AUTHOR NOTE: At the end of chapter 3, Miranda went to have dinner at Shepard's home, where he had told her there would be a surprise. When she entered the kitchen door, she fainted. Surprise?  Enjoy finding out what kind of surprise causes instant unconsciousness in Chapter 4 of THE MAMMOTH MURDERS.  Thanks for reading.

(The video above is a six-minute summary of "The Last of the Mohicans," for those who haven't seen the movie. Miranda has seen it four times. Of course, she read the book five times, since she was age 8.)

~o~~o~~o~

The Fratelli Twins  (Miranda never saw them together.)

Miranda began to hear voices nearby as she gradually emerged into consciousness. Beneath her, she felt soft settee cushions instead of a hard, tiled kitchen floor. Someone must have carried her out of Shep's kitchen. Maybe the same someone who was holding her hand, gently stroking her wrist with a thumb.

"This is your  fault!" Shep's voice resonated off the walls.

"No, no, no, you thoughtless thug! You the one didn't tell her what to expect. You coulda predicted this reaction and prepared her for my return."

The second man had an Italian accent that tugged at her heart. Pietro was dead. Murdered in the car bombing that had nearly killed Shep. "My return," the man had said. His return from the dead?

Yes! That was why she had fainted. She remembered opening Shep's kitchen door and seeing Pietro, at the stove, in his ridiculous apron, cooking as he had cooked every night for years. Pietro's ghost? She had not quite completed that thought when her lights winked out.

"Pietro?" Miranda asked the men's voices, without opening her eyes.

"No, cara," the Italian man crooned. "It is I, Carlo. Forgive me if I frightened you."

"I'll get her a glass of water," Shep's deep voice said, and the hand holding Miranda's began to pull away.

"No! This you fault," snapped Carlo. "I get the water. You stay here and make this right, pretty boy." This last was no compliment, judging by Carlo's tone.

Miranda opened her eyes to see Shepard's concerned face looming over her and another man, in a silly apron, leaving the room. "What?" she murmured, squeezing Shep's hand a little desperately in her confusion. "What? Who? How?"

"Typical librarian. Reciting The Five W's at a time like this."

"Shepard!" She seriously needed answers, and fast.

"It's not Pietro," he soothed. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize what a shock it might be to see Carlo again, under the circumstances. You remember Pietro's twin brother, don't you?"

She shook her head, "You talked about him, but I never actually...."

"Right, you never really met Carlo. I wish you had seen them together; then Carlo's return would've been less ... um ... jolting for you."

She lifted herself to a sitting position, with Shep's strong arms to help, and Carlo, returning from the kitchen, pressed a water glass into her hand as soon as she was safely vertical.

"Pleased to meet you, cara," the water bearer said with a Casanova smile. "I am sorry to frighten you. If this brainless oaf had told you ahead of time, instead of playing childish games — 'Surprise! Your dead friend is making dinner!' — our first meeting would have been safer and more pleasant for you."

"I said I was sorry," Shep insisted.

"No, in fact, you did not," Carlo responded calmly.

Shep squeezed Miranda's hand. "I didn't?"

"I don't remember hearing it," she said, "but I can't be sure I heard everything. I was sort of incommunicado for a little while."

"Again, your  fault," Carlo nudged Shep.

For a second, Shep half-turned toward Carlo as if to argue, but he caught himself and turned back to face Miranda. He lifted her hand to his lips and placed a warm, soft kiss on her palm. "I am so, so sorry, Bean. I thought you'd be happy and excited to see Carlo. I never thought you'd think he was ... his brother. I'm a jerk—"

"Yes, you are," Carlo interjected.

"—and you should make me do penance for scaring you—"

"Yes, you should. A thousand 'Our Fathers'!"

"—and I'll understand if you want to skip dinner with me tonight—"

"No! You want to eat here! I, Carlo, have prepared a masterpiece, one of my mother's greatest recipes. You will dine with us. But, if you do not want to talk to the big, stupid fellow with only muscles between his ears, you can talk to me."

Miranda looked at the two men kneeling beside the sofa where she sat. One radiated shame and regret, the other pride and self-assurance. From the kitchen, a heavenly aroma wafted through the house, transporting her to a cucina far away where, years before, a small, rotund woman had taught twin boys to cook.

