Twelve Angry Librarians

FIFTEEN

“Where are you now, Lisa?” I asked. The poor thing sounded terrified.

“I’m about to leave the sheriff’s department. They’re going to bring me back to the Farrington House.” She sobbed again, then collected herself. “Can you meet me there? I hate to impose, but I really need to talk to you.”

“I’m already at the hotel. Diesel and I will wait for you in the lobby. Don’t worry, now, I’m sure we can get this sorted out.”

“Thank you.” She ended the call.

I put away my cell phone and looked down at my cat. “Well, boy, I guess we’re not going home for a while yet. Come on, let’s go sit over there out of the way until Lisa gets here.”

Diesel resisted for a moment and pulled against the leash when I tried to lead him toward the lobby sitting area. He meowed in protest, but after a stern look and a “stop that” from me, he gave in and followed me to a small sofa. The moment I seated myself he jumped up and lay his head and the upper half of his body across my lap. The rest of him extended to the other arm of the sofa, and his tail thumped against the upholstery.

I worried for a moment about the cat hair that would no doubt get left behind, but then I figured that, over time, there had probably been far worse things on this sofa. The sheriff’s department was nearby, so Lisa ought to be here soon.

While we waited, I stroked Diesel’s back to keep him happy. He purred in response, and I knew he would be satisfied for a little while. My thoughts turned to the encounter with Maxine Muller and her friend, Sylvia. I supposed it didn’t take a great leap of imagination on her part for Ms. Muller to connect me with Gavin’s murder after she saw me knock him down. I didn’t kill him, though, and I would try to get that point across if I could get her to talk to me. As someone who had seemed friendly to Gavin, she could be helpful in identifying persons with motives far stronger than mine to get rid of the man.

Lisa Krause walked into the lobby and made a beeline for me the moment she spotted us on the sofa.

“Oh, Charlie,” she said, her breath catching in a sob. “I feel like I’m going crazy. You’ve got to help me.”

“I will. I promise.” I gently moved Diesel aside so I could stand up. He chirped in protest and climbed down from the sofa to rub against Lisa’s legs. “We can’t talk about it in the lobby, though. Aren’t you staying here during the conference?” At her nod, I suggested we go to her room, and we headed for the elevator.

In her fifth-floor room, I checked out her view of the town square before I settled into a low-backed chair. Diesel stretched out beside me, while Lisa sat on the edge of the queen-sized bed. She appeared calmer now in this quiet space.

“Okay, tell me what’s been happening with you.”

Lisa nodded. “It all started because I was the one who handed Gavin Fong that bottle of water he drank from right before he collapsed.” She shuddered. “That was awful. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the shocked expression he had right after drinking from that bottle. At first I was so stunned by it all that I didn’t think clearly. It wasn’t until someone at my table asked me about the bottle that it dawned on me that whatever killed him was inside it.”

“You couldn’t have known there was poison in the bottle,” I said. “If, indeed, that turns out to be the case.”

“No, I couldn’t have,” Lisa said. “But the fact is, I handed it to him. I brought the bottle to the table. Actually I brought a couple of them because he, Gavin, I mean, insisted that he had to have them. He refused to drink the hotel water.”

“There were two bottles. That’s interesting. Where did they come from?” I asked.

“From his suite,” Lisa said. “I arranged to have two dozen there for him during the conference. I figured that ought to be enough water for anyone for three days. Any that were left over he could take home with him, and I told him that.”

“How many were left when you went to get the two that you brought to the table?”

Lisa gave me a blank stare. “I’m not sure.” She thought for a moment, then shrugged. “There are a dozen bottles in each shrink-wrapped package. One package was still intact. The other one was open, of course, and I think maybe five bottles were left after I took two. Could that be important?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It might be. They’re going to have to figure out when someone had the opportunity to put the poison in the bottle. Did you happen to look at the caps? Perhaps notice if one had been opened already?”

“No, why would I?” Lisa said. “They were still with the others in the shrink-wrap, and I simply pulled them out. I wouldn’t have had any reason to examine them closely.”

“You wouldn’t,” I said. “The killer had to count on the fact that no one was looking closely at the caps, I suppose, unless there was another way of getting the poison into the bottles.” I frowned. “It seems a chancy thing to do, frankly. A lot of people would check to make sure the seal was unbroken before they would remove the cap. I usually do.”

“I guess.” Lisa frowned. “If I’m in a hurry I don’t pay much attention to things like that. From now on, though, I darn sure will.”

