“Have you found something?”
“Maybe,” I said. This was crazy. It didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the murder. Ted could have switched the tiles at any time since we’d moved in, to harass Liz.
Funny she hadn’t mentioned it, though.
Maybe she had just been too exasperated to talk about it. This is Liz you’re talking about, I told myself. We’d laughed together, commiserated together, become friends.
I stuck the flashlight back under my arm and turned to climb down. The beam hit the bookcase in front of me, and I saw something. One of the thick legal volumes had a small red stain on the spine. I plucked it off the shelf, examined it, and then climbed back down the ladder with it.
“What do you make of this?” I said, handing it to Dad. He trained his flashlight on it.
“It’s not blood,” he said, handing it back with a shake of his head. “Blood wouldn’t stay red after it dried.”
“No,” I said. “It’s stage blood. I’ve spent enough time with Michael and his drama department cronies to recognize the stuff when I see it.”
“You think this is connected with the murder?” Dad asked, frowning.
“I suppose it’s remotely possible that this book was already stained with stage blood before Monday,” I said. “But I think you’re looking at how the killer managed to stun Ted before strangling him.”
“Instead of a karate chop?”
I set my flashlight on a shelf, where the beam would provide some general illumination, and climbed back up the ladder.
“Imagine you’re Ted. You’ve switched tiles so the mail cart will cruise through here. And you’re lying on the mail cart, with stage blood running down from your chest. Down your sides, your arms - and onto your throat.”
“And I stop right beneath the ladder,” Dad said, throwing himself into his role. He walked along my theoretical mail cart path, leaning back to become as horizontal as he could without actually falling on his back.
“From up here, I wouldn’t need that much strength to hit someone hard,” I said. “Gravity’s on my side. So all I have to do is take a step or two down and wham!” I slammed the book down on an imaginary Ted’s throat, with a violence that clearly startled Dad. Startled me, in fact. I was angry. Not at poor irritating Ted, but at the person who’d killed him. The person I’d considered a friend.
“And then,” I went on, “if there happened to be a mouse cord on one of the pigeonholes of the mail cart - and there probably was since people were always sending each other stray bits of hardware on the mail cart - mice, disk drives, cables - all I’d have to do wduld be to pick it up and finish the job.”
Dad and I stood, looking at each other for a few seconds. Then he reached out and patted me on the shoulder.
“Good job,” he said. “Let’s take this book to the chief and tell him - “
“I knew I was going to have to do something about you,” came a voice from behind me.
I turned to find Liz, standing in the library door, holding a gun.
“Liz, you - “
“Stay back,” she said. “I’m a good shot with this.”
“Yes, I remember,” I said. “You took lessons, when you lived in a bad part of East Palo Alto. For self-defense. I don’t think this counts as self-defense.”
She shrugged. “Depends on your point of view,” she said. “Here, catch!”
She threw something at us. Dad started and clutched his flashlight with both hands; I took a half-step forward and raised my good hand, out of reflex, to catch whatever it was before it hit him, I’d caught a roll of silver duct tape. “You win the toss,” she said. “Tie him up.”
“Does it really count as tying up with duct tape?” Dad asked. “I think taping me up would be more accurate.”
“I stand corrected,” Liz said. “Tape him up. Just do it.” She kept the gun on us as I taped Dad’s hands behind him, and then she ordered him to lie down, facedown, so I could tape his feet together. And roll Dad’s flashlight over where she could pick it up. Which she did, very, very carefully, feeling the floor for the flashlight with her left hand without taking her eyes off me. Or, more important, without taking her gun off me.
“Okay,” she said when she had the flashlight. “Now you sit down and - “