Page 9

Chapter Five

Case of the Missing Rope!

B ack in the kitchen, Gerry was bustling about among the various pots and pans and a horn o’ plenty’s worth of ingredients spilling across the counter that they must have brought with them.

(Edgar owned an electric kettle, an array of mismatched utensils, a couple of coffee mugs, pre-chipped, and an aluminum frying pan.

Miranda had installed a cappuccino machine with espresso cups in the back, and even then Edgar had complained about her “gentrifying” the place.)

Andrew was attempting to mince mint leaves on a cutting board, much to Geri’s disapproval.

“Small chopping motions,” she said with a rictus smile. “If you saw the blade back and forth like that, you’ll shred the leaves. We don’t want shredded leaves, we want minced leaves.”

She was relieved when Miranda interrupted.

“Andrew, darling, I must pull you away from here, I’m afraid. I need to get back to my suite at Bea’s to ready myself for tonight’s performance.”

“Not a performance,” said Edgar as he entered the kitchen. “A reception.”

“One and the same, Edgar. Life is a performance!”

Edgar hung the key to the reading room on the hook in the kitchen.

“You locked the door to the reading room?” said Miranda, impressed.

“With the overly enthusiastic interest Kane and that publicist showed in John D. Ross’s lost manuscript, I figured, yeah, maybe it’s more valuable than I thought. Figured I should keep it locked up until I can get it back to Helen Ross, especially when all the guests get here.”

Andrew was wiping his hands, having thoroughly shredded the mint into a pulpy, wet mulch. “All done!”

“Andrew, please call Ned Buckley and arrange a ride for us back to Bea’s.”

Edgar intervened. “No. Don’t. Miranda, you have to stop using 911 for that. Here.” He tossed Andrew the keys to his Jeep. “You can run her nibs down.”

Andrew stammered, “But—but I can’t.”

“Don’t worry. I’m here for the rest of the day. Won’t be needing the Jeep.”

“No, I mean—I can’t . I’m not good with standard drive.”

But Edgar waved this aside. “You’ll be fine. It’s downhill most of the way. Worst case, you can coast if you have to.”

Which is how Miranda Abbott found herself being jounced about in the herky-jerky of a stop-and-go, gear-grinding misadventure, as they wound their way down, down, down through the trees along Beacon Hill, past the hotel to the harbor below, with Andrew white-knuckling it the entire way, shifting gears up and down, more or less at random, to loud protests from the engine.

“You’re doing wonderfully well,” Miranda assured him as he lurched the vehicle onto Harbor Road in a series of fits and near stalls. Andrew had driven regularly in LA; Happy Rock with a stick shift was much more nerve-wracking.

They arrived at Bea’s cottage by the water on an agonizing internal screech (both from the car and from Andrew) and a final pop of the clutch.

“Whew!” said Andrew.

“Strange, isn’t it,” Miranda mused, “how ‘standard drive’ is no longer standard. Just as ‘common sense’ is increasingly uncommon. I remember when I first learned how to drive a standard on my TV show. A Jeep, in fact. Just like this one. I was undercover as an army cadet, you see.”

“Wait. What?” His hands were only now relaxing on the wheel. “You can drive a stick?”

“Of course! One of my many hidden talents.” She scooted out the side.

“You could have told me!” he shouted through the car window. “I would have let you drive.”

“Nonsense, how else would you have learned? When Pastor Fran went undercover as a toreador, they put me straight into the ring with a cape and a young bull. Not an aggressive bull, but a bull nonetheless. One must plunge into life from the high diving board, not splash about in the kiddie pool. Come along, Andrew!”

Another life lesson from Miranda Abbott: to play a toreador, become a toreador. A lesson Kane had attempted, but failed at.

* * *

M IRANDA LIVED IN the attic suite of Bea’s B she recognized the breathless covers with the open-shirted smoldering men and bosom-heaving women.

“I’ll send some SunnyD up to the reception, too,” said Bea, “just in case Edgar runs out of beverages.”

“And I shall focus on preparing myself for the Grand Ball. Andrew, my wardrobe awaits! I was thinking something green...”

“You’ll have to narrow that down,” Andrew pointed out.

“Something in green satin .”

“Again...”

“Shouldn’t you be at the store, helping your husband?” said Bea, dropping that last word unnecessarily hard. As much as she loved having her idol as a guest in her attic, Bea had long thought Miranda’s place was not in the B&B, but with Edgar.

“He’s not my—” Miranda caught herself. “It’s...” Don’t say complicated . “... complex.”

“I see,” said Bea, but of course she didn’t.

Although best known as the karate-chopping church pastor she’d played for six years on network TV, Miranda Abbott was a classically trained actor who had trod the boards at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis before being discovered by Hollywood.

As such, she was well versed in the actor’s craft: movement, voice, dance, diction—and swordplay.

She knew a thrust from a parry, and she countered Bea’s unstated suggestion with one of her own. “And what of you and Ned Buckley?”

Bea was instantly on the defensive. “What do you mean?”

“Come now. Ned practically lives here!” It was true. Happy Rock’s finest was so often at Bea’s that the locals referred to it as HRPD Station Number Two. “Why can’t he move in here, save himself the drive back every night to that sad little basement he rents behind the flower shoppe?”

Bea, blushing to the bone, said, “Ned and I are friends. Old friends. We went to school together. He was Bob’s best friend.”

She’d managed to say “friend” three times in one breath.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much!” said Miranda.

Andrew, however, was on Bea’s side. He said softly, “I don’t know. Sometimes moving in with someone can ruin everything. Too much of a good thing.” He looked away. Far away.

Three bruised souls. Three hearts in search of love.

“Hey, everybody. Where’s the funeral?”

It was Ned Buckley, in uniform as always. Was he ever out of uniform? Miranda wondered. He’d popped into Bea’s unannounced, as was his habit.

“Why so glum? Usually this place is full of chatter. Hey, is that peach cobbler I smell?”

Bea’s mood brightened with his arrival. It always did. “I made it ’specially for the do tonight.”

“I saw Edgar’s Jeep out front,” said Ned, pulling up a chair.

Andrew perked up. “I drove!”

“Good on you,” said Ned.

“Working on a big case?” Andrew asked, fascinated as always by Ned Buckley, the small-town cop of lore.

“Could say that. Some rope went missing from behind Owen’s garage.”

“How would anyone know?” asked Miranda. “Owen’s garage is a heaping pile of discarded parts. It’s practically on the tour route. The Teetering Mountain of Happy Rock .”