Mysterious Montana

by B. J Daniels

Zack nodded.

  “Don’t worry, okay? Sam will take care of everything. She’s an amazing woman. What guy wouldn’t want a woman like Sam looking out for him?” He realized what he’d said and looked toward the door and Sam.

  Her gaze locked with his, her eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights.

  Only a guy who didn’t have a lick of sense, he thought. Or a guy looking for a wife, a certain type of wife, one who didn’t carry a gun or steal kids or put herself into danger all the time.

  “So,” he said to Zack, “everything’s going to be all right.” He doubted that as he glanced toward the doorway again. Sam was gone.

  * * *

  SAMANTHA STOOD OUTSIDE the door for several moments. What would happen to Zack? She couldn’t bear to think. When she heard them coming, she hurriedly tried to pull herself together. The last thing she wanted Will to see was the hurt in her eyes. Of course he didn’t want her. He didn’t even want to date her now that he knew she wasn’t who he’d thought she was.

  You’re not falling for the guy, are you?

  Good heavens, no. What do you think I am, stupid?

  “Is Zack all right?” Charley asked, peering down the hallway at her.

  She straightened and put on her best face. “Will’s talking to him. They’ve become pretty close.” Tears threatened. She willed them away. “I’m scared for him. Whoever’s determined to get that game will feel they need Zack now if they hope to force me to find the pieces for them.”

  Charley nodded. “Have you talked to Lucas’s next of kin?”

  She stared at him. “You mean his grandmother Gladdie?”

  “No, his brother.”

  “Lucas has a brother?” Had she known anything about Lucas? Or had it all been a lie? He’d told her he had no one but his grandmother.

  “He has a half-brother who lives here,” Charley said as the hallway door opened behind her. “We stumbled across him when we began investigating the break-in at Whiz Kidz.”

  She turned to see Zack and Will.

  “Can I go play with the kids now?” Zack asked.

  “Sure, you can,” she said, patting his shoulder as he passed.

  Her gaze lifted to Will’s. He looked as sheepish and as embarrassed as she felt.

  “Lucas’s half-brother identified the items found on the body as Lucas’s,” Charley said, after the kids had all raced back into the family room and slammed the door behind them.

  Will expressed surprise. “I thought Gladdie was his only living relative.”

  “So did I. It seems there’s a lot about Lucas I didn’t know,” she said, hearing the bitterness in her voice. “What is this brother’s name, and how do I find him?”

  * * *

  ERIC ROSS LIVED in the University District just off Auburn Street in a run-down apartment house that smelled of cooked cabbage.

  The man who answered the door bore little resemblance to Lucas, except for the eyes. They were that same pale green. Nothing like Zack’s dark brown eyes.

  He held a can of beer in his fist and looked as if it wasn’t his first.

  “Eric Ross?” Samantha enquired.

  “Yeah?” He regarded them warily as if they might be bill collectors.

  “Who is it?” asked a rather shrill female voice from the other room.

  “I don’t know yet,” he called back, sounding irritated.

  “I’m Samantha Murphy, a private investigator. I’m investigating your brother’s death.”

  Eric opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He appeared shaken and a little disoriented. Then he hurriedly brushed his hands on his jeans and offered her a hand. “Come in, please, come in.”

  She took his hand and shook it quickly, before he offered it to Will. “This is Will Sheridan. My…colleague.”

  Eric ushered them into a cramped little room full of hard-used furniture. “Sit down, please, sit down.” He seemed embarrassed by the room and the blonde in it.

  The young woman looked like a girl, thin and boney, small-breasted and big-eyed. She wore only a large, oversize T-shirt. A pair of scrawny legs stuck out the bottom, ending in bare feet. She looked at Sam and Will, and frowned.

  “Bebe, do you mind?” Eric snapped.

  Bebe. Where had Sam heard that name?

  Bebe gave them a curious look, then turned and casually left the room, leaving the bedroom door partially open. No doubt so she could hear the conversation while she dressed.

