Down in Whisper (9781311456113)

by Elizabeth, Bonnie

I made it to North Bend in good time, maybe five minutes earlier than I’d planned. I drove through town, slowing my speed as I got closer to where I’d need to turn. The machine shop was down a narrow road that appeared to lead directly to Mt. Si, but instead ended at the parking lot for the shop.

  A trailer to my right was labeled Taylor and Sons Machinists. That made sense. I’d talked to a Mike Taylor on the phone. I wondered which Taylor he was. In addition to the trailer, which looked like it had seen better days, there was a large shop. The shop was an older building that sat behind the trailer. I stood looking around but saw no one to direct me. I figured the trailer was the main office. I’d start there.

  I walked up the steps to the trailer. There was a window on the door, where I could see a desk and a phone. A short man had his back to me. He appeared to be making a copy or maybe collecting a fax. I opened the door.

  The man turned. His face was long and narrow, almost birdlike. His eyes were equally quick to take in my dress.

  “Can I help you?” he asked. His voice held the hint of an accent that I couldn’t place.

  “I’m Rain McFarland. I’m here to talk to someone about security for the shop.”

  “I didn’t call about security,” he said.

  “Someone else?” I wondered what was going on.

  He shook his head. “I’m Mike Taylor and I own this place. I haven’t called for security today. No real reason to.”

  “Well that’s strange,” I said. “I got a call from someone claiming to be Mike Taylor and he wanted someone from Barringer and Associates to come out and give him an estimate on security services for the next few weeks. He complained of thefts.”

  The birdlike man shook his head. It was disconcerting to see how long and narrow his face was from the front but it seemed so ordinary from the side.

  “Playing a prank, probably,” he said.

  I sighed. There wasn’t much to do. I made to leave the office but turned before doing so. “I’ll just leave my card in case you need someone,” I said. I set it down on the desk.

  Mike Taylor just looked at me but said nothing. I suspected the card would end up in the trash as soon as I drove away.

  Once back in my car, I thought about the strangeness of the whole situation. Mike didn’t sound at all like he had on the phone. On the phone he’d talked like everyone in the Northwest spoke, much like I did. But this man had had that strange accent. I’d clearly spoken to someone else on the phone but there didn’t seem to be anyone around. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong with the whole situation. I’d need to follow up but I wasn’t certain how.

  Meg

  Back in the office, Meg continued to stew about her father’s attitude. She knew she ought to be the one out on the mountain, but it seemed like everyone was set to keep her at her desk. She was an outdoor person, not a computer sleuth. In fact, if anyone was an expert at finding things on the computer, it was RaeLynn. Meg pushed aside the cup she’d brought back from lunch and started down the hall to see her former receptionist.

  “Hey,” she said, casually walking by Kyle’s desk.

  “Hey.” He barely looked up from his computer. Clearly the case she had put him on was interesting.

  Kaitlyn was on the phone when Meg came through the main office.

  “Gotta go,” Kaitlyn said, hanging up the phone, before she turned to look at Meg, expectantly. Meg bit back a comment about non-work related calls. She really needed to do something about Kaitlyn, but she wasn’t sure how to go about it. Besides, Kaitlyn reminded her of Lacey. And what a lot of stuff the two women would have had to share now. Meg smiled a little, wondering what Lacey would say about Peter.

  “I told you, you should have just ripped his clothes off a long time ago.” Meg could picture Lacey laughing when she made the comment. Probably up on the old deck of her house, watching the goats. Lacey would be dressed in work clothes, with mud all over them and her hair pulled back in a braid. Meg would be dressed in jeans, which were mostly clean.

  Looking up, Meg caught a last glimpse of Kaitlyn, her hair the same color as Lacey’s, the same curl that was only tamed in a braid or by cutting it all off. The angle of her chin was the same as well, which made the side angle glimpse particularly poignant.

  Meg flicked some food from her pullover as she turned the corner to RaeLynn’s office. She needed to keep focused on the case, not letting her mind wander over things that had happened nearly a year ago.

  “Afternoon,” Meg said when she was at the door of RaeLynn’s office. This room was smaller but in the same general position Meg’s held on the other side of the building. “Afternoon,” RaeLynn said looking up. “So what can I help you with?”

  “Wondering if you’ve found anything about the plane,” Meg said, walking into the room. She dropped into the big chair that sat across from the desk. The computer looked pretty ordinary, although Meg reminded herself that was just the screen. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen the computer and if she had, it was likely only the exterior case. She always expected that it would take up more space than it did. Joe Running and Zari A had done a fine job of building and hiding their special machine.

  “I haven’t gotten anything yet,” RaeLynn said. “Did you have an idea?”

  “I figured you’ve checked the usual government contractors, the FAA, Homeland and the Department of Defense, right?” Meg said.

  “I tried poking around a bit earlier but wasn’t getting any place. You do know the government has pretty good security.”

  “Isn’t that why we have this computer?” Meg asked.

  RaeLynn gave her a long look and a sigh.

  “You mean you want me to try to hack the Department of Defense? The United States government?” The other woman’s eyes were the size of the small clock that hung on the wall by the door.

