Twelve Angry Librarians

THIRTY-ONE

I listened, riveted, as Ada Lou and Virginia continued.

“He did manage to knock that gravy boat over, though, and that gravy went everywhere from what I could see. I don’t guess anyone got it on them, but I remember a couple of people did get up and leave the table. Do you think, Virginia, that they did get gravy on their clothes?”

“Why on earth would you possibly care whether any of those people got gravy on their clothes, Ada Lou?”

“Well, it’s happened to me at a conference, and you know how it is at conferences—you don’t always have extra clothes to change into, and of course you don’t want to go around wearing gravy or something else on your clothes all day, especially if you can’t rinse it out in the bathroom sink. I remember a time at ALA in New Orleans . . .”

At that point I decided I had heard enough. The sound of those two voices had already begun to make me want to butt my head against a brick wall. I eased Diesel off my lap as gently as I could, but I was determined to get out of sound range of Ada Lou and Virginia. I was thankful to them, though, for the interesting information they had unwittingly shared with me. I hoped that Harlan Crais hadn’t heard any of it, and that the two elderly women had sense enough not to talk to him about it. They could be in danger, if what I suspected was the solution to the two murders. Kanesha, however, had promised to make sure they were safe.

I hesitated. Maybe I should try to talk to them and warn them anyway. There was one point that needed clarification, if I could get it from them. Was Gavin one of the people who’d left the table after the spilled gravy incident? And was that when Crais knocked the water bottle off the table so he could switch it with a poisoned one?

Another question occurred to me. Why hadn’t Crais stashed the poisoned bottle among the bottles in Gavin’s suite? Was he concerned about the wrong person getting hold of one? If he hadn’t put the poisoned bottle among those in the suite, where did the bottle that killed Maxine Muller come from?

The solution hinged largely on two things, I thought. How the killer obtained the cyanide and how the two victims ended up with poisoned bottles of water. I wondered if Kanesha was thinking the same thing.

If only Randi, Marisue, and I had sat at a table near Gavin’s that day. I could have observed this for myself and immediately have brought it to Kanesha’s attention. I realized that Crais might simply be clumsy and was always knocking things over and so on, and what Virginia and Ada Lou witnessed was normal behavior for him. I’d not seen any signs of clumsiness from him, however.

At the moment he stood balancing a wineglass atop an empty plate. As I watched he turned slightly to pick up a couple of small wedges of cheese from the table, and when he did so, the plate and glass remained steady.

As a somewhat klutzy person myself, I would never have attempted that, because as sure as I had, I would have tilted the plate and wine would have gone everywhere. Crais’s balance was better than mine. I continued to watch him for a few minutes longer, but nothing happened in the way of klutziness. I concluded that Crais had staged the little accidents at the luncheon table to suit his own purposes.

I spotted Nancy Dunlap and Cathleen Matera at the end of the table away from where Harlan Crais stood talking to the same three women he’d been chatting with for probably the last ten minutes. Now would be a good time to rejoin Nancy and Cathleen and finish our conversation.

“Come on, Diesel,” I said in a low voice. “Let’s go talk to those nice ladies again, okay?” He chirped in response. He still seemed all right, but before much longer, I knew we’d both be ready to head home.

“Hi, Charlie.” Nancy grinned when Diesel and I walked up to her and Cathleen. “Our little chat earlier got cut off pretty dramatically.” She bent to scratch Diesel behind one ear, and he purred.

“I’ll say it did.” Cathleen chuckled as she watched Nancy and Diesel. “Your expression was priceless when you realized Mitch Handler had overheard you.” She chuckled again.

“Not one of my more shining moments,” I said. “It was awkward, but he actually talked to me and told me what I was trying to find out.”

“We aren’t going to ask you what the story was, even though we’re dying to know,” Cathleen said.

“Thanks,” I said. “If you do have a few more minutes to talk, could I ask you a few questions about Gavin’s party the other night?”

Cathleen groaned. “And here I was, trying to forget the whole darn thing.”

Nancy rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t that bad. We’ve both been to worse. Gavin was an obnoxious twit on Thursday night, but he didn’t seem to be as intent on malice as he usually was.”

“Really?” That struck me as interesting. “I would have expected him to be in full-on attack mode. Didn’t he basically force you all to attend the party?”

Nancy shrugged. “He didn’t force me. He had no power over me anymore. I only went because Cathleen begged me to.”

“I knew Nancy could make him back off if he started in on me,” Cathleen said. “I just couldn’t deal with him.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “I couldn’t, either. In my case, I ended up hitting him. That’s not really the way to handle a problem like the one Gavin presented.”

