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

show him this.”
    He handed me a paper. I glanced down. It was an e-mail from Dr. Wright to Ramon. I read it quickly. She was acknowledging receipt of his paperwork and giving him permission to do his dissertation on Mendoza’s work. Her permission sounded grudging and was hedged with at least a dozen cautions and requirements, and I had no idea if he’d paid attention to them, but the core issue—whether he’d gotten permission for his topic—was there in black and white.
    Either Dr. Wright had been mistaken or she’d been lying.
    “Did you get this legally?” I asked.
    “As far as I know,” he said. “Since Danny was clearly too distracted to do much, I thought I’d help out. I asked Ramon if I could search his e-mail for proof that he’d gotten permission for his dissertation and he wrote down his e-mail ID and password. Some friends in the college systems department helped a bit by restoring all his deleted e-mail from the archives, and voila.”
    “You’d think he’d have kept a copy of this somewhere he could find it,” I said.
    “I would,” he said. “Then again, I write code, not plays.”
    “Can I take this to my husband?” I asked.
    “Sure,” he said. “I can run another copy.”
    “Thanks.”
    I got up and shuffled back across the basement to the stairs.
    “Careful,” he said, frowning a little as I reached the basement stairs. “Shouldn’t you be lying down more?”
    “Yes,” I said as I heaved myself upward once again.
    I glanced back down from the top of the stairs. Josh’s facelooked rather eerie, lit only by the light from the monitor, and as I watched, he pushed the same key over and over again a few seconds apart. Something to the right of the keyboard—possibly the page-down key. From his frown, he didn’t seem to like what he was seeing.
    Was the e-mail from Dr. Wright real? I was at least ninety percent sure it was. I’d learned enough about computer security from some of my brother’s technical staff to know that it would be hard to fake something like that well enough to hold up under a forensic examination of the college mail system.
    But right now I wasn’t going to trust anything a hundred percent. Josh had been here all day and for all I knew, he could have been holding a grudge if Dr. Wright had flunked him back in his all-too-recent college days. I needed some information that wasn’t coming from a possible murder suspect. I needed my own laptop.
    Which, last I’d seen it, was locked up in the secure closet in Michael’s office. I should probably share what I’d learned with the chief anyway. As I passed by the stairs I glanced longingly up, thinking of our bedroom. Later. For now, I made a quick pit stop then shuffled down the long corridor toward the library.

Chapter 17
     
    “Shouldn’t you be resting?” Sammy called to me as I came down the hallway.
    “Is there an echo in here?” I muttered.
    Sammy was sitting in a chair at the far end of the hall, guarding the library door. Combined with the crime scene tape behind him and the chain and padlock wrapped around the knobs of the double doors, his guard post gave off a definite message: keep out. I ignored the message.
    “I wanted to get my laptop from Michael’s office,” I said. And then, remembering the pill bottle in my purse, I added, “And I’d like to see the chief for a few moments.”
    Sammy nodded and gestured toward the small hallway that led to Michael’s office. He looked glum. I suddenly remembered why.
    “Any more news on Hawkeye?” I asked. Sammy’s face clouded.
    “Still doing well, thanks to Clarence and your dad,” he said. “It was touch-and-go for a while, though. And you know what really burns me?”
    I shook my head.
    “The guy who did it didn’t even stop,” Sammy said. “And I’m not even sure we could charge him with much if we manage tolocate him. The chief’s going to check with the DA, but I know what will happen. They’ll say it’s only a dog and he wasn’t killed. Except he almost was.”
    “At least he’ll be all right,” I said, patting Sammy’s shoulder.
    He nodded. I could see that he was deeply upset but pretended not to notice and plodded down the hall toward Michael’s office.
    I found the chief sitting back in Michael’s desk chair, his feet up on a trash can. One hand held a cell phone to his ear while the other was scratching Scout, who sat leaning against the chair.
    “You look comfortable,” I said.
    “That doesn’t