Murder Misread by P.M. Carlson Page A

hadn’t thought
about eating.” But the aroma of onions and sausage set his recently
parched mouth to watering.
    “ Yeah, I’d forgotten too,”
she said soberly. “But my ridiculous stomach never quits. It told
me a couple of dolmas were not enough for lunch no matter what. Go
ahead, have some.” She perched on the edge of the chair Hines had
used.
    “ Thanks.” Charlie grabbed
a napkin and took a piece, careful of the warm cheese dripping from
the sides. “Maggie, can you think of any time my memo book might
have fallen from my pocket on the lower trail? Maybe when we were
standing on the bridge looking down at that guy?”
    “ So that Chaplin-design
memo book was yours, huh?” She frowned, hooked an ankle under the
rung of the second chair, and pulled it closer to prop her feet on
it. “I don’t remember you dropping anything. I was looking down at
the guy in the bushes, but I think I would have noticed if you made
a sudden movement big enough to dislodge something from your
pocket.”
    “ Yeah,” Charlie agreed
gloomily. “I can’t remember anything like that happening either.
But how in the world did it get down there?”
    “ Mm.” She was chewing
vigorously, her cheeks lumpy, her eyes clouded with thought. “Well,
I think of two things,” she said indistinctly. “First, don’t worry
about Hines. After all, we were together almost the whole
time.”
    “ That’s right.” But
Charlie was not completely soothed. Hines hadn’t reacted as though
he believed he had an alibi. But then Hines hadn’t reacted at all.
He wasn’t stupid, though; he’d know Charlie hadn’t been down there.
Maybe he was merely curious, just as Charlie was, about how it got
to the lower trail.
    “ But no one knew
beforehand that I’d be with you, did they?” Maggie mused. “I’d told
Tal I had to have lunch with the children. Hell, even I didn’t know
I was going with you until the last minute when Liz offered to take
them to McDonald’s.”
    “ Yes, but the important
thing is that the police know I was with you.”
    She paused, a fragment of
pizza still held in her hand, studying him intently. “Charlie,
could someone be trying to frame you?”
    “ Frame me? My God, no!”
But even as he spoke his stomach clenched in cold fear. She was
right. Someone must have stolen his book. That’s how it got there.
But who the hell hated him that much? Hated Tal that much? It
wasn’t possible. He said wanly, “So you think I didn’t drop it at
the bridge.”
    “ Maybe, maybe not. I’m
just a statistician, looking at another hypothesis that we haven’t
yet disproven. I’m thinking that you were racing through the halls
when I first saw you this morning. Could the book have fallen out
then?”
    Charlie nodded unhappily.
“Sure. Or outside in the parking lot, or running up the
stairs.”
    “ Did you have it in the
same pocket as your keys?”
    “ Yeah. Right outside
pocket.” He patted his jacket.
    “ I don’t remember anything
falling out when you pulled out your keys. But the kids were there
and we were both distracted.” She swooped another wedge of pizza
from the box, stringy cheese trailing behind it. She spun the
cheese spaghetti style onto her forefinger, lifted it high, and ate
it like Chaplin savoring his boiled shoelace. “But,” she mumbled,
mouth full again, “we’ve got a real possibility that someone got
hold of your book and used it as a backup plan.”
    “ Backup to
what?”
    “ Okay. Someone decides to
kill Tal. Doesn’t want to get caught. Drops your memo book there so
the cops will think it was you.”
    “ Yeah, I
understand.”
    “ But the guy has a high
opinion of you. Knows if you did such a thing you’d cover your
tracks. So he figures you would stage a suicide to throw the police
off. Okay so far?”
    “ Uh… yes. So the killer
puts the gun in Tal’s hand. And that’s supposed to implicate me
too!”
    “ Right. The killer
probably knew Tal was a cheery man and that his