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Chapter Twenty-Four

A Formidable Woman

W ith a satisfied smirk, he said, “Of course she was murdered. And I can tell you exactly how.”

Lachlan Todd had draped himself over a velvet settee in the parqueted reception hall of Hiram Henry House and was looking properly pleased with himself.

He’d been rounded up at the Duchess Hotel, where he’d recently rented out the entire Gerald Ford Suite on the fourth floor.

(The dynamic former president had once spent a night in the Duchess, to the town’s eternal pride.) Lachlan had paid up front and in full, Ned noted, and had also cleared his outstanding account at the Hideaway Motel.

“All a misunderstanding,” he’d assured Ned.

Chief Buckley had gathered them in the furniture-laden environs of this historic inn: Lachlan Todd and the authors (those of them still alive), plus the publicist. G something quite unexpected.

Ned placed the speargun back in the bag as gingerly as he’d extracted it.

The solution seemed both tantalizingly near at hand and hopelessly far away.

Miranda felt like she was caught in a game of Whac-A-Mole, the kind she’d played as a girl at the St. Olaf County Fair.

As soon as you hammered one problem down, another one popped up.

Kane? Killed by an arrow shot upward into his chest as he bent over to pick up a copy of his own book.

A locked lighthouse? The bolt to the door had been pulled back against a heavy spring that slowly expanded, pushing the bolt back into place after the killer had left.

And now Wanda Stobol, killed by a phantom—or a faulty heart.

Three locked rooms, three impossible crimes.

Then it hit her: none of them were meant to be locked rooms .