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

computer.
    “This is Danny’s,” he said. “And look what someone’s been using it for.”
    He studied the screen for a few minutes, clicked a few keys, and pointed to the site he’d called up.
    The headline read “Digitalis Overdose.”

Chapter 16
     
    I studied the page on digitalis. Sounded authentic—not that I was an expert, but since Dad was not only a doctor but also an avid reader of mysteries, I’d managed to pick up a fair amount of normally useless trivia about poisons. Even better, the page was from the Web site of a major medical school. And it gave fairly specific information on clinical and toxic doses. Anyone with half a brain could probably figure out how many of Señor Mendoza’s little heart pills it would take to make sure Dr. Wright wouldn’t survive to meet with Ramon’s dissertation committee.
    “Danny was looking at this?” I asked.
    “Either Danny or someone he was letting use his computer,” Josh said.
    “And was he letting anyone else use his computer?”
    “Only Bron, that I saw,” Josh said. “Of course, the other students living in the house are always coming down trying to cadge a little computer time, and not all the guys are careful about password-protecting their machines. But Danny’s more careful than most—more paranoid, maybe. And his desk is the farthest from the stairs, so not as many people go all that way to mess with it.”
    “Probably Bron or Danny, then,” I said.
    “Not that you could prove it in court,” he said. “But yeah.”
    I studied the evidence. Pretty damning. But was it maybe a little too damning, not to mention awfully convenient? After all, if Bron or Danny were planning on killing Dr. Wright with Señor Mendoza’s heart medicine, it would be fairly stupid to leave a page like this open. Even if they hadn’t left it open and Josh had found it by looking at the computer’s history, there were ways of wiping that kind of information trail clean. Even I know that, so wouldn’t a cyber-savvy killer know it?
    Then again, Danny seemed a pretty unlikely killer, and I had no idea how tech-savvy Bronwyn was. It was possible that one or the other had not realized that someone like Josh would be checking up behind them.
    And also possible that Josh had planted the evidence. He’d been here the whole time, too. I didn’t know what grudge he could have against Dr. Wright, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have one. If he had killed Dr. Wright and wanted to divert suspicion from himself, what better way to do it than to show me this page and claim Bron or Danny had been looking at it? Even if he wasn’t the killer, what if he had it in for Bron and Danny and wanted to cast suspicion on them?
    “Of course, you probably don’t want to take my word for it,” Josh said. “For all you know, I could be the one who was looking at the digitalis information.”
    Was the man a mind reader? Or had my sudden flash of doubt been all too visible on my face?
    “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “You might want to tell the chief about this.”
    “I only just found it a few minutes ago,” he said. “You think he’d be interested?”
    I nodded.
    “Okay,” he said. He leaned over to reach behind the makeshift computer table. The monitor went dark.
    “You don’t want to save that stuff first?” I asked.
    “No, anything I did on the machine would muddy the waters,” he said. “Best way to preserve whatever evidence is on it is to just pull the plug. Leaves all the temporary files in place, and sometimes that’s your best source of forensic data.”
    As I watched, he unplugged various cables and wires from Danny’s computer.
    “Won’t Danny be suspicious when he finds his machine gone?”
    “It belongs to the company, not him,” he said as he hefted the CPU under one arm. “I’ll tell him we had to take it back to the office for some kind of maintenance. You still interested in learning what you can about Drs. Wright and Blanco?”
    I nodded.
    “I’ll see what I can dig up,” he said. He put the CPU down under his own desk. “Danny might be a little distracted right now.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “After you take that to the chief. Or if you like, I could tell him about it.”
    “That’d be good,” he said. “Maybe he could send someone down to fetch it. I’d rather keep an eye on things here, if you don’t mind. Make sure no one else sneaks down and uses corporate property to research a murder. And I should probably