“That wouldn’t make a lot of sense from the killer’s point of view, Mac. The sooner law enforcement gets to the scene of a homicide, the better. It would have helped the killer if the body hadn’t been found until tomorrow. As it was, we got there less than half an hour after the shooting.”
Oops. I’d unintentionally misled the police about the time of the murder, but it couldn’t have been by all that much; the blood was still fresh when we arrived around six-thirty.
“Where do I come into this?” I asked.
Mac said, “I persuaded Oscar that you should be involved in your capacity as public relations director for the college. The murder investigation is likely to spill over onto the campus grounds, given Matheson’s reason for being in Erin.”
“He didn’t say anything about Teal tagging along,” Oscar added.
“Consider me a bonus,” she said.
Applause erupted from inside the closed doors of the President’s Dining Room. If I remembered the agenda correctly, Kate must have been announcing the winners of the costume contest.
“As a working premise,” Mac said, “what do you think happened, Oscar?”
“Well... this is strictly off the record, Teal, understand?”
“Yes, massa,” Lynda said.
“It must have been somebody who knew him, not a homicide committed during a burglary. There was no break-in, for one thing, and it doesn’t look like anything was disturbed.”
Give Lynda and me points for neatness.
“Besides,” Oscar added, “we have a witness, another guest at the Winfield, who saw the victim open the door for someone who may have been the killer.”
Damn - just what I had feared. Somebody saw Lynda coming out of the room and me standing there. We must have given quite a show, the big hug. The pit of my stomach felt like a load of concrete had been mixed there. I shot a covert glance at Lynda. She swallowed hard.
“A witness!” Mac bellowed. “Oh, Oscar, you are the sly one, holding that back. Tell us about this witness.”
The chief allowed himself a self-satisfied smirk.
“She’s rock solid - an IRS attorney in town to check out the college for her daughter,” Oscar said. “She came back to her room down the hall to take a shower around six and saw Matheson open the door to a visitor. She didn’t see the visitor’s face, but get this: He was wearing one of those funny Sherlock Holmes hats. What do you call them?”
“A deerstalker,” I said in a choked voice, nearly limp with relief.
Maybe it really was the killer this witness saw - it sure wasn’t Lynda. Aside from the chapeau she wasn’t wearing, the timing was off by half an hour. We weren’t even finished with Post by six o’clock.
“Yeah, that’s it - a deerstalker,” Oscar said. “I figure it should be easy to find this character. How many people can there be running around Erin in a deerstalker hat?”
Chapter Twenty - What We Have Here... (Part Two)
Mac’s answer to Oscar was a sound that started as a rumble in his stomach and burst forth from his lips as a hearty, uncontrolled laugh.
“What the hell’s so funny?” Oscar demanded.
“Deerstalker caps,” Lynda said, “are about as rare at this little confab as big ears on an elephant.”
Standing between Mac and Oscar, no wonder she thought of elephants. Oscar glowered at her.
“Surely you understand what this colloquium is all about, Oscar?” Mac said. Without waiting for an answer, he added, “Unfortunately, this isn’t the only crime that has marred an otherwise delightful occasion. Do you suppose there could be a link between the theft last night of several rare Sherlock Holmes volumes and the murder of Hugh Matheson?”
“Well,” Oscar said heavily, “there sure as hell seems to be some kind of connection to Sherlock Holmes.”
But Oscar didn’t know what the link was - his officers apparently hadn’t found the hidden books in Matheson’s hotel room.
“Obviously, you’re going to be conducting some interviews around here tomorrow,” I said. “I’d appreciate it if you would check in with Ed Decker, let him know what you’re up to. You know how touchy he is about turf issues.”
Oscar grunted, which I took to be an affirmative response. “If you remember anything that might be important about the victim, give me a call. You have my cell.”
“I’m sure I’ll be in touch,” Lynda said, earning a malevolent stare from the chief.
“Good night, Oscar,” Mac said. “And thank you for the flower.”
“The what?”
Mac reached into Oscar’s plaid sport coat and pulled a carnation out of the inside pocket. He affixed it to the lapel of his Victorian suit coat while Oscar watched with an expression composed of equal parts surprise and chagrin.
“You ought to stick to magic,” Oscar told Mac. “You’re good at it. Leave the detective work to law enforcement.”
With a curt nod to each of us he disappeared down the escalator.
“I’d better go, too,” Lynda said. “I’ve got to get to the office and help Ben with his story for the website and tomorrow’s paper.”
Mac and I wished her good night. It was ten o’clock and I felt a deep weariness, as if I’d been up for at least three days. And, like Lynda, I still had work to do.
“I’d better call Ralph and get it over with,” I told Mac with a sigh of resignation.
“You have my sympathy,” he said.
“I need it. But it would be even worse if Ralph heard it someplace else first. Never let your boss be surprised.”
I pulled out my phone, chose Ralph’s name from my contacts list, and tapped his phone number.
“This is Jeff Cody,” I said when the provost had answered in his precise voice. I could hear music playing in the background. Could that really be Dave Brubeck? “You aren’t going to like this.”
“That I believe. Well, what is it now?”
“One of the participants in this Sherlock Holmes colloquium thing has been murdered.”
“Good God in heaven!”
I winced and pulled the phone away from my ear. The expression on Mac’s hairy face showed that he’d heard Ralph almost as well as I had.
“It isn’t as if the body showed up in the middle of Muckerheide Center,” I said quickly. “The murder was off-campus.”
“Thank God for that. Give me the details.” I could have sworn Ralph had stopped to drink something between the two sentences.
I summed up the case as Oscar knew it - leaving out, of course, what I knew that the chief didn’t.
“What we have here, Ralph,” I concluded, “is a very unfortunate set of circumstances, especially with the murder following the theft so closely. But I’m on top of it. I’ve spent quite a bit of time discussing this case with the chief of police. I’m sure that when he finds this mysterious visitor in the deerstalker the murder will be solved.”
“And I suppose we can look forward to yet another spate of unfavorable publicity when someone is arrested,” Ralph said. “At least it isn’t likely to be a college employee. Is it?” The last two words came out almost as a plea.
The doors of the President’s Dining Room swung open. Sherlockians spilled out in a sea of now-familiar faces - Molly Crocker, the deerstalkered (yes!) Dr. Queensbury, Sven Larsen, Professor Whippet...
“Well, Cody?”
I went as far as I could, assuring Ralph that neither Mac nor I nor anybody connected with St. Benignus College had been wearing a deerstalker cap today.
“What you have to do is downplay the college connection with this so-called colloquium,” said Ralph, who had made a speech earlier that day accepting the Woollcott Chalmers Collection as a highlight of what he now dismissed as the “so-called colloquium.”
I promised him I’d use all my influence with the police and the press. It was an easy promise because I have none. But it mollified Ralph, who believes otherwise.