Poisoned Prose (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

shadow of the lighthouse, he abruptly stopped and pawed an object in the sand.
    “Are you after some poor crab?” Olivia drew up alongside Haviland and saw that he was sniffing what appeared to be a tubular-shaped piece of stone. She leaned over and grabbed it with both hands.
    “It doesn’t feel like a rock,” she told Haviland. “More like a shell.”
    Pivoting the object this way and that, she marveled over its contrasting textures. The interior was bubbly and glassy, while the exterior felt like sandpaper. Slipping it into her bag, Olivia hurried back home. She filled a glass with ice water and settled in front of the computer to research the mystery object. “It’s a fulgurite,” she told Haviland excitedly. “Lightning glass. The lightning strikes the sand, fusing the grains together into a tubular form in less than a second. The shape of the lightning is left imprinted in its surface.”
    Opening her bag, she drew out the fulgurite and cradled it in her palm. One of the ends was jagged, as if the point of the lightning bolt had been forever captured inside. “Petrified lightning,” she said, touching the rough exterior in awe. “It just goes to show that everything can be imprisoned. Even something six times hotter than the surface of the sun.” She held her treasure for several minutes, fascinated by the way it felt beneath her fingertips. Finally, she rolled her prize in bubble wrap and placed it in her handbag.
    Thirty minutes later, Olivia had showered and dressed in a navy cotton sundress. The color reminded her of the deepest parts of the ocean. She usually brightened her ensemble with a necklace of fat silver beads, but the shiny jewelry seemed out of place in the wan daylight, so she left it sitting on the bed.
    She’d barely pulled out of the driveway when her cell phone rang. Seeing that it was Rawlings calling, Olivia eased the Range Rover to the shoulder and put the car in park. Haviland barked at the unexpected stop, but Olivia shushed him and answered the phone.
    “I wish I had some of your good Kona coffee to start my day,” he began.
    Olivia admitted that she’d missed having him there that morning and then said, “Any breakthroughs?”
    “I’d planned on asking Leona Fairchild a few more questions yesterday, but she was in no shape to answer any. That’s why I’m calling, Olivia. Mrs. Fairchild had a heart attack yesterday afternoon. She’s stable,” he added hastily. “But I know you’re fond of her and that you’ll probably want to visit her.”
    Olivia ran her fingers over the fur on Haviland’s back. “I’m heading to the hospital now.” She was about to hang up and then hesitated. “How are you, Sawyer? Did you sleep at all?”
    “A few hours,” he said, his voice gravelly with fatigue. “But we’ve made some progress. For example, we found an interesting connection between Greg Rapson and Lowell Reid.”
    “Oh?” Olivia fumbled with her headset and, after she finally got it to work, pulled back onto the road.
    “Greg taught a class called Human Resources Development to inmates at the jail where Lowell was incarcerated. The purpose of the class was to teach prisoners how to apply and interview for jobs.”
    Olivia tried to remember if she’d seen Rapson after Violetta’s performance, but she’d had no idea who he was at the time, so she was unable to bring forth an image of him in the library lobby. “Was Lowell in the class?”
    “He was. We have copies of his transcript.”
    Olivia was too worried about Leona to process these new facts. All she could think about was that the older woman’s health had probably been affected by the stress of having had a murder occur in her beloved library. “I thought Rapson and Amabel were both college professors. And that Rapson didn’t live near Violetta. What was he doing teaching a class to convicted criminals?”
    “Mr. Rapson teaches at the community college level,” Rawlings said. “The pay is lousy, and he takes side jobs whenever he can. Performing is one of them. Teaching inmates is another.”
    “And did he ever mention that Lowell had once been his student?”
    Rawlings snorted. “No, he didn’t. Just like Amabel failed to tell us that she was Violetta’s older sister. These storytellers certainly keep things close to the chest.”
    “And Flynn?” Olivia couldn’t help but ask. “What’s his dark secret?”
    “I’m still working on that.”
    As she was nearing downtown, Olivia