No Cats Allowed

THIRTY-TWO

I double-checked the number on GER’s website and dialed again. Still no answer. Definitely odd. I looked up the area code and discovered it was a New Jersey number.

I went back on the library’s online catalog to have a more thorough look at those expensive e-books. Our default sort in the catalog was by descending publishing date, so the most recent books were listed first.

I blinked and peered at the screen. The first title in the result list had a publication date of twenty-three years ago. Surely that couldn’t be right. I checked the sort, but they had been sorted properly.

After going through every screen of the list, I reached the end. The last title was a math book published in 1899. I clicked on the link for the book and was taken, after nearly thirty seconds, to a screen that informed me, “Resource locked by user.” Then the helpful words “Please try again later.”

These e-books must be on a single-user license, and that meant only one person could use them at a time. I was curious why someone would be interested in a nineteenth-century math book, but research interests varied greatly.

I clicked at random on the link for another e-book and, after a similar wait, ended up at the same screen. My curiosity thoroughly piqued, I started at the end of the list and worked backward, checking access to every fourth title in the list.

Twenty minutes—and an even achier head, with sore neck and shoulders—later I had worked my way to the beginning of the list. Every single e-book I had tried to access was “locked by user.”

I recalled that the ten-year-history spreadsheet included columns for cost-per-use for resources each fiscal year. I went back to it, found the line for GER, and scanned across from present to earlier fiscal years.

After I’d finished, I rubbed my eyes. Usage for these e-books started high ten years ago and increased every year, even as their cost increased. The cost-per-use varied from a high of two dollars and eighty-six cents to a low of twenty-seven cents per use.

That was phenomenal usage, I realized after I did some quick calculations. That would account for the resources being constantly locked.

But it was also suspicious, at least to me. I looked through the spreadsheet and examined the cost-per-use of other resources. None seemed to be as good or as consistent, except for the major journal collections.

A tap on my door pulled me out of my ruminations. I blinked and turned to see Melba standing a few feet away.

“You were so deep into whatever you were looking at I thought you were in a trance,” she said. “What is so fascinating?”

“Budget figures,” I said in a light tone. I wasn’t ready to share my suspicions with anyone else. I wanted to make sure I had evidence of some kind before I said anything.

Melba grimaced. “They’d put me to sleep. Anyhow, that’s not why I knocked. I wanted to let you know it’s five o’clock, and I’m getting ready to leave. Will you be staying much longer? If you are, you may want to shut Diesel in here with you.” She glanced down at the feline rubbing against her legs. “He’s been with me most of the afternoon, but he’s also been out to visit the cop on duty by the front door. They’re buddies now.”

“I’ve lost track of the time completely.” I yawned suddenly. “Excuse me. No, I’m not going to stay. I need to clear my head for a while. Come on, Diesel, come to me and let Melba get going.”

The cat meowed and rubbed against her legs again, but then he ambled around the desk to my side. I scratched his head, and he warbled. “Thanks again for everything, Melba. I’d never get through this without you.”

She merely smiled and said good night before she turned and left the room.

“Okay, boy, give me a moment, and we’ll be on the way home soon.” I gave Diesel’s head one more scratch before I turned back to the computer. I shut down everything except e-mail. I checked to see whether Delbert Winston had sent me anything.

He hadn’t. Perhaps he was having trouble finding what I wanted.

Perhaps he doesn’t want to find it.

“Maybe he doesn’t,” I said. “But until I have a better picture of what’s really going on here, I don’t know.”

Diesel meowed, and I realized he thought I was talking to him. I laughed and logged off the network. It took me a moment to gather my things, and I made sure I had the canvas bag of files with me when we left the office and locked the door.

I closed and locked Melba’s door in turn, and while I did so, Diesel went to bid his new buddy good night. I chatted with the young man for a moment, and then I headed for the car with Diesel.

Azalea had gone by the time we reached home, but she left dinner for Stewart, Haskell, and me. Stewart had the table set, and we ate about thirty minutes later.

I was poor company during the meal because my thoughts kept straying to the issue of Global Electronic Resources. I foresaw a long evening ahead, because I knew I would not be able to go to bed until I had some kind of answer, or at least a glimmer of one.

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.