“Such as the Library of Popular Culture,” Lynda interpreted.

Post executed a little bow in her direction. “I am virtually certain our lawyers can make it happen.”

“Your lawyers,” Mac drawled, “will have to go through me and the college’s lawyers first. They will find the task neither easy nor enjoyable.”

“On the contrary,” Post said. “You don’t know my lawyers. These particular legal talents will enjoy it. In the case of the Renfield Collection of Disney cartoon cells-”

Lynda pulled on my arm and kept pulling until we were through the doors of the Hearth Room. “I couldn’t stand anymore of that,” she explained.

“It wasn’t a lot of fun,” I agreed. “I guess we aren’t very good sleuths. We kind of made fools out of ourselves back there.”

“What do you mean, ‘kind of’’? We’ll never live this down. McCabe won’t let us.”

We started wandering through Muckerheide Center. I took Lynda’s hand and she didn’t jerk it back. I still wasn’t sure where our relationship was going, but at least it looked like we had one. So I wasn’t as depressed as I should have been about the fiasco we were leaving behind us.

“Maybe Post killed Matheson,” I said. “He was on Mac’s list. And look at how he benefits from this whole mess if he can use it to convince Chalmers to back legal action against the college.”

Lynda shook her head. “That’s too indirect and too uncertain to be a motive for murder.”

“I know,” I sighed as we passed the President’s Dining Room, “but it’s too bad. I’d love seeing that prig in prison gray.”

“What do you suppose Mac has up his sleeve?”

“Don’t ask me. As far as he’s concerned I’m just his idiot Watson. He hasn’t even explained to me the part about Matheson not stealing the books. That could be the solution to the murder for all I know.”

Without destination in mind we found ourselves heading aimlessly down the back stairs. The main level of Muckerheide looked as if it had been hit by a neutron bomb. The bookstore, the gallery, the main dining room were all dark. The only living being in sight was the Viking girl at the information desk and the only sound was the small TV she was watching, probably WWE wrestling.

As we kept walking down the stairs toward the next level, Lynda pulled the agenda for the colloquium out of her purse.

“This is practically a timetable of events leading up to the murder,” she said. “There must be a clue in here somewhere. It always worked for Hercule Poirot.”

“Max Cutter does not use timetables.”

She went on, ignoring me. “Obviously, the crucial time period is between the end of Kate’s talk - Matheson was still alive then - and when I found the body an hour or so later. Where was everybody then?”

I mentally worked my way through Mac’s list. “I don’t know about Pfannenstiel, Pinkwater, or Post - three P’s in a pod! - but we’re not looking at any of them as serious suspects. Molly Crocker and Noah Queensbury alibi each other. Renata Chalmers was getting dressed and putting her hair up in those fancy ringlets. Her husband supposedly was discussing some obscure point in a Sherlock Holmes story with Mac, but you’ve effectively questioned that.”

By now we were on the lowest level of Muckerheide Center. The game room was still open, attracting a few stranded dormies, but not many.

“And now Mac is giving Chalmers an alibi again,” Lynda mused. “Chalmers couldn’t have hit me on the head. But wait a minute! It didn’t have to be the killer who did that. If you and I figured out that Chalmers had the book, somebody else could have done the same thing - somebody bent on stealing it.”

So Mac could be wrong. Or maybe he didn’t have to be. My brother-in-law never stopped playing games, especially word games. Had he ever actually said that Chalmers wasn’t guilty? I wasn’t sure. What I remembered was Mac talking as if the coroner’s report and the TV segment on the Chalmers Collection revealed something critical to the case.

“There’s something in my office I think we ought to take a look at,” I told Lynda. “It might be the answer to the whole thing.”

“What whole thing? What are you talking about?”

“A video of the-”

I shut up. We’d just turned a corner and encountered a horrendous sight. Staring malevolently at a row of soft drink and snack machines was Oscar Hummel. The source of his anguish was elementary to someone who knew the chief as well as I did: He had just worked himself up to having to actually buy cigarettes, then had gone looking for a cigarette vending machine, only to realize that there isn’t a single such mechanism on campus.

Oscar heard our footsteps and whirled around.

“Teal!” He managed a smile, of a sort. “You’re a lifesaver. I need-”

“The love of a good woman,” Lynda told him. “But what you want is a cigarette. Sorry, Chief, I quit. Remember? Let me buy you a root beer.”

With a grunt and a sour expression on his face, Oscar ungraciously accepted the offer. Lynda bought Diet Cokes for the two of us and a Dad’s Root Beer for Oscar. Drinks in hand, we took over a little Formica-topped table in a grimy alcove. I wanted to get out of there, to take Lynda to my office and show her something, but there was no way to exit gracefully. Besides, I wanted to hear what the official investigation had turned up.

“You saved me some shoe leather,” Oscar said. “I was just about to go looking for you guys.”

“So, Chief,” I said, putting it on the professional level, “did you find the gun?”

Oscar knocked back his Dad’s as if it were his favorite brew, a local product called Hudepohl 14K. “No gun. And our second witness says Kane wasn’t the redhead she saw coming out of Matheson’s room.” The expression on his face was disappointment and a little more, maybe discomfort. “A redheaded man and a blondish woman, it turns out. That’s what the witness saw. Funny coincidence, that’s just what I’m seeing now as I look at you two.”

“Funny,” Lynda agreed, looking grim. “But actually I’ve never thought of myself as exactly a blonde. I’d say my hair leans more toward light brown.”

“I consider it dark honey,” I chipped in. My stomach felt like some sailor had been using it for knot-tying practice.

Oscar drummed his right hand on the table, like he didn’t know what to do without a cigarette in it. “I don’t like coincidences. So I asked a few questions, Teal, and I found out that you spent a lot of time hanging around Matheson yesterday.”

She shrugged. “I already told you I sat next to him a few times. We talked about Sherlock Holmes.”

“And that’s all - with Matheson’s reputation as a lady-killer and your thing with Jeff here on the rocks?” He shook his head. “That’s hard to believe. No, I figure you got a lot cozier than that. He probably gave you the key card to his room. It wasn’t on his body or anywhere in the room. Then Jeff walked in on you two later. Anybody who knows Jeff knows how jealous he is when it comes to you. Goodbye lawyer.”

“What!” I could feel myself starting to sweat.

“When we were talking earlier today it was obvious you were trying to point the finger at somebody, almost anybody - Molly Crocker, Al Kane. Now I can see you were really just pointing away from you.”

This was my worst nightmare come true. “You can’t be serious, Oscar.”

“Am I laughing? Believe me, old buddy, I take no pleasure in this. In fact, it’s hurting me more than it is you.”

Before I could express my sincere doubt about that, Lynda said, “Bullshit. You’re eating this up. But your stupid theory makes no sense. Why would I leave the room with Jeff if he’d killed a man I’d been intimate with, which by the way I hadn’t? Why would I be telling you right now that you’re crazy instead of putting the finger on him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you like the idea that a man killed for you.”

Lynda threw up her hands with an appropriate amount of drama. “I give up. Oscar, you are certifiable.”