Page 48

“The dust in the basement. Fairfax was a short man, and there was nothing to stand on down there except some crates stacked to one side. He might have dragged those over to reach the grate above him, but the dust on them was undisturbed. I can hardly picture someone as short as Fairfax angling an arrow so precisely through the narrow gaps in a floor grate. No. You would want to place the speargun directly against the grate as you waited. The killer would have to be tall. Fairfax was too short. And how would the killer know to place Kane’s book—not someone else’s—on the grate in the reading room unless they knew exactly what Kane was going to do: barricade himself inside and pass the stolen page through the transom to Fairfax DePoy, who would be waiting outside.

Thick as thieves. I believe that was the phrase Cephus used.

It wasn’t a conspiracy of two—it was a conspiracy of three.

A pact had been made: Kane, Fairfax, and yourself.

They thought you were in this together. But you had other plans, didn’t you, Penny? ”

Miranda slid a photograph across the table. It was the one the janitor had pinned up. He’d crossed out Wanda’s face, but the surviving members of the Idaho Seven remained. The close-knit smiles. The fingers, entwined.

“If you look carefully, what do you see? Here—where your arm lies next to his, where your fingers meet. You’re holding hands. How sweet! You and John D. Ross.”

“This proves nothing.”

“I’ve already spoken with Helen. She knew about you and your mentor.

She always knew. She just didn’t care, and that must have been the final sting.

What was it Wanda said? ‘Some people sleep their way to the middle.’ Ah, but you were in love.

And yours was not a middling talent. You were the only real writer amongst them, the only one who’d already been published, even if it was with a small, obscure press. ”

“Miranda, listen—”

“You planted the note about the lighthouse, slid it under Fairfax’s door to lure him there.

You would never have spelled Virginia Woolf’s name wrong, and you were also the one who ‘discovered’—and decoded—the message.

A nice deflection, that. Fairfax was waiting for you at the lighthouse, and when you entered with the speargun, held him at bay as you began preparing the noose, he knew.

Fairfax choked trying to swallow the last page of the manuscript, thinking that’s what you’d come for. But it wasn’t.”

A flash of anger from Penny. “It wasn’t enough to sink that stupid series of novels.

A six-foot former whatever, going town to town punching bad guys?

It deserved to die. But so did the others.

I was going to make them pay, starting with the two I was closest to, my friends—my so-called friends—the ones who’d watched it happen, had watched me fall in love, had watched as he toyed with me and then fobbed me off, had watched me squander my talent and my heart. ”

“ How Precious the Rain, How Sad the Sun . There is no Gertrude Gyilkos, is there? That’s why Andrew couldn’t find any trace of her, and he’s very good at that sort of thing.

Your name truly is Penny Fenland, unlike Kane or Wanda or Fairfax, all of whom operated under pen names.

And yet, I suspect Gertrude Gyilkos is who you truly are. ”

But Penny’s thoughts were elsewhere. She looked away.

Far away. She was remembering the tall, ungainly girl who had attended the Idaho Writers Workshop in Boise, nervous and insecure even though she was the only student there who could call herself an actual author, who had actually been published; the tall, ungainly girl who struggled in her attempts to switch to mysteries, only to have each and every attempt dismissed by The Great Writer?.

John, turning in bed to look at her. John, reaching out to stroke her cheek, saying, “You know, I liked that one character of yours, the French Canadian in Chapter Seven. You could probably write a whole book about him, so long as you don’t worry too much about psychology and focus more on plot instead.

Who knows? It might change your life.” It would.

It did. Though not necessarily for the better.

She looked at Miranda with twenty years of sorrow in her eyes.

“We missed one. The other authors and I. Fear, greed, love, anger, and madness. But we can also kill out of pain. The missing motive on that list is pain.” The sadness broke, the rage returned.

“I was the only one! The only one with a novel to my name, the only one who’d come there as a real writer, the only one with talent, yet my work was marginalized, dismissed, and demeaned by the same Great Man who gathered his acolytes around him even as he isolated the weak and the vulnerable, as he took advantage of my affections and my insecurities.

Like his cruel alter ego, Trevor Lucas, he deserved to die. ”

“John D. Ross died in his sleep. The others were not so fortunate.”

Penny’s rage had dissipated. Her eyes had cleared.

Her intelligence took over. “Miranda, let’s think this through.

I can ensure that you get a bigger role, a better character, more lines—maybe a limited series of your own eventually.

I won’t insult you by offering you money, I know you don’t care about that, but I can offer you fame—and creative control over how your character is depicted. ”

“It’s tempting—I won’t say that it’s not.

But I keep thinking about Fairfax in his ill-fitting lifts, terrified and desperately trying to save himself when you cornered him in the lighthouse, shoving that page into his mouth, trying to swallow the final, lethal words of John D.

Ross, choking on them, dying in abject fear.

He didn’t deserve that. Neither did Kane. Neither did Wanda.”

“Listen, Miranda. We can work this out. Where did you say you were staying?”

“Oh, I’m not staying in LA. I’m only down for the day. We’re heading back this afternoon.”

“We?”

Ned Buckley entered Penny’s office with Deputy Andrew Nguyen in tow.

Penny turned on Miranda, not in anger or hatred, but with tears in her eyes and genuine affection.

“You were a true actor, so much more talented than those TV writers ever gave you credit for. Classically trained, sharp as a whip, you squandered your talents on that show, just as I squandered mine. I would have removed Lachlan from the picture—you know that, don’t you?

And once he was safely out of the way, I would have invited you back into the fold.

It would have been the two of us, together, telling the stories we wanted to tell. We could have made art, Miranda.”

Miranda Abbott said nothing.

Ned was holding a manila envelope in his hand, and when he spoke to Penny, his voice was surprisingly soft. “Ma’am, I have an extradition order here from the State of Oregon. You’ve written enough of these books. You know what happens next. You have the right to remain silent... ”