Miranda smiled for Carlo, and squeezed Shep's hand at the same time. "I think I might talk to both of you," she said, letting her smile fill her voice. "But let's eat first."

~~

The trio had nearly finished consuming Carlo's unforgettable home-cooked Italian dinner, during which no one lost consciousness, when Carlo said something that nearly dropped Shepard right out of his chair.

"So, have you set a date for the wedding?"

Shep's fork clattered onto his plate as he rocked backward.

Miranda choked on her mouthful of iced tea and quickly covered her mouth with her napkin.

Miranda asked, "How did you know about that?" at the same time Shep said, "What wedding?"

"You better get busy looking at your calendar, my friends. Madam is well into a series of planning meetings."

"What?" said Miranda, while Shepard said simply, "No."

"No?" Carlo raised an eyebrow at Miranda and let his voice convey the gesture to Shepard. "Did you ask this lovely lady to marry you?"

"Many times," Shepard said.

Miranda said, "Nobody knows about that!"

Carlo smiled. Madam's spies were never wrong.

"And, pretty lady, did you consent to marry this ignorant savage?" Carlo gestured toward Shep.

"Hey...!" said Shep.

"Yes," she said.

"So, have you set a date for the wedding?" Carlo repeated, as if the intervening conversation had never happened.

"Well, no, but—" Miranda began.

"This weekend. We're going to be married by a ship's captain," Shepard announced flatly, picked up his dropped fork, and returned to eating dinner calmly. "Simple ceremony. Short and simple. Very simple."

"This weekend!" Miranda cried. "But it's already Wednesday! I can't—"

"Going on a cruise?" Carlo inserted.

"Canoe trip," Shep reported, between bites. "Semi-annual Audubon Society fossil hunting tour on the Sho-ke-okee River."

"Canoeing!" Miranda cried. "Fossil hunting? This is a joke, right? Like when you told me you and Aunt Phyllis used to go bird watching?"

Shep chuckled. "Couldn't believe how long it took you to catch that one. But this one is for real. Phyllis and I went on the Sho-ke-okee canoe trip twice a year."

"Right. And you, Shepard Montgomery Krausse, ... looked ... for fossils," Miranda said, sarcastically.

He shook his head. "I was just the brawn. Phyllis was the brains — which, of course, this year will be you. Bring a field guide. I have everything else."

"You can't get married on a canoe trip," Carlo advised. "There's no ship's captain to marry you."

"I'm not sure they can really do that, anyway," Miranda said.

"We'll have the canoe outfitter marry us."

"You're kidding!"

"Yes, Bean, I'm kidding. The canoe outfitter can't marry us."

"And we're not getting married this weekend."

"Right. We're not getting married this particular weekend. But we are going canoeing. You up for it?"

"Truthfully, I don't know," Miranda said, "but I know I'm not letting you go do something like that alone!"

"So, what is the real wedding date?" asked Carlo, bringing the conversation back to his original query. "Madam needs to know."

"No, Madam does not need to know. Madam is not planning the wedding," Shep said, picking up his place setting and carrying it toward the sink.

"That's right," Miranda agreed, taking up her own place setting and following in Shep's wake. "The bride's family is supposed to plan the wedding."

Shep stopped in his tracks, and Miranda ran into him, nearly dropping her dishes.

"You told your parents?" he asked.

"Well, no, but I guess I'll have to tell them eventually."

"Perhaps not," Carlo said in an oddly cautious tone. "I regret to say, I believe Madam may be contacting Doctor and Signora Ogilvy this week."

"What?" said Shepard, while Miranda simply said, "No!"

~~

After dinner, Shep and Carlo washed, dried, and put away the dishes while Miranda, as the guest of honor and recovering fainter, watched from a comfy chair. Once the kitchen was tidy, Shep held out a hand in Miranda's direction. "Come with me, Castor Bean, and I'll show you your royal barge."

When she rose and took his hand, he led her out the kitchen door and into the evening darkness. In the shadow of the house, away from the few street lamps of Minokee, she could see a sky so full of stars it looked as if someone had tossed handfuls of white sand across a black tablecloth.

Miranda stopped to look up, and Shep stepped back, to stand beside her.

