She frowned at him. “It’s nothing to be so thrilled about.”
“Sorry.”
She sighed and leaned closer. She might as well tell him. It would pass the time. but she wasn’t in the mood for an encounter with any new spirits today so she had to be quiet about it. “There’s one hanging around who looks like he used to work here.”
“Uniform?” Liam asked.
“No. Plain clothes. So a detective maybe?” she guessed.
“Era?”
“Judging by the hair style and the style of clothing, I’d say a long time ago. Nineteen-thirties maybe.”
“So like the Maltese Falcon era?”
She pulled back to glare at him. “You really like to romanticize my pain, don’t you?”
“Oh, come on. You’re fine.”
“Yeah, as long as I don’t make eye contact.”
“Any others?” Liam asked.
“No. And I wouldn’t tell you anyway. You’re enjoying this too much.”
“Oh? Kind of like how you enjoy investigating murders?” he asked.
“Touché.” She smiled.
“You two are still hanging around?”
Natalie glanced up to find Pataki, his hat in his hand, standing in front of them. She jumped up from the seat. “Did you arrest Peter?”
“Shh!” Pataki looked around. “Jeezus. Come with me and be quiet.”
He led them to what looked like an interrogation room. Not the most comfortable place for this conversation especially considering she and Liam had been the first persons of interest in this case. They were lucky they didn’t get a first-hand view of this room weeks ago when Pataki and Garland first came to Mudville.
But things were different now and she was dying to know. She barely waited for Pataki to close the door when she said, “What happened?”
He tipped his head to the side, then nodded. “You were right.”
“I knew it!”
Pataki let out a grunt at her I told you so before he continued. “Yeah, yeah. I know. In his apartment we found pretty much everything there could be to implicate him. Graves’s computer was there, the one you said was missing from the apartment. The kid said he took it as evidence. That it would prove that Graves stole a book idea from a paper the kid wrote. He had a copy of Graves’s latest book too, all marked up in red with these angry comments written in the margins. There were empty potassium bottles in the trash—luckily for us kids never take out the garbage. And get this. On the kid’s laptop, the browser search history was full of things like how to kill someone that won’t show up in an autopsy.”
Liam shook his head. “Damn.”
Pataki nodded. “I know, right? The kid did everything except tie the evidence up in a red bow and hand it to us.”
“So why do you look so miserable?” Natalie asked.
“Because you found this. Not us. And it should have been us. It was all right there. Why the hell didn’t we check the boyfriend’s place after we interviewed the girl?”
“Because the lead to check the TAs in the first place came from a doctor and a shop owner playing at being Nancy Drew?” Liam suggested, turning Pataki’s own words against him.
Pataki closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath before opening them again. He nodded and then made eye contact first with Liam as he said, “You’re right.” He looked to Natalie and continued. “It was stupid of me not to take you both more seriously. I won’t make that mistake again.”
She lifted a shoulder. “It’s all right. It all worked out in the end. So what’s next for Peter? And Mia?”
