think his name is. The one who locked us down in the bookstore last night. When I phoned the station, the officer who picked up said, and I quote, ‘Try Bea’s, that’s usually where you’ll find ol’ lover boy.

’ The officer—Holly, I think her name was—said something about Mr. Buckley being ‘Happy Rock’s answer to Don Juan. ’”

Now it was Bea’s turn to blush.

“In regards to lover boys,” said Tanvir, a broad smile breaking through his beard, “Owen, I am informed by Harpreet that you and Ms. Fonio are now an item.”

Owen stared at the table. “Not really. Not so much. She’s been kinda cold to me today, like the passion burnt out in one night. I probably shouldn’t have asked her to marry me.”

It was all Doc Meadows could do not to slap his palm against his face. “Owen, no. You didn’t. Not again.”

“I just think a girl worth kissing is a girl worth marrying.”

Doc turned to Ray. “Our friend the mechanic has a habit of falling a little too hard, a little too fast.”

“Why were you looking for our police chief?” Miranda asked.

Ray dug around in his cardigan pocket, fished out a necklace chain with a small circle of broken glass at one end. “I found this. Hanging off a tree branch outside the Better B&B.”

God, I wish he’d stop saying that! thought Miranda. Even if it is the name of the damn place.

“That’s Inez’s necklace!” said Owen. “It’s that vial of her blood. It must have come loose when we were, um, pre-indisposed. She was lookin’ for that. How’d it break?”

“No idea. But it seemed like a clue of some sort.”

Deputy Andrew retrieved a plastic baggie from Bea’s counter, and Ray dropped the necklace inside as a piece of potential evidence.

“How is that evidence?” Owen asked, agitated. “Are you accusing Inez of—what exactly?”

With hands held up in protest, Ray insisted he was suggesting nothing of the sort. “I found it by chance. The afternoon light across the bay. I was sitting on the stairway out behind the Better—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Miranda. “Move the story along.” Ray had a knack for annoying people.

“I managed to pull the branch down, and I recognized it right away as the remains of that little glass tube Inez was always wearing around her neck. It struck me as possibly important to the case. Something the police should examine.”

“You could have asked her about it!” Owen shouted, getting angrier by the moment. “You didn’t need to pocket it and then come skulking around. You were probably the one who stole my rope!”

Owen grabbed his jacket and left. The tension in the room crackled on his departure.

Ray took a big breath. “Maybe I should go.”

“Maybe you should,” said Miranda, still smiling with all her teeth.

The mood had been spoiled, and Doc got up, too, stretched, and thanked Bea for the cobbler.

She thanked him in turn for watching out for Ned. “I worry about him.”

“I know you do,” Doc said. He pulled on his jacket. “Miranda, I can run you and the deputy to the police station, if you like, so you can drop off that broken necklace.”

As far as evidence went, this was a dead end, she was sure. But one never knew. And the fact that Ray Valentine had gone out of his way to draw attention to it seemed more significant than the item itself.

Doc opened the door of his SUV and put his tackle box and medical satchel in the rear seat to make room for them up front.

Before he could start the engine, Miranda said, “Can I ask you a question?”

He grinned. “You just did.” It was his gentle teasing that always made Miranda a little weak in the knees.

“I mean, can I ask you another question?”

“You just did.”

“How about a third question, then?”

He took pity on her this time and said, “Shoot.”

“You’ve known Ned for a long time.”

“Since we were kids. Sure.”

“What’s the story behind that quarter he carries with him?”

This got Andrew’s attention. He was dying to know, too.

“Oh,” said Doc. “That.”

“He says it’s a lucky coin.”

“It is—and it isn’t,” said Doc. “You have to understand that Bea was just about the cutest girl in middle school, and the sweetest girl, too. Bob and Ned, they both had immense crushes on her. We all did. How could you not?”

“Bob being Bob Maracle, Bea’s late husband.”

“That’s right. Bob and me, we were cousins.”

Andrew said, “No way!”

“Sure. I got lotsa cousins, all the way up the coast, from Neahkahnie to Sechelt. Anyway, Bob and Ned, they both wanted to ask Bea to the Spring Jamboree school dance (or some such). They didn’t want to put Bea on the spot, so they tossed a coin.

Whoever won would get to ask her out first. If she said no, then the other would get to ask.

Bob won the toss. Bea said sure, she would love to go to the dance with him.

He kissed her behind the gym, they started going steady, and they fell in love.

The two of them got married. Ned never did. He’s kept that coin ever since.”

Doc had just started the engine when his phone rang.

His ringtone was the theme song from Quincy M.E.

, Miranda noted, right down to the voice-over: “Gentlemen, you are about to enter the most important and fascinating sphere of police work: the world of forensic medicine.” Everyone around here is a frustrated detective, she thought, with a shake of her head. How delusional.

“Hey guys. Speak of the devil,” said Doc. “It’s Ned on the phone.”

Doc answered and the smile drained from his face. “I’ll be right there.” He pulled out onto the harbor road.

“There’s been another death,” Doc said.

“Oh no! Who?” Miranda asked. “And where?” Though she had an inkling.

“Where we were heading. The police station. The woman they were holding, Wanda Stobol, she was found dead, locked inside her cell.”

Another X through another member of the Idaho Seven, thought Miranda. And then there were four...

* * *

A FTER EXAMINING THE body, Doc determined the cause of death to be sudden cardiac arrest, and the Investigative Support Team from Portland concurred, pending a fuller examination of the body.

And with that, Wanda Stobol (aka Deborah Nolan, according to her driver’s license) was no more.

She had died in a police station, while inside a locked cell, alone.

“She didn’t seem like a Debbie,” Miranda said. It was sad. So many masks. So many pen names and false names and fictional heroes that were confused with their creators.

Officer Holly was crushed, even if it wasn’t the same Wanda Stobol who’d written the Compendium Cathy novels she’d loved as a child. It was like a piece of her childhood had died with her, she said.

“Three bodies in two days,” said Doc. “I don’t like this, Ned.”

“Neither do I. Dammit, she was under our care! She was in protective custody.”

“It was a heart attack,” Andrew cut in. “There was nothing you could have done.”

“A woman dies inside a locked jail cell, alone, normally I’d say that’s a clear-cut case of death by natural causes. But with everything that’s going on, I’m not so sure.”

“What else could it be?” Andrew asked.

A steely determination came over Ned Buckley. His checked his holster, tightened his belt, straightened his cap, and headed out.

“Miranda. Andrew,” he snarled, straight-arming the front door of the station. “Come along. We are going back to Hiram Henry House. And we’re going to settle this once and for all.”

“Yes!” Andrew was about to punch the air, like the freeze-frame at the end of The Breakfast Club , but caught himself in time.

“Dignity,” Miranda reminded him as she sailed past. “Dignity and decorum, darling.”