I pulled out my cell phone and checked the time: 1:30. Art and Abe had arrived around noon. Michael had called her a few minutes after he called them, and even considering that she probably had to walk from the drama building to wherever she parked her car, it shouldn’t have taken her more than twenty minutes to get here. Had she really lost over an hour entertaining The Face and returning to get the files?
I peered out the window and saw that she was near the hedge at the front of our lawn, talking to a uniformed deputy. The deputy was probably there to keep people from just wandering up to the front door during the chief’s investigation—so how had Kathy slipped past him?
I sighed. I hated to admit it, but Kathy was a suspect.
I couldn’t see her as the murderer. She’d have been a lot more plausible for that role back when I thought Dr. Wright had been killed by a blow to the head. Kathy had been to our house dozens of times in the last several years, so she’d had plenty of chances to notice that the sunporch at the back of the library could be used by someone who wanted to get into the library without coming through the rest of the house. And given Kathy’s fierce devotion to Abe Sass and the department, I could even imagine her trying to take some action on her own. Sneaking in to confront Dr. Wright, for example. And Kathy had a temper. I could see her long-standing grudge with Dr. Wright erupting into sudden intolerable rage, impelling her to grab the nearest weapon.
But poisoning? There my vision of Kathy as the killer fell apart. Unlike the students, who were here most of the time when not actually in classes and had vast piles of their worldly belongings close at hand, she’d either have had to find a poison on the spur of the moment—unlikely—or come already armed with it, on the off chance she’d get a chance to use it—equally unlikely. Even if she were planning to kill Dr. Wright and had brought poison for the purpose, someone surely would have noticed and greeted her when she showed up in the kitchen. And she was too smart to believe she could sneak away and not have someone mention she’d been hanging around the kitchen. Not a very promising plan.
Devising a flimsy plan would be completely out of character for Kathy. My family praised how organized and efficient I was, but I was nothing compared to Kathy. Her incredible organizational skills made her invaluable to the drama faculty and students—so many of them highly creative right-brain types who couldn’t organize their way out of a wet tissue. If Kathy came up with a plan, you could be certain she’d researched it thoroughly, had worked out contingency plans for any possible snags it might hit, and would execute it flawlessly. Wandering into the library in the hope that she’d get a chance to poison her potential victim was not something Kathy would do.
But marching into the library to confront Dr. Wright—that I could see Kathy doing. And if, once there, she saw Dr. Wright apparently asleep and calculated that there was no serious obstacle to getting away with murder?
Maybe. And if Kathy thought she’d killed Dr. Wright or realized she’d just attempted to kill somebody who was already dead, that could account for her unusually agitated state. She’d been almost babbling, and that was completely unlike Kathy. Unless Kathy, like me, was cool and calm in action and sometimes got the shakes afterward. I could see that, too.
I should probably mention all this to the chief.
Later. I was way overdue for my nap. But by now I couldn’t even bear to look at the stairs. I went into the living room instead. It was a cluttered mess, since about fifteen students were sleeping there—though at least it was empty, since the students were all out in the barn, nervously awaiting their turn to be questioned. Or possibly singing “Ding, dong, the witch is dead!” and coordinating their alibis.
Their sleeping bags and air mattresses were still there, along with their other belongings. The few organized ones had stuffed their possessions in cardboard boxes or plastic bins. The rest just surrounded their beds with huge deltas of clothes, books, cosmetics, and other paraphernalia.
The students’ belongings! Surely some of them had food stashed away that I could eat. I’d replace it later. Tenfold.
I searched the students’ belongings until I found a couple of unopened packages of cheese crackers and an orange soda. Both items from what Michael and I referred to as the neon-orange food group, processed as hell and not normally to my taste. Rose Noire would slap my hands if she saw me reach for them. But she was out in the barn, waiting her turn for interrogation. I pounced.
I picked my way through the debris to the far corner, where a quirk in the architecture made a nook that Michael and I had filled with a particularly comfy couch with its back to the room, making a lovely, private little niche. Assuming the students hadn’t moved it. . . .