“He had no idea. He went to his deathbed thinking she was living overseas somewhere. He preferred to believe that than to think he was losing control of his own organization.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“I always wondered if Leo had a hand in her disappearance. He was an unpredictable guy. He lacked discipline. He was the kind of guy Luigi would never have dreamed of hiring ten years earlier. Luigi started compromising on the quality of his personnel. It was one of the first signs that the organization was deteriorating.”
“Where is Leo now?”
“He died in a car accident about ten years ago. I never figured out if it was an accident or a hit. He started working for the Russians, you see. It could have been either.”
“I presume you heard about the hatching day scandal at the school?”
“Sure, chicky. The whole island heard about that.”
“What do you make of it? There was note saying that Rochelle deserved to die because she was such a bitch.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It sounds like maybe one of the kids got rid of her. My money’s on Sheena. She was hard as nails that one. And cold too.”
He met Eulalie’s eyes with a steady gaze. She knew she was looking at a hardened mobster. He might have been telling the truth or he might not. She didn’t know him well enough to be sure.
“If I were you, I’d go back and re-interview Rochelle’s friends,” he said. “Get them in a room together and watch the sparks fly. They might know who did it. Hell, they might all have had a hand in it.”
Eulalie stood up. “I’ll think about it. Thanks for taking the time to speak to me, Mr. Chiavelli.”
He waved a hand. “You’re welcome. It did me good to remember the old days. You made me feel relevant again, Ms. Park, and I thank you for that.”
As Eulalie left, she heard him shouting for his friend to come back so they could finish their game.
She got to the office to find the cat stretched out full-length in the doorway, like a furry draft excluder.
“You’re going to trip someone up like that,” she said. He stretched out even more, making himself impossibly long.
Bracing a hand against the doorframe, she stepped carefully over him. She knew from experience that he had a habit of waiting until your foot was poised in the air before leaping to his feet and knocking you sideways while you were off balance.
“Now he is actively trying to discourage clients from coming in here.”
“On the contrary, dear,” said Mrs. Belfast. “The clients love him. He’s a real drawcard. At least one client came in here to pet the cat and ended up hiring us for a job. He’s good PR, that’s what he is.”
“Hmm.”
Eulalie handed her secretary a piece of paper.
“What’s this?”
“I need you to set up a meeting tomorrow with all of these people.”
“Sheena Macintyre, Mick Sorenson, Rosalind Grier, and Cole Richmond?”
“That’s right. We can do it anywhere that they feel comfortable.”
“What should I say it’s about?”
“Tell them it’s about Rochelle Chirac and the club. That should get a reaction.”
“Leave it with me, dear. I’ll have a result for you before the end of the day.”
“Thanks, Mrs. B. You’re awesome.”
Eulalie went to her office to see if she could pick up a cyber trail leading from Odysseus Pryor back to the client he was working for.
She booted up her laptop and attempted to trace him using the path of the virus he had uploaded into the systems of the six companies insured by Queen’s Town Federal Life. That quickly ended in a dead end. Communications bounced back and forth between the Internet Worx Café on the one hand, and the affected companies on the other. She would need to visit the café and work from there.
Eulalie stood up and closed her laptop.
“I’m going out again, Mrs. B.”
“Are you, dear? I thought you were here for the rest of the afternoon.”
“I was, but your foxy brother has outwitted me again.”
Was that a slight smirk on Mrs. Belfast’s face? It passed too quickly for Eulalie to be sure.
“That’s a shame, dear. I’m sure you’ll get him in the end.”
“I’ll be at the Internet Worx Café. Please text me if you manage to get a time and place for the meeting tomorrow.”
“With pleasure, dear. Should I feed Paddy before I go?”
“Thanks, but I should be back before six.”
Eulalie set off for Robespierre Lane in an uncharacteristically bad mood. She was tired of playing cat and mouse with Odysseus Pryor. Even worse, she was no longer sure who was the cat and who was the mouse. She had a feeling he had been playing her for some time now. She needed to remind herself why she had been the top computer science student in her year at college.
The trouble with computer science qualifications was that they became obsolete within months, if not weeks. Eulalie hadn’t allowed that to happen. She had stayed current with every new development in the industry. She went on regular refresher courses and tinkered constantly on the deep web to stay current with the latest developments.
Odysseus Pryor had been running rings around her, but that ended today. It was time to make her presence felt.
“Good afternoon!” Her greeting made the clerk at Internet Worx Café jump in his seat.
“You again.” he said. “That guy you’re looking for – he hasn’t been in. I promise.”
“You mean since you warned him about me and he got away? I’m not surprised he hasn’t been back. But that’s fine. I’m back. And I happened to notice which machine his crony was heading towards before you warned them off.”
Putting money on the counter Eulalie aimed for the third computer from the left against the far wall. It was not the same one he had pointed her to on her first visit.
“No!” said the clerk urgently. “It wasn’t that one. It was a different…”
Eulalie just smiled at him. Then she settled down in front of the screen and lost herself in code.