  “It isn’t what you think,” Eric said.

  Sam wasn’t sure what she thought as she sat down on the edge of the blanket-covered sofa, and Will took a chair with a view of the doorway. She wondered if he’d done that on purpose. He looked uncomfortable, as if he had reason to be wary.

  Eric sat on a straight-back chair across from the couch. He looked nervous and kept glancing toward the bedroom where Bebe had disappeared.

  “Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill Lucas?” Sam asked.

  Eric looked surprised by the question. “The game, of course.” He looked again toward the bedroom. “What other reason could there be?”

  She wished she knew. “Which game is that?” she asked, wondering how much Lucas had told his half-brother.

  Eric looked confused. “The one the cops said he was working on.”

  “He didn’t talk about the game with you?” she asked.

  Eric shrugged. “He mentioned he was working on something big. But he always said that.”

  “He didn’t mention that he thought someone might want to kill him?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Did you ever see the game?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “He didn’t let anyone see his games until they were on the market. Paranoid, you know.”

  “So you don’t even know if this game, that was supposedly really big, even exists?” she asked.

  He frowned. “It must exist. Why else is Lucas dead?”

  It still sounded unbelievable that Lucas could have been killed over a computer game.

  “I thought you said it was more than a game?” Bebe said from the bedroom doorway.

  Isn’t that what the hype on the game boxes all said? “In what way?” Sam asked.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Eric interrupted. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  “But you said what Lucas did was the ultimate game,” Bebe pouted. She’d pulled on a pair of too-large, holey jeans. “Mailing out pieces of it the way he did.”

  Eric made a face at her that any fool could see meant shut up.

  “So you got a piece of the game?” Sam said, looking to Eric.

  “No,” he said shaking his head adamantly. “Why would he send me a piece and involve me in this mess?”

  “Because you’re his half-brother,” Sam pointed out. “If you didn’t get a piece of the game, then how did you know that Lucas had mailed them out?”

  Eric frowned. He looked to Bebe as if she had the answer. “The cops,” he said finally. “The cops must have mentioned it when they questioned me about Lucas’s death. Yeah, that’s right, they said he mailed out five pieces of the game to friends or something.”

  Sam considered that for a moment. “I heard he gambled online and could have gotten involved with loan sharks,” she said, fishing.

  “Who told you that?” Eric demanded. “It wasn’t true. Not Lucas.” But he didn’t sound very convincing.

  “Then who do you think killed him for the game?” she asked.

  “Someone as brilliant as Lucas was bound to have enemies,” he said with a shrug.

  Something in his tone caught Sam’s attention. “Are you also in the game software business?”

  “Yeah,” Eric said avoiding her gaze. “Nothing like Lucas, mind you. I just kinda dabble in it.”

  “You’ll sell a game someday,” Bebe said, as she came in and perched on the arm of the couch. “Eric’s got real talent.”

  He looked embarrassed to have her suddenly fawning over him
.

  Bebe leaned toward them. “You know if Lucas had helped Eric even a little, Eric would be bigger in the business than Lucas ever thought about being.”

  “Bebe,” Eric warned.

  “It’s true, come on,” she said, waving him off with a hand. “Lucas was just so full of himself. He even said one time that he was going to come up with software that could break into any computer in the world and steal anything he wanted without anyone knowing who he was or even suspecting he’d been there until it was too late. Any computer in the world. Can you imagine that kind of arrogance?”

  “Bebe, get me a beer,” Eric snapped.

  It was obvious Bebe didn’t like being ordered around. Nor did she want to leave the room, but she did, although reluctantly.

  “Don’t pay her any mind,” he said the moment she was gone. “She’s just a game designer groupie. She believes anything you tell her.” He didn’t look happy about that. “Catastrophe is just a game.”

  Catastrophe. She thought he’d said he didn’t know anything about the game—including its name.

  “So did you get a piece of the game?” Bebe asked Sam, as she came back into the room, holding an open can of beer.

