With a sense of exhilaration I was beginning to believe Lynda could be close to the truth, a truth Mac probably didn’t suspect even though he had put Chalmers on the list to be interviewed.

“And what about Chalmers’s precious stolen books?” I said.

“I don’t know why he missed two of them, but I bet he has the one that’s still missing. We need to search his room at the McCabes’ house.”

“I didn’t see anything when I was there with Renata this morning.”

Lynda’s eyes dilated. “What were you doing-”

“I wasn’t looking for the books,” I said. Wait, that didn’t sound right. “I’ll explain later. I guess it would take a really thorough search to find the books if they were hidden, and I can’t do that now. I have to take Nakamora to a live interview on WIJC in” - I looked at my watch - “five minutes.”

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

Applause echoed over the speaker in the hallway. Bob Nakamora apparently had finished enlightening his audience about “Holmes on the Radio.”

“You can’t just go barging into Mac’s house,” I told Lynda.

“Why not? You would if you weren’t tied up.”

“I’m kin.”

“And don’t tell me you’ll do it later,” she said, talking right over me. She pulled a folded-up copy of the colloquium schedule out of her purse. “This is the perfect time because Mac’s talking next. You can bet your sister and both Chalmerses will be hanging on every word. Nobody’s going to go back to the house for anything.”

All of a sudden we had a lot of company in the hallway. People were oozing out of the Hearth Room, taking advantage of the end of Bob Nakamora’s talk to run outside for a smoke, hit the john, or just stretch their legs.

Nakamora himself paused just outside the doorway, straining his neck to look around. Renata Chalmers, standing next to him, tapped him on the arm and pointed at me. He smiled in relief and started coming my way.

“You win, dammit.” I pulled the key to the McCabe household out of my pocket and gave it to Lynda. “Wipe your feet on the hall carpet before you go in.”

“I always do. Meet you back here.”

She snatched the key out of my hand like one of those toy banks that grabs your coins. She was down the escalator by the time Bob Nakamora reached me.

“Are we going to be late for the interview?” he fretted.

“Not if we hurry. Come on.”

As we descended on the escalator, Renata Chalmers peered over the railing at us, her lovely face devoid of any expression that I could read. What did she know about the murder, I wondered, and what did she suspect?

We reached the main level and kept going down. The studios of WIJC-FM, like the offices of the campus newspaper, The Spectator, are located on the lower level of Muckerheide Center. The Spectator was shut down for spring break, but not the radio station, which is college-owned but not exclusively student-run. With impeccable timing, Tony Lampwicke was just finishing his interview with the author of some incredibly obscure (and therefore noteworthy) academic book when we arrived.

The long-time host of the weekly Crosscurrents program nodded to acknowledge our presence and moved smoothly into an introduction of a new topic in his heavy British accent. “Very stimulating indeed,” he said to an invisible conversation partner, apparently a telephone interviewee. “I’m sure your fine book will spark quite a revival of interest in Bulgarian neoclassicism. You know, the medium of radio itself is undergoing something of a revival these days...”

Lampwicke famously has a penchant for analyzing everything beyond the bounds of reason with a humorless intensity. He must be well into his forties, but he somehow seemed younger sitting behind the microphone in his loafers and cable knit sweater. His chin was sharp enough to be a lethal weapon and was covered by a neatly trimmed goatee.

“We have with us in the studio today on Crosscurrents an expert on old-time radio, and particularly the many radio adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the famous...”

I wanted to pace or crack my knuckles or do anything other than sit and listen to those two babble on. Most of all I wanted to join Lynda at Mac’s house. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and I eased myself out of the studio. After all, I’d done my duty just by making sure that Nakamora had arrived on time. I was sure he could find his way back upstairs.

The glass door to the studio had just closed behind me when I heard, “Cody! Hold it right there.”

It was the law. And he was wearing a deerstalker cap.

Chapter Twenty-Nine - Police Procedures

“Popcorn told me I’d find you here.”

“Oscar, you look ridiculous in that deerstalker,” I said.

“I’m just trying it on.” At least he had just enough taste to sound a little defensive. “You liked the Panama hat better?”

I ignored that.

We started walking toward a bench across from the studio.

“How’s the investigation going?”

“It’s continuing.”

Wow, that was informative. “Throw me a bone here, Oscar. For instance, did you find out who it was your witness saw coming out of Matheson’s room, wearing the deerstalker?” He hesitated, as if he didn’t want to tell me, so I went into persuasion mode. “Come on, Oscar. I have a stake in this. We’re on my turf here. I just want to know where things stand.”

He shook his head. “Nobody admitted it, and it could have been just about any clown in this carnival.”

We sat down.

“Including a woman?” I pressed. “You said ‘he’ when you told me about it, but couldn’t it have been a woman, like Molly Crocker, for example?” I was having a hard time letting go of that particular bone, even though I liked her.

“I guess so, if she were dressed in a man’s clothing or something that could pass for it - gender-neutral, I guess you’d call it. Funny you should mention the judge, though. We had an interesting conversation, for reasons I won’t get into. I think she’s clean. If she hasn’t killed that lunatic she’s married to, I figure she wouldn’t kill anybody.”

I could see his point. That would make an interesting defense strategy.

“So you’re nowhere on the deerstalkers?”

“I didn’t say that and don’t put words in my mouth. I got the names of the five people who bought deerstalkers from that guy selling them along with the books. I’ve got Gibbons working the list.”

Damn. I should have pressed Pinkwater on that.

“Five not counting you, I presume. Anybody I know?”

“I don’t know who you know, but I’m drawing the line there, pal. I’m not giving you any names. Besides, it may not mean anything anyway. We’ve got a new witness, a woman on the housekeeping staff, who got a better look at a guy coming out of Matheson’s room.”

Now he tells me. In the news business, that’s what is known as “burying the lead.”

“He was a redhead,” Oscar added. “That’s all I know right now. What I wanted to tell you is, I’m going back to the Winfield right now to interview the witness myself.”

Somebody saw me. Fighting panic, I tried to pretend my hair wasn’t the color of a carrot and this couldn’t possibly have anything to do with me.

“Al Kane is a red-head,” I mused, hating myself for casting suspicion on one of my favorite writers. “And we know he likes guns.” I was thinking of all those years of National Pistol Association commercials that ended with him pointing a Magnum .357 right at the viewer.

“He claims he’s never even owned a gun,” Oscar said. “I’ve got a search warrant to have all the hotel rooms checked. We’re looking for a .32 revolver. The bullet was still in the body, didn’t go right through. That and the fact that there were no powder burns - ‘tattooing’ they call it - probably means the killer wasn’t too close to the body. Now, that’s kind of odd. How far away can you get in a hotel room? But it doesn’t tell us much. And, of course, the killer wiped the place clean of fingerprints.”