thought perhaps it was somewhere in the bookshop."
So Mildred's pencils really had been moved!
Chief McBride leaned forward. "Man, how can you say it has no relevance? A man is dead, this young lady here has been attacked, and now a child is missing." He did everything but wave a finger in the man's face, but still Hugh wouldn't tell us what he was looking for.
"I don't suppose you found it, then?" the chief said.
"No." Hugh slumped in his chair and stared at the feeble fire. He didn't move, rarely blinked.
"Is that what you think is concealed in the stuffed animal you wanted from the little girl?"
"That was stupid of me, I know. It was just something my sister asked me to do."
"And why would Mrs. Whitmire want this child's toy?" Chief McBride asked.
"She thinks there's something in there that would put our family in a bad light. My sister is very proud of her heritage."
Chief McBride sat and closed his eyes for a minute, as if the whole thing were just too much for him. "So, you didn't go to the academy the night Otto Alexander was killed?" "
No." Hugh Talbot shook his head.
"But you knew he was going to be here. How was that?"
Hugh Talbot sighed. "Otto had called me at the academy, left a message on the machine. He said he'd be here that night—he volunteered in the academy library, you know— and that he had something I might be interested to see. He'd hinted—well, more than hinted, really—that he could ruin me. Wanted money, of course."
"So Otto was blackmailing you?"
"That was his intention, yes, but I wasn't planning to take the bait."
"The pin," I said. "He told you about the pin." I knew Otto had taken the pin from Mildred's hiding place.
Hugh nodded. "That was part of it." He turned to the chief. "My grandfather, I'm afraid, wasn't as squeaky clean as he was stacked up to be. A bit of a ladies' man, I think. At any rate, he got one of the young women in the family way, and she was supposed to have drowned in the Saluda—only it turns out she didn't. Now her daughter has come back to haunt us for his sins."
"Don't you dare make light of it!" I jumped to my feet and would have clobbered him, I think, if the chief hadn't cleared his throat really loud. "Your grandfather forced himself on those girls—students who were supposed to be in his care! He should've been locked away.
"You killed Otto, didn't you? You got him drunk, then smothered him to keep him quiet."
"No, I did not. I'm sorry my grandfather was a lech and that he caused grief to those young women—if indeed he did—but that's not my fault. I wouldn't kill a man for that."
"Otto met somebody here that night," I told the police chief. "He had that pin in his pocket just before he was killed, only it rolled into the next stall, and the murderer didn't see it."
Chief McBride frowned. "Why didn't you tell us this earlier?"
"I forgot I had it. Didn't even realize what it was for a while; then I guess I was afraid. Otto might have been killed for that pin; I didn't want the same thing happening to me."
The chief turned to Hugh. "And you say these things weren't important to you, yet you searched Otto's bookshop for something. Was Otto already dead?"
"Certainly not! I knew nothing about that. But I had to look there while Mildred was at that church movie thing, and I knew Otto would be waiting to meet me at the academy. Look, I was only trying to spare us both a lot of trouble."
"So if what you say is true, someone else must have known about that telephone message. What happened to that tape, Mr. Talbot?"
Hugh Talbot shrugged and stared into his empty glass.
There was only one other person who could have heard Otto's message on that tape. Gertrude Whitmire. And she was somewhere in this town hunting for a five-year-old with a stuffed zebra.
"I have to go," I said, and didn't stop until I reached my car.
I drove straight home, keeping an eye out for both Faye and Gertrude Whitmire along the way, pulled into the drive, and ran into the house. I needed some heavenly help, and fast.
"Augusta!" I called her name over and over again, checking every room, but she wasn't there. I knew she wasn't there as soon as I walked inside, but I had