Mac had just pulled off Lynda’s hairpiece when the Indiana Jones theme song blaring out of the iPhone on the nightstand by my bed shattered the dream. I bolted up, fumbled for the phone, grabbed it, and finally stammered out a hello.

“Jeff? It’s Morrie Kindle, Associated Press.”

For five years Morrie has been stringing for the AP, and I’ve known him longer than that, but he always gives me the complete ID.

“You got a crime wave going on there at Benignus or what?” he demanded.

I pulled the phone away from my ear to look at the time: 6:36, the numbers said. By now the print edition of the Erin Observer& News-Ledger, which is where Morrie gets most of his news, would be decorating the front lawns of Erin. I should have stolen Ralph’s.

“I suppose you’re calling about the Matheson murder?” I said.

“Unless there’s some other campus crime I should know about.”

My head was pounding from the lack of sleep and my eyes hurt. I was in no mood for trading witty dialogue with an untalented scribe.

“I haven’t seen the Observer and I can’t help you much on this one anyway, Morrie,” I snapped. “The murder didn’t happen on campus and Campus Security isn’t involved. I really don’t know very much about it.” All but the last sentence was clearly true, and I could make an argument for the last one. “Why don’t you wake up Chief Hummel and see what he can tell you?”

Morrie assured me that Oscar was next on his call list. But he had a few questions about “this Sherlock Holmes deal” that had brought Matheson to Erin. He already knew something about the colloquium from rewriting the Observer story on the stolen books caper for the AP, but he wasn’t sure where a big shot legal eagle like Matheson fit into such shenanigans.

“I guess he was crazy,” I said, “just like all the other Sherlockians. That’s off the record, of course. But why else would a grown man collect all that Holmes stuff?”

“He was a collector? You mean like books? Rare books about Sherlock Holmes?” Morrie Kindle’s voice got louder and faster. I could almost hear his heart go into overdrive. Even a second-tier reporter could see the story there. “Still off the record, Jeff, there has to be some kind of connection between this murder and those books being taken, don’t you think?”

“Off the record, Morrie? I really don’t know what to think.”

I meant it. When we’d found the stolen books in the dead man’s hotel room it had seemed so clear to Lynda and me that Matheson was the thief. Not so, Sebastian McCabe had insisted - and then refused to elaborate.

When I finally convinced Morrie that I was innocent of any useful thoughts, he hung up on me.

The morning was cool and the sun was hiding. Instead of pulling up erinobserver.com on my smartphone to read the story like a smart public relations director would have, I went into denial mode and tried to hide under the covers. It was no use; sleep wanted no part of me. Finally I gave up and got out of bed. I showered, shaved, and slipped on a pair of khaki slacks and a light blue shirt with thin green lines running in both directions. I would have looked right at home at a boat dock or trendy bar.

Dressed for the day ahead, I retrieved the morning newspaper from the lawn in front of the carriage house and took it back to my apartment to read.

The headline on the top story was informative if not particularly creative: FAMED LITIGATOR SLAIN AT WINFIELD. I was impressed that the headline writer got by with using the word “litigator” instead of the shorter “lawyer.” A hint of mystery entered the story in the subhead: Did Killer Wear Deerstalker Cap?

There was a little refer line in bold type politely telling the reader to Please see related story, page 12A. The inside piece turned out to be Lynda’s story on the presentation of the Chalmers Collection. It was illustrated by a nice photo of Chalmers and Ralph, who didn’t look nearly as constipated as usual, so that was good. But the murder story started at the top of 1A. That’s what everybody would read.

With his typical thorough reporting, Bernard J. Silverstein had gotten all the facts straight, as far as the police had known them last night. The third paragraph read:

“Matheson was in Erin, police and hotel officials said, to take part in a colloquium on ‘Investigating Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes’ being held this weekend at St. Benignus College.”

That was the first of four references to the college in the main story. I counted them because I was sure that Ralph Pendergast would.

As the subhead hinted, Ben had really taken off on the Holmes angle again. Who could blame him? The murder of a “famed litigator” in our little town was juicy stuff by itself. Throwing in the stolen books, the colloquium, and the mysterious visitor in the deerstalker made it National Enquirer and Inside Edition material. It would be an epic, too, and not a one-day wonder. And after the AP story went out, the aforementioned tabloids and their allegedly more respectable brethren in national media would be on it like bees on flowers.

Not that I blamed Lynda, for she was only a news editor doing her job, but how could she do this to me? I crumpled up the first section of the newspaper and threw it across the room at a bookcase, where it knocked over the perfidious woman’s photo.

Well, that didn’t help matters, even if it did feel good. I had to concentrate on the murder and solve it myself. That was my only chance to limit the journalistic feeding frenzy to a few days. I sat in my armchair and tried to think.

In any good detective story, the killer would be just about anybody who hadn’t been seen wearing a deerstalker. And it could be that way. It wouldn’t have taken much for somebody to borrow one for an hour or so as a sort of slight disguise or protective coloring. But I couldn’t help thinking of Noah Queensbury. He’d been dressed in that particular headgear every time I’d seen him. And he’d had an argument with Matheson shortly before the murder. How did I know he was telling the truth when he said they’d been arguing about Sherlock Holmes? Maybe it was something a lot more serious.

But would he really kill somebody? As loony as he seemed, Queensbury was a surgeon.

So was Jack the Ripper, most likely.

The Indiana Jones theme song interrupted my reverie. At least this time I was awake. Reluctantly, I answered the phone with, “Hello, Ralph.” I plowed on before he chance to say anything. “I’m sorry about the Observer story, but you know there was no way to keep the college out of Matheson’s murder.”

“Murder? Oh, yes, most regrettable. But what your friend Ms. Teal did with that story about the presentation of the Woollcott Chalmers Collection was even worse.”

“Huh?” Blindsided and scrambling to figure out what he was talking about, I quickly un-crumpled the paper. Spreading the relevant page in front of me, I once again looked at the photo of the distinguished Woollcott Chalmers and the un-constipated Ralph Pendergast. The story with it was heavy on adjectives that indicated what an honor this was for St. Benignus College to be the recipient of the collection. Lynda had written it, as well as apparently helping Ben with his page one murder story. “What’s wrong with it? I couldn’t write a story that positive.”

“No doubt,” Ralph’s dry voice dripped acid. “But if you had interviewed the provost perhaps even you would have quoted him in the story, not McCabe.”

I sighed.“Whose picture is with the story, Ralph?”

He conceded that his was.

“That’s worth a thousand words,” I said. “College official meets enthusiastic contributor. We’ll get permission to put that picture on the website and reprint it in the alumni magazine and in the next fund-raising brochure. It’s dynamite.”