“Probably a good idea,” I said. “Now, about the sheriff’s department. Why do you think they might arrest you? I think if they seriously intended to, you wouldn’t be here. You’d still be at the sheriff’s department.”

“They kept me down there for four hours. I thought I would go crazy because they kept asking me the same questions over and over.” She shot me a dark look. “That friend of yours, the chief deputy, nearly scared the life out of me. She looks at you like you’re about to be taken to the gas chamber if you don’t answer her questions.”

I had certainly experienced that same look from Kanesha, and, while intense, it wasn’t as scary to me as Lisa claimed it was for her.

“What seemed to be the focus of the questions?”

“First, they asked me how well I knew the deceased. I told them I didn’t know him. I’d maybe seen him at a couple of SALA meetings, but that was it.” Lisa paused for a breath. “Then it was all about the stupid bottle of water. I had to go over, and over, and over, every blinking thing I knew about the bottles.”

“I think they’re trying to zero in on opportunity,” I said. “To my mind, that’s the critical question. When did the killer have the opportunity to add the poison?” I thought for a moment. “I suppose there’s a chance that the poison was delivered some other way, but his collapse only seconds after drinking from the bottle seems to preclude that. They have to take a hard look at you, naturally, because of opportunity. They can figure out the motive later.”

“Because I retrieved the bottles from his suite and had them in my possession.” Lisa nodded. “I guess I was too upset earlier to think clearly about that.”

I remembered that she had mentioned bringing two bottles to the luncheon. I asked her about that.

“He finished one of them a few minutes before he was going to speak,” Lisa said. “He ducked out to the restroom for a minute, and when he got back, it was almost time for him to go up on the dais.”

“I wonder why he didn’t take the bottle with him then.” That puzzled me, because it would have been the obvious thing to do. Yet he hadn’t done it.

Lisa snorted. “Knowing him, he left it deliberately so he could snap his fingers and make me bring it to him. He did other things like that to show that he had to be waited on.”

I shook my head. “Sad, but that does sound like something he would do. Now, another question. The tables were set for eight people, so who was at your table, besides you and Gavin?”

“Let me think a moment.” Lisa peered at a spot over and behind my head. “Well, there was Maxine Muller. She was always hanging around him. She was like a puppy trailing after him. I’ve known her slightly for several years. Then of course there was the man who introduced him. Harlan Crais.” She paused. “The rest were the current president of SALA and the other main officers, the vice president, the treasurer, and the secretary.” She rattled off their names, and I didn’t recognize a single one. They weren’t any of the people Marisue and Randi named to me earlier.

“Discounting you and Gavin, then,” I said, “there were six other people at the table who could feasibly have tampered with the bottle.” I didn’t feel I could share with Lisa what Marisue and Randi told me earlier about Harlan Crais. Though I might share it with Kanesha Berry, I wasn’t going to pass it along idly to another librarian.

“That’s true.” Lisa’s expression brightened. “Harlan Crais sat on one side of Gavin, and Maxine on the other. They were both closer to the bottle than I was.”

“Did you tell the deputy that?”

“Yes, she had me draw her a diagram,” Lisa said. “It took me a few minutes to remember who was where because the deputy had me pretty rattled by that point.”

“Either of them is far more likely to have done it than you,” I said. “Kanesha knows that already, I have no doubt. They both worked with Gavin more closely, and for a longer period of time, than you did the past few days.”

“I don’t know how they stood him for more than two days running.” Lisa snorted. “He was the most obnoxious waste of time I’ve ever dealt with.”

“Once she digs into his past, no doubt she’ll find a lot of people who wanted revenge on him for things he did,” I said. “The question is, which of them would go as far as murder. But Harlan Crais and Maxine Muller were at that table. Did you see either of them handling a water bottle?”

“The deputy asked me that, too,” Lisa replied. “But I didn’t. I had to leave the table a couple of times to visit the restroom myself, and I was probably gone three or four minutes each time. Either one of them could have done something while I was gone.”

“Maybe one of the SALA officers saw something,” I said. “Although how the killer got the poison into the bottle is a mystery in itself. Sitting there, opening the bottle, and dropping something in it would attract attention.” I shook my head. “It just seems too risky to do it then.”

“I certainly wouldn’t have the nerve to try it,” Lisa said. “Someone would see me for sure.”

“Kanesha will also try to find out whether anyone visited Gavin’s room,” I said. “It’s certainly possible a visitor had the opportunity, or that the killer managed to get into the room when Gavin was out of it.”

“Or it could have happened during the party,” Lisa said.