Stork Raving Mad: A Meg Langslow Mystery (A Meg Lanslow Mystery)

sorry for him.
    “That was interesting,” the chief said.
    “Do you think it has anything to do with the murder?” I asked. “Oh, never mind. I should know better than to ask that.”
    “Could Dr. Wright have had something to do with Randall’s problem?” he asked.
    “Seems unlikely,” I said. “Blanco’s in administrative services—they deal with facilities. But Wright’s a dean in the English department. I can’t imagine what she could have to do with the boiler.”
    “We’ll look into it,” the chief said. “Meanwhile, Sammy?”
    “Yes, sir,” the deputy replied. He was still lurking cautiously at the other end of the hall.
    “Guard the door to my crime scene,” the chief said. “When Horace Hollingsworth gets here, let him in. No one else.”
    “Yes, sir,” Sammy said. He began striding toward the library door. His gangly frame and awkward, jerky way of walking made you overlook the fact that he could move quite rapidly when he wanted to.
    “Chief?” Randall again, sticking his head around the corner at the far end of the hall. “About that delivery . . .”
    “Can we have them put it in the barn for now?” I suggested. “Whatever it is.”
    The chief nodded. Randall disappeared.
    “Now, Ms. Langslow, if you don’t mind.”
    I led the chief into Michael’s office.
    “I’m taking the desk chair for now,” I said, as I plopped down in Michael’s huge leather chair. “You can have it when I leave, but right now, I’m sitting for three.”
    “That’s fine,” he said.
    “And you might not want to sit there,” I said, as he pulled up one of Michael’s four guest chairs.
    “Why not?” he asked, glancing down at the chair as if expecting to find something dangerous in the seat.
    “They may look comfy—in fact, for the first five minutes, they aren’t too bad. But they’re next to impossible to get out of,” I said. “I’ve seen able-bodied people take two or three tries, and for anyone with weak knees or low upper-body strength, forget it.”
    “I’ll save them for any witnesses I want to be sure of holding onto,” the chief said. He pulled up a nearby book box and sat on that instead. “Now tell me what the devil’s been happening around here.”
    I took a deep breath and dived in.
    I’d gotten as far as telling the chief about the confrontation between Ramon Soto and the prunes when someone knocked on the door.
    “Who is it?” the chief snapped, in a tone of voice clearly intended to make casual curiosity seekers flee.
    Sammy stuck his head in.
    “We appear to have found the murder weapon,” he said.
    He held up the pregnant hippopotamus statue in one gloved hand.

Chapter 12
     
    “What the hell is that?” the chief asked.
    “She’s the Egyptian goddess of pregnancy and childbirth,” I said.
    The chief studied the statue with a look of vague distaste on his face.
    “This thing belongs to you?” he asked.
    “Don’t look at me,” I said. “It was a present.”
    “Who the dickens would give a pregnant woman a thing like that?”
    “Rose Noire. It’s supposed to protect me and the kids from demons. And if you want to know how I felt about it—well, there’s a reason I exiled it to the library.”
    The chief shook his head.
    “There seems to be hair on the hippo,” Sammy said. “Human hair, I mean. And if you ask me, the dent in the victim’s skull matches the hippo’s snout.”
    “We’ll have Horace look at the hair when he gets here,” the chief said.
    “He’s already here,” Sammy said. “He wouldn’t let me bring this to show you till he took about a million photos of it lying there on the floor.”
    “Good,” the chief said. “Give that nasty thing back to him. I’m sure he and the medical examiner will want to do some tests to confirm the match to the wound. But from the look of things, I expect you’re right.”
    “Does this mean you’ll have to confiscate the statue?” I asked. I tried not to sound too cheerful.
    “I’m sorry,” the chief said. “I’m afraid so.”
    “Don’t be sorry,” I said. “I’d be absolutely thrilled if you ended up having to keep it indefinitely.”
    “That shouldn’t be necessary,” the chief said. He turned back to Sammy. “Where did you find this?”
    “Lying there right by the body,” Sammy said. “Like whoever did it just hit her and dropped the hippo right away.”
    “Show me,” the chief said. “If you don’t mind,” he added to me.
    “I’m not going