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

wouldn’t be surprised.
    I flipped the paper over and looked at the next sheet. It was a bad photocopy of what appeared to be a court document of some sort.
    After peering at it for a few moments, I suddenly realized what I was seeing. A copy of a twenty-year-old court documentgranting Henry S. White a change of name to Enrique Blanco.
    No wonder Blanco had been so unsympathetic to Ramon’s cause and so reluctant to address Señor Mendoza in Spanish. He probably wasn’t Latino at all.
    The other papers in the envelope were a medley of little Henry’s greatest hits since changing his name. Enrique Blanco accepting a scholarship from the Spanish Culture Association. Enrique Blanco awarded a certificate for outstanding Hispanic student at his business school. Enrique Blanco being honored as the Latino administrator of the year by some other organization.
    Why had someone hidden an envelope in our closet containing evidence that would do serious damage to Dr. Blanco’s career if it were made public?
    My nose was tickling again. I turned my head again and sneezed several times.
    It wasn’t dust. I lifted the envelope to my nose, took a hesitant sniff, and then had to turn aside to sneeze six times in a row. The envelope was permeated with the faintly acrid and completely annoying smell of Dr. Wright’s perfume.
    Had this envelope come out of Dr. Wright’s purse?
    Most probably. When she’d looked in her purse for her PDA—was it only this morning?—she’d taken out her wallet and a folded envelope. I was willing to bet this was the same envelope—and also the reason for Blanco’s curious willingness to connive in Dr. Wright’s persecution of the drama students. If she had proof of his underhanded behavior and threatenedhim with exposure, he’d probably have done anything she asked. Until he got a chance to eliminate her.
    And he had probably taken these papers from her and then hidden them in our closet in case the chief searched him, either individually or as part of a general search of all the suspects. Rotten luck for him that I’d decided to lock the closet after he’d stowed the papers there.
    I needed to tell the chief about this. It gave Blanco the strongest possible motive for murdering Dr. Wright. And if he was, by his own admission, her closest friend at the college, who more likely to know about her diabetes?
    And from his retreat in my office, out in the barn, he could easily sneak across the yard and in through the sunporch to the library. What if he’d been in the library when Randall Shiffley entered the library? He could have shouted and waved outside the window not because he was trying to get in, but because he was trying to disguise the fact that he’d already entered, killed her, and fled when he heard Randall’s approach.
    I stuffed the papers back in the envelope and reached for my cell phone as I backed out of the closet.
    I bumped into someone on my way out.
    “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see you.”
    Suddenly I felt something cold and hard poking into the middle of my back.
    “Don’t move.”

Chapter 28
     
    “Very funny, Dr. Blanco,” I said, forcing a laugh and projecting my voice as much as possible. “But I’m a little tired for practical jokes. Why don’t—”
    “Shut up and give me the envelope,” he said, emphasizing his words with a jab from the gun. At least I assumed it was a gun. I didn’t think Blanco had enough imagination to fool me with a pencil or an umbrella. “And stop shouting. It won’t do you any good. Everybody’s out in the barn watching that wretched farce.”
    “Does that mean you’re hoping The Fa—the president will cancel Ramon’s show?”
    “I couldn’t care less whether it’s canceled or not,” he said. “That was Jean Wright’s particular obsession.”
    “Great,” I said. “Then we have no quarrel. Here.”
    I held the envelope over my left shoulder. After a second, I felt it snatched away.
    “Now if you’ll just let me go back to sleep—” I began.
    “Oh, do shut up,” he said, jabbing the gun in my back. “And drop the cell phone.”
    I complied.
    “There’s no need to—”
    “Shut up!” He jabbed me again. “You’re annoying me, and you’re going to make me late for my plane.”
    “Plane?” I echoed.
    “Yes, I’m leaving,” he said. “And no, I’m not going to tell you where I’m going. Let’s just say there’s no extradition and my money will be waiting there to meet me.”
    A sudden