Twelve Angry Librarians

NINETEEN

Lisa started sobbing, and I almost had to yell over the phone to get her attention. Passersby stared at me, and one woman made as if to approach me. I held up my hand and smiled to let her know I was okay.

“Lisa, you’ve got to calm down enough to tell me where you are,” I said. “I can’t help you if I don’t know where you are.”

I heard her draw a shaky breath. “Sorry, Charlie, you’re right.” She sniffled. “I’m at the hotel. Room 602. Can you come?”

I had already turned in the direction of the hotel and started walking back. “Yes, I’m on the way. Who is it you’re talking about? Are you sure she’s dead?”

Lisa sobbed again into the phone, but she caught hold of herself right away. “Maxine Muller. She’s dead. She looks so awful I can’t stand to look at her.”

“Have you called 911 yet?” I started moving faster, and my calves ached from the strain. I wasn’t used to this pace.

“No,” Lisa said. “I was so scared I called the first person I thought of. I guess I’d better call them now.”

“Yes, and then notify the front desk. I’m on the way.” I shut off my phone and stuck it back in my pocket. By now I was only about thirty yards from the hotel. I kept up the pace, despite the pain in my legs, and I almost ran into the front door of the hotel.

I made it through to the elevator without knocking anyone over, and I muttered under my breath while the agonizingly slow elevator doors opened to admit me. The elevator stopped twice on the way up. The moment the doors opened wide enough on the sixth floor I hurried out and looked for the sign that indicated the locations of the rooms by number.

Maxine Muller’s room lay almost at the end of the corridor to my right. I could see Lisa sitting on the floor in the hallway. She glanced up as I approached, then struggled to her feet. She fell into my arms when I reached her, and I patted her back awkwardly when she started crying.

“I know this is a horrible shock for you,” I said in gentle tones, “but I need you to get yourself together. The police ought to be here any moment, and the hotel manager, too. You did call, didn’t you?”

Lisa pulled away and fumbled in her bag. She extracted a tissue and nodded as she dabbed at her eyes.

“Good,” I said. The door stood open, and I resisted the temptation to go inside. “You’re absolutely certain that she’s gone?”

“Yes,” Lisa said. “She’s dead.”

“Before everyone else gets here, let me ask you a question or two.”

Lisa nodded.

“What were you doing here? Were you meeting her here?” I remembered that she left me earlier in the meeting room, saying she was supposed to meet someone and was late.

“No, we were supposed to meet downstairs,” Lisa said. “She’s going to be—was going to be—chair of the local arrangements committee for next year’s meeting, and we were going to go over a few things. But she didn’t show up. I thought I’d missed her because I was late.”

“Surely she could have waited five minutes or so,” I said.

“That’s what I thought.” Lisa frowned. “I tried calling her, but it went to voice mail. I left a message and waited a few minutes, but she didn’t call back. Then I sent her a text message and told her I’d catch up with her later.”

“Did she respond to either message?”

Lisa nodded. “She texted me a couple of minutes after I texted her and said to come up to her room in ten minutes. She had to talk to someone first, but then she’d be ready for our meeting.” She paused for a deep breath. “I waited like she asked me to, even though I was getting really irritated over the delay because I have so many things to check on today. But I came on up. Her door wasn’t closed completely. I knocked and waited. I didn’t hear any response, but I figured she might be in the bathroom. I pushed the door open and called out to her.” She shuddered.

“What happened next?” I glanced down the hall. I’d heard the elevator doors open, and several people stepped out and headed toward us.

“I s-s-saw her feet and legs sticking out between the beds,” Lisa said. That was all she had time for, because the hotel manager, along with a couple of police officers and another hotel staff member, had reached us now.

The hotel manager barely acknowledged us. He brushed past Lisa into the room, and one of the policemen and the other hotel staffer went right behind him. The other police officer motioned for Lisa and me to step aside, and he drew us a few feet down the hall.

Now began the routine I had come to know better than I ever wanted to. The officer, who looked vaguely familiar, spoke gently to Lisa, having identified her as the 911 caller. He appeared to know who I was already, and I tried to remember when and where I might have met him.

The hotel manager stumbled out of the victim’s room, his face pale and his mouth twisted in a grimace. He looked at me, and his eyes narrowed. “I might have known you’d be involved in this somehow.”

I didn’t appreciate the man’s attitude. I tried to keep my tone even as I responded. “I wasn’t the one who found the body. I’m here only because Ms. Krause, who did find it, called me and asked for me to come. She was naturally quite upset.”

The manager’s gaze softened as he observed Lisa in conversation with the police officer. “Sorry,” he muttered. “This is all too much. First that man dying right in the middle of a luncheon, and now this.”

The other policeman and the hotel staffer exited the room. He indicated he would remain outside the door until the county crime scene investigators arrived. The policeman who had been talking to Lisa had the rest of us move about ten feet down the hallway before he stopped. He started to question Lisa further, but the elevator doors pinged open, and several uniformed men and women stepped out. Some of them carried bags and equipment. After a quick word they passed us and headed down the hall.

