Миранда Джеймс - Twelve Angry Librarians

Diesel was intrigued by the napkin-wrapped food that I carried in one hand. As we made our way through the lobby and out to the parking lot behind the hotel, he kept looking at it. He meowed every so often, and I told him that this food wasn’t for him. He would get a treat as soon as we got home.

In the car I made sure to put the food out of reach in the glove compartment. I didn’t think he would try to get at it if I left it in the open car, but with felines, even one as well-behaved as Diesel, I had learned you could never be absolutely certain what they would do in any given situation.

The house was quiet when we entered. Stewart’s car wasn’t in the garage, so that meant no one was home, except possibly Dante in his crate up in Stewart and Haskell’s apartment on the third floor. Once I released Diesel from his leash and harness he scurried to the utility room. I took my food out of the napkins in which I had wrapped it and transferred it into a plastic refrigerator bag. I was tempted to eat a couple of the spirals and stared at them for a moment, then put them in the fridge. A small victory for willpower. I needed more of them.

When Diesel came back to the kitchen I had his treat—or rather, treats—ready for him. I told him again what a good boy he had been at the party, and he gobbled down the treats as if I hadn’t fed him in three days. He looked at me hopefully when they were gone, but I told him, “No, that’s all for tonight.”

He stared at me a moment before he turned and walked back to the utility room. I knew he would make do with dry food to fill the bottomless pit that was his stomach.

Shaking my head and smiling, I headed upstairs to get ready for bed. I was tired and hoped I could go to sleep soon. I felt a little guilty that I’d left Lisa with the cleanup, but I hadn’t argued when she told me she’d handle it. After all, she was around twenty years younger than I.

Diesel hadn’t come upstairs when I was ready to climb into bed. I lay there with the bedside lamp on until he appeared a couple of minutes later. He climbed on the bed and stretched out beside me in his usual position. I thought about calling Helen Louise, but she wouldn’t be home from the bistro for at least another hour or two. She was always exhausted on Saturday nights.

Instead, I turned out the light, got comfortable, and waited for sleep to overtake me.

And I waited.

The moment the light went out, my brain started cogitating on the murders. I knew then it would be a while before I could go to sleep. So I let my mind roam over the various questions I had and sought answers to them.

The question that I kept returning to was the two poisoned bottles. Why two?

I had a feeling that there were only two, but I couldn’t figure out why. I started thinking about what had happened, about the scanty information Kanesha had shared with me, and all at once I had a possible answer to the riddle of the two poisoned bottles.

No , I thought, that can’t be it . It’s too bizarre a solution . But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that I had stumbled on the answer.

How on earth would I—or rather, Kanesha—prove it?

THIRTY-THREE

I shifted my position in the bed and squinted at the clock on the nightstand. The luminous numbers told me it was nine twenty-one.

Not too late, then, to get in touch with Kanesha.

I reached for my cell phone but drew back my hand before I touched the phone. No, what I was thinking was too wild. Kanesha would think I’d finally gone completely round the bend.

It was possible, I thought. Maybe not probable, but possible. Weirder things had happened in the annals of crime. Without thinking too hard about it, I could remember at least two crime novels that had solutions as improbable as the one I’d come up with in the present case.

I doubted, however, Kanesha would have any interest in that. She needed facts, evidence that could prove beyond a reasonable doubt the identity of the killer.

I had conjecture, mostly, no hard facts that could be considered evidence. But maybe with my theory—okay, I’ll call it that, a theory—to work with, Kanesha might find the evidence that would prove I’m right .

I considered a couple of things she told me when we talked face-to-face about the investigation. I needed to figure out how certain things fit into my wild scenario.

Maxine Muller had told Kanesha that Gavin had received anonymous death threats and was frightened.

Maxine had seen a couple of the threats. One through an anonymous e-mail account, the other through the regular mail. She wasn’t sure if Gavin had kept the envelope. She also wasn’t sure how many threats he’d received. He had told her multiple , that was all.

He had told her one other thing, however. He was pretty sure who was behind the threats, but he refused to tell her who it was. He did finally admit to her that he knew the person would be attending the SALA conference, and he planned to confront him there.

Gavin had specifically said him , Maxine recalled, so she figured a man was behind the threats. When pressed by Maxine, however, Gavin got nasty with her and wouldn’t confirm the gender of the culprit.

Kanesha couldn’t ask Gavin about any of this, of course. I wondered if she had found any evidence of these threats when she and her people searched Gavin’s room. I had asked her when we talked, but she said they hadn’t, at that point. They were still going over his suite looking for evidence. I figured he might have brought any sent through the regular mail with him to use when he confronted the person he thought was responsible. Any others he received electronically would be found in his e-mail, surely.

Why had Maxine been given a tainted water bottle? I thought I knew the answer to that, too. Maxine knew too much about Gavin’s activities, the nefarious ones, and she posed a threat to the killer. The killer wanted her completely out of the picture. Tying up the loose ends, as it were.

Maxine had told Kanesha one other thing, and it fit in with my solution. Gavin had applied for four different jobs over the past nine months, all of them at larger, better known schools than his current institution. Two of the schools appeared interested and set up phone interviews. A day or two before the scheduled phone calls, however, Gavin had received e-mails telling him that they regretted it, but he was no longer being considered for the position. From the other two schools he received fairly prompt responses to let him know they weren’t interested.

He had been livid, Maxine told Kanesha, over the rejections. Particularly the two with the canceled phone interviews. Gavin was convinced someone had blackballed him. Again, he seemed to be sure who was responsible, or so Maxine thought. But he wouldn’t say who. She figured it must be the same person who was sending the threatening letters. Gavin had started receiving them around the same time he received the rejections for his job applications.

I thought I knew who had blackballed Gavin, and I found it amusing, in a macabre sort of way. Hoist by his own petard , or the biter bit . Poetic justice, I’d call it. And more to come.

I reached for the phone again, and this time I picked it up. I thought about calling, because I doubted she was even at home, let alone in bed. No, a text would do. That way she could text me back and tell me I had lost what mind I had or she would call me to hear me out.

I tapped the keyboard slowly so I wouldn’t have to go back and correct any misspellings or stupid auto-correct changes.

Think I have figured it out. Too complicated to explain in text. When can we talk ?

I hit Send and waited.