Peril in Paperback: A Bibliophile Mystery

was dead?”
    “Everyone was talking about him at breakfast,” she explained. “They said he was as good as dead. Dead as a doornail.”
    At least she wasn’t reporting that they blamed his death on me.
    “So it scared you when you saw him,” I prompted.
    She nodded vigorously. “I thought he might be a zombie.”
    This was the first time I’d seen Merrilee act in such a naive and childlike manner. I had begun to think that Suzie was wrong about her, but now I could see that she was a bit challenged. She was beautiful as well as thoughtful and kind, and she ran Grace’s house and staff professionally and competently. Seeing this sudden shift in her personality was a real eye-opener.
    “You know there’s no such thing as zombies, right?” I said gently.
    “I guess so,” she said, pouting. “But he’s mean, too.”
    “I completely agree—he’s a total jerk.”
    “Hey!” Stephen shouted.
    “Zip it,” Gabriel told him.
    Merrilee’s smile blossomed and grew. “Thank you, Brooklyn.”
    I squeezed her arm in response, then let her go.
    “Well.” She rubbed her hands together. “The beds aren’t going to make themselves, are they? I’d better find Shelly and get going with the chores.” And just like that, she was back to her regular self. In a flash, she bustled off to take care of her people and her world.
    Leaving Gabriel and me to deal with a wild-eyed, very cranky Stephen Fowler.
    “He wouldn’t tell you where it happened?”
    “No,” Gabriel said, glowering at the walls of the third-floor hallway. “The jackass would only admit that he was pushed, but refused to tell me where.”
    “So we’re on our own again,” I said, disappointed that Fowler wouldn’t just walk upstairs with us and point out the spot where he’d fallen through the wall. Merrilee was right: the guy was a zombie.
    “Pretty much,” Gabriel said, knocking on another wall.
    “But I thought you’d been through the trapdoors before. Don’t you know where they are?”
    “She keeps moving them,” he muttered.
    I ran my hand across a seam in the wall panel. “Fowler was probably too embarrassed to talk about it.”
    We worked in silence for a few minutes, studying the surfaces of the walls, looking for a secret panel or a hidden doorway.
    Gabriel’s theory was that the killer, thwarted by Bella’s death and Shelly’s near miss, might have changed tactics. If Fowler were disposed of, then Grace wouldn’t be able to change her will right away. The killer would have a reprieve and be able to take the time to plan the perfect way to finally get rid of Grace.
    This assumed that the killer was someone who was actually mentioned in Grace’s will.
    Maybe it was a long shot, but if we could find the spot in the house where Fowler had disappeared, we might find a clue as to who might have pushed him.
    “Merrilee had it right when she called him a zombie,” I said crossly. “Wouldn’t it be fitting if he turned out to be our killer? I didn’t mean that. Not really.”
    “Yeah, I know. But it would solve some problems.”
    “Everyone hates him, anyway.”
    Gabriel leaned his shoulder against the wall and stared at its surface from the side. “The good news is that Grace was too distracted last night to make any changes in the configuration of these walls.”
    “Small favors.”
    “Yeah.”
    I smiled at the way he understood my shorthand speak. My entire family had a tendency to talk this way. It was a legacy from growing up with our great-aunt Jessica. She spoke in clichés so much that eventually she stopped saying the whole phrase and only uttered a word or two. “Saves nine,” she would say, or “Once bitten.” And we would all nod in agreement.
    Derek had always gotten a kick out of that, too. My heart did a little twist at the thought of Derek, and I wondered if he missed me as much as I missed him.
    Absence makes?
I could only hope.
    “Check out this panel,” Gabriel said.
    “What do you see?” I asked, moving closer.
    “This seam here.” He ran his hand over the wall.
    I pressed against the wall and stared at it the way he had, sideways, trying to see if I could discern a gap in the panels. But instead my eye caught a flicker of white halfway down the hall. I jogged off to see what it was.
    “Where are you going?” he asked.
    I stopped at a small antique console. A bouquet of freshly cut flowers had been arranged on a pretty white doily. Turning to Gabriel, I pointed to the floor. “Right