  “No,” Sam said. Or Andy, her associate at the office, would have called to tell her. No, Lucas hadn’t sent her a piece. He’d just left her a message on her answering machine telling her to take care of—something. Someone. Zack, obviously. “How about you?”

  “Me?” Bebe cried. “Lucas wouldn’t give me the time of day!”

  “Who do you think does have a piece of it?” Sam asked, watching Bebe.

  Bebe shrugged as she handed Eric the beer and sloshed some of the brew onto the carpet. He gave her a dirty look as she rubbed the spilled liquid into the rug with her bare foot.

  “So what’s in it for you?” Bebe asked her pointedly.

  “I just want to find out who killed Lucas and why,” Sam said.

  “Got any ideas?” Bebe asked.

  Sam shook her head and looked over at Will. They’d hit another wall. Then she remembered the credit card she’d found in Zack’s backpack. “Do you know anyone named Robert Walker?”

  “Bobby?” Bebe cried. “Sure, he invested in Lucas’s game. Wouldn’t invest in any of Eric’s though.”

  “Shut up, Bebe,” Eric snapped, this time more forcefully. “How do you know Bob?” he asked Sam.

  “I just heard his name somewhere,” she said vaguely, and shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but she watched Bebe’s face. The girl’s gaze flicked nervously to Eric, but she said nothing as Sam reluctantly followed Will out the door.

  “You think she’ll be all right?” Will asked, obviously referring to Bebe.

  Sam glanced back to see Bebe trying to make up to Eric, cuddling against him and talking fast. “I hope so. What bothers me is why Eric was lying about having a piece of the game,” she said as Will opened her side of the pickup and she slipped in. “Charley told me that the cops didn’t mention the name of the game or that there were five pieces mailed out. The only way Eric could have known that was if he got one—and the note with it.”

  * * *

  ROBERT WALKER was playing tennis under a large white bubble in his impressive backyard. He wiped his face with a towel before coming over. He was a handsome, athletic man in obviously good shape.

  “You must be Samantha Murphy,” he said congenially as he offered a hand. His handshake was firm, his gaze steady and strong. He didn’t look like the kind of man who would know Eric, let alone Bebe. Nor did he look like a man who went by “Bobby.” “My secretary said you’d be dropping by.”

  “This is my associate, Will Sheridan.”

  If Eric or Bebe had called to warn him, he didn’t show it.

  He shook Will’s hand. “Can I offer you something to drink? Juice? Or something stronger?”

  “No, thanks,” she said, and Will declined, as well. “I just wanted to ask you some questions about Whiz Kidz, the computer game company you invested in.”

  Bobby frowned but motioned to the lounge chairs along the edge of the covered court. A sleek, lean woman continued to hit balls from a machine at the other end of the huge building.

  “Whiz Kidz? The name doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ve invested in a lot of companies. I don’t have much firsthand knowledge of their day-to-day operations,” Bobby said.

  “I’m mostly interested in Lucas O’Brien, a computer game designer and one of the partners in Whiz Kidz.”

  She could tell the name rang a bell.

  “Oh. Lucas. Sure.” He turned to watch the woman on the court smack a few balls before he looked at the two of them again. “I really don’t understand why you’d be interested in my investments.”

  “Lucas was in partnership with Whiz Kidz. It was in financial trouble. So was Lucas.”

  Bobby smiled. “A lot of small computer businesses in Seattle are just getting on their feet. It takes a while in the game business. The average computer game sells twenty thousand copies—the successful game, one-hundred thousand. Less than one percent of the games written sell more than one-hundred thousand copies.” He held up his hands. “It’s a tough industry. You have to be very clever to survive.”

  “And Lucas was clever?”

  Bobby grinned.

  “How much can a successful game make?” Will asked.

  “A megahit? Three-hundred thousand dollars a month for a year, maybe more.”

  “Wow, I didn’t realize there was that kind of money in games,” Will said.

  “You’d be surprised. It’s just a matter of finding the right game at the right time. The game market is incredible,” Bobby said enthusiastically.

