Truth or Dare (34 page)

45

W
alter Kirwan's beautifully restored study was crammed with Whispering Springs dignitaries, members of the Historical Society and a sprinkling of Kirwan scholars and enthusiasts. The patio doors had been opened to allow access to the reporters, photographers and television cameras.

Zoe stood with Bonnie, Arcadia, Harry and Singleton at the back of the room. Jeff had managed to wriggle his way through the throng to get a front-row position. Theo was perched on Singleton's shoulders.

Zoe could only catch glimpses of Ethan. He was at the other end of the long study, standing next to Mayor Santana in front of the massive stone fireplace.

Dressed in a khaki green shirt and black trousers, he
appeared amused by the small media frenzy going on around him. She blew him a kiss over the heads of the crowd. He winked.

“If I may have your attention,” Paloma Santana said in authoritative tones.

Everyone immediately hushed and turned toward her. Zoe noticed that Nelson Radnor and his wife had managed to squeeze into the room. She saw that Nelson had his arm around Daria's shoulders. Daria looked very happy.

“Welcome to the Walter Kirwan House,” Paloma said, speaking into a microphone. “Thanks to the efforts of a great many people in this community, it has been restored as nearly as possible to the way it looked when Kirwan lived and wrote here. Before we get to the mystery, I'm going to ask Professor Millard Cottington, a noted Kirwan scholar, to give you some background.”

Professor Cottington, looking every inch the distinguished academic, took the microphone and rambled on for several extremely boring minutes about the importance of Kirwan's contributions to literature. He finally got to the exciting stuff.

“The exact cause of Kirwan's death has been a matter of conjecture and gossip for years,” he intoned. “But it was the disappearance of his last manuscript that has proved the most frustrating aspect of the mystery for those of us who have devoted our careers to the study of his work. The possibility that it was stolen, rather than destroyed, on the night of Kirwan's death has intrigued all of us. Many are watching today to see if Ethan Truax, a private investigator with no expertise in Kirwan's work or in American literature in general, can solve a
mystery that has baffled two generations of Kirwan scholars and collectors.”

How dare he make Ethan sound like an uneducated gumshoe, Zoe fumed, hissing softly.

“Down girl,” Arcadia murmured.

At the front of the room Ethan took center stage, clearly unfazed by the professor's condescending remarks.

“There are really only three possibilities here,” he said easily. “The first is that the manuscript was stolen and disappeared into the private collectors' market. I ruled that out after my associate, Singleton Cobb, an authority on antiquarian books, conducted an extensive investigation of the underground collectors' market and found no trace of the missing manuscript.”

He nodded at Singleton and everyone turned around to look at the biker dude with the kid on his shoulders at the back of the room. Singleton smiled and turned red. Theo grinned proudly.

Professor Cottington's face clouded in a troubled frown.
Take that, you condescending, elitist twit,
Zoe said to herself. Evidently Cottington had never considered that there might be an expert in rare books in Whispering Springs.

“The second possibility,” Ethan said, “is that Kirwan burned the manuscript on the night of his death. His last words to his housekeeper could certainly be interpreted to mean he intended to do just that. Most scholars, including Professor Cottington here, have assumed that is the most probable answer.”

Cottington nodded sagely.

“The difficulty with that explanation,” Ethan said, “is that the housekeeper, Maria Torres, told her family on several
occasions through the years that she saw no trace of what must have been several hundred sheets of typing paper in the ashes the next morning. In fact, she always claimed that there was no indication that any fire had been built that night.”

Cottington's white brows snapped together in obvious annoyance. He cleared his throat portentously.

“I would like to remind everyone present that the housekeeper's story was never verified and that there is some question about her veracity,” he said loudly.

Paloma's elegant profile went taut but she did not speak.

“Maria Torres happens to be an excellent witness,” Ethan told the crowd. “She had a history of stable employment with Kirwan. He evidently trusted her, and those who knew her best maintained that she was an honest, hardworking woman whose word could be taken to the bank.”

“She also knew that she was in Kirwan's will,” Cottington sputtered. “She stood to inherit this very house.”

“As we all know, the will was contested and she got nothing,” Ethan said. “But that's beside the point. What matters here is that, even if your assumption was true, you're left with the fact that her only interest would have been the house. She had no particular use for the manuscript. If she had taken it, she would have sold it.”

Cottington glowered. “What is your conclusion, Truax?”

“My conclusion is that the manuscript is still here.”

There was an appropriately dramatic gasp from the crowd. Cottington's jaw dropped visibly. Zoe heard Bonnie chuckle.

Ethan produced two long-handled screwdrivers. “I could use a little help here. I'd like to ask the other private investigator in
town, Nelson Radnor of Radnor Security Systems, for some professional assistance. Nelson? Would you mind? This will go faster with two of us.”

Zoe glanced at Nelson and saw a startled expression cross his face. But he recovered quickly.

“My pleasure.” He took his arm off Daria's shoulder and made his way through the crowd. “What have you got in mind?”

“After eliminating the other possibilities, it occurred to me that Kirwan really did feed his manuscript to the fireplace, but not to the flames, as everyone assumed.” Ethan handed one of the screwdrivers to Nelson. “You take the right side, I'll take the left. Start tapping.”

