Rogues Gallery by Dan Andriacco

couple of minutes, I ventured, “Maybe after all that it was just a - ”
    The boom sounded more like a firecracker from where we were standing. It didn’t take down the house and it didn’t even shake the Mustang, but it was a real explosion. The bank would need to have at least a few rooms remodeled before they could sell the place. If we’d still been inside at the time we’d have been killed.
    â€œNo,” Lynda said, “it wasn’t just a joke.”
    Having no access to a cell phone and not knowing how many doors we’d have to knock on to find somebody home, we decided to go to Mo and Jonathan’s party to report our near-death experience. Oscar Hummel, Erin’s police chief, would be among the guests. And so would Mac. The GPS gizmo plugged into the Mustang, which has spoken with an English accent ever since shortly after we returned from London, got us there in about five minutes.
    The old mansion that in a few weeks would become a funeral home was lit up and alive with noise. I felt warmer as we approached the front door.
    Jonathan Hawes, the friendly undertaker, answered the door. Tall and lean, he looked right in the deerstalker cap and Inverness cape. Still, I thought it was a bit of a copout to wear his costume from the play 1895 in which he had starred as Sherlock Holmes. The deerstalker had been a big bone of contention between Lafcadio Figg, the director of the drama, and Sebastian McCabe, who wrote the play and co-starred as the smarter and lazier Holmes brother, Mycroft. Mac resisted the headgear because it was never mentioned in any story, but Figg insisted because it had been good enough for the actor William Gillette. Figg won.
    â€œWhere the hell have you been?” Hawes roared. His first drink of some adult beverage clearly had not been his last.
    â€œHell is exactly where we’ve been,” Lynda said grimly.
    She looked like it, with her wig askew and the catsuit somewhat the worse for all the wriggling she’d done in an attempt to slip her bonds. I didn’t look like the cover of GQ myself, mind you. I’d found my bowler hat and umbrella in Lynda’s car, but I was in no mood to dress for a party.
    â€œWhat have you done with her, you beast?” Triple M yelled. But her perennially cheerful face fell when she saw us. I’m sure we didn’t look like the jaunty Steed and Peel she’d been expecting for some time. Instead, our appearance must have reflected what our bodies and minds had been through over the past couple of hours.
    Hawes got it. “Come on in.”
    Joining the party was like falling through a TV screen into The Mystery Channel, that cable network with all the old detective shows from the past sixty years. Some of the costumed guests were in the huge hallway, some in one of the rooms on either side of it. I’m sure there were also a few partiers in the kitchen where I couldn’t see them.
    Figg, as promised, was dressed as Nero Wolfe, with a yellow shirt and an orchid in his lapel. He had the figure for it, and he’d sacrificed his muttonchops for the sake of authenticity. My sister Kate’s scarlet hair was teased like one of Charlie’s Angels, but I’d never learned their names. Bob Tucker, the bald-headed principal of Malcolm C. Cotton High School, sucked on a lollipop as Kojak. Beth Bennet, a newcomer to town whom I’d run into a few times at Pages Gone By, wore a three-piece suit, a bow tie, a homburg, and a pointed mustache. She made a cute Hercule Poirot in the manner of the BBC productions with David Suchet, not the Peter Ustinov rendition.
    Don’t get the idea that I consciously made this inventory as soon as I stepped into the house. That didn’t happen. Once in the door I looked around for Mac and Oscar. To my astonishment, Mac wheeled himself our way.
    â€œThere you are at last!” he thundered. “I was about to suggest a search party.”
    Lynda and