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bold face: A CASE FOR SHERLOCK HOLMES .
    Damn. Ralph would blow whatever gaskets he had left.
    â€œThis is looking like a case for Sherlock Holmes,” Ben’s piece began, grabbing the obvious hook for the lead.
    â€œA manuscript and two valuable books from the famed Woollcott Chalmers Collection of Holmes materials were stolen Friday from a temporary display on the St. Benignus College campus.
    â€œCollege spokesman T. Jefferson Cody said the value of the collection...”
    The Indiana Jones theme song blaring from my night-stand stopped me there. It was the ring tone on my iPhone. Morrie Kindle, the Associated Press stringer, was calling to confirm the details of the Observer story. I read through the rest of it in a hurry, told him it was correct, and promised to get back to him if there were anything new from Campus Security. I called Decker’s office, but he wasn’t in yet. I knew he would be eventually, Saturday or not.
    This was just the beginning, I realized with a sense of doom as I left my apartment. Once Kindle’s rewrite of the story hit the AP feed, calls would be coming in from all over the map. No time to worry about that, though. I had to go show the flag at the colloquium, plus be on hand to help a TV reporter shoot a few sound bites in the late morning.
    My carriage house apartment next to Mac’s house, seventeen steps above his garage, is only a ten-minute bicycle ride from campus. I picked up my Schwinn and pedaled off, all the while imagining Ralph’s reaction to Ben’s story. It didn’t take much imagination.
    A registration table was set up outside of Hearth Rooms A and B. Aneliese Pokorny, my diminutive administrative assistant, was taking money and handing out name tags. Popcorn is forty-nine years old, dyes her hair blond, and would cheerfully commit grand theft auto if Mac asked her to. She was volunteering her time this morning. I greeted her while the guy in front of me handed over a designer check carrying a silhouette of Sherlock Holmes.
    â€œDo you feel as bad as you look?” she asked.
    â€œWorse.”
    Popcorn gave me a nametag with my moniker already typed in. I pinned it on, poured myself a cup of decaf from the coffee-and-pastries spread next to her, then went to survey the scene.
    Hearth Room C, the scene of last night’s excitement, was sealed off by Decker’s men with yellow plastic tape. Immediately to the left was the door to Room B, which functioned as the entrance to the back of the Hearth Room when A and B were opened up to form one hall as they were today. I went in that way, intending to stay at the back of the room for a good view of the crowd and an unobtrusive exit when necessary.
    It was about ten minutes until show time and the place was filling up. Maybe fifty or sixty people were there so far out of seventy-eight registered in advance and a few walk-ins expected. I counted six deerstalker caps. Mac and the Chalmerses were in the middle of the room, fiddling with a laptop and projector setup. I also noticed Al Kane, author turned pitchman; Dr. Noah Queensbury, the bore with Basil Rathbone’s nose; and a few others from Mac’s party that I couldn’t put a name to. One was a handsome, slightly plump woman with gray-blond hair who’d been in the kitchen the night before talking about Dr. Watson.
    If Mac was right - and I didn’t doubt it - whoever stole those books yesterday was probably in this room right now.
    I sipped my decaf and found myself turned toward the back of the room. A series of tables running the length of the far wall were covered with Sherlockian bric-a-brac for sale from a handful of vendors. There was a ton of books, of course, but also a lot more - drinking glasses, book bags, Christmas ornaments, buttons (“HOLMES IS WHERE THE ♥ IS,” “HOLMES SWEET HOLMES”), tie tacks, posters, CDs, DVDs, computer games, board games, and T-shirts. There were even a few