Chapter 23
Odysseus Pryor had been careless.
He had uploaded information to the cloud from another computer, and then accessed it at the internet café. He had also emailed attachments to himself from that other location and retrieved them at the internet café.
It didn’t take Eulalie long to obtain an IP address for the other computer that he was in constant contact with. She downloaded the necessary software and ordered it to match the IP address to a physical address.
While it was running, she wondered who was at the other end of that computer, receiving his messages and sending him others. She looked at the pattern of communication between the internet café and that off-site computer and began to suspect that the person at the other end was Odysseus himself.
He was working from two locations. Any illegal activity originated here in the internet café. The other computer was used for harmless but necessary house-keeping and admin. Eulalie had a strong feeling that she was about to find out where Odysseus Pryor was living while he was on Prince William Island.
Her computer chimed to indicate that it had found a match. It had traced the IP address of the computer to a physical location on the island. Eulalie stared at the address for a long time, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. Things were falling into place now. She had been puzzled by Odysseus’s apparent invisibility on the island, but now it made sense. She shook her head. Who would have thought?
A plan to catch him began to hatch in her mind. And this time there would be no advance warning.
She spent her last twenty minutes at the café carefully covering her tracks – wiping all traces of her activity from the computer. Odysseus Pryor would know that she had been in, thanks to the clerk, but he would not know what she had done.
The clerk was stood at his cash register, wringing his hands. He could see en
ough of her screen to know that some advanced level coding was going on, but not enough to know exactly what she was up to.
He looked relieved when she stood up to go. She gave him a bland smile and a wave of her hand on her way out the door. He reached for his cellphone the moment she stepped onto the street. On another day, she might have tried to prevent that call, but now it wasn’t necessary. She knew exactly where Pryor was staying. She could pick him up at her leisure.
It was almost six when Eulalie got back to her apartment.
Odysseus Pryor might have been an international criminal, but he was also a man in his sixties. If he was anything like his sister, he liked an early night. She would strike at ten o’clock, she decided. He should be running out of steam by then.
She ordered takeout sushi and settled at her laptop to do more work on the Pryor case. She wanted to be in a position of strength when she finally met him. The more she knew about his operation the better.
While she ate, she researched cyber-security companies that had recently cold-called or pitched their services to the six companies that had been affected by the cyber-attack. There were only three companies that had pitched to all six of the businesses. They were called Cybersecure, Corporate Solutions, and Failsafe Digital Security. They had recently launched aggressive marketing campaigns that involved cold-calling companies and asking to speak to their IT divisions or inviting them to attend presentations demonstrating the threat of a cyber-attack and showing what they could do to prevent it.
Eulalie called up a copy of the insurance policy documents that Queen’s Town Federal Life had with its six clients. It was the same policy in each case, just slightly tweaked for the individual needs of the company. No cyber security was specified, apart from the usual anti-virus software.
She knew that would change after this attack. A new policy would be drawn up with a special clause specifying that the company should have a full array of cyber security in place, preferably monitored offsite. The service provider who got the contract to supply this for all six companies was the one that would clean up, even in the current economy.
Following a hunch, Eulalie checked which of the three cyber-security companies had also pitched their services to Queen’s Town Federal Life. A smile spread across her face when she saw the name come up – Failsafe Digital Security.
“Bingo.”
As the time ticked closer to ten, she hacked into the email server of Failsafe. There she found heavily encrypted correspondence between the company’s chief operations officer and Odysseus Pryor, outlining the sabotage plan. She saved everything she found.
At nine-thirty, she went to her room to change.
If Pryor ran again, and she needed to chase him, a different outfit was called for. Stripping off her jeans and ankle boots, she pulled on a pair of black leggings in a technical fabric that was strong and water-resistant. She put on a tight-fitting black top in the same fabric and fastened a lightweight canvas belt around her waist. She could clip whatever she liked to that belt – her gun, crampons for rock-climbing, a rope, a multitool. Even – the thought popped unbidden into her mind – a set of throwing knives.
How cool would that be? Something to think about for the future.
Right now, all she needed was the multitool and a pouch for her cellphone. She wore a pair of flexible black boots with rubber soles that would allow her to climb almost any surface.
Eulalie brushed out her mane of wavy black hair and confined it to a ponytail at the back of her head. This she wound into a bun and secured. Then she pulled a watch cap down over her head.
As an afterthought she clipped a pair of night-vision goggles to her belt too.
Leaving the cat lying flat on his back on her bed, she got her Vespa out of its nighttime parking and headed towards Sea View. She was three blocks from Admiral Drive when she cut the engine and left the scooter where it was. She would proceed the rest of the way on foot, knowing that the distinctive roar of the Vespa was a dead giveaway.
Eulalie stuck to the shadows as she walked. Mysterious individuals dressed in black from head to toe were not a common sight in this respectable neighborhood. If someone called the cops on her, Odysseus Pryor would be long gone.
When she got to Admiral Drive she did a big loop around number 25 and approached it from the service alley at the back. The next day was clearly garbage collection day because all the residents had put their cans out into the alley.
