Kanesha stared at me over the rim of her mug while she drank. She set the mug down before she responded. “She did, except for a dog. Little yappy thing, like that poodle of Mr. Delacorte’s. He was barking his head off, and her neighbor went over to complain. Looked in through the back door when Mrs. Taylor didn’t answer the knocking and saw her slumped over her desk in a corner of the kitchen. Turned out she’d been strangled to death.”

I nodded as I offered her a refill, and she accepted. I sat down across from her and waited for the questions to start.

“You saw her twice yesterday, you said. What was she doing?” She sipped at her coffee and regarded me intently.

“She came to the library—the public library, that is—for meetings with Teresa Farmer and me about an event for National Library Week.” I went on to explain the nature of the event and the participation of Electra Barnes Cartwright. “Mrs. Taylor published a newsletter devoted to the author—she always referred to her by her initials, EBC.”

Kanesha frowned. “That explains part of the note that was puzzling me. Above your phone number and your name she—or someone—had written EBC.”

“Maybe she was planning to call me about something to do with Mrs. Cartwright,” I said. “When she left the library the second time, she said she was going home to look through her EBC archive.”

“What was she looking for? Did she say?” Kanesha drained the last of her coffee, but waved away the offer of another refill.

I thought for a moment. “She had a picture she wanted to find, of the garden shed where Mrs. Cartwright used to write when she was younger.” There was something else, but what? I dug into my memory. “Oh, and there was a remark about Gordon Betts.”

“Who is Gordon Betts?” Kanesha frowned. “I don’t remember a family in Athena called Betts.”

“No, he’s not from around here. Chicago, I think I heard him say. He’s one of the book collectors who showed up because of the information on the library website. He’s a rabid fan of Mrs. Cartwright’s, and he has a large collection of her Veronica Thane books.” I related briefly the two incidents with Betts. “The last thing Mrs. Taylor said was that she had items in her own collection that Betts didn’t know about. The way she said it, I took her to mean that he would want them badly if he knew about them.”

I had a sudden horrible feeling. Would Gordon Betts want these mysterious items badly enough to kill?

“Do you have any idea what these items were, or how valuable they might be?” Kanesha had pulled out a small notebook and a pen and was jotting down notes.