Sunday
When she got to her car, Ginny pulled out her phone and accessed her brother’s home number. Alex answered on the second ring.
“I’ve got another question for you. Were there any unaccounted for needle sticks on the victims, any of them?”
“I’ll have to look. Why?”
“I may have a theory about how Professor Craig was exposed to this virus.”
“So tell me.”
“Needle sticks. Look for needle sticks.”
“Blood to blood transmission.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll send you those files tomorrow.”
“I’ll be on the lookout for them. Love to everyone. Bye.”
Her mother met her as she came in.
“Hi, darling. How was the library?”
“More interesting than usual. Some of the shelving in the stacks has been moved out to make way for new ones and you wouldn’t believe the mess they found underneath.”
“I can imagine. You have a message, dear.”
“Oh?”
“Some nice young man called.”
“Hal?”
“No. This was someone else. Someone I haven’t spoken to before. He asked you to call, if it wasn’t too inconvenient.”
Ginny pulled the message off the pad and looked at the name and number. Jim Mackenzie. She pursed her lips, wondering if she ought to be encouraging him, then decided he might want to talk about the virus.
“Excuse me while I go make this phone call. I’ll be upstairs.” Ginny took the number and retreated to her library/office/computer room. She dialed the number on the note and heard a recorded voice directing her to leave a message or dial 9-1-1, if it was a medical emergency. She almost hung up without saying anything, but decided it would be better to let him know his message had gotten through.
“This is Ginny Forbes returning your call at—” she glanced at the clock, “—six twenty-five p.m. Sunday. My number is—”
“Ginny?” Jim’s voice interrupted the rest of her message.
“Yes?”
“Sorry about that. I was hoping you’d call and I had to step out for a moment.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering whether you’d heard anything from your brother.”
“Yes, I have.” She outlined what Alex had told her.
“That’s very interesting. No other victims in each of the other two incidents?”
“It looks like we may be off the hook.”
“Well, that would be a relief.” There was a short pause. “So when may I see you again?”
“Don’t you ever work?”
“This is my weekend off. I’m free until Tuesday. May I take you to dinner?”
“Tonight? Sorry, I already have plans.”
“Tomorrow night, then?”
“I have to be on the floor at six thirty.”
“Lunch?”
His voice held a note of pleading that pricked Ginny’s conscience. She considered it and decided he hadn’t given her any reason to deny him.
“Yes, thank you, I’d like that.”
His voice was warm with approval. “Good. I’ll pick you up at twelve and you can introduce me to your mother.”
She hung up the phone. It was just lunch with a medical colleague, she told herself. About the virus. No need to mention it to Hal. Not yet, anyway.
* * *
Ginny spent the next hour getting organized.
Ginny was a list maker. Her mother was a list maker. As a matter of fact, she came from a long line of list makers. Any time she had a problem to work out or a task to do, it seemed natural to her to sit down and start making lists.
If there were three deaths from the same, or a similar virus, it was at least possible they were connected. And if her theory about the lancet pen was right, then all three victims had been injected with the lethal virus. Deliberately injected. That made it murder.
She opened her spreadsheet program and set up a file. Across the top she listed the three victims, labeling the columns Donald Craig, Victim # 1, and Victim # 2. Down the left hand side she started listing everything she could think of that might link the three together; age, sex, race, residence, occupation, and so forth.
The next set of rows had to do with the victims themselves: date, place, and cause of death; heirs, length of time from first symptoms to death, unexplained puncture wound(s), and more. By the end of the hour, she had a formidable list.
“The trouble is,” she said to herself, “that I don’t have the slightest idea what to put in those fields.”
She sat back and stared at the machine. A murder implied a murderer or murderess. Why did people kill one another? She started a new table, this one with an arbitrarily chosen three rows, labeled Suspect # 1, Suspect # 2, and Suspect # 3, one for each victim. In the first column she listed Means. The second was labeled Motive, the third Opportunity.
“Well,” she said to herself, “the means is the same in each case, unless the murderer delivered the virus in some way other than a lancet pen.” She typed virus/lancet pen in the slot for the means for Suspect # 1 and virus/? for the other two suspects.
“Okay. What else have I got?”
