“Well, then, that leaves us with Bob Coben,” I said.
Randi giggled again. “The bad boy.” She licked her lips and quirked her eyebrows at me.
“What do you mean?” I asked, though I had an inkling.
“He looks like a bad boy,” Randi said. “That bald head, all the tattoos, the earrings. You know, like he should come roaring in on a motorcycle, wearing a leather jacket. That kind of bad boy.”
Marisue snorted with laughter. “He doesn’t seem anything like that to me.”
“You have your fantasies, I’ll have mine,” Randi retorted. “I actually talked to him for a little while before Marisue started yanking on my arm to get me to leave.”
“I did not yank your arm,” Marisue said. There was a knock on the door, and she went to answer it.
Figuring it was room service, I told Diesel to come down off the bed to sit by me. Randi wouldn’t want to eat with a cat on the bed beside her, I figured.
The server brought the tray in, and Marisue cleared the nightstand on the side of the bed where Randi sat propped up. She signed the ticket for Randi, and the server left. Marisue began to prepare the food for Randi to eat, adding mayonnaise and mustard to the hamburger and opening the tiny ketchup bottle for the fries.
I knew Randi was ready to eat by the way she looked at the food tray, but I wanted to hear about Bob Coben before I left her and Marisue. I said as much, and Randi nodded.
“All right, all kidding about hot bad boys aside,” Randi said, “I talked with him for a while, and he mostly wanted to talk about his plans for his career. He’s a musician, did you know that?”
I nodded, and she continued. “I thought he wanted to go further into music, but he told me he was working on a master’s degree in chemistry. He wants to go on for a PhD, but he has to work for a couple more years to save up the money.”
A master’s degree in chemistry? If Bob Coben was taking classes, then he was actively working in a lab—where he would have direct access to all kinds of chemicals, including cyanide.
TWENTY-NINE
Neither Randi nor Marisue seemed to understand the implications of what Randi told me about Bob Coben. After a moment, however, Marisue figured it out. Randi, after dropping her bombshell, had reached for a french fry. In the midst of chewing it, her mouth dropped open, and I looked away.
Randi evidently swallowed quickly, because when she spoke she did so clearly. “No, I don’t believe it. Surely he wouldn’t poison anyone.”
“How could he expect to get away with it?” Marisue said. “Don’t they have to keep careful track of any chemicals they use in their labs?”
“I’m sure they do,” I said. “Look, I don’t know that Bob Coben is the one who put the poison in Gavin’s bottle, or in Maxine Muller’s. The thing is, he had easy access to it, or at least easier access than anyone else in the case that I know of.”
I pulled out my phone and texted Kanesha a quick message about Bob Coben. She might already have found out about his getting a degree in chemistry, but in case she hadn’t, I thought she ought to know right away.
Moments later my phone buzzed, and I thought I’d received a reply from Kanesha. Instead, the message came from Lisa Krause.
Where r u? Need u at the party.
I had lost track of time, talking with Randi and Marisue, and forgotten about the party in Lisa’s suite. I checked the time on my phone. I should have been in Lisa’s suite ten minutes ago.
I responded that I would be there in two minutes. I explained to Marisue and Randi that I had to leave.
“Thanks for talking with me,” I said. “I know you’re both exhausted.”
Marisue nodded, and I noticed that she looked rather wilted now. Randi actually looked perkier, but that was probably because she was eating.
“I’ll check in on you tomorrow,” I said. “When were you planning to leave?”
“Not till Monday morning,” Marisue said. “We both took the day off so we didn’t have to rush back tomorrow.”
“Good, you’ll have time to rest before the drive. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Diesel and I took our leave of my friends and made our way to Lisa’s suite on another floor.
The door stood open, and when we entered I saw Lisa talking to a couple of women who looked vaguely familiar. That meant I had probably noticed them at some point during the past couple of days here at the conference, but I had no idea who they were. There was no one else in the suite that I could see.
Lisa saw me, nodded in my direction to acknowledge me, and continued with her conversation. I took the opportunity to glance around the suite. The layout was exactly as I remembered it. The bar against the outside wall, with a large window next to it, a table that could seat six comfortably on one side of the room, and two sofas and a couple of armchairs, with a coffee table in their midst. Small tables at each end of the sofas held lamps, all dark at the moment, because Lisa had the overhead lights on.
I walked over to the bar and found a can of diet soda in a large basin full of ice and drinks. I found a napkin on the bar to wipe excess moisture from the can, and then Diesel and I walked over to one of the armchairs. He stretched out near my feet while I opened the can and took a sip.
I knew I should be more sociable and join Lisa and the women with her, but at the moment I wanted to sit and think, at least while the room was still relatively quiet. I needed to consider what I had learned from my conversation with Marisue and Randi.
Bob Coben had suddenly emerged, at least in my mind, as the chief suspect in the murders. That bothered me, because he had stepped forward quickly after the altercation I had with Gavin on Thursday, offering to support me if Gavin tried to sue or cause any other unpleasantness. The next day, however, after Gavin’s shocking death, I had overheard Coben in conversation with Harlan Crais. From that I’d gathered that Coben thought Gavin had kept him from getting a better job. Given what I’d learned about Coben’s plans for a PhD and the need for money to pay for that degree, I figured he must have been deeply angry with Gavin.
Angry enough to kill him? That I didn’t know, but I wondered how tempted Coben might have been, working in the chemistry lab, knowing that one solution to his desire for revenge lay so close within his reach. The means was there, but did he avail himself of it?
That lay in Kanesha’s province, not mine. Working with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, she could contact its equivalent in Alabama, I reckoned, and ask for their cooperation. That might take a time to arrange, but it would no doubt happen.
Mitch Handler, the librarian-turned-writer, had a degree in organic chemistry and worked as liaison with the chemistry department. What kind of access did he have to dangerous chemicals? Perhaps he had a crony in one of the labs who would help him out, maybe turn a blind eye and cover it up if Handler helped himself to a pinch or two of cyanide.
Sources of cyanide were always easier in Golden Age English detective stories. Everyone had cyanide on hand in the potting shed to get rid of rats and wasps and other unwelcome intruders. Or they had connections with an industrial concern where cyanide was used in various processes. This case wasn’t that simple.
Lisa and the other two women interrupted my cogitations on cyanide and murder, and I stood while Lisa performed the introductions. Both women made charming remarks about Diesel, and he, the ham, ate it up. They patted his head and stroked his back, and he adored it. We chatted for a few moments longer, and then the two excused themselves and left the room.
Lisa, Diesel, and I were alone for perhaps three minutes after that. More people began to arrive, and among them, I was pleased to see, were Cathleen Matera and Nancy Dunlap. They made a beeline for the bar and helped themselves to wine. Then Nancy Dunlap spotted Diesel, and she came immediately over with Cathleen Matera.