“Do you really think so, Cody?”

“Scout’s honor.” I’d never been a Scout, but Ralph didn’t know that. He was mollified enough about the Chalmers Collection story to start worrying about the murder again. I promised I’d stick close to the situation all day and do any damage control that might be necessary. By the time Ralph hung up I congratulated myself that I’d avoided another royal ass-chewing.

That happy thought was marred by one of the less pleasing of the sounds that punctuate my life. Vroooom! Mac’s ancient Chevy was tearing out of the garage below me. I looked out the window just in time to see the tail fins disappearing down the road. The Chalmerses were leaving for the second day of the symposium. Mac again would preside over the day’s rather limited activities like a royal duke while he expected me to do his leg work, damn him anyway.

Even worse, I was going to do it.

I called Lynda to enlist her help - I figured she owed me for the morning I’d had so far - but got no answer. Today being Sunday, maybe she was at Mass with her cell phone turned off. I’m not Catholic, but I should have been in church myself, praying my way out of this. (In case anybody is worried about my sister and brother-in-law, who are Catholic, they hit the 5:15 p.m. Mass in the chapel the night before.)

Or maybe Lynda was somewhere else. Should I send her a text: Where the hell are you? Better not. She would not react well.

As I disconnected the call I looked around for my notebook with Mac’s list of suspects - casually at first, then with a growing concern. After a minute of that I realized I must have left it in Mac’s study last night. I put on a jacket, picked up my wallet and keys, and went out of my apartment, locking up behind me. With the McCabes gone to the colloquium and the three McCabe children all staying overnight with friends for the weekend, there was nobody to let me into the house. Fortunately I have my own key, which I used.

The notebook was on the small table where I’d thrown it in a pique last night. I stuck it in my pocket and left the study, heading out of the house. Then I stopped, frozen.

I’d heard something - I wasn’t sure what, but something, a noise in an empty house where there should have been no noise.

Chapter Twenty-Three - Personal Space

With stealth and caution I passed through the hallway toward the guest suite at the back of the house, where the noise had appeared to originate. Down these mean streets a man must go...Along the way I picked up my nephew Brian’s baseball bat from the kitchen. It was only aluminum but it felt comforting in my hand. I held it like a club.

Outside the suite, added on by the previous owners for the wife’s parents, I paused. My stomach was one big mass of knots and my heart was pounding in my ears from the adrenaline rush. I wiped sweaty palms on my khaki slacks.

Strangely, from this close up the noise in the suite sounded like water running in the bathroom.

Should I knock first and give the traditional “Who’s there?” or should I barge right in, bat at the ready? WWMD - What Would Max Do?

Opting for the element of surprise, I tightened my grip on the bat with my right hand and pushed in the doorknob with my left. And I walked in.

The empty bedroom was large and bright, with sun pouring in from a window overlooking a spectacular view of the Ohio River. There were two dressers opposite the bed (one of them with a mirror), a clothes tree draped with clothes, a couple of modern lamps and a captain’s chair. At the far end of the room, to the right of the big window, was an alcove that I knew led to a small sitting room with a TV and several bookcases.

The dresser with the mirror was clearly Renata’s domain. Across the top of it were spread all the tools of the womanly arts - a hair brush, a jewelry box, a wig, and a tray full of lipsticks, eye shadows, powders, and other elements of witchcraft. The other dresser top was blank by comparison; it only held a set of keys, some spare change, and a large container for pills marked off by the days of the week.

I had gotten about that far in my visual survey of the room when I heard the gasp, a sharp intake of breath behind me to the right. I jerked around, simultaneously swinging the bat into position for action.

And saw Renata Chalmers.

She stood in the doorway of the guest bathroom, her deep brown eyes dilated in surprise. Her right hand was on a middle button of her green and white blouse, as though she’d stopped dead in the act of dressing. The pale pink of a lacy bra was just visible. Okay, I noticed; I couldn’t help it.

For a long moment, with her eyes fixed on me, I felt like a butterfly mounted on a pin in somebody’s collection. The room was hot and my mouth was dry and this should have happened to somebody else, like maybe Ralph Pendergast.

“Jeff!” Renata said at last. Her eyes traveled down to the bat in my hand. “What are you doing in my room? And with that thing?”

I let my right hand and the bat drop to my side. “I thought I heard a noise,” I said lamely.

“I pretty much always make a noise when I take a shower.” The temperature of her voice was just this side of frigid. Her hair was damp from the steam of the shower and the Victorian ringlets from last night were gone. She buttoned her top two buttons as I avoided her eyes, certain that my face must be turning the color of her underwear.

“But there wasn’t... there shouldn’t have been anybody here,” I stammered. “Mac left fifteen minutes ago. I was sure he would have taken everybody with him.”

“He had to set up some things early,” Renata said. “My husband and your sister did go along, but I wasn’t ready yet. You could have knocked, you know.”

“It’s this murder business and the robbery, I guess. It has me on edge. I’m sorry. I feel ridiculous.”

“You look it, too,” she said. “A baseball bat, yet!”

She laughed and I managed a smile. “It was the nearest weapon I could grab to defend myself.”

“Well, thanks for not using it on me. Are you going over to the colloquium or do you have more sleuthing to do?”

Both, actually. The colloquium is where I would see and interview the people on Mac’s list. Without telling Renata that, I offered to give her a lift in my seldom-used 1998 Volkswagen New Beetle, but she demurred.

“On a morning like this I’d just as soon walk,” she said. “It isn’t that far.”

True enough, so I decided to leave my bike at home and walk with her. It was still cooler outside than you’d expect from the brightness of the sun, but it was perfect for a brisk walk. The long-legged Renata, swinging her huge handbag, set a pace I had to work to keep up with.

“It’s hard to believe Hugh’s dead,” she said. “He was so lively.”

“Maybe too lively. He had quite a reputation for playing to win, no matter what the game.”

She nodded. “The reputation was well deserved. And what you must have heard about his success with the ladies - that was true, too.”

I let that pass. “Your husband and Matheson didn’t get along, did they?”

“Well, you saw them yesterday.”

“Yeah, and I’ve also heard stories.”

“Probably true.”

I shook my head and said I found it amazing that grown men could be so venomous over a shared hobby.

“There’s a little more to it than that,” Renata said.

“Meaning?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

I supposed she was right. Chalmers was on Mac’s list of people to suspect or at least interview, but Mac himself had provided the old man’s alibi for the period when Matheson was murdered.

But there were other members of the Anglo-Indian Club on that list, people Renata would know.

“Tell me about Molly Crocker,” I said.

“She’s one smart cookie, Jeff - plus ambitious, aggressive, and tough. She was especially tough on deadbeat dads when she was a prosecutor. Her fans call her Maximum Molly.”