He had hesitated for a bit, and then said, “This is a big step for us Kate. Moving in together.” He hesitated again.
“I know,” I said. “But I don’t want to be alone here in New York.” Hopefully I didn’t sound like I was too needy.
“Is this just a New York decision then? If we were back in Toronto would we be in separate apartments?”
“Well,” I responded honestly. “I don’t know. We’re in New York and so much has changed in my life in the last two weeks. I know I want to be with you. Can we just say yes for now and talk about it when we’re face to face?”
Jay hesitated again and then said he would see me at the apartment in the morning. When the car pulled up and I saw he had his suitcases with him, I felt pretty good.
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him. He snaked one hand through my hair and the other one wandered down my back. He pulled me closer and I melted into him. Leaving the suitcases in the lobby we wandered into the guest bedroom and stretched out on the large, king size bed. Jay slowly unbuttoned my blouse and helped me out of my clothes. He covered my body with kisses and kept murmuring “Kathleen, I love you”.
Later, I dragged him into the shower for some more fun and games, but not before he made me scrub his back.
That afternoon Jay went to his office and I carried out a complete search of the apartment. I was looking for some very specific things, like Tommy’s hand-held electronic organizer, and some clue as to the password to his computer. But I was also on the look-out for anything out of the ordinary.
Starting in the kitchen I went through every cupboard and drawer. The cupboards held all the accoutrements one would expect to find in a kitchen comparable in size to a large restaurant. There was very little evidence that the kitchen was used on a regular basis. It didn’t look lived in. There were no piles of junk mail on the counters, no plants, no dish towels, and very little in the way of foodstuffs. There was no junk drawer. My kitchen and my mother’s kitchen always have a junk drawer. A drawer that holds take-out menus, elastic bands, pens, pieces of string, bills, receipts, Canadian Tire money, combs, and things we generally have no use for but can’t bare to throw out. Tommy’s kitchen did not have a junk drawer.
In the living room, dining room, lobby and hallways, I opened every drawer in every desk, coffee table, side table, buffet and credenza. I removed every picture and painting that was hanging on a wall to look behind it for a secret safe (I was really feeling like Nancy Drew at this point). I took each one of those pictures and paintings out of their frames to see if anything was hidden under the backing.
In the living room, I removed every book from the bookcase and turned it upside down, fanning the pages, hopeful that something would fall out and give me all the answers.
In the two bedrooms, I searched through every dresser drawer. The drawers and the closet were empty in the guest bedroom. In Tommy’s master bedroom I went through all his clothes hanging in his walk-in closet. I checked all the pockets of all the pants and jackets and shirts. I put my hand into each shoe, not knowing what I was looking for. I was exhausted by this point but refused to stop even when I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. Tommy’s aroma was pungent in the walk-in closet, and I felt myself wanting to cry for him. There was nothing in his dresser drawers other than neatly folded T-shirts, socks, underwear, an old wallet (with nothing in it), and some workout clothes.
I fanned all the pages of all the books in Tommy’s bookcase (which contained every bestseller in paperback from the last ten years), and was surprised to find two Harlequin romance novels in amongst them. They both looked vaguely familiar and I realized that they were probably old books of mine that Tommy had kept. He used to laugh at my secret obsession with romance novels, and would grab the books from me and tease me about the women on the front covers with their bosoms partly exposed, swooning in the arms of a Fabian-like Adonis.
I had no luck with the books, so I started on the framed photos and paintings hanging on the walls of the bedroom. The sun was going down by this point and the room was getting dark, so I turned on the bedside lamps. There was no overhead lighting and the room was subdued and sexy. I hurried through my task, not expecting to find anything pertinent at this point in my search. It had been a long afternoon and I was bone tired. The ends of my fingers were sore from prying the backs off picture frames, and the back of my neck was throbbing.
I pushed my way up onto the end of the bed and sat down, with my feet swinging off the floor. Now would be a good time to stop with this nonsense, I thought. If Tommy had left a clue, it certainly was not in this apartment, as far as I could see.
My eyes landed on the lone photo, sitting in the little space high up on the bookcase. It was the photo of me, taken on our honeymoon. What are the chances, I thought excitedly as I jumped down from the end of the bed. In the end I had to get a chair from the living room so I could reach the picture on the upper shelf, but the effort was worth it.
A key fell onto the floor when I took off the back of the picture frame. “Bingo,” I yelled.
chapter twenty-three
My heart was pounding and I needed a cigarette to help me get my thoughts organized. Stupid, stupid habit I chastised myself as I dragged deeply. Pacing back and forth on the terrace, I knew I was onto something significant. If Tommy had taken the trouble to hide a key in the back of a picture frame holding a picture of me, then the key was definitely a key to something.
I was waiting anxiously for Jay to come home because I wanted him there when I inserted the key into the filing cabinets hidden in Tommy’s secret place. I was certain the key would unlock one of those cabinets. It was small, brass plated and looked exactly like the key to thousands of filing cabinet keys I had handled over the years. And the fact that it had the word “Steelcase” engraved on it helped. Steelcase was one of the world’s largest manufacturers of office furniture and cabinets. Duh!
“Look what I found,” I said, and proudly held the small key up for Jay to see when he arrived. “I waited for you to get here before I tried opening the cabinets in the room behind the wall.”
Jay grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and activated the opening in the wall. The key worked on both cabinets which were chock full of files, neatly arranged alphabetically but in a strange way. The files didn’t have names or words on them, only letters of the alphabet, followed by a hyphen and a number. In the A’s, there were seventeen files, labeled A-1 through A-17. The cabinet on the left held files from A through R in two drawers, and the cabinet on the right had files S through Z in the top drawer. None of the files were thicker than an inch, and several appeared to hold only one or two sheets of paper.
