Whiplash

Relieved, Erin stopped scrubbing the shine off a fork. 'From what Bowie's told me, it sounds like this guy Blauvelt went all over the world for Schiffer Hartwin, and cleaned up messes for them, silenced people who were causing problems, that sort of thing, right?'

Sherlock nodded.

'So maybe it's the CEO of Schiffer Hartwin here in Stone Bridge who killed him, maybe in self-defense. What's his name?'

'Caskie Royal. Or maybe whoever killed Blauvelt is planning on killing Caskie Royal too.'

Erin said, 'You know, I think I'd speak to his wife. Wives know every secret, every sin.'

'Her name's Jane Ann Royal. She's on my To Do list for tomorrow,' Sherlock said. 'Turns out, Caskie was sleeping with one of his executives. I guess the night of the break-in, they didn't make it to the couch.'

Yeah, I sure wrecked their fun. Erin said, 'I'd shoot the louse if he were my husband. Why is his wife putting up with it?'

'I'll ask her,' Sherlock said. 'Interesting that you're working on a case about drugs. Tell me about it.'

Unfreeze your brain. 'Well, I promised the client to keep it confidential, you know?'

Erin was saved by the two men walking into her small kitchen, Savich saying, 'The kid's got Nancy Drew memorized.'

Bowie laughed. 'That's the truth. She said Savich read okay, but she likes your voice better, Erin. She said you should go to Hollywood. I think she really wants you to do her ironing.'

Erin was still lying wide awake in her bed around midnight, with Georgie asleep and her apartment quiet, wondering if she'd looked guilty when Sherlock had asked her about her case. Sure she had.

No, she was being paranoid, about all of it. None of them would ever begin to guess it was she who'd dived out of Caskie Royal's bathroom window. Graceful or not, long brown hair or not, they knew her in an entirely different context. They had no reason to suspect her, none at all. She wasn't on their radar, she wasn't on anyone's radar.

Tomorrow, she was driving up to New Haven to have lunch with Dr. Edward Kender at the Berkeley College dining room.

She realized she'd told Sherlock she was having lunch in New Haven with a client at Yale, but that was it. Sherlock probably wasn't even listening.

Erin finally went to sleep and dreamed of the eight-hundred-pound gorilla sitting under the red beanbag in the middle of her living room.

23

BERKELEY COLLEGE DINING ROOM

New Haven, Connecticut

Wednesday

Erin gazed around the huge dark-wood-paneled room as she chewed on a pork sparerib, the meat falling off the bone it was so tender. She waved the rib toward the large buffet. 'I've never seen such a delicious display of food in one place in my life, and it's a college dining room. Amazing.'

'Wait until you taste the garlic mashed potatoes, my father always calls it his forbidden treat when he eats here with me. It's been a while now.'

Dr. Kender paused a moment, swallowed.

'I have the papers with me, sir. I think you're going to be very pleased. I know I am. It's all laid out, everything we want and need. Whenever you would like to look at the pages-'

He raised his glass of spring water and clicked it to hers. 'Congratulations, Erin. That was well done of you, but far too dangerous.'

'As I already told you, sir, I couldn't think of anything else to do. But please don't congratulate me for breaking the law, though in this case, I think it was worth it. On the bright side, I'm in the clear.'

'Then we'll drink to your being in the clear.' He tapped his glass to hers again. 'I am happier than I can tell you that we have the goods on those unconscionable bloodsuckers. Yes, I would like nothing better than to study the papers in detail, but I invited you here for lunch. Let's eat first.' He looked around the vast dining hall with its long tables and benches and the scattered group of students. He and Erin sat at one of the small tables favored by the faculty. 'I spent many happy hours here when I was a student. It seems like an eternity ago. Life continues to happen, doesn't it?'

'Yes sir, it does.'

He sighed, ate a final bite of green beans, then slowly placed his fork neatly across his plate. 'I can see something's happened since we last spoke. Before we go over the papers, tell me if I'm right.'

Erin said honestly, 'I'm scared. For you. Please tell me you had nothing to do with killing Helmut Blauvelt.'

She watched a flash of fear cross his face, and then she saw anger, deep anger at her, and she saw something else in his eyes, some reaction she couldn't grasp, though she was usually very good at reading people. She watched him pick up his fork again and push a cherry tomato around in his salad plate. Then he looked at her and said smoothly, 'I see you're serious, so I will answer you seriously. No, I did not kill Helmut Blauvelt. After you told me who he was, I paid more attention to the newspapers and the television reports. That isn't to say that if I'd run into him in a dark alley and I'd had a gun, I wouldn't have been sorely tempted.'

'Good, that's answered. Thank you, Dr. Kender. To be honest, I was afraid you'd made contact with him in some way, that perhaps you were on the list of people he was here to see. If you had killed him, it would have been in self-defense in any case.' Except for bashing his face in and cutting off his fingers. She wasn't about to tell him that. Those details hadn't been released by the FBI, probably never would be, except to a grand jury.

'Thank you for believing me to be such a man of action.'

'I think most anyone could be a man of action if pushed hard enough, if, for example, someone you love is placed in danger.'

Dr. Kender stared at her. 'Do you really think the man could have been here to see me? Me, as in archaeology professor at Yale University? An academic right down to my tweed jacket?'

'And a very persistent one, Dr. Kender. I'd like for you to tell me exactly how far you went with your complaints and questions to Schiffer Hartwin. Both here and in Germany.'

'I pestered them nearly every day from the day after Dad's oncologist told us about the unexpected Culovort shortage, until I came to you last week. I helped support the post office, one registered letter after the other, maybe a few dozen if you count all the members of the board of directors in Hartwin, Germany. I don't remember if I told you I called. The first couple of times, the assistant put me through to the head of the whole shebang, a Dr. Adler Dieffendorf. The conversation was not cordial, especially after I told him cutting back on the production of Culovort was criminal, that he was killing my father. I asked him if it was his wife or one of his children who needed the drug, would he have allowed this to happen? I told him I was sure they could start production up quickly again if it was worth more money to them. I told him I would soon have proof of that, and I planned to go to the media once I had all the facts. I might even have intimated I'd key his Mercedes before he lost his calm and threatened me with their cadre of lawyers. Then he hung up on me.'

Erin said, 'Did you tell him where you were going to get the proof?'

He looked down at his elegant hands. 'Well, I might have mentioned the American headquarters in Stone Bridge.'

Wonderful, just wonderful. 'Did you imply that an employee here in the Stone Bridge headquarters had ratted them out?'

'I made up any number of things, any threat I could think of. Yes, I might have suggested that someone would roll on them. I remember he snorted when I mentioned a whistleblower. A pity, but he didn't seem to believe that.

'It got harder and harder to get through to anyone after that, though I did manage a few calls to some of the