Accompanied by three deputies, Kanesha Berry stepped out when the doors of the second elevator opened, and her gaze seemed to focus right on me. I knew she wasn’t happy to see me here, but neither was I all that pleased to be here myself.

She greeted the police officer. “I’ll take over from here.” He nodded and left us to join the group down the hall. She directed the three men with her to keep anyone from getting close to the crime scene. Then she addressed the hotel manager.

“Mr. Hampton, I’m afraid we’re going to have to take over that part of the floor until the preliminary crime scene investigation is finished. The room will have to be sealed off. Is it a room with a connecting door to another room?”

Hampton looked at his staffer, who shook his head.

“No, it’s not,” he said. “How long do you think all this is going to take, Deputy Berry? Our guests in this area aren’t going to be happy about not having access to their rooms.”

“Yes, I realize that,” Kanesha replied. “We will do our best to finish what we need to do in a timely manner, but that could still take several hours. I’m sure people will understand.”

Hampton nodded. “Of course.”

“Please wait here until I’ve had a chance to examine the scene. Then I’ll need to talk to all of you.” Kanesha walked on down the hall, and I watched as she entered the victim’s room.

We waited in silence for nearly twenty minutes before Kanesha emerged from the room. She paused in the hall to have a brief conversation with another officer, then she rejoined us.

“Thank you for waiting. Mr. Hampton, I need a space to use while we are conducting the investigation. What do you have available?”

The manager and his staffer consulted for a moment. “One of our conference meeting rooms on the second floor is open. I believe it will serve your purpose.”

“Good. Can you take us there now, please?” Kanesha nodded to me and Lisa. “I’d like you both to come with me, Ms. Krause, Mr. Harris.” She motioned for one of her men to join us. I wondered why Haskell Bates wasn’t with her. He was one of her senior deputies.

“Certainly, Deputy Berry,” I said. We followed her and the others to the elevators. The deputy brought up the rear.

No one spoke again until we stepped inside the conference room. Kanesha moved immediately to the head of the large table inside. “Would you gentlemen mind waiting at the other end of the room while I talk to Ms. Krause?” Kanesha indicated a chair to Lisa while Hampton, his associate, and I did as Kanesha requested. The deputy remained with Kanesha, standing off to the side behind Lisa.

The room, I estimated, would comfortably fit thirty people—space for half of them at the table, and the other half in chairs around the walls. A good size, but not so large that I couldn’t hear Kanesha’s conversation with Lisa.

Kanesha took her through the same questions I asked Lisa earlier, and Lisa responded with the same answers.

Then Kanesha went further than I’d had time to do. “How well did you know the deceased? Ms. Muller?”

“Not all that well,” Lisa said. “I mean, I knew her as a colleague from another library. We served on a couple of committees together in the past five years, but we weren’t friends. Only acquaintances.”

“So your only contact with her was on a professional basis?” Kanesha asked.

“Yes,” Lisa said. “Exactly.”

“Tell me more about the subject of the meeting you were supposed to have with her.”

“Okay.” Lisa nodded. “I was the chair of the local arrangements committee for the meeting this year, and Maxine was going to be chair for next year’s meeting. She was on the program committee for this meeting, and I think she was on it for last year’s meeting, too.” Lisa paused for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, she was. Anyway, she volunteered to be in charge of local arrangements for next year, and I told her I would meet with her during this meeting to go over some of the things I’d learned.”

“That seems clear enough,” Kanesha said. “Ms. Muller was a friend of Gavin Fong’s. She spoke to me about him yesterday. Did she happen to tell you anything about him? Or anything she might have known or suspected about his death?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Lisa said. “Really, we hadn’t time to talk much. At the luncheon yesterday she spent most of her time talking to Gavin Fong.” She paused for a moment. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, because it probably doesn’t mean anything, but I did hear her say one thing that was pretty odd. I don’t think she realized I could hear her.”

“What did she say?” Kanesha asked when Lisa didn’t continue right away.

“I’m trying to remember her exact words,” Lisa replied. “I think I’ve got it now, though. She said, What are you going to do if he doesn’t pay you like he promised? Will you send that letter?”

I wondered what Maxine Muller had meant. Was Gavin Fong trying to collect on a debt, and if he couldn’t, was he going to write to someone about it? Perhaps a demand letter?

Kanesha frowned. “Did you hear Mr. Fong’s response?”

“He just said, Shut up, Maxine. Not now. He gave her kind of an ugly look when he said it. She drew back in her chair, and that was the end of it, I think. At least while we were at the table,” Lisa concluded.

After I thought about it a moment, I realized there was a more sinister interpretation. Was Gavin Fong blackmailing someone? And what did Maxine Muller know about it?