Happy as I was that I hadn’t missed any of my prints or Lynda’s, I also felt guilty that I’d possibly destroyed important evidence. But what were the chances of that, really? In detective stories, fingerprints are almost always false clues that get the wrong people in trouble. Surely whoever killed Matheson knew enough to wipe up afterwards.

“But I have a hard time figuring Al Kane for this,” Oscar went on. “From what I can tell, he’s about the least popular guy here but that’s just because he isn’t one of those Sherlockian wackos. I don’t see a motive. In fact, I don’t see a reason for anybody to kill Matheson. But then again, I also don’t see why a guy with all his dough would steal the stuff from that collection. Kleptomania, maybe?”

“What!”

Oscar looked puzzled. “Didn’t Ed Decker tell you? I told my guys to let him know. We found two of the missing books in Matheson’s hotel room.”

Chapter Thirty - Not Tonight, I Have a Headache

My surprise was a put-on, of course. Oscar’s force is small but not incompetent. I knew they would find the books sooner or later, or the housekeeping staff would.

But Oscar wasn’t within a mile of solving this murder. And so far as I could tell, neither was Mac - never mind his mysterious pronouncements designed to give that impression.

That left it up to me - and Lynda. Having no more real questions for the chief, I wrapped up the conversation and walked out of Muckerheide Center as casually as I could muster.

Then I broke into a jog.

Not much more than fifteen minutes later, taking a few shortcuts along the way, I arrived at the old McCabe house on Half Moon Street. I didn’t have my key, having given it to Lynda, so I banged the iron door knocker. A long minute passed without the door opening. I banged again, loud enough to wake the dead. Still no answer.

Finally I turned the doorknob and gave an experimental push. The door opened.

“Anybody home?” I yelled, standing in the hallway. The words seemed to echo off the brass hall tree, the antique secretary, the framed paintings. Everything was familiar, yet somehow ominous. The silence was creeping me out. “Lynda!” I called

No response.

She might have completed her reconnaissance mission in Mac’s guest suite and returned to St. Benignus already - except that I’d seen her yellow Mustang in the driveway outside my carriage house apartment.

I moved through the house slowly, like a thief in the night. That made no sense at all after the racket I’d already made, but I was functioning on the level of raw nerves and instinct now; sense or nonsense had nothing to do with it.

Within several feet of the guest suite I could see that the door was open. Nothing surprising about that, but it made the hair on the nape of my neck do handstands. I walked even slower, trying to prepare myself for whatever I might find in the room.

It didn’t work, of course; nothing could prepare me for the awful sight of Lynda lying just inside the guest room, limp and lifeless as a marionette with its strings cut. Her body was curled almost in a fetal position, with her legs bent back and one of her blue-gray shoes off.

Unsteady on my legs, I dropped to my knees and felt her pulse. It was strong.

Satisfied that she was in no danger of dying, I held her hand and kissed her on the forehead. “Lynda, Lynda,” I murmured, not expecting her to hear. “If we could get back together, I’d never be a jerk again.”

Her eyelashes flickered. Her lips parted and a sound came out, halfway between a moan and a mumble.

“Lynda! Easy now,” I said. “Don’t strain yourself, honey.”

She muttered something. I put my left ear next to her lips.

“Jeff.” She swallowed.

“Yes?”

“What you just said. Was that a promise?”

“Well, I could try.”

She managed a rueful grin. “Nice loophole. Listen, Jeff, I want you to know that Maggie didn’t really break her ankle in a parachuting accident. She barely strained it.”

“What?” This was so out of left field I wondered if she were delirious. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m fessing up. I’m telling you that I ordered Maggie to stay home and nurse her ankle yesterday so I could assign myself to the story because I missed you. You’re a bundle of neurotic ticks and only slightly less crazy than McCabe, but I missed you so much that I just had to see you again.”

That was somewhat like being slapped with her hand, then kissed by her lips, but the overall effect put me in serious danger of levitating. I tried not to show it.

“Then why’d you get rid of my picture in your apartment?” I asked.

“I didn’t. I just moved it to the dresser in my bedroom. Get that leer off your face.” She winced. “Mamma mia, what a headache. It feels like - Oh! Oh, no!” With a look of wild panic on her face, she jerked her hand away from mine, pulled herself up from the floor, and stumbled to the bathroom. Immediately came the sickening sound of repeated vomiting. When Lynda emerged again she was pale, washed out. I put my arm around her.

“I actually used to like mysteries,” she said. “After this weekend, I’m not sure I can read them anymore.”

“You never liked mine.”

“I never said that. They’re really pretty good, except for all that macho crap and the sexism.”

Fighting the urge to respond to that, I said, “What the hell happened here?”

“I was in that other little room, the sitting room with the bookcases, when I thought I heard a sound in here. The room looked empty, but when I went on to check out the hallway I got conked from behind.”

“The bastard must have been hiding in the bathroom. Let me look at your head.”

Gently as I could I separated the matted hair to get a look at the wound. It was a bloody bump about the size of a quarter. I accidentally touched it with the tip of my index finger.

“Ow!” Lynda jerked away. “Sadist.”

“It doesn’t look too bad,” I said, “but I understand that head wounds are tricky. You should go to the hospital.”

“I should use dental floss and give up red meat, too. At least, that’s what you used to tell me.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want some doctor tapping my knee with his little mallet. Just give me a minute, I’ll be okay.”

“Whatever you say.” The new Jeff Cody is non-directional. “Did you find anything while you were poking around?”

She shook her head, then winced. “No chance to. Why did somebody do this to me?”

“Because somebody wanted you out of the way before you could prove the identity of the killer.”

“Chalmers?”

“I can’t think of a better candidate. He looks frail, but maybe he hit you with his cane.”

It didn’t make sense that Chalmers would just leave her there, right in the place he was staying, but then maybe that’s what we were supposed to think.

“The book,” Lynda said suddenly, gripping my shoulder. “We still have to look for that missing Holmes book.”

I talked her into letting me clean her wound first with soap and water and peroxide from the bathroom cabinet.

“As you said, this is where the killer had to be hiding,” she pointed out as we stood in the bathroom. “We might as well start our search here.”

I couldn’t see hiding a priceless book in a room where people were taking showers and flushing the toilet. Humidity is death on paper products. But we gave it a go. It wasn’t an especially large bathroom, and a few minutes of intensive searching was enough to convince both of us that Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887 wasn’t hidden in the towels or wrapped in waterproof plastic inside the toilet bowl.

“Maybe it isn’t hidden at all,” I suggested. “Chalmers probably never dreamed anybody would be rude enough to search his rooms, not even his host’s brother-in-law.”

“And then maybe he didn’t have time to hide it after he knocked me out,” Lynda added. (Actually, that sounds pretty weak right now, but it didn’t then.)