Motive. She scrolled down the sheet and started a list of every reason she could think of for wanting another person dead.
Passion headed the list, with lust, jealousy, hatred, revenge, and other strong emotions under it.
Then came avarice. Follow the money.
The third entry, power and altruism, seemed two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, the suspect would get his or her jollies from controlling another life. On the other, you might find mercy killings.
The fourth entry, deception, implied the suspect had something so awful in his past that he would be willing to kill to cover it up. This included eliminating witnesses and Ginny wondered if any of the three victims could have seen or heard something they weren’t supposed to.
The fifth entry covered making a political statement. Sometimes the killer wanted to kill a specific person or a representative member of a targeted group; sometimes anyone would do.
The last entry was psychopathology. Ginny didn’t even want to think about this type of killer. The idea of someone who heard voices instructing him to kill, or someone who killed for the thrill of it, was so frightening it made her shiver.
That left opportunity. She knew, or at least suspected, where Donald Craig had been attacked. She typed in library stacks? Was it true most victims knew their attackers?
Whoever it was would have to get close enough to inject the virus, but that didn’t mean he knew the assailant. Pickpockets made a living bumping into strangers on the street and, if they were good enough, no one noticed until they went looking for their wallet.
There must still be a connection of some sort, or the death served no purpose. Ginny refused to believe a murder committed by stealth, using a poison, was anything other than premeditated.
She shook her head over the enormity of the problem. She couldn’t even begin to answer the questions until she got those files from Alex. She would have to wait. She shut down the computer and went to get ready for her dinner date.
* * *
Ginny watched as Hal placed the file she had gotten from Elaine in his briefcase, then climbed behind the wheel. He accelerated away from the curb, swinging wide around the corner, the centrifugal force throwing her against the door of the car.
“Ow! Please, Hal, I don’t need any more bruises.” Ginny rubbed her sore knee.
Hal glanced over, his mind clearly on other things, then slowed down. “Sorry.”
“What’s bothering you?” she asked.
He glanced over at her, frowning.
“I guess I’m a little tired after all that’s happened this week; the conference, Craig dying, and this virus scare on top of everything else.”
Ginny nodded. “We’re all on edge. It would be hard not to be.”
He reached over and took her hand. “I’m sorry. What do you say we put the whole thing out of our heads for tonight and concentrate on having a good time?”
She smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Then it’s a deal.” He gave her hand a squeeze then let go. “So, what did you think of Jim?” he asked.
Ginny started, then realized Hal was referring to Friday night. “He seems nice enough. What do you know about him?”
“Not much. He’s a doctor. There’s family in the neighborhood, though I always thought they were Virginia natives. He’s just moved here and has an apartment off of Northwest Highway somewhere.” Hal looked over at her and smiled. “I know that because he was teasing me about having to look after the grounds around the house. So I told him it was better than having to share a laundry room.”
Ginny laughed. “I always hated that. What else?”
“No wife, if that’s what you mean.” Hal grinned at her.
Ginny felt the tips of her ears turn pink. “I’m more interested in his professional credentials. Was he a good student?”
Hal nodded. “I think so. He was always buried in his books when we wanted to go somewhere, and as he had one of the few reliable cars on campus, we were always having to pry him free to take us places.”
“You didn’t have a car?”
“I had an old clunker and it was a real pain. I remember one time—” Hal launched into a series of stories about untrustworthy cars that had Ginny’s side hurting from laughing.
During dinner, they turned from discussing the past to speculating on the future. The money raised by Friday night’s party had been generous and would go a long way toward shoring up the IT infrastructure in the genealogy library. Over coffee Hal expressed himself glad to have the entire thing behind him and to be able to turn the accounting over to the library staff.
“I don’t like handling money. It makes me nervous.”
Ginny grinned at him. “But you’re loaded. How can you stand to have all that money coming in and not like handling it?”
Hal shrugged. “I like spending it well enough. It’s the accounting for it I don’t like. You should see my CPA, a real slave driver. He makes me keep receipts for everything.”
“You poor dear,” Ginny laughed. “Well, all I can say is I wish I had your problems.”