The bottom drawer of the right hand cabinet held a jumbled assortment of power cords, computer and printer cables, a few magazines and a strong box. I eagerly grabbed the box and held it up by its handle. Jay calmly took the strong box from me and pushed the button on the front of it and it opened.
The box contained an interesting assortment of items: mine and Tommy’s marriage certificate, dated almost ten years ago, Tommy’s birth certificate, his passport, a crazy love letter that I had written him on the back sheet of a draft prospectus (I remembered writing it one late night at the office as we were all working on the initial public offering of Phoenix Technologies’ shares), another key (which appeared to be a safety deposit box key), and Tommy’s electronic organizer. Eureka! Now we were getting somewhere.
I was convinced that the electronic organizer would hold some clues and maybe some passwords. Tommy never went anywhere without it. Well, maybe he did, if it was in this strong box and not on him when he was murdered.
I handed it to Jay, hoping he would be able to unlock untold secrets. Needless to say, he was happy to work his magic on it while I started going through the files in the cabinets.
I had no sooner pulled out file A-1 when Jay told me that the electronic organizer was locked and we needed a password to access it.
&nbs
p; “I give up,” I said dejectedly. “Could Tommy have made this any harder? What in God’s name could be so important that he had everything password protected?”
“Obviously, he and his company had secrets which needed protecting. I’d guess they were pretty big and possibly damaging, and it’s probably why he was murdered. The police haven’t said that it was a typical mugging, have they? I think he was shot because of something in his personal or business life,” Jay said.
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I’m just frustrated. And wanting answers. And I want them the easy way. Let’s take some guesses on his password,” I suggested.
“Okay shoot. I’m not sure how many tries you can have before the organizer will lock you out, but usually it’s at least ten. Let’s start with his birthday.”
“May 6, 1959.”
Jay entered 561959. And then he tried may61959. And a couple variations on my birthday, September 10, 1968.
“Any other ideas?”
“Try Phoenix.”
“No, another strike-out. I’m going to try your name.” He entered Kate. Then Kathleen. Neither worked. “You know, I think we might be on the right track. He left everything to you in his will. The key to the cabinets was behind a picture of you. No one in New York seemed to know about you so it’s a good guess that the password is one that someone wouldn’t cotton-on to, probably something to do with you.” Jay was getting excited now. “So, did Tommy have any nicknames for you?”
I blushed thinking about some of the pet names Tommy had for me.
“Okay,” Jay said. “Let’s start with one that may not be that personal.”
I thought about it for a moment and something niggled in the back of my mind. It had been many years since Tommy and I were together and it was difficult to recall everything but I definitely remember he used to tease me a lot about something. Then the light went on!
“My middle name,” I said.
“Great. What is it?” Jay asked ready to key it in. He paused. “That’s weird. I should know the middle name of the woman I’m sleeping with but I don’t know if you’ve ever told me.”
“That’s because I don’t make a habit of telling people my middle name.”
“Oh, a little testy about it, are we?” Jay teased.
I hated being teased.
“It’s my grandmother’s name. Florence,” I told him reluctantly.
“That’s not so bad,” Jay said, as he started entering Florence.
“Hold on,” I said quickly. “Don’t waste a try on Florence. That may be my middle name, and I’ll deny it if you ever tell anyone, but that’s not what Tommy used to call me. His nickname for me when he wanted to tease me was Flossie.”
Jay snorted. “Yeah, that’s bad.” He was trying to hold back a smile, but he failed miserably and broke into a laugh. “Okay, I won’t use it against you. Often,” he snickered and then he entered Flossie into the electronic organizer and the thing started to chime. Then we both broke into wide smiles.
chapter twenty-four
I turned around and booted up Tommy’s computer.
“If Flossie worked on that thing, what do you think the odds are that it’ll be the password to his computer?”
I could feel the excitement building and was anxious to find out as much as we could. When the password log in screen came up on the computer I typed in Flossie and the computer politely told me that it was an incorrect password and I should try again.
“Shit,” I mumbled and tried Flossie in all capital letters, all lower case letters and several other variations.
“Cut it out Kate,” Jay told me. “You’re going to lock yourself out of the computer. Hang on a minute, I’m looking for a password file on his organizer.”
I sat on my hands to keep myself away from the computer and tried to be patient. At just about the point where I was going to scream in frustration, I heard the doorbell sound through the building intercom. The noise startled me because everything about this apartment was so new. Anxious to do anything but sit on my hands, I jumped up and went through the living room to the lobby and picked up the phone on the wall.
“Yes,” I said into the phone.
“Albert at the Front Desk ma’am,” I heard through the handset. I would hope so, I thought. No one else should be able to call up.
“Yes, Albert, what can I do for you tonight?”
“You have a visitor, ma’am. Shall I send them up?”
“Well, would you like to tell me who the visitor is, before I agree to that?” I asked him politely, but through clenched teeth. I was starting to suspect that security wasn’t one of the building’s stronger suits.
“A Miss Scott. Natalie Scott. Your neighbour miss, from the twentieth floor,” he drawled.
Oh really, I thought. I wondered if she was bringing me a Bundt cake to welcome me to the building.
“Send her up Albert,” I told him.
I quickly ran around to the living room and told Jay that we had a visitor. He could either lock himself in the secret room or come out, and close the wall opening. He chose the latter. The wall just finished closing as the front door chimes sounded. I braced myself and opened the door with a tentative smