Twelve Angry Librarians

If only Randi, Marisue, and I had sat at a table near Gavin’s that day. I could have observed this for myself and immediately have brought it to Kanesha’s attention. I realized that Crais might simply be clumsy and was always knocking things over and so on, and what Virginia and Ada Lou witnessed was normal behavior for him. I’d not seen any signs of clumsiness from him, however.

At the moment he stood balancing a wineglass atop an empty plate. As I watched he turned slightly to pick up a couple of small wedges of cheese from the table, and when he did so, the plate and glass remained steady.

As a somewhat klutzy person myself, I would never have attempted that, because as sure as I had, I would have tilted the plate and wine would have gone everywhere. Crais’s balance was better than mine. I continued to watch him for a few minutes longer, but nothing happened in the way of klutziness. I concluded that Crais had staged the little accidents at the luncheon table to suit his own purposes.

I spotted Nancy Dunlap and Cathleen Matera at the end of the table away from where Harlan Crais stood talking to the same three women he’d been chatting with for probably the last ten minutes. Now would be a good time to rejoin Nancy and Cathleen and finish our conversation.

“Come on, Diesel,” I said in a low voice. “Let’s go talk to those nice ladies again, okay?” He chirped in response. He still seemed all right, but before much longer, I knew we’d both be ready to head home.

“Hi, Charlie.” Nancy grinned when Diesel and I walked up to her and Cathleen. “Our little chat earlier got cut off pretty dramatically.” She bent to scratch Diesel behind one ear, and he purred.

“I’ll say it did.” Cathleen chuckled as she watched Nancy and Diesel. “Your expression was priceless when you realized Mitch Handler had overheard you.” She chuckled again.

“Not one of my more shining moments,” I said. “It was awkward, but he actually talked to me and told me what I was trying to find out.”

“We aren’t going to ask you what the story was, even though we’re dying to know,” Cathleen said.

“Thanks,” I said. “If you do have a few more minutes to talk, could I ask you a few questions about Gavin’s party the other night?”

Cathleen groaned. “And here I was, trying to forget the whole darn thing.”

Nancy rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t that

bad. We’ve both been to worse. Gavin was an obnoxious twit on Thursday night, but he didn’t seem to be as intent on malice as he usually was.”

“Really?” That struck me as interesting. “I would have expected him to be in full-on attack mode. Didn’t he basically force you all to attend the party?”

Nancy shrugged. “He didn’t force me. He had no power over me anymore. I only went because Cathleen begged me to.”

“I knew Nancy could make him back off if he started in on me,” Cathleen said. “I just couldn’t deal with him.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “I couldn’t, either. In my case, I ended up hitting him. That’s not really the way to handle a problem like the one Gavin presented.”

Nancy quirked her eyebrows at me. “I bet it felt good, though. There were a few times I longed to let go and slap the you-know-what out of him, the smug little twit.”

Her voice had grown heated, and her body language tense, as she spoke. Nancy didn’t seem as immune to Gavin as she might want others to think. The anger hadn’t disappeared, obviously.

I let that pass, however. By now I was pretty sure who killed Gavin, and it wasn’t either Nancy or Cathleen.

“Back to the party,” I said. “Will you tell me what you observed, in the order that it happened, if you can?”

They exchanged a glance, and both of them shrugged.

“Why not?” Cathleen said, and Nancy nodded in agreement.

“You start,” Nancy said.

Cathleen launched into a summary of her observations of the party. Much of what she told me tallied with what I’d already heard from Randi and Marisue. Cathleen and Nancy had stayed on after my two friends left, however; that was the time that interested me the most.

Nancy took up the narrative from Cathleen at the point when Randi and Marisue left. “Sylvia, that odd woman who was such a close friend of Maxine’s, left soon after your two friends did. Mitch Handler didn’t stay more than five minutes after Sylvia left.”

“So at that point, the only others there besides you and Cathleen were Harlan Crais, Maxine, and Gavin. Is that correct?” I asked.

“No, Bob Coben was still there, I think.” Cathleen frowned. “Wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” Nancy said. “He was, for maybe another ten minutes or so. Said he had to meet someone. Sounded like a hookup to me.” She shook her head. “I don’t see the attraction myself.”

Cathleen rolled her eyes. “You can’t get past the earrings and the tattoos. He’s really good-looking, I think.” She sighed. “I’d’ve gone out with him, but I’m probably old enough to be his big sister.”

Nancy snorted. “Big sister, yeah. More like his mother, you mean.”