Free A Candidate for Murder by Joan Lowery Nixon Page B

same thing,” I said and dangled the key to the front door over my head. “I left my shoulder bag here and came back to get it. I wouldn’t have gone into the private offices, but that’s where you were.”
    “Big deal,” she said.
    “How did you get in here?” I asked her.
    Her eyes crinkled, and the corners of her mouthturned up, but there was no humor in her smile. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” She picked up a small clutch bag from the chair on which she’d left it and started toward me.
    “Don’t leave,” I warned her. “I think I’d better call Dad.”
    She surprised me by pulling out a chair and sitting on it. “Go ahead,” she said.
    I turned to the phone, but as I dialed our number a hand pressed hard against my back, sending me sprawling across the table. The door opened and slammed, and I straightened in time to see Francine running down the street.
    Dexter answered and called Dad to the phone. I told Dad what had happened, and he said, “I don’t think we need to call the police. Make sure both the front and back doors are locked. Keep the lights on and wait right there. Your mother and I will be with you as soon as possible.”
    I did as he suggested and dropped the key in my shoulder bag, which was on the floor where I’d left it. The back door was not only locked but bolted. Had Francine been able to get hold of a key?
    I tried to remember what the room was like when Delia had announced it was time to lock up. I closed my eyes, and I could picture some of the people and where they were standing, and I could see them pick up their things and cluster at the front door, moving through, then stopping to chat in small groups out on the sidewalk. Many of them walked toward the parking lot, as I did.
    But I couldn’t put Francine into this picture.
    Of course, I had been more concerned with Justin, and I was awfully tired from folding letters for a couple of hours. Had I seen Francine leave and just not noted it? Or was it possible that Francine had hidden in the rest room and didn’t leave at all?
    I walked past a couple of small offices to the one in which I’d found her and turned on the light. It was Delia’s office—a small room with a desk, three chairs, and two file cabinets on the far wall. One of the drawers in the nearest file cabinet was open.
    There were two posters on the wall, one with a campaign slogan and the other with an enlarged photograph of my father, just the barest of smiles on his lips. He looked earnest and sincere.
    I was beginning to hate the words. They sounded like campaign promises, like something waved around only until after elections, but in Dad’s case they weren’t. They were the way he really was. I studied his photograph and tried to disassociate myself from it. Suppose I were a voter, a person who didn’t know Charles Amberson at all. Would I believe the expression on his face?
    A sound at the front door made me jump, and I ran to the hallway. I could see my mother, dressed in a smooth black sheath and pearls for the reception, peering through the window as my father unlocked the door. Mom looked relieved when she spotted me. The door swung open, and I hurried toward my parents.
    “I didn’t touch anything,” I said, “but Francine did.One of the file drawers is open, and I’m pretty sure she was going through the desk.”
    “Who is Francine?” Mom asked as she and I followed Dad back to Delia’s office.
    “All I know is that she’s majoring in political science,” I said.
    “Where?” Mom asked.
    I shrugged. “She didn’t say.”
    Dad stopped in the doorway, surveying the room before we entered. “What’s her last name?”
    “I don’t know that either.”
    We silently and cautiously walked into the room as though someone were going to jump out at us. Mom asked Dad, “She must have been searching for something. What do you think it was?”
    “I have no idea,” he said.
    “Francine said something that now seems a little