Nancy quirked her eyebrows at me. “I bet it felt good, though. There were a few times I longed to let go and slap the you-know-what out of him, the smug little twit.”

Her voice had grown heated, and her body language tense, as she spoke. Nancy didn’t seem as immune to Gavin as she might want others to think. The anger hadn’t disappeared, obviously.

I let that pass, however. By now I was pretty sure who killed Gavin, and it wasn’t either Nancy or Cathleen.

“Back to the party,” I said. “Will you tell me what you observed, in the order that it happened, if you can?”

They exchanged a glance, and both of them shrugged.

“Why not?” Cathleen said, and Nancy nodded in agreement.

“You start,” Nancy said.

Cathleen launched into a summary of her observations of the party. Much of what she told me tallied with what I’d already heard from Randi and Marisue. Cathleen and Nancy had stayed on after my two friends left, however; that was the time that interested me the most.

Nancy took up the narrative from Cathleen at the point when Randi and Marisue left. “Sylvia, that odd woman who was such a close friend of Maxine’s, left soon after your two friends did. Mitch Handler didn’t stay more than five minutes after Sylvia left.”

“So at that point, the only others there besides you and Cathleen were Harlan Crais, Maxine, and Gavin. Is that correct?” I asked.

“No, Bob Coben was still there, I think.” Cathleen frowned. “Wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” Nancy said. “He was, for maybe another ten minutes or so. Said he had to meet someone. Sounded like a hookup to me.” She shook her head. “I don’t see the attraction myself.”

Cathleen rolled her eyes. “You can’t get past the earrings and the tattoos. He’s really good-looking, I think.” She sighed. “I’d’ve gone out with him, but I’m probably old enough to be his big sister.”

Nancy snorted. “Big sister, yeah. More like his mother, you mean.”

Cathleen bridled at that, and I was afraid they were going to get into an argument if I didn’t intervene. “When Coben left, there were just five of you still at the party.”

Cathleen gave Nancy one last speaking glance before she said, “Yes, that’s right.”

“Anything unusual happen from then until you left the party?” I asked.

“Not that I can recall,” Nancy said. “We were ready to go ourselves, and I think Harlan was, too. I said something about being tired and ready for bed, and Harlan chimed in. Said he was pretty exhausted, too.”

“Gavin was a little annoyed, I think,” Cathleen said. “But he didn’t make a big fuss like he usually did at one of his forced gatherings. He liked to keep everyone there as long as possible so he could torture us more.”

“No, he didn’t make a fuss.” Nancy frowned. “That was a bit odd, and then he did another odd thing.”

“You mean the food,” Cathleen said, and Nancy nodded.

“What about the food?” I asked.

“There was quite a bit left over,” Cathleen said. “And it was good stuff, too. I guess the hotel catered it.”

“It wasn’t the usual cheese tray Gavin picked up at the local discount warehouse, that’s for sure,” Nancy said.

“No, thank goodness.” Cathleen eyed the food that remained on the table near us. “In fact it was pretty much the same as this.”

I wasn’t sure where this was leading, and they were taking too long to get to the point. I tried not to sound irked when I asked, “So what was it about the food that was odd?”

“Oh, just that usually Gavin made sure nobody took any of the leftovers with them,” Cathleen said.

“He always wanted to keep them for himself,” Nancy said. “That’s how cheap he was.”

“This time, though, he told us to help ourselves to whatever we wanted, even his precious bottled water,” Cathleen said.

The mention of bottled water startled me. “Did any of you take food and water with you?”

“I took some food. I love those pinwheel-looking things with the cream cheese and spinach,” Cathleen said. “So I took several of those, and a couple of those little Greek pastry things with the spinach inside. What are they called? I can’t remember.”

“You mean spanakopita?” I asked. “I love it, too.”

“Yes, that’s it,” Cathleen said. “So I took that and the other. I love spinach, in case you couldn’t tell.”

I looked to Nancy, and she shook her head. “I don’t care for spinach, and I wasn’t particularly interested in any of the other stuff. I didn’t even take any of Gavin’s precious water.”

Nancy laughed suddenly. “Maxine was always like a squirrel around a table full of nuts, though. She stuffed several napkins full of food into her knitting bag, along with a bottle of water.”

“Yes, she did,” Cathleen said. “You’d think the woman hadn’t eaten in days. I took a bottle of water, too, and so did Harlan.”

My heart started racing. I worked to keep my voice steady when I asked Cathleen whether she had opened the water bottle.

She looked at me strangely, then nodded. “Yes, I drank it yesterday. Why, did you think it was poisoned?”