Not to mention the continuing saga ofThe Secret of How to Get Back into My Boss’s Good Graces.
Hopefully if I handled this new mission skillfully enough, that would be one less mystery to solve.
I locked the safe, hung the portrait back in place, and stepped down off the ottoman.
“Come on, Koshka. We’ve got a job.”
At once, he woke up from his deep sunbeam sleeping and was on all four feet. He might take a catnap every chance he got, but when there was work to be done, the boy was a consummate professional.
As I put on my gray trench coat, I called out to Mrs. Turner.
“Dinner for none tonight! We’re working.”
Mrs. Turner peeked her head out of the kitchen door at the end of the hallway. “You have to eat, Miss March.”
“I’ll get something in town.”
She nodded as if agreeing. “I’ll put something in the icebox for you.”
Koshka and I left the house by the side door. Usually we’d walk to the Coven’s bookstore, a mere six blocks away on Seventeenth Street, but it sounded like I was going to have to leave on my mission immediately. So we went to the garage. I hit a button on my key chain and the door yawned open, revealing a metallic gold VW Bug, vintage 1974, a.k.a. the Sun Buggy. Cute but about as sturdy as a soapbox derby car, so I always strapped Koshka into his safety harness and carrier, even if we were only going a few blocks. True, I was a Book Witch, and he was my magical familiar, but that didn’t make us immortal. If only.
We drove to the bookstore down the quaint, quiet streets of Fort Meriwether. Nearly five o’clock in the evening, yet the sidewalks were mostly deserted but for a few people walking their dogs. The houseswere all weather-beaten Victorians or craftsman bungalows that were listing a little. Our town was built on the side of a hill overlooking the Columbia River. Gorgeous view, but you needed to be sure your car’s brakes were in good working order unless you wanted to pull a Thelma and Louise off the docks and nose-dive into the drink.
You might not know from looking at it, but Fort Meriwether is a veritable hub of literary magic. Fictional characters tend to be drawn to either charming small towns or dramatic coastal vistas, and we have both in spades. When a fictional character escapes the bounds of their book, they gravitate to settings similar to the story worlds they left behind. This is a port town, built on the junction of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean, and it is charming as heck, if slightly overpriced. Even better, from our little city, you can travel south and stop in at glorious beach after beach after beach. It’s fictional character catnip, especially for female leads in emotional turmoil. I mean, look at every other cover of a women’s fiction book or historical novel. What’s on it? A woman looking at the ocean.
We parked on the street in front of a sky blue Queen Anne house with a sunshine yellow door, the home of Words, Words, Words, Fort Meriwether’s only bookstore. The name came from Shakespeare’sHamletAct Two, Scene Two.
POLONIUS:
What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET:
Words, words, words.
Classic.
The bookstore, as the white wooden yard sign explained, was owned and operated by mystery writer Medda Baker. She was our sole local celebrity, an author who had lived in our town all her adult life. She wasn’t a Book Witch herself, but she was on our team in more ways than one. And she let the Ink and Paper Coven meet on the second floor.
Once inside the bookstore, I started for the cookbook section torendezvous with my boss. I turned a corner, and right there in front me was the Duke of Chicago.
—
Not literally. Metaphorically.Poetically. He wasn’t there in the flesh, but his books sat on a front table display with a sign.
With the publication of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” in 1841,
detective fiction was born!
I didn’t like that exclamation point, but I kept reading.
His character C. Auguste Dupin is literature’s first fictional sleuth!
On October 7, 1849, Poe would die under mysterious circumstances.
In memory of his final mystery, read a work of detective fiction this October!
