Миранда Джеймс - No Cats Allowed

I surfaced from my reverie to hear Stewart say to Haskell, “Then the Queen of Sheba turned to me and said I had to stay for dinner and she hoped that I liked stewed goats’ eyes and pickled cow tongue.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

Stewart chuckled at my expression of confusion. “I wondered whether you were really listening.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m preoccupied with work. Not something that has occurred often in recent years.”

“Must be a real mess,” Haskell said.

“I’m beginning to think it’s worse than anyone realized,” I said. “I can’t go into details, but I suspect there’s an embezzler on the staff.” I shouldn’t have said that, I realized a little too late. “You can’t repeat that anywhere.”

“Of course not,” Stewart said. “I would think it was Peter Vanderwhatsit, if it was anybody. Otherwise, why did he just up and disappear like that?”

“Vanderkeller,” I said absently, struck by Stewart’s question. Why had Peter disappeared so abruptly? Because he knew his fraud was about to be uncovered, and he decided to skip the country before he could be caught? That was possible, I supposed, but from what I had learned from the vice president of finance, there wasn’t any money actually missing. Not that they could find evidence of, at any rate.

I had thought he had resigned because he was simply too embarrassed to face the music. Peter had never liked owning up to mistakes. He had that much in common with Oscar Reilly. He had already suffered great embarrassment several years ago when his wife left him. Being blamed for fiscal ineptitude might have been more than he could handle.

“Earth to Charlie,” Stewart said laughingly.

“Sorry,” I said again. “Look, guys, I hate to do this, but would you excuse me? There’s something I really have go to dig into, and until I do and find some kind of answer, I’m going to be distracted.”

“Of course,” Haskell said. “Do you think it’s connected to the murders?”

“Almost certainly,” I said, “if what I suspect is true. But I’ve got to keep digging.”

“Dig away,” Stewart said. “And if there’s anything we can do to help, just name it.”

“If you could keep Diesel entertained for the next three hours, that would help,” I said, eyeing the feline by my feet. Inevitably, when I tried my hardest to focus on something, he decided that was when he needed immediate attention. As much as I loved him, I could do without that kind of distraction for a while.

“No problem,” Stewart said. “Dante will be ecstatic. We’ll take them both upstairs and let them play.”

“Thanks.” I rose. “I’ll make it up to you later and clear the table before I go to bed, if you’ll leave it all for me.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Haskell said. “I’m taking care of it tonight.”

I didn’t protest any further, simply thanked them again, and hurried to the den. I got the laptop set up, pulled out the files and put them on the desk, and got to work.

I went through the folders and pulled out the purchase orders and invoices for GER. I discovered that the original licensing of their products occurred thirteen years ago, under the tenure of the director before Peter. She had been the library director when I was in college, and by the time she retired, she had to be around eighty, I guessed. She was an institution in herself, but I had heard that the last few years she had only a slender grasp on things, and the associate director, long since departed for a job elsewhere, had actually run the library.

There was no list of titles with the invoices, only a single line-item consisting of the name of the collection. The GER Science and Math Collection . The renewal date each year fell on December fifteenth. I paid particular attention to the most recent renewal and noted that the purchase order wasn’t actually submitted until the second week of January. It bore Peter’s signature, or to be more accurate, what looked like his signature, and a date of January thirteenth.

It must have been one of the last items he approved before he left, I supposed.

I went back through the folders and pulled out the purchase orders he had approved for the items that had put the library so overbudget.

There were five in all, various collections of journal back files and one new e-book collection. The total was just over half a million dollars.

Peter had scrawled his name on each one, and they all bore the same date, January thirteenth. I checked the calendar on my computer. January thirteenth was a Monday.

Was that the last day Peter was in the office? I couldn’t remember.

I knew who would, however. I picked up my cell phone and speed-dialed Melba.

“Sorry to bother you at home,” I said. “I’ve got a question for you. Do you remember the last day you saw Peter in the office?”

“I sure do,” she said. “It was a Friday, January tenth. I remember telling him to have a great weekend. He actually smiled at me and said he planned to. He said he’d tell me all about it on Monday, but then he never showed up again.” She paused. “Why did you need to know?”

“Just curious,” I replied nonchalantly. “I was thinking about him, and I couldn’t remember exactly when it was he left. I took the first half of January off, as you recall.”

“Yes, you missed all the excitement of those first few days,” she said. “I was never so surprised in all my life. Peter never seemed the kind to just up and vamoose like that.”

“No, he didn’t,” I said. “I can’t remember, did he leave a note? Or an e-mail?”

“E-mail,” she said. “To the president, and he copied me on it, too.”

“Do you recall exactly what it said?”

“Let me think.” Melba was quiet for a good twenty seconds. “Yes, he said, ‘Sorry I screwed things up, consider this my resignation.’”

“That was it?” I asked.

“Yes,” Melba said. “I was surprised there wasn’t more detail. He didn’t even leave me a forwarding address for his personal mail. I’ve actually got a handful of letters from friends of his, and I don’t know what to do with them. I keep thinking he might get in touch with me to ask me to send them on to him, but so far he hasn’t. I tried calling his cell phone, too, but he never answered. The most recent time, I got a message that it wasn’t a working number. Strange.”

Definitely strange . I looked at the purchase orders Peter had supposedly signed three days after he left the library.

I suddenly had a feeling that Peter might not have gone voluntarily.

THIRTY-THREE

“And you know another strange thing?” Melba said. “Well, not exactly strange, I guess, but a little unusual.”

I wasn’t really paying attention. My mind was racing over the possibilities. Could Peter be dead ?

“. . . Margie at the grocery store on the way home, and you should have seen the ring she was wearing. I’ve never been so envious in my life. Gorgeous blue stone.”

I knew if I didn’t get out of this conversation now, I’d be on the phone for a good twenty minutes.

“Sorry, Melba, I heard a beep. Somebody’s trying to call me. I’d better take it.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you the rest in the morning.”

“Sure thing.” I ended the call and set the phone down.

I heard Melba’s voice repeating Peter’s message: Sorry I screwed things up, consider this my resignation .

Had it been Peter who caused the problems?

I wondered.

I looked through a year’s worth of purchase orders. Odd how Peter’s signature got so bad only within the last month or so before he left.

What about the date under the signature?