“However,” Mac said, “I would be delighted to use my good offices to persuade Lars to accompany you, should such persuasion prove necessary. Of course” - he cocked an eyebrow as he gestured airily with the unlit cigar - “that would be all the easier if I knew what the bloody hell you have in mind, Jefferson.”

“Are you ready to explain your mumbo-jumbo about Matheson not being the thief? No? I didn’t think so. Well, this time I’m the detective and I get to do mysterious things without explaining.”

Besides, if I told him my idea and it proved wrong, I’d look like the biggest fool outside of Congress.

Mac took my reticence in good humor, promising to pull Jenson out of the Hearth Room where he was awaiting the start of the program. With an aggressive lope, he crossed the hallway and disappeared into the Hearth Room. As I was watching him go, Lynda blindsided me on my right.

“Okay, Jeff,” she said. The greeting, totally unexpected and out of context, made me jump slightly. “You two had your Boys’ Night Out. Now, what gives?”

“You!” I said, investing the syllable with the most accusatory tone I could muster. “You sure didn’t do me any favors with those two stories in the paper this morning.”

“I’m sorry, Jeff, I really am, but doing you favors isn’t part of my job description at the Observer. You never seem to get that.” She ran a hand through her honey-colored hair, a nervous gesture.

“Any more of this crap and I’m going to lose my job. I wish you could have at least quoted Ralph in the - oh, never mind.”

I was overcome by the depressing familiarity of a scene played out so many times before. The conflict between Lynda’s job and mine had been a constant irritant the whole time we had dated. Here it was again, just when I was hoping that what we had been through together yesterday, and the conspiracy of silence about it that still bound us together, meant that our romantic relationship was no longer in the dead letter file. And even before that, she had said she loved me - and then called me an idiot. Confused as well as depressed, I changed the subject.

“I didn’t expect to see you here this morning,” I said.

“It seemed the place to be. This is where the murderer is.” She gripped her purse with a force that turned her knuckles white. “Look, Jeff, I want to know if you and Mac have any idea who killed Matheson - because Oscar and his crew don’t. They may never find those books in his room if they aren’t even looking for them. And that means they won’t know Matheson was the thief, which could turn out to be the biggest clue of all. I think we screwed up last night by not calling 911 and telling the whole story as soon as we found the body. It would have been a lot easier on my nerves.”

“Not if you were in jail.”

She ignored that. “Unless you have any better ideas, it’s not too late to tell Oscar about the books.”

“Somebody in housekeeping at the hotel will find the books eventually. Besides, Matheson didn’t steal them.”

“What?”

“That’s what Mac said, and I have to admit that he’s right often enough that the other times don’t count.”

Lynda yanked open her purse, pulled out a stick of gum, unwrapped it, and shoved it into her mouth. “If he wasn’t the thief, then why did he have the books?”

“Mac wouldn’t tell me that much. He’s acting mysterious about it. But it could be that Matheson actually recovered the books somehow, only for some reason didn’t find all of them. Anyway, what’s really important is, I have an idea that may explain why Matheson died, if not who-”

I stalled out when I saw Mac coming out of the Hearth Room with Lars Jenson.

“Jefferson,” my brother-in-law called. “Lars is quite amenable to assisting you. Have you met?”

We hadn’t, although I had watched the tall, stooped Swede in the library. Mac introduced him to Lynda and me.

“A great pleasure,” Jenson said in that sing-song voice. He bowed at Lynda, oh-so-Continental and old-fashioned. She stuck out her hand for shaking. After a while Jenson figured out what he was supposed to do with the hand, and he did it. Then he turned to me. “You like to look at some books now, ja?”

“Ja,” I said.

“And Lynda makes three,” she added.

You may think we’d have trouble getting into the Lee J. Bennish Memorial Library on a Sunday during spring break, and normally you’d be right. But things weren’t normal. Guards were all over the place, inside and out. The Campus Security people knew me. And even if they hadn’t, my staff ID card would have been at a high enough level to get me past them.

Gene Pfannenstiel’s office, full of ancient books spilling out of bookcases, looked almost Dickensian except for the laptop computer open on his roll-top desk. The gnome looked up from it in surprise when we entered.

“Oh, hi,” he said. “What are you folks doing here? It’s Sunday, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but we have a distinguished visitor all the way from Sweden and we wanted to take him on a quick tour of the Chalmers Collection.”

Jenson smiled. “Ja, ja.”

Gene regarded Jenson shrewdly. “Didn’t I see you yesterday during-”

“We’ll only be a few minutes,” Lynda interrupted. “He can’t stay long.”

“Right,” Gene said, reaching down to tie a lace on his right gym shoe. “I’m knee-deep in cataloguing right now, but go ahead and look. The guards won’t stop you. They’ll just watch you real closely if you touch any books.”

“Actually, that might happen,” I said. “Dr. Jenson is a serious scholar. Can you unlock the cases where the best stuff is on display?”

He agreed without complaint.

While we were walking from his office to the rare book room, where the Chalmers Collection was on display, I asked Gene whether he’d heard anything from Decker about the books that were stolen.

“Nothing, I’m afraid.”

“Did you know Hugh Matheson, the man who was murdered?” I didn’t expect an affirmative answer, and I didn’t get one.

Gene shook his head. “That was a terrible thing, wasn’t it? The murder. No, I didn’t know him, but I must have seen him if he was at the library yesterday, huh? I saw so many people.”

I tried to think of more questions Mac might ask, since Gene was on his infamous little list, but I drew a blank. So did Lynda.

When we reached the Chalmers Collection, I could practically hear Larsen’s pulse race faster as he shoved his glasses against his nose and bent down to read the titles in the foreign section. He talked to himself in Swedish as he pulled out a book called Sherlock Holmes aventyr.

I tugged on his sleeve and led him to where Gene was unlocking the cases holding the rarest remaining gems of the Chalmers Collection.

“Mr. Jenson,” I said, “I want you to look at as many of these books as you can with extreme care and tell me if each of them is exactly what it’s supposed to be. Are the first editions really first editions and are any inscriptions inside genuine? Understand?”

“Ja. Just like a mystery. I am sleuth.”

Gene’s eyes widened. “It’s just a wild idea,” I assured him. “There’s probably nothing to it. Relax. Go back to your cataloguing. The guards will keep an eye on us.” I wanted him gone. He was a suspect.

“Okay. Call me if you need me.”

When Gene was out of earshot, Lynda said, “That’s your brilliant idea?” Her tone lacked the admiration I would have hoped for. “You think the books in the Chalmers Collection might be fakes?”

“I didn’t say it was brilliant; I said it could explain why Matheson was murdered. I got the idea from a Sherlock Holmes story that was described to me. It’s about a collector who steals his own book to keep a rival from finding out that it’s a phony. Now maybe somebody killed Matheson for the same reason - because when he got his hands on those missing books they turned out to be frauds. And if that’s true, other books in the Chalmers Collection could be just as spurious.”