“I know she had a problem with crochet versus knitting, but do you think she’d go so far as to break into a room? And what would be the point of stealing the galleys? I’m sure the publisher has another copy. Finally, I think we know Adele well enough that if it had been her, we would have recognized her shape,” Dinah said.

By now our heartbeats had returned to normal, and all that was left was the rush from the adrenaline. I glanced around the room with a different perspective.

“I guess it’ll be my responsibility to pack up her things.”

Dinah gave me a sympathetic nod. “Yes, one more responsibility that goes along with the rhinestone clipboard.”

The room was laid out about the same as mine, except there was only one twin bed against the wall. Aside from the papers it seemed orderly. Izabelle’s personal items were in several unzipped pouches by the sink. A stack of plastic bins sat against the wall. Each of them had a label for a session of her workshop. When I lifted the lid of the top one, I saw pillowcases with thread crochet trim and a lot of flowers in different sizes and yarns, along with a copy of her book. I walked over to the closet and opened the door. A faint scent of her floral cologne clung to her neatly hung clothes and the suitcase stowed below. When I turned back to the room, Dinah was sitting on the bed with a laptop computer open next to her.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Checking my e-mail. You know how upset I’ve been about not bringing my laptop. This is even better. She has one of those cards that makes it so her computer can go online anywhere.” Dinah looked up and caught my expression of disapproval. “It’s all right. I’m just going to see what I have. And I want to check a quote for the memoir workshop. So technically I’m using it for the weekend. I’m sure Izabelle wouldn’t mind.” The reflection from the screen illuminated Dinah’s face after she’d pressed the power button.

“Hmm. It looks like Izabelle was in the middle of something and just let it go into hibernate mode.” Dinah turned the computer so I could see the screen. The body of an e-mail was in the center of the screen. It had no salutation and said Don’t do anything before you talk to me. Call me or at least answer your phone. It was signed Tom, ITA Sponsor. I sat down on the bed next to Dinah and put the computer on my lap, but I almost dropped it when my cell phone started to vibrate in my tote next to me. I hurried to get it before it started to ring. Dinah and I had kept our conversation to a whisper. Somehow, I didn’t want to make any noise.

I answered the phone with a whispered hello.

“Hey, babe,” Barry said. “Just calling to see how it’s going. I figured by now you’d be in your room… alone. Right, you are alone?”

There was dead air. I couldn’t lie when asked a direct question, but I also didn’t want to answer. Saying nothing seemed the safest bet. Unless you’re talking to a top-flight homicide detective who knows how to squeeze information out of the most reluctant suspects. In my case it was easy. He knew me well enough to recognize that the dead air meant something was up, probably something he wouldn’t be happy about. “Okay, Molly, let’s just save us both a lot of time and cut to the chase. Where are you, and what are you doing?”

“I was going to call you. There’s been a little incident.” I paused; what I was going to say next was going to get the reaction. “One of the presenters died.”

“What?” Barry said. I could practically hear his blood pressure go up.

“The doctor and the police think it was from some kind of allergic reaction.” I heard his breath come out in a gush.

“Then it wasn’t homicide. Good.”

I told him the doctor thought Izabelle had suddenly developed a life-threatening allergy.

“That sounds reasonable.” He began his standard speech. “The police will investigate. Stay out of it. Leave it to the professionals la la la la.” He didn’t actually say la la la la. That was the part where I wasn’t listening anymore. Eventually he figured out something else was up, and he knew me well enough to ask me directly. Like I said, when someone asks me a specific question, I always tell the truth. Barry asked where I was. I thought he took the information that I was in Izabelle’s room rather well. But since he didn’t ask about the purse, I didn’t tell. I let him think I was being overzealous about my responsibility to handle things.

“I understand you think it’s your task to pack up her things. But you have all weekend, and you might want to wait until you talk to her next of kin.”

Barry seemed pleased when I said I would definitely take what he said into consideration. Then he signed off after telling me how much he missed me.

“He just wants to protect you,” Dinah said when I flipped my phone shut. It was pointless to try and keep our conversation private. Besides, Dinah knew all my business anyway.

“The trouble is,” I said, putting my phone away, “he makes it so I can’t discuss things with him. I can just imagine what he’d say if I told him someone was in the room when we got here and went out the window. And he’d get crazy if I told him we thought that what we’d just read on Izabelle’s computer made it sound like she was planning to do something that would cause trouble.”

“We do?” Dinah said.

“Sure, look at it. It sounds like some person is telling her not to do something rashly.” Dinah read it again and nodded in agreement.

“I wonder what ITA is?” she said.

I looked at it again, too. “I bet the A stands for anonymous. Like Alcoholics Anonymous. They always give people sponsors.”

“And the I probably stands for independent or international,” Dinah said. “All we have to do is figure out the T.”

For a few minutes Dinah and I thought of words beginning with T that might go with Anonymous and Independent or International. We got teetotalers, tap dancers, taskmasters, tastemakers, tattletales, techies and taxi drivers before we gave up.

“Let’s check Izabelle’s favorite Web sites. Maybe that will give us a clue,” Dinah said, clicking on a button on the computer.

A list came up. A number of the Web sites had to do with crochet, but one popped out at me. I told Dinah to click on it. When the opening page loaded and I read it over, I nodded toward the screen.

“You realize what this means,” I said as we looked at the home page of peanutallergies.com. “She knew she was allergic to peanuts. It wasn’t a sudden allergic reaction.”

“Then why would she eat a s’more laced with peanut butter?” Dinah said. I flipped through some more screens that described first aid maneuvers. I pointed at the screen.

We both looked at the slender cylinder with the designation EpiPen. Underneath was a diagram of how to use it. Apparently you stabbed it in your thigh if you had a reaction to something and it would keep you going until you could get further help. The lime green pouch bag was still hanging on my wrist. I reeled it in and turned it upside down. A cell phone fell out along with a match of what we were looking at on the screen.

“Hmm, one more thing that proves she was aware of her allergy and had taken precautions,” Dinah said, examining the EpiPen.

I checked the cell phone; the battery was completely dead. “Then how did she die from an allergy attack?”