Eulalie wrinkled her nose and reminded herself that she had smelled worse.
It was her lifelong habit whenever she was in a new place to check it out the way a cat burglar would case a jewelry store. The entrances, exits, windows, roof-access, and proximity to other buildings were all grist to her mill. She noted them unconsciously and never forgot them.
Number 25 had several sturdy downpipes leading up to the roof, which was steeply pitched and covered in ceramic tiles. Two of the rooms had trap doors leading up to a ceiling crawl-space just under the roof.
Eulalie checked her watch. It was ten-fifteen. The only illumination came from an outside security light. Just as she suspected, her quarry had retired for the night.
Gripping a downpipe with both hands, she ran lightly up the wall and climbed onto the roof. As expected, the tiles were not in a state of perfect repair. With most homeowners, it was a case of out of sight, out of mind. As long as the roof wasn’t actually leaking, they tended to forget about maintaining it. There was one section where several tiles were cracked or missing, and that was where Eulalie began. Gently and soundlessly she began to remove tiles until she had exposed an area big enough for her to fit through. Slipping her night vision goggles into place, she lowered herself into the ceiling crawl space. It was big enough for her to walk semi-erect.
Treading as lightly as possible, she made her way towards where she thought the guest bedroom was. It was possible that she had miscalculated and would find herself in the main bedroom, but that wouldn’t be a disaster.
The ghostly illumination of her goggles revealed a trapdoor at her feet. She knelt and felt around until her fingertips found the edge of the trapdoor and slid it soundlessly out of place. When she had created a big enough gap, she peered down into the room below. It was the correct bedroom. Her quarry was an amorphous shape on the bed under a duvet.
Eulalie moved the trapdoor fully out of the way and lowered herself silently into the room. She paused and listened to his breathing. It sounded deep and regular.
She took two steps towards the bed and shook him gently by the shoulder.
The next moment there was a ringing sound in her ears and a cold wind seemed to blow through the bedroom. She saw Odysseus Pryor sit up in bed, two-handing a pistol. He levelled it at her and fired off a shot at her chest.
The next instant the rushing sound in her ears subsided and the room returned to normal.
Pryor sat up in bed, but she was ready for him. Almost before he had begun to aim the pistol, she ducked under his arms and jerked them upwards so that the bullet fired harmlessly through the ceiling.
The sound was shockingly loud in the confined space of the bedroom and they were both temporarily deafened. Eulalie took advantage of his disorientation to seize the pistol from his slackened grasp and to switch on the bedside lamp.
The door flew open and Mrs. Belfast burst into the room in a flowery robe.
“What?” she babbled. “Odysseus, are you…?” She broke off when she saw Eulalie standing there. “Oh, good evening, dear. What are you doing here?”
Her brother found his voice. “You know this lunatic?”
“Of course. This is my boss, Eulalie Park. I’ve spoken of her before.”
Pryor gaped at Eulalie, taking in her cat-burglar outfit and watch cap.
“This is your boss?”
“Yes, dear. You saw her that time at the internet café.”
He shook his head. “I thought she moved fast then, but this was something else. She seemed to know what I was go
ing to do before I did it. Good thing too or I’d have shot her dead.”
“Do you normally greet nighttime visitors with a bullet through the chest?” said Eulalie.
“Only when I’m on a mission of some delicacy.”
“I’ll make us some tea, shall I?” Mrs. Belfast headed for the door.
“Make it a brandy rather,” said her brother. “I need it for my nerves.”
Eulalie could only agree. Her nerves were jangling too.
“Come and join me in the living room, dears.” Mrs. Belfast bustled down the stairs.
“If you’ll excuse me a moment,” Pryor said to Eulalie. “I’ll put on some pants and come down to join you.”
Eulalie didn’t move. “So you can disappear out that window never to be seen again? I don’t think so.”
She lifted a navy robe off a hook behind the door and tossed it to him. “This will do fine.”
He put the robe on grumpily and preceded her down the stairs. Eulalie still had his pistol in her hand, and no apparent intention of giving it back.
Mrs. Belfast poured cane brandy into crystal glasses and handed them around. Her brother took a sip and gave a grateful sigh.
“One thing I really miss when I’m off-island is the cane brandy. You can buy the export varieties, but they never seem to taste quite the same.”
Eulalie fixed her secretary with an accusing eye.
“All this time,” she said. “All this time, you’ve been watching me spinning my wheels trying to find your brother and he’s been living here with you. When did he move in? The night of the break-in?”
“Yes, dear.” Mrs. Belfast looked a little sheepish. “He came back after you and Chief Macgregor left, and helped me tidy the place up. Wasn’t that nice of him?”
“Very nice, considering that he created the mess in the first place.”
“Still, I thought it was considerate. I was perfectly happy to help you find out what he had been up to, but he asked me not to reveal his whereabouts to anyone, so I didn’t. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same.”
Eulalie sighed. Family was family, after all.
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 136