“But we fell down on the practical part,” she said. “Although I do know they called all his references, and they all gave him a glowing report.”

“Which is why he picked them,” I said.

“And of course we only have his word for it that they’re really people from his old church,” she said. “I will certainly have a thing or two to say when we start forming the committee to find Mr. Lightfoot’s replacement. Right now we’re arguing over how soon to tell him. Some people think we should wait till August, when his contract’s up, but I think we need to start a lot sooner than that. And yes, we should check out his credentials—properly, this time. Won’t do us any good now, of course, but if we were bamboozled, I’d like to know the whole of it.”

“Better yet, if he got the job with false credentials, you might be able to get rid of him a lot sooner than August,” I said. “Most contracts have escape clauses in case one party’s committing fraud.”

She blinked for a few moments, and then a smile slowly crept across her face.

“So how do we go about vetting his files?” she asked.

I was about to fish in my pocket for the slip of paper Charles Gardner had given me. Then a thought hit me.

“You know,” I said. “I bet the chief could find out today. Seeing as how this could be related to a homicide.”

Her face fell.

“It’s an interesting theory,” she said. “But I’m not sure I see Lightfoot as a killer. He’s a blowhard.”

“He didn’t dislocate your arm,” I said, glancing down at my sling.

She flinched slightly, and nodded.

“Look, I agree,” I said. “I can’t see Lightfoot carefully plotting something and flawlessly executing it. But losing his temper?”

She nodded.

“And lashing out at Vess?” I went on. “Striking him down in the heat of anger and then, when he realized what he’d done, starting that fire in the furnace room as a clumsy attempt to make the whole thing look like a prank?”

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s a possibility. I’ll call Henry.” She pulled out her phone but remained pensive, looking at it.

“But?” I asked.

“Obviously you think Barliman Vess is the one who was looking up Lightfoot on the computer.”

“You don’t think so?” I asked. “Why not? Was he not very computer savvy?”

“Oh, he was savvy enough,” she said. “Surprisingly so for such an old … old-fashioned person.”

I suspect she’d been about to say “old codger,” or possibly “old coot.”

“According to Henry, he was always sending things he’d printed out from the Internet to justify all his suggestions and complaints,” she said. “But I can’t imagine why he would care that much about Lightfoot.”