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

anxiety.
    “What does he care how happy I am?” she was asking. “I mean, do you suppose that’s what he asks people before he fires them?”
    “He doesn’t fire people,” I said in my most reassuring voice.
    “No, he leaves that to his minions,” she said. “Like Dr. Blanco. The most obsequious toady ever to slime his way into administrative services, and considering some of his predecessors, that’s really saying something. Anyway, the whole conversation with him was so creepy that I drove halfway out here before I realized that I’d left behind the files I was supposed to bring. I locked them in my desk drawer as soon as The Face showed up, of course, so it’s not as if they fell into the wrong hands or anything. But he was there a half an hour—maybe more—and then all that time driving around on top of the time I spent dealing with him, and only my word for it that any of it happened. And it’s not as if The Face would remember that he wastalking to me if you asked him five minutes after he left my office, much less hours later. And—”
    “Calm down,” I said, in my most soothing tones. “So you don’t have an alibi. Hardly anyone here has an alibi. You’ll fit in perfectly. Take a few deep breaths.”
    “Sorry,” she said. “Look, what should I do?”
    “Go around to the barn,” I said. “Abe’s probably still out there, and you can identify yourself to the deputies and explain that you only just arrived. Don’t go volunteering the fact that you don’t have an alibi unless they ask you.”
    “Okay.” She retrieved her coat and tried to struggle into it while opening the front door, a maneuver that ended up costing time instead of saving it. “Will do. Why don’t you get some rest? You really look done in.”
    “That’s just what I plan to do,” I said as I shut the door behind her.
    The second she was out of sight, something struck me: She hadn’t asked how Dr. Wright was killed. If I were arriving at a house where a murder had just taken place, I think I’d be full of questions about how it happened—especially if I knew the murderer was still on the loose. Kathy hadn’t asked a single thing. Her first reaction to hearing about the murder had been to worry that she didn’t have an alibi. Did she have a reason to worry?
    I pulled out my cell phone and checked the time: 1:30. Art and Abe had arrived around noon. Michael had called her a few minutes after he called them, and even considering that she probably had to walk from the drama building to wherever sheparked her car, it shouldn’t have taken her more than twenty minutes to get here. Had she really lost over an hour entertaining The Face and returning to get the files?
    I peered out the window and saw that she was near the hedge at the front of our lawn, talking to a uniformed deputy. The deputy was probably there to keep people from just wandering up to the front door during the chief’s investigation—so how had Kathy slipped past him?
    I sighed. I hated to admit it, but Kathy was a suspect.
    I couldn’t see her as the murderer. She’d have been a lot more plausible for that role back when I thought Dr. Wright had been killed by a blow to the head. Kathy had been to our house dozens of times in the last several years, so she’d had plenty of chances to notice that the sunporch at the back of the library could be used by someone who wanted to get into the library without coming through the rest of the house. And given Kathy’s fierce devotion to Abe Sass and the department, I could even imagine her trying to take some action on her own. Sneaking in to confront Dr. Wright, for example. And Kathy had a temper. I could see her long-standing grudge with Dr. Wright erupting into sudden intolerable rage, impelling her to grab the nearest weapon.
    But poisoning? There my vision of Kathy as the killer fell apart. Unlike the students, who were here most of the time when not actually in classes and had vast piles of their worldly belongings close at hand, she’d either have had to find a poison on the spur of the moment—unlikely—or come already armed with it, on the off chance she’d get a chance to use it—equallyunlikely. Even if she were planning to kill Dr. Wright and had brought poison for the purpose, someone surely would have noticed and greeted her when she showed up in the kitchen. And she was too smart to believe she could sneak away and not have someone mention she’d been hanging around the