Page 46

A fat slice of pie with sliced apple and caramelized sugar on top, Ned’s dessert looked almost as good as the view from the café.

And though she was currently eschewing dessert for mineral water and a selection of celery, Miranda was impressed.

She watched wistfully as Ned attacked it.

Must get myself down to TV-friendly form, just in case.

If she was going to return to the screen, she had to account for the weight the camera inevitably added.

The Saturday paper lay folded on the table in front of her, the headline: ASIDE FROM THE TRIPLE HOMICIDES, A GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL!

“Ned,” said Miranda. “Do you remember the murder at the Opera House during the Little Theater’s performance of Death Is the Dickens ?”

“Of course. Your first case.”

“That took three months,” she said. “And the murders at the Duchess Hotel?”

“The body in the dumbwaiter. How could I forget?”

“That took three weeks. This one was solved in three days.”

“Mmmph?” he asked, mouth full.

“I was just thinking, next time, we’ll have to solve it in three hours, and then in three minutes, till finally it would have to be done in three seconds. There’s a body— and there’s the killer! ”

He choked back a laugh, chased down the pie with coffee.

“Are they going to formally charge Inez?” she asked.

“Looks that way. Waiting on the DNA. You were right, by the way. Tiny traces of melted wax were discovered in Wanda Stobol’s stomach.

Would’ve been missed in a standard autopsy, especially since she’d taken no medication while she was in her cell and she died from cardiac arrest. Killed by a sudden spike of adrenaline that damaged the heart, which is to be expected of death by stress—had it been natural causes. But it wasn’t. It was murder.”

“The case is wrapping up, then.”

“The case, yes. But that’s not the end of the story, is it, Miranda?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

He placed his napkin to one side. “Andrew told me about the job offer. In Hollywood.”

“Blabbermouth.”

“We’re going to miss you,” he said.

Taken aback, Miranda said, “You think I should go?”

“Don’t want you to, but I think you have to. You’d always regret it if you didn’t try. Life is too short for regret. Bea will miss you fiercely, of course, but getting to watch you on the screen again, battling the forces of evil, setting the world to rights—that would be even better.”

“I’m not so sure. They hired Lachlan Todd as the head writer!”

“The smarmy guy with the outlandish theories?”

“The same. A nuanced literary series set in Quebec’s Eastern Townships will now be adapted by a Hollywood hack, the Master of the Locked-Room Mystery.”

“King,” he said.

“King, pontiff, imperial pooh-bah. However you slice it, it’s still cheese.

When I found out about the deal—oh, how he crowed about it before he left town!

—my first thought was to back out of the project entirely.

But then I thought, no. I will go down there and I will duke it out with him, not giving an inch.

I won’t let him win. A feeble and petty reason to go, I admit. ”

“Sometimes we make the right decisions for the wrong reasons.”

“Hollywood or Happy Rock?” A smile surfaced. “It’s not the kind of thing that can be decided on the toss of a coin.”

He either missed this reference or chose to. He put down his fork and shook his head, pushed his plate away from him. “See? This is good—this is fine—but it’s nowhere near as good as Bea’s. I’ve been telling her, open a bakery.”

“Doc told me about that quarter you carry with you, the story behind it.”

“He did, did he?”

“Indeed.”

“Blabbermouth.”

“He told me about the fateful coin toss when you were young. He said you lost.”

“I did. In every conceivable way.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Miranda, “is why you keep telling everyone it’s a lucky coin.”

“I said it was a lucky coin. I didn’t say it was lucky for me.”

“You know, when the killer was on the loose, Bea worried about you so much she couldn’t sleep.”

“Aw, that’s just Bea being Bea. She worries. It’s what she does.”

“Does she, though? Bea Maracle is the world’s greatest Pastor Fran fan; she knows that character better than I do. And yet, it wasn’t me she was worried about. It was you . A wise person recently told me, It’s the people we worry about who we love the most . Bea worries about you, Ned.”

“And Edgar worries about you,” he countered.

“No. He doesn’t. No one worries about me.”

“Andrew,” said Ned. “Andrew worries about you.”

There was a pause.

“And how about you, Ned? Do you worry about Bea?”

“All the time.”

He cleared his throat and gathered his cap and pulled on his jacket and said, “I’ll be stopping by later tonight. Promised her a fresh salmon to make up for the other one. Are you joining us for Pastor Fran Friday?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Not this time. I think I’ll stay up in my attic suite. You can keep Bea company in my stead, just the two of you.”

“Okay, then.”

Ned threw a few bills on the table, told Myrtle to keep the change, then paused. Went into his wallet, tossed the quarter on the table as well. He left the café unencumbered.

Miranda watched him leave, then picked up the quarter, turned it over in her palm. As Pastor Fran, she’d once gone undercover as a riverboat gambler; she knew how to flick a coin and how to slap it down, just one of the many strange and eclectic skills she’d picked up over the course of her career.

Miranda took a deep breath, flipped the coin in the air, and caught it on the back of her hand.

“Heads I stay, tails I leave.”

* * *

T HAT NIGHT , H ARPREET Singh told her husband, “Good news! Miranda is going to teach me how to make lemonade. Turns out, I’ve been doing it wrong!

We have agreed that I will show her how to make a proper chai and she will return the favor by showing me the correct way to prepare lemonade. Isn’t that splendid?”

The look of horror on Tanvir’s face gave it away. “ Soniye, soniye, soniye, why would a star * of such an elevated stature as Miranda Abbott ever agree to teach you how to make lemonade?”

Harpreet was affronted by this. “She’s not a movie star. * She’s my friend. * ”

* * *

O N THE OTHER side of town, as her twins lay softly sleeping, Officer Holly Hinton of the HRPD sat down at her kitchen table and wrote a letter. It was to an address in Maine:

Dear Ms. Stobol,

I know you are not the real Wanda Stobol, or the only Wanda Stobol, but you are the one whose books I read when I was growing up, and I just wanted to tell you how much they meant to me.

When our dad left us and we moved to Tillamook Bay, your books got me through a very tough time.

I didn’t have many friends, except for Compendium Cathy.

She was smart and brave and true, and she never backed down.

She will always be real to me. I hope you are doing well.

Holly