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

mean I’m not busy,” he said. He turned to sit up straight, feet on the floor.
    “I was talking to Scout,” I said, reaching down to pet the dog. His short, light-brown tail thumped softly on the rug as I did so. “You, on the other hand, look overworked. Put your feet up again.”
    “Hope it’s okay to have him in here,” the chief said, nodding at Scout. “We’ve all been too busy for me to assign anyone to take him home.”
    “He can stay as long as you like,” I said. “Spike’s staying overnight at the vet’s for observation, so the coast is clear.” I sat down on an ottoman, which I knew from experience was a lot easier to get out of than the pseudo-comfy guest chairs. “I brought you something.”
    I pulled the paper-wrapped pill bottle out of my pocket and put it on the desk in front of him.
    “What’s this?” he asked, peering over his glasses at it.
    “Ramon Soto’s sleeping medication. Which I overheard him admit slipping into Dr. Wright’s tea.”
    “Overheard?” His voice was sharp. “You weren’t interrogating him?”
    “I was trying to nap in the living room while you were interrogating people,” I said. “He and his girlfriend woke me up discussing it.”
    I gave the chief a rundown of what I’d overheard between Ramon and Bronwyn, and for good measure Bronwyn’s conversation with Danny and the page on digitalis Josh had shown me.
    When I finished, the chief continued frowning and scratching Scout’s head for a few moments.
    “When you left here I thought you were going to rest,” he said finally.
    “I was resting,” I said. “Can I help it if some of your suspects chose to wake me up with their plotting?”
    A fleeting hint of a smile interrupted his scowl, so quickly that I wasn’t entirely sure I’d seen it.
    “You weren’t resting when you found this,” he said, nodding at the pill bottle.
    “The kitchen was off-limits the last time I checked,” I said. “I was rummaging through the students’ stuff for something safe to eat.” Which was only a small lie, I figured. The chief didn’t know I’d rummaged twice—once for food and once for incriminating evidence.
    He nodded absently then picked up his cell phone and poked a couple of buttons.
    “Dr. Langslow?” he said. “Could you step in here for a few moments? Thanks.”
    He put the cell phone back on the desk. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a pair of plastic gloves, and began putting them on.
    A few seconds later, Dad appeared through the French doors between the library and Michael’s office. Well, that explained the chain and padlock.
    “Meg!” he exclaimed. “Do you need me?”
    “No,” I said. “The chief does.”
    The chief picked up the pill bottle in one gloved hand and held it out to Dad, whose hands were also gloved. Dad peered at the pill bottle’s label, then smiled and held it up with a flourish, as if the chief had just handed him some kind of trophy.
    “Diazepam!” he exclaimed, as if this alone solved the case.
    “Meg says that’s generic for Valium,” the chief said.
    “Very good,” Dad said, beaming at me. He opened the pill bottle, inspected the contents, and nodded.
    “So this could be the murder weapon?” the chief asked.
    “Oh no,” Dad said. And then, seeing how the chief’s face fell, he added, “But they could be another very useful piece in the puzzle.”
    The chief didn’t look very happy to see the number of puzzle pieces multiplying.
    “So what would happen if someone slipped two or three of these in our victim’s tea?” the chief asked.
    “She’d feel sleepy,” Dad said. “Might even fall asleep, though that’s a pretty minimal dose. And she’d probably be just finewhen she woke up, as long as no one came along while she was asleep and did something else to her. Which appears to be what happened.”
    “But I thought Valium was for anxiety, not insomnia,” the chief said.
    “A lot of insomnia is caused by anxiety,” Dad said. “Dull the anxiety and the body’s natural sleep mechanisms take over. And the diazepam itself acts as a mild sedative. It can be very effective in the short term. In the longer term, patients tend to develop tolerance to the sedative effects.”
    The chief pondered this briefly.
    “So,” he said. “If Ramon’s doctor thought his insomnia was due to, say, the stress of trying to finish his dissertation and direct the play, he might prescribe this in the short term?”
    Dad nodded.
    “Or