  “Yeah,” Meg said, casually.

  RaeLynn bit her lip but started typing. Meg waited looking out the window at the clouds as they moved towards the mountains. She wondered if it would rain that evening. It hadn’t smelled like rain when she’d been outside earlier.

  Meg wasn’t surprised to see Zari A saunter into the room and leap on the desk. RaeLynn rubbed the cat’s chin. Zari’s eyes were half closed but she paused to give Meg a long look before letting them fall completely shut. Meg thought that perhaps the cat was annoyed that she was just sitting there and not paying attention to her.

  “Zari says we can do it, but it’s not something I’ve ever done. Maybe I should try running searches on any missing persons that are also pilots.”

  “Have you found anything doing that?” Meg asked.

  “It wasn’t a priority so I’ve been sort of running some ideas out there as I think of them. I haven’t gotten any hits. In fact, the only thing interesting is what I haven’t found.”

  “What’s that?” Meg figured that sometimes what you didn’t find might tell her something.

  “No flight plans that might have had a plane flying over Whisper at that time of night. A couple of planes that could have been slightly off course but I checked and they reached their destinations.”

  Meg nodded, thinking about it.

  “I still think you need to search around the government databases. From the images I got from Peter it looked like a fighter plane, so that seems like government, especially if it was a test plane.”

  “And how far do you want us to dig?” RaeLynn asked.

  “As far as you have to,” Meg said.

  “And if we get caught?” RaeLynn asked, very directly.

  “Does Zari think you’ll get caught?”

  “Zari never thinks we’ll get caught.”

  “And have you ever?”

  “No,” that was drawn out as if RaeLynn wanted to protest. However, after looking at Meg and then the cat and getting no support, she stopped arguing and put her fingers to the keyboard.

  Meg knew that much of what Ian and Dillon did was hacking their own security systems wi
th Zari’s computer. So far they hadn’t found any trails leading back to them. In fact, they hadn’t even managed to detect that someone had gotten in. Rain had even hired Joe Running to see if he could detect that they’d been hacked. So far, he’d not found anything, even though, having helped Zari build the system, he knew better than anyone what to look for.

  Meg remembered the meeting. She’d been there at the conference table with Rain, Dillon and RaeLynn. Joe had been dressed in blue jeans and a nice button down shirt. Joe had looked confident, sitting there at his end of the table, with the report neatly typed in front of him.

  “Three files get larger but no matter what I do, I can’t get a look at what’s in the extra size. And I can’t pick up a trail as to how the extra size got there,” he’d reported. “I think that most security experts might finally give up thinking it was a glitch, particularly as there’s nothing at all to suggest a trail.”

  Meg had wanted to pay attention in the meeting so she’d know what the system was and was not capable of, but she kept getting distracted by the rain on the windows, making patterns that reminded her of the way movies scrolled data across a screen.

  Meg shook herself, mentally coming back to the room, where she watched Zari and RaeLynn. Zari turned and sat before standing again, taking a look at the screen. The cat repeated the motion several times. Meg finally got up to look over RaeLynn’s shoulder. She could smell the light scent that reminded her of incense floating around the other woman. There was also the vaguest sent of rose as well as if it might be part of her shampoo.

  “You’re making me nervous, Meg,” RaeLynn said. “You really don’t want to make me nervous while I’m checking in the government computers where I’m not supposed to be.”

  “Okay,” Meg said. “I figured if Zari was looking, you had found something.”

  “Only another layer to get through first,” RaeLynn told her. “It’s probably faster if I get in and then download what I can. I’ll send it to you when it’s done. Once we’re in, I can let Zari work on her computer here. She absorbs things faster than we do.”

  “Go to it, then.” Meg felt a little miffed she was being pushed out of the investigation yet again.

  On the way out, Kaitlyn was on the phone again. She was talking on her cell phone, so the call was clearly personal. Meg stopped at the desk, waiting.

  “Yes?” Kaitlyn asked, holding the phone away but making it clear that Meg was interrupting.

  “If you’re on a break, you need to do it somewhere other than the front desk,” Meg said.

  “Oh I’m not,” Kaitlyn smiled. “I can work and talk.”

  “No,” Meg said, finally realizing that she couldn’t take any more of this. “You can’t. And if I catch you doing it once more, you’ll be looking for another job. Is that clear?”

  Kaitlyn’s jaw dropped, but she said her good byes quickly. Meg looked back as she continued on to her office to see the young woman casting glances over at her, tears threatening at the corners of her eyes.

  Rain

  The traffic was heavier coming home, but only slightly. Not that there was ever that much traffic through the Valley. And, when I did see cars, most were driving in the other direction. I puzzled about the mystery of Mike Taylor and the machine shop.

  Maybe I should call the police and tell them about the call? Maybe they could check out the Taylors? Could there be a Taylor who did want the security and one who didn’t? But why lie to me about the names?

  “Well it’s about time,” Zari told me as I crossed that invisible point where I was close enough to hear her again.

  “What’s up?” I asked, thinking that if something had happened someone would have called me. RaeLynn would have done that even if we couldn’t count on Kaitlyn.