Hal leaned back and looked smug. “Yes. Things could be worse.” He smiled at her and Ginny smiled back.
She held his gaze.
“What?” he asked.
Ginny dropped her eyes to the tablecloth. “Jim asked me something Friday night I couldn’t answer.” She looked up again.
Hal crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward, his eyes unblinkingly on her face, a slight smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “What did he ask?”
Ginny blushed, but persevered. “He asked if you were going to marry me.”
“Did he now?” Hal’s eyebrows rose. “Interesting. What did you tell him?”
“That I didn’t know. You’ve been so distant this last week. I was wondering if you’d grown tired of me.”
Hal leaned closer, reaching across the table, one hand outstretched. “Give me your hand.”
Ginny looked into his eyes, those beautiful brown eyes that always made her feel as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath and slid her hand towards him. He took it, wrapping both of his around hers, enveloping it.
His voice took on a husky tone. “I will never grow tired of you, Ginny. Who could? You were the most beautiful woman in the room Friday night. Several people commented on it, but more than that, you were a gracious and correct hostess. My mother would have been proud of you.”
Ginny smiled. A compliment indeed, from Hal.
“I may need a wife, some day,” he continued, “one who can handle that kind of burden. When this confirmation of arms goes through, it will carry some responsibility with it. There will be more receptions, bigger ones, with more important guests.” He licked his lips. “Does that sound like the sort of lifestyle you’d enjoy?”
“Is that a proposal?”
“It’s a question. I haven’t given much thought to getting married, but Friday night was a chance to see how it might work; a dress rehearsal, if you will. If you married me, there’d be more of that, a lot more, and it can get exhausting. So I’m asking, does the idea of entertaining strangers fill you with dread, or would you enjoy it?”
Ginny thought carefully before replying. “I think I’d enjoy it, as long as you did.”
“There would be other demands made on you. Like showing the house.”
Ginny nodded. She wouldn’t mind that.
“Maintaining proper standards of dress and deportment.”
She raised an arch eyebrow. “In private, too?”
His eyes twinkled. “I would expect proper standards of undress in private.”
Ginny grinned. “Of course.”
“The obligatory two and a half children,”
She nodded. “Go on.”
“An overdrawn clothing account,”
“Never!”
“And absolute obedience.”
“In your dreams!” She tried to pull her hand away, but he turned it palm up and kissed the center very gently. Ginny felt a shiver run down her spine.
He held her gaze for a long moment, his eyes sparkling. “I have a rather special cognac I’d like your opinion on. Shall we go?”
Ginny nodded, letting him escort her to the car, then in his front door.
“The Masons are out tonight,” he said. “At the opera.”
Ginny lifted her glass to her lips, smiling down into it. She had no doubt who had arranged that little treat for them. “Lucky them,” she said.
“Lucky me,” he responded.
* * *
Hal handed Ginny into the passenger side of his car and drove her home. The evening had been satisfactory and so had the cognac, but he was not sorry to see it end. He had something he wanted to do.
She turned on the doorstep and slid her arms around his neck. “Thank you for a lovely evening.”
He put his arms around her and pulled her close, then bent down and kissed her goodnight. “Sleep well.”
“You, too.” She slipped out of his arms and over the threshold, closing the door softly between them.
He drove home thinking about the evening’s conversation. He’d been planning on having no wife at all, but having a presentable spouse would be a business asset as well as a social one and she would do a good job of it. She was smart enough to train and they had shared interests and a history together. It might work to his advantage. He should consider it.
He retrieved his briefcase from behind the seat. Setting the case on the sideboard, he pulled the Confirmation file out, and settled down to see exactly where he stood.
He turned the sheets over one at a time and read them carefully, peering at some of the more exotic examples of legal verbiage. It took him forty minutes. When he had turned over the last sheet of paper he blinked, frowning, then turned the stack over and started again. An hour later he was sure. They weren’t here.
He closed the file. They had to be somewhere else. Craig’s office, maybe, or his briefcase, or his house. The library was closed on Mondays so he was safe until Tuesday morning. After that—
He wiped suddenly damp palms on his pants. He needed to think. He leaned back in his chair, his brow wrinkled. He was still there when the clock struck three.
* * *