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

hall closet.
    Or I could go down to the hall closet and fetch one for myself. The self-sufficiency of that pleased me.
    I got up, stuck my cell phone in the pocket of my robe, and made my pit stop before heading for the stairs. And then turned back to grab my keys. I remembered that for once I’d actually locked the closet, as we’d been trying to do, so the flashlights and other useful items it contained would still be there when Michael and I went looking for them.
    As I climbed down the stairs, I realized that I didn’t feel all that bad. In fact, considering how long and exhausting a day I was having, I was feeling remarkably energetic. My back felt better than usual. Perhaps all the exercise was good for me.
    Or perhaps I was still revved up from too much excitement.
    The front hall was quiet. Apparently Ramon had a full house for the dress rehearsal. I unlocked the hall closet and rummaged through the shelves until I found a flashlight on one of the higher shelves. I tested it—working fine. And then I stuck it in my pocket and turned to go.
    Something fluttered to the floor in front of me. I stooped to pick it up and saw that it was a worn envelope in the characteristic pale blue used for all official Caerphilly College papers. And there was something typed on the outside: “Dr. Enrique Blanco—confidential.”
    I turned it over. It was folded in half, so I unfolded it and saw that although the gummed flap had been sealed at some point, someone had opened it. A good thing, since it saved me from the moral dilemma of whether to unseal it. All I had to do was pop the flap open to sneak a peek at the contents.
    I pulled out several folded pieces of paper and opened them up. The top one was a photocopy of a yearbook page. The top half of the page showed a dozen teenagers lined up in two rows under the headline “Business Club.” The bottom showed the chess club gathered picturesquely around a table. Two of their number were glaring at each other over a chess board, while the rest assumed eloquent attitudes of fear, triumph, scorn, or indifference. Who’d have expected such a flair for the dramatic from a group normally dismissed as the school geeks? Were any of these hams now treading the boards in our barn? I pored over the photo and studied the names beneath, but none were familiar.
    I went back to the top photo. Business club? Was this some kind of organization for high schoolers who had already figured out where they were getting their MBAs and which corporation would be the target of their first hostile takeover? Not my idea of a fun way to spend your after-school hours, and from the looks on the faces of the four girls and eight boys, probably not theirs either. The business club members had “pad your extracurricular activity list for that college application” written all over their faces.
    Most were staring awkwardly at the camera, wearing the sort of fixed smiles that always result when the photographer says, “Hold that smile. . . . Just one more shot.” And to make it worse, they were all sporting fashions from the late ’70s and early ’80s, including some truly memorable examples of why big hair had been such a hideous trend. Was it quite fair to shudder at fashion crimes you’d once committed yourself? Surelymost of these earnest-looking young future businesspeople had sworn off mullets and Farrah ’dos and grown up to regret what they were wearing here?
    At the far right side of the back row I spotted Enrique Blanco. Apart from the slight suggestion of a mullet, his hair wasn’t too bad, and his clothes were pretty bland compared to the rest of the crew. Only his air of superiority remained unchanged. He stared out with a faint frown on his face, as if preparing to chide the photographer for taking too much of his valuable time.
    I turned my head aside to sneeze. The old papers must be dustier than they looked.
    I turned back to the photocopy and read the caption. Just a list of the names, but I studied them anyway.
    Odd. Enrique Blanco wasn’t listed. Yet there was his face, radiating juvenile pruniness.
    I counted the names till I got to the seventh one, corresponding to his place in the group shot. The face I knew as Enrique Blanco was listed as belonging to a Henry White.
    Henry White?
    Blanco was Spanish for white, and if I wasn’t mistaken, Enrique was the Spanish equivalent of Henry. Had Blanco gone through a period of juvenile rejection of his ethnic heritage? Bronwyn