Twelve Angry Librarians

TWENTY-EIGHT

I had to stop Randi before she drank from the bottle. When I reached out for it, Marisue stared at me as if I had totally lost my mind.

“Don’t open it.” My tone was sharp, but Marisue complied with my demand. She jerked her hand away from the cap.

“What is it?” Randi demanded, now more alert than before.

“That’s the same brand of water that Gavin drank.” I took the bottle from Marisue’s unresisting hands. “Where did you get this bottle?”

Marisue looked at me, then at Randi. “Is this the one you took from Gavin’s party the other night?”

Randi nodded weakly. “Oh dear Lord, do you think it’s poisoned?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my heart still pounding, “but I don’t think we should take any chances. Is this the only one you have from Gavin’s suite?” I took a couple of deep breaths to try to steady myself. Diesel meowed and moved away from Randi toward me. I reached over and rubbed his head, and we both calmed a little.

“Yes,” Randi said. “Thank the Lord I hadn’t tried to open it before.” Her skin had an ashy cast to it, and I knew how frightened she was from a potentially narrow miss. I patted her right hand.

“You’re fine now,” I said. “I’m probably overreacting.”

Marisue went to the bathroom and came back moments later with a cold washcloth, folded it in half, and laid it on Randi’s forehead. “Thank you,” Randi said.

“I need a drink.” Marisue went over to the nook and poured a cup of wine and drank half of it in a gulp. “Charlie, how about you?” She refilled her cup.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Is there another water bottle for Randi?”

“Yes, the expensive one the hotel provides,” Marisue said. In a wry tone she added, “Worth three dollars in this case.” She brought the bottle over to Randi and twisted off the cap. Randi took the bottle and drank deeply while Marisue went back for her wine.

“Better?” I asked, and Randi nodded. “Are you hungry at all? It’s been a long time since lunch.”

“Actually, I am hungry.” Randi sounded surprised. “I don’t feel like going anywhere, though. I guess it will have to be room service.”

“I’ve already had something.” Marisue went over to the desk and found the room service menu. “I’ll order it for you and help you eat.” She studied the menu for a moment. “They’ve got only a few items, an expensive steak, an expensive salmon dish, an expensive chicken dish with pasta that sounds good, and then of course they have several expensive sandwiches to choose from.”

“Hamburger?” Randi asked, and Marisue nodded. “I’ll have a hamburger,” Randi continued. “You know how I like them.”

“With fries, potato chips, or steamed vegetables?” Marisue asked.

“French fries this time,” Randi said. “I think I’ve earned them.”

I had to smile at that. After what she’d been through today, Randi should have whatever she wanted in the way of comfort food. While Marisue phoned room service, I pulled one of the armchairs nearer Randi’s bed, making sure I was within an easy line of sight for her so she didn’t have to strain her neck to see me. Diesel, now completely relaxed again, lay stretched out beside Randi on the bed.

“Do you feel up to talking awhile longer?” I asked.

Randi nodded. “At least until my food comes.”

Marisue resumed her seat at the foot of the bed. “They said about twenty minutes. That means anywhere from ten minutes to forty-five, probably, depending on how busy they are.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Randi grimaced. “What do you want to talk about, Charlie?”

“Gavin’s party,” I replied. “I want you to tell me whatever you can remember, both of you.” I glanced in Marisue’s direction, and she nodded.

“I’ll start,” Marisue said, “and Randi can break in when she has anything to add. We were the last to arrive, except for Lisa Krause who came in for a few minutes and then left, pretty early on.” She paused for a sip of wine. “The whole thing was awkward, of course, because no one really wanted to be there, except Gavin.”

“And Maxine,” Randi added. “You know she stuck by Gavin like a leech most of the time, when he wasn’t yelling at her to leave him alone.”

Marisue shrugged. “They definitely had a weird relationship, cooing and holding hands one minute, and the next spitting at each other like a couple of cats. Sorry, Diesel.” She raised her cup at him and then drained it.

“What mode were they in at the party?” I asked.

“They were hardly speaking to each other,” Randi said. “In fact, most of the time we were there, Maxine never went near him. Instead she and Sylvia sat together, whispering back and forth.”

“Were she and Sylvia really good friends?” I wondered whether Kanesha had found out anything useful from talking to Sylvia O’Callaghan.

“I’m not really sure,” Marisue said. “I think they’d known each other a long time.”

“They worked together about ten years when they were first out of library school,” Randi said. “Sylvia told me that. But then one of them took another job on the other side of the country, and they didn’t see each other except at the occasional convention.”

That was enough about Sylvia for the moment, I thought. “How were the other people there interacting with Gavin?”

Marisue got up to refill her cup. At the rate she was hitting the wine she might soon be a bit squiffy. Not your business. No, it wasn’t.

Marisue rejoined us. “About what you’d expect. No one was interacting with him willingly, as far as I could see. I certainly wasn’t. Gavin, of course, was going around, poking at each one of us, trying to get some reaction.”

Randi giggled. “Not literally poking, you understand, but if he’d had a stick, he probably would have.”

Marisue rolled her eyes at her friend. “Verbal poking. He knew we were all there because we were afraid of what he might do to make our lives uncomfortable.” She frowned. “It was a bit like waiting for a dangerous animal to come after you but hoping he would go after someone else instead.”

“I’m sorry you had to endure that,” I said. “He really was a piece of work, wasn’t he?”

“You’re not going to find anyone wearing black on his account, I can guarantee,” Marisue said.

