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position mean just about everything to certain kinds of individuals. So it was a possible motive—just barely, in my estimation.
    Also, Lissa was not, shall we say, well-liked. She had an acerbic, biting personality that rubbed many people (including myself) the wrong way. She gave feminism and lesbianism a very bad name. She enjoyed deliberately doing things that punished or hurt other people, for reasons that only made sense to her. So, she might have been killed by one of her myriad enemies, from both inside and outside the business.
    The only thing that I could think to do that might eventually lead me to the murderer was to track the book. What had happened to the inscribed copy of The Secret of Castle Dred ? According to the rumor mill, the police hadn’t located it in her room. Someone—the killer or an onlooker—had walked away with it. Someone had it now. They wouldn’t be able to sell it openly, not with the notoriety that had now been attached to it; but there would be a buyer, sooner or later, who would agree to purchase it under the counter. I knew this business, and I knew that lack of scruples went both ways.
    â€œHave you thought about getting an attorney?” I asked Margie.
    â€œI have a friend who’s a lawyer,” she said. “I phoned him an hour ago. He recommended a good criminal practitioner, but I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”
    â€œUnless they find someone better, I think you’ll almost certainly be arrested,” I said. “You need to be prepared for that possibility.”
    She sighed. “I don’t know why I went to Lissa’s room last night, I really don’t. In retrospect, it seems so damned stupid. I know what kind of person Lissa is. She’d only have been interested in hard cash, cash on the line, and I don’t bring very much to these shows. She had to have someone—or someones—on her string, or she never would have brought the book with her. She knew an interested party would be here. But who ?”
    â€œYou’re sure it wasn’t your friend?”
    â€œHow would I recognize her? I haven’t seen anyone here that reminded me of her—not even close. But it’s been so long. She’s never made any effort down the decades to contact me, and on the one occasion when I went back home in the late ’60s, she refused to meet me—I think she was afraid that her husband would realize that our friendship was more than that. A few years later, when I returned for my Mom’s funeral, she was gone—no one knew where. My brother had left town not long after I did for the city lights, and there was no one still close to me that I could ask. Someone told me later that she’d left her husband and remarried—but they had no contact information. I have no idea even what her name might be now—or if she’s still alive.”
    â€œOK,” I said, “so let’s assume Lissa knew what she was doing. She may have been a real shit, but she always made a profit. She must have had at least two possible bidders for the book who’d agreed to come here. They could have been dealers themselves, or ‘interested parties,’ or both. How would she have handled it?”
    Margie thought for a moment. “Well, I think she would have called both of them, told them what she had, and said that she was initially going to conduct a private auction; and then, if the bids were insufficient, she would have told them that she’d go public, and try to sell it that way. She might have given them a window between, say, seven and nine p.m ., and made appointments for specific times for each of the interested parties—with the most interested individual being left for last. And then she’d try to jack up the price while reaming them out with the threat of revelation.”
    â€œAnd if that final potential purchaser couldn’t match the