Twelve Angry Librarians

“I did sit at the back, and I couldn’t see Gavin’s table clearly from there.” I reminded her about the two retired librarians, Ada Lou and Virginia, whose last names I didn’t know. “I overheard them last night discussing Crais and his clumsiness. They were sitting at a nearby table and saw it all.” I paused. “Well, I don’t think they saw him actually switch bottles, but they saw him knock a bottle off the table. I’m sure if you talk to them, they’ll tell you all about it. It might take a while, but they’ll talk.”

I glimpsed a brief smile before Kanesha raised her mug to her lips. She had already talked to Virginia and Ada Lou. They were eccentric enough to make even Kanesha smile.

“After the switch, all Crais had to do was wait. Gavin would open that bottle and drink, never suspecting that it was the bottle he’d poisoned and given to Crais. He went up to the podium without it, started talking, then realized he’d left the bottle at the table. He gestured at Lisa to hand it to him. He opened it, drank, and then of course realized he was going to die. Lisa was watching him, and she told me she thought he looked shocked in the split second or two before the cyanide hit him and he collapsed behind the podium.”

“Where did he get the cyanide?” Kanesha asked.

I shrugged. “That I don’t know. He might have gotten it through Bob Coben. Coben had access to chemicals at the lab. I told you he’s working on a master’s degree in chemistry. Gavin could have blackmailed Bob to get it for him, or he could have ordered it himself online from overseas. Stewart told me it was obtainable that way.”

“Have you figured out how the cyanide was put into the bottles?”

“I think so. Make a hole in the bottom of the bottle where it’s far less likely to be seen, insert the cyanide, and then stop up the hole with some kind of superglue.”

“I see. You’ve got it all worked out pretty neatly.” Kanesha leaned back in her chair and regarded me like a professor who’d been questioning her student.

“Well, how did I do?” I almost added teacher but that wouldn’t have gone over well. Kanesha didn’t appreciate flippancy. “Did I get it right?”

Kanesha didn’t respond right away. The silence between us lengthened, then suddenly she laughed.

You did make a fool of yourself after all. It was too far-fetched to be believable.

I sighed and waited for her to tell me how big an idiot I was for wasting her time.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Kanesha said. “How you manage to figure these things out without all the other information that goes into solving a case.”

“Do you mean I’m right?” I was astonished. I’d prepared myself to be laughed at, and she did laugh, but not for the reason I expected.

Kanesha nodded. “Based on information I have, I’m pretty sure you are. We’ve traced the cyanide to Fong’s house in Alabama. We don’t know yet how or where he got it, but investigators there found where he’d hidden it.” She shook her head. “He was incredibly careless to go off and leave the evidence right there in his house.”

“Sounds like typical Gavin to me,” I said. “Always thinking he was too smart to get caught.”

“I guess you’re right about that,” Kanesha said. “We’ll find out where he got the cyanide eventually, but it will take time. Now, about those little old ladies, Miss Ada Lou and Miss Virginia. They were hard to track down, but they finally showed up in the room we were using at the hotel about six o’clock last night. Seems they realized that what they had seen at the luncheon might have some bearing on the case, and I had an officer watching them from then on. I guess they were talking about it again when you saw them later.”

“Harlan Crais came into the suite where we were having a small gathering,” I said. “I guess that set them off again.”

“They didn’t see the actual bottle switch, but I have confirmation of that from another source.”

“Harlan Crais himself?” I asked.

“When you texted me last night, I’d been trying to track him down for almost an hour. He wasn’t answering his cell phone or responding to messages left on his room voice mail. Thanks to you, though, I was able to question him further last night.”

“So he admitted to switching the bottles?”

“Not right away,” Kanesha said. “He was nervous. Pretty sure he thought he was about to be arrested for murder because he didn’t think I’d believe his story. I finally convinced him to tell me.”

“Was he the one who had blackballed Gavin and kept him from getting interviews?”

“Yes, and he explained why,” Kanesha said. “It never occurred to him that Fong would try to kill him, he said, but he got suspicious at that party when Fong suddenly turned generous. He didn’t actually examine the bottle until the next morning, and that’s when he found the evidence of tampering. You figured that out, too—how Fong got the poison into the bottles.”

“Did you charge Crais with anything?”