“No, I guess not,” I replied. “What about the others? Can you give me some specifics about how they were dealing with Gavin?”

“I talked to a couple of the other women,” Marisue said. “Nancy Dunlap and Cathleen Matera. They were trying to avoid talking to Gavin as much as I was. He did come over at one point and make snide remarks about Nancy being a professor now with tenure.”

From my research into everyone’s careers, I remembered that Nancy Dunlap had degrees in biology and was a liaison to the chemistry department at her university. Cathleen Matera had no connection to the sciences that I could recall.

“How did she react to him?” I asked.

Marisue chuckled. “Nancy brushed him off. I guess now that she’s tenured, she’s not too worried about what he could do to her career. She’s pretty much set. When he started in on Cathleen, Nancy told him to back off. Surprised the heck out of me, but he did. I guess he figured he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Cathleen as long as Nancy was there. He glowered, but then he walked away.”

“Did he try getting at you?” I asked.

“Not right then. If Nancy hadn’t been there, he probably would have.” Marisue stared into her cup. “A little later, he caught me by myself. He did the usual things, stood too close, tried to touch my arms, you know the routine.”

“Disgusting,” I said.

“I finally used a few words that would have my grandmother spinning in her grave if she even suspected I knew them.” Marisue smiled grimly. “That pissed him off, and he left me alone after that.”

I decided not to broach the subject of blackmail with them, especially since Kanesha had that spreadsheet and would be working on deciphering it and trying to connect it with Gavin’s victims. That was definitely a task better left to a professional.

“You know, there was another person who didn’t seem all that bothered by Gavin and his remarks.” Randi shifted in the bed, and the pillow bracing her head and shoulders slipped. “Would you mind fixing my pillow?” She looked at Marisue, but I responded first.

“Thanks, Charlie,” she said. “Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes, Harlan Crais. He sat in one corner and watched most of the time. Looked to me like he was smirking. What do you think?” She directed her question at Marisue, who nodded.

“I thought so, too,” she said. “Maybe he’s like Nancy and has tenure. I don’t know, but he didn’t seem all that bothered by Gavin.” She frowned. “And you know, I don’t think I saw Gavin speak to him at all while we were there.”

“Maybe Gavin was avoiding him then but went after him later, once we’d left,” Randi said.

“Could be,” Marisue replied. “Well, let’s see, who was there that we haven’t talked about?”

“The other two men,” Randi said.

“Right, trust you to remember the men,” Marisue said. “I talked to Mitch Handler for a bit, mostly about his writing. I’ve read most of his books and was curious about a few things. He’s a nice guy, but boy, is he shy. It took a little while to get him to say more than four or five words at a time. I guess it’s a good thing he’s a cataloger so he doesn’t have to deal with the public at work.”

Mitch Handler interested me particularly, because he had a degree in organic chemistry. He served as liaison for the science departments at his institution, so he obviously had a connection to a chemistry lab. He was a dark horse, however, when it came to his connections with Gavin. They must have worked together at some point. This was another one Kanesha would have to dig further into, unless Randi and Marisue knew something more about him.

I recalled a remark Randi made during one of our conversations. I reminded her of it. “You said you’d heard something about Gavin and Mitch Handler, but at the time you couldn’t recall it. Can you remember it now?”

“Did I say that?” Randi asked. “If you say so, I guess I did.” She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Sorry, my brain is too fuzzy right now. If I can recall whatever it was, I’ll tell you.”

That was frustrating, but I knew I couldn’t push her at the moment. Maybe by the time she felt ready to talk to Kanesha, she would have dredged it up out of her memory. I glanced at Marisue, but she shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t know what it was, either.”

“Well, then, that leaves us with Bob Coben,” I said.

Randi giggled again. “The bad boy.” She licked her lips and quirked her eyebrows at me.

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I had an inkling.

“He looks like a bad boy,” Randi said. “That bald head, all the tattoos, the earrings. You know, like he should come roaring in on a motorcycle, wearing a leather jacket. That kind of bad boy.”

Marisue snorted with laughter. “He doesn’t seem anything like that to me.”

“You have your fantasies, I’ll have mine,” Randi retorted. “I actually talked to him for a little while before Marisue started yanking on my arm to get me to leave.”

“I did not yank your arm,” Marisue said. There was a knock on the door, and she went to answer it.

Figuring it was room service, I told Diesel to come down off the bed to sit by me. Randi wouldn’t want to eat with a cat on the bed beside her, I figured.

The server brought the tray in, and Marisue cleared the nightstand on the side of the bed where Randi sat propped up. She signed the ticket for Randi, and the server left. Marisue began to prepare the food for Randi to eat, adding mayonnaise and mustard to the hamburger and opening the tiny ketchup bottle for the fries.

I knew Randi was ready to eat by the way she looked at the food tray, but I wanted to hear about Bob Coben before I left her and Marisue. I said as much, and Randi nodded.

“All right, all kidding about hot bad boys aside,” Randi said, “I talked with him for a while, and he mostly wanted to talk about his plans for his career. He’s a musician, did you know that?”

I nodded, and she continued. “I thought he wanted to go further into music, but he told me he was working on a master’s degree in chemistry. He wants to go on for a PhD, but he has to work for a couple more years to save up the money.”

A master’s degree in chemistry? If Bob Coben was taking classes, then he was actively working in a lab—where he would have direct access to all kinds of chemicals, including cyanide.