  “I have been looking at government files for some time now. Meg asked us to find out who might have hired to build a plane by one of your various governmental agencies. I have said before you run your country very inefficiently and going through all these agencies to find one thing just proves it.” Zari was clearly in lecture mode.

  “Meg asked you to do that?” I asked. I slowed to make the turn off from Highway 203 that would take me up into the east hills above the Valley.

  “She asked RaeLynn,” Zari clarified.

  “Have you found anything?”

  “That is what is strange,” Zari admitted. “We haven’t. RaeLynn has expanded our search to various companies that do government contracting and any company that makes any sort of airplane, hovercraft and even the private companies that make rockets but we have yet to find a mention.”

  “What about anything discussing something that has the properties of your metal?” I was thinking that perhaps they were only trying the plane but the project might be around the special metal.

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you suppose this is something that Colleen might be able to help with? She was in the military. Could she give us some leads on what type of language to scan for?” I asked. I was mostly thinking aloud. Being in the military did not mean she could think like someone at the DOD or anywhere else. However, she might recognize something I would overlook, or even Meg.

  “She is not in the office now,” Zari told me. She and Colleen were not very good at communicating. While they had been practicing, Zari told me that Colleen was limited in how much she could hear. The cat believed it had to do with the other woman’s world view, but she didn’t quite explain what that was.

  “I can check in with her in the morning,” I said.

  It didn’t take me long to finish my drive. There was even less traffic on this stretch, although it was about as busy as it gets in Whisper. I actually had to wait behind a blue car making a left turn at the light at Baseline and Main. Once in the parking garage, I had to wait for a moment while one of my tenants finished parking, carefully backing out once more to be sure they were straight.

  “Afternoon,” I said to the woman who had been parking as we waited for the elevator.

  “Afternoon,” she said. She was taller than I was, but then most people are. Like so many in the Pacific Northwest she was slimmer than me and looked like she worked out. I wondered what she did for a living, mostly because I wanted to know my tenants but I didn’t have time to think of a conversational gambit.

  I got off at the office level while my companion continued up another floor. Inside, Kaitlyn was packing up her stuff to leave. She looked as grumpy and as frustrated as I felt.

  “Have a good evening,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she told me, tossing a cell phone in her purse and marching out. I wondered what had happened and if this was something I’d have to deal with tomorrow.

  I walked back to my office. I saw Zari, trotting towards me with her tail high. She was coming from RaeLynn’s office. As she got close to me, she fell on her side and offered me her belly. Clearly she was stressed if she needed a rub that badly. Normally she waited until we were in private. We were practically in the reception area.

  “Hard day?” I asked her, speaking out loud, something I’d started doing.

  “A little,” Kyle said stepping out of his office to watch me rub the cat’s belly.

  “She was talking to me,” Zari said, turning her head to glare at him.

  Kyle gave the cat a smile. As I stood up, he bent towards her and gave a more thorough and rougher rub. She kicked at his hand with her back paws before standing and shaking herself off. She didn’t say anything but trotted down towards my office.

  “So a rough day for you too?” I said. I did not offer to rub his belly.

  “A little. I’m just not getting anywhere on this.”

  “Well the machine shop visit was a bust. I swear I talked to Mike Taylor on the phone but when I got there, the only person in the office answered to that name and insisted they hadn’t called for a security consult.”

  “Did you get any identification?” Kyle looked up at me, dark eyes suddenly probing, and clearly I had caught hi
s interest.

  “Well, it seemed weird to do that. It wasn’t like I was already asking for money or anything. But I did catch the trace of a strange accent, not one I heard on the phone.”

  Kyle frowned. “I don’t like that.”

  “Neither do I. Do you think I should call the police?”

  “Maybe call Sheri?” Kyle suggested. Sheri Wyman was on the Whisper police force and our office often worked closely with her. She’d been a handy source of information for us on occasion. Of course, Meg and Kyle had managed to solve some cases that would have been left open if she had had to go by the book, so perhaps she was returning favors. Then again, she had always had a little bit of a crush on Kyle.

  “Maybe I will. At least then it’s on record. And I guess if the machinists all turn up murdered or robbed by the guy in the office, my butt is covered,” I said, laughing a little.

  Kyle gave me another smile but this one was a little more forced. I hit myself for adding in the comment about killing. He was still sensitive about the man he had accidentally killed a few months back.

  “I’m sure Sheri can get you to the right people in North Bend,” he said a little more quietly.

  Meg

  Around dinner time, Peter showed up in the office to find Meg pacing in front of her desk.

  “Any news?” she asked, barely looking up. She was still mad at him. He’d approved of her father’s plan to send her back to the office, as if he thought she couldn’t take care of herself on the mountain. She’d been hiking the mountain since she was a child. He’d be able to protect her on his land if she ran into anything she couldn’t handle. She couldn’t figure out what was up with him.

  “Dillon is still off the mountain. I’m not sure if he’s camped for the night or if he’s found something.” Peter leaned back against the window watching her, eyes slightly narrowed, dark hair dipping across his forehead.

  “And my dad?” Meg asked. “You know I should have gone there with them. I know the mountain.”