  “I guess I’m surprised you’d invest in a company that hadn’t had a hit game in five years,” Sam said.

  He smiled. “I didn’t invest in Whiz Kidz. I invested in Lucas O’Brien. The top games are being designed by guys with about seven years of experience. That’s what it takes to know if you have a game that’s going to work. Lucas was at that point. Plus, he had something he was working on that interested me.”

  “Really?” she said. “This game he was working on was separate from his partnership with Whiz Kidz?” She wondered if Buzz knew this.

  Bobby nodded. “He wanted to do something different, something on his own.”

  “He told you about the game?”

  “Not a lot—just that he thought he had something. That was good enough for me. I usually go on my gut feelings with these things.” He glanced around the tennis court. “So far, it’s paid off.”

  She was sure now that neither Eric nor Bebe had called to warn Bobby about her. Probably didn’t want to admit that they’d been the ones who’d told her about him.

  “How did you find out about Lucas and his game, to invest in the project?” she asked.

  Bobby looked surprised.

  “I mean,” she continued, “it sounds like Lucas was pretty hush-hush about the game.”

  He nodded and seemed to be searching for the answer. “I don’t remember. Probably a mutual friend.”

  That didn’t seem likely, and they both knew it.

  “You didn’t happen to lose a credit card recently, did you?” she asked.

  He looked startled. “As a matter of fact, one of mine was stolen—”

  She pulled the card from her purse and handed it to him. “I just happened to find it on the ground.” A whopper of a lie, but no telling where Zack—or Ralph—had picked it up.

  “Thanks for returning it,” Bobby said, and laid it on the table between them. “But I’d already called it in and canceled it.”

  If he was lying, he was better than she was.

  She wasn’t sure how to give him the news. But his arrogance made it a little easier. “I just spoke with the police. Lucas O’Brien was found murdered. He’d been floating in the Sound since Friday when his office was broken into.”

  Bobby blanched. “He’s dead?”

  She nodded and
waited for him to ask about the game. He didn’t.

  “Lucas didn’t happen to send you a piece of the game he was working on, did he?” she asked.

  “No, why?” He looked to Will.

  “It’s missing,” Will said.

  Bobby didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look quite as tanned as before. She and Will got to their feet. Bobby Walker seemed relieved they were leaving. Maybe he really was only upset over Lucas’s death and not worried about his investment. Or maybe he had a piece of the game and planned to get the others.

  “I hope you didn’t invest too much,” she said conversationally.

  Bobby smiled and shook his head as he picked up his racket. “Not all investments pay off. You have to just take the bad with the good.”

  “I guess so,” she said, and she and Will left.

  Behind them, inside the bubble, the bouncing balls stopped and there was loud cursing, followed by what sounded like a tennis racket shattering on a hard surface.

  It wasn’t until Will was driving away that Sam remembered where she’d heard the name Bebe before. Bradley Guess, aka Buzz Zingler, had been talking to someone on the phone he called Bebe.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was growing dark by the time he and Samantha caught the ferry to Vashon Island. A cold wet wind whipped the top of the water, sending spray into the air like driving rain. Will was glad they’d stayed in the pickup. The Sound seemed dark and treacherous.

  Samantha looked exhausted from lack of sleep, he noticed.

  When her cell phone rang, he started, suddenly struck with an irrational fear. “Don’t answer it.”

  She jerked her head up in surprise. “It might be Charley.” She snapped on the phone and put it to her ear, her gaze never leaving his face, as if she didn’t know what to make of him.

  He watched her eyes widen, then fill with tears. “I know” was all she said before she clicked off again.

  He closed his eyes, not wanting to hear.

  “It was Charley. Cassie got a court order. She’s taken custody of Zack.”

  “This quickly? How is that possible?” Will demanded.

  “Her father is rather influential in the state of Washington, it seems,” Sam said.

  “I’m so sorry.” Sorrier than she could ever know. He felt sick inside. And mad.