“Well, the janitor wasn’t sure that it was her he saw. If he was stoned... and knew her face... that’s a problem. Whoever tookthe maps knew what they were doing—they’re valuable, but not the most valuable; they weren’t often referenced; and they’re not so uncommon that their sale would get special attention. So there’s all that.”
“Huh. Is this woman French?”
“No. Not Irish, either. Born right here in Minnesota.”
—
They were still talking about the map thefts and the Quill murder when Trane came up the stairs, looking harassed. She blew a stray hank of hair from her face, and said, “Okay, let’s see it.”
The two campus cops followed them to Quill’s carrel. Virgil unlocked the door, and said, “The pencil point is an inch away from it.”
“What is it?” the shorter of the two cops asked.
Trane didn’t answer. She got down on her knees, pushed her glasses back on her nose, looked, and said, “Okay.”
She stood up, and said, “Lock the door.”
Virgil did, and said, “We’ve got to go somewhere and talk about it.”
“There are a couple of study rooms here...”
—
The campus cops would have been happy to hear their conversation, but Virgil waved them off with a cheerful “See you later, guys” as he followed Trane to an empty room.
“Crime Scene ought to be here pretty quick, given what I told them and how their asses are now up around their ears,” Trane said. “If Quill was screwing somebody in there, it’d have to be after hours. And we know he was there after hours.”
“You had no hint that he was dating anybody?”
“Haven’t been able to find anyone,” she said. “There’ve been two weeks of publicity, and nobody’s come forward. Why would he be nailing somebody in the library? His house is a five-minute drive from here.”
—
“There’s something else,” Virgil said, and Trane’s eyebrows went up.
He told her about the campus cops investigating the maps theft and that a woman who worked in the library, apparently on the next floor up, had been questioned.
“A janitor, who may have been stoned at the time, thought he saw the woman over there late at night. In the map collection,” Virgil said. “She used to work there and might have had keys for both buildings. Suppose he spooked her and she wanted to get out of sight, so she came over here...”
“... and ran into Quill. But would she kill him? If she’s a librarian, wouldn’t she make an excuse and then ask him what the heck he was doing there?”
“That sounds reasonable, depending on how spooked she was. Whoever took the maps took at least thousands of dollars’ worth. From what those cops told me, they could be missing even more.”
“We need to dig into this,” Trane said.
“I’ll tell you what, Margaret, I thinkyouneed to dig into it. I’ve talked to two campus cops and a librarian here, and a secretary over at the Humphrey Center, and there have been all kinds of people walking around here since I reopened the carrel—so word could get out that some new guy is investigating. It’d be better for all of us if you were running this part of it.”
“You’re right,” Trane said, looking around. A student seemed to be watching them through the study room window. “I’ll take it. Thank you. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to give you the name of the woman the cops talked to...”
“I’ll check her hair color, too...” Trane said.
Virgil: “Yeah, do that, although—”
“I know. Would Quill be screwing a map thief? And why? That doesn’t sound right. But if that’s a pubic hair, it didn’t drift down from heaven.”
“We don’t know how long it’s been there,” Virgil said. “He might have been having an affair, bringing someone here, before he and his last wife broke up.”