Nelson raised a brow as he took the screwdriver, but he merely nodded.

Excitement erupted in the room as Ethan and Nelson began systematically tapping the stones. The cameras moved in closer. Journalists fired questions.

“You think there's a secret safe somewhere in that fireplace?” the reporter from the
Whispering Springs Herald
asked, holding out a microphone.

“I think it's the one explanation that fits all the facts in this case,” Ethan said.

He rapped a series of stones. Each gave off the flat sound expected from a solid chunk of rock. On the opposite side of the hearth, Nelson went through the same exercise. He got the same response.

Ethan moved up a row and struck a large gray stone directly to the right of the heavy wooden mantel.

Unlike the others, it produced a distinctly hollow tone.

The entire room fell silent.

Nelson stopped tapping and looked at Ethan. “That sounded interesting.”

“Let's have a look.” Ethan moved his fingertips around the edge of the stone. “I'm betting there will be a spring mechanism somewhere. What do you think, Radnor?”

“I'd say it's a very, very good bet there's a spring mechanism there somewhere,” Nelson said, smiling. His eyes glinted with amusement.

Ethan probed a little more. Then he reached under the mantel.

“Here we go,” he said softly.

There was an audible click. The stone that had sounded hollow when it was tapped slowly swung open.

“Uncle Ethan, look,” Jeff shouted from the front row. “There's something inside.”

The crowd broke into wild applause. Reporters hurled more questions. Professor Cottington stared, dumbfounded.

Very carefully, Ethan reached into the hidden safe and removed a large leather box. He set it down on Kirwan's desk and looked at Paloma.

“Would you care to do the honors, Mayor?”

Her smile illuminated her dark eyes. “I'd be delighted.”

She unfastened the latch and raised the lid. For a couple of seconds she just looked into the box. Then, very carefully, she reached inside and removed what appeared to be a ream of paper.

“Canyon Visions,”
she read aloud.

A murmur of wonder went through the room.

“There are two manuscripts in here,” Santana announced. She took out another bundle of paper and glanced at the title. “
Light of a Desert Dawn,
by Walter Kirwan.”

“I don't believe it,” Cottington roared. “Let me see those manuscripts.”

Paloma handed both bundles to him. “Of course, Professor. Be my guest.”

Cottington examined the two manuscripts. “These will have to be authenticated. Tests will have to be run on the paper, the ink, the writing style.”

“Certainly,” Paloma agreed.

Gradually Cottington's outrage and disbelief turned into reverent awe. “If these are real,” he whispered, “this is an absolutely extraordinary event in the history of American literature. Extraordinary.”

 

The gang went out for pizza that night. Zoe had watched the evening news with Ethan a short time earlier and she was still fuming.

“I can't believe that the local station went with Professor Cottington's quote about an
extraordinary event
as the lead-in,” she said. “They had no business giving him so much airtime. They should have used a quote from you, Ethan. Instead, all we got was about two seconds' worth of you and Nelson Radnor tapping on the fireplace.”

“Yeah,” Theo said around a mouthful of pizza. “They hardly showed Uncle Ethan at all.”

“How come they let that professor do so much talking?” Jeff asked. “He wasn't the one who found the manuscripts.”

Ethan helped himself to a wedge of pizza. “Glory is fleeting.”

“Who's Glory?” Jeff demanded. “Where did she flee to?”

“Never mind.” Ethan munched pizza. “It's complicated.”

Bonnie looked at him across the table. “Okay, I've just got to ask. You didn't really leave that big discovery to chance, did you?”

“I'm a PI, not a magician,” Ethan said. “Of course I didn't take any chances. I got the key from the mayor the night before last and went over to the hacienda with Zoe to take a look. We did a little tapping and got lucky.”

“Ethan's very good at solving old mysteries, so it was no big surprise when he turned up the missing manuscript,” Zoe said. “It was finding the second one inside that leather box that really blew me away. Think of the impact on the literary world. Not one but two unpublished Kirwan manuscripts.”

Harry contemplated that. “You think they're for real?”

Ethan shrugged. “We'll have to leave that to the experts, but judging from the dust we found inside that fireplace safe, it's safe to say no one had opened it since the night of Kirwan's death.”

“So Kirwan did die of natural causes?” Arcadia asked.

Ethan nodded. “That's obvious. If Maria had poisoned him, she would have done something with the manuscript. She knew it had value. At the very least she would have tried to sell it to the agent.”

“Unless Kirwan hid it before he collapsed from the effects of the poison,” Harry mused. “Obviously Maria didn't know about his secret safe.”

Ethan shook his head. “Zoe and I took a look at the manuscript. Kirwan noted his changes in red and dated them that
night. It looks like he spent several hours going through the book before he hid it. Maria Torres was a housekeeper, not a professional hit lady. Most of the common poisons that she might have had access to in those days would have been very fast-acting. Furthermore, they would also have produced some fairly obvious and messy results that would have been noticed by the authorities.”

“So Maria Torres is cleared on all charges,” Harry said.

“Yes, but something tells me Professor Cottington is going to hog all the credit for finding those manuscripts,” Zoe grumbled.