"Ohhhh, I wish you could see this," she whispered, leaning her head against his shoulder.

"You can see it for me."

"But, I don't have the words to share all of it with you, the vastness of it, the power of countless spinning infernos, shining for us out of the distant past," Miranda said.

"Space is so huge!" she continued. "Even at 186,000 miles per second, a star's light can take a thousand years to get here! Many of those stars don't even exist anymore by the time we can see them."

She paused to let out a long sigh, then said, "And we walk about beneath them all the time, assuming we are the most important things in the universe."

"Those words will do for a start," he said, and she heard the smile in his voice. He kissed the hair at her temple. "And when you run out of words, Miss Librarian, you can kiss me. That'll give me all the awe and wonder I can handle."

They didn't move from that spot for a few minutes. Then, with his hand resting gently on her elbow, Shep and Miranda strolled across the moonlit back yard to a wood frame workshop in a far corner of the property. The little building shone a pristine white, and its terra cotta roof tiles peeked from beneath a waterfall of massed bougainvillea, covered in magenta flowers.

"Ohhh," sighed Miranda, "it looks like a quaint little cottage right out of a fairy tale."

"But not Hansel and Gretel, right?" he said. "It doesn't look witchy and evil, right?"

"Don't worry. I don't believe in witches."

He scoffed. "You should listen in on one of my mother's bridge parties. You'd change your mind."

"Stop. You love your mother."

"Well, sure, I love my mother. I'm not uncivilized," he said. "But I'm also not blind to her faults, I can't believe I even said that, do not respond in any way if you know what's good for you."

"I thought you were going to show me my Cleopatra-ish barge," she said.

"Yes, Your Majesty. Immediately, Your Majesty." He produced a key from his pocket, unlocked the padlock on the workshop's double door, and swung the two panels wide in opposite directions.

Miranda saw only a cave-like black opening. "Um..." she began.

"Oh, sorry!" He reached inside the doorframe, flicked a switch, and light filled the barn-like structure. A canoe rested bottom-up on sawhorses along one wall.

Canoe similar to Shepard's.

Miranda was awed speechless by the work of art displayed there. Unable to resist, she brushed past Shep to go to the boat and glide her hands over its shining, silk-smooth surface.

"Like it?" said the baritone voice from behind her.

"It's beautiful," she breathed, "but that's not a sufficient description. It's amazing. The lines are so subtle and fluid, like a gently flowing river, and the wood is dark and natural with a texture like rainforest hardwood trees."

"So, you do like it."

"It's not what I expected at all," she said. "I thought canoes were either white, like birch bark canoes pictured in books, or brightly colored Fiberglas and plastic, like the ones at Dick's Sporting Goods."

"I built this one."

She swung around to gape at him. "You made this yourself!"

"Well, my dad and grandpa helped, of course, but they made sure I did my share of the work."

She turned back to the canoe and slid her palm down its sleek keel. "What's it made of?"

"Mahogany and teak, with an infusion of Fiberglas micro beads, and a good coating of clear resin to keep it shiny. I sand it and re-coat it every few years."

"It's absolutely lovely. Is it a good canoe? I mean, does it work as well in the water as it looks on land?"

"You can decide for yourself on Saturday. How much do you know about canoes?"

"I saw 'The Last of the Mohicans' four times."

"Really."

"Yeah, but I confess I know a lot more about handsome, shirtless 'Mohican' actors than I do about the canoes they paddled."

"Ah," he said carefully, suppressing any inflection that might be construed as mocking or judgmental or, heaven forbid, jealous. "Well, then, I'll have to give you a crash course before we head out on Saturday."

"Could you not say 'crash,' please? I'm fairly nervous about this venture as it is."

He stepped closer behind her and rested his big hands on her slim shoulders. "Don't be nervous, Castor Bean. All you have to do is steer. I'll provide the forward motion."

~o~o~o~

AUTHOR NOTE: Next week, in Chapter 5, we'll go canoeing with Shep and MIranda and some people we haven't met before. Heads up: In this group of canoeists are a couple of future murderers and one or two future murder victims. And it will all happen because of a the discovery they observe on this canoe trip.

Thanks for reading. Be sure to click that little voting star below, and drop me a one- or two-word comment on Chapter 4. 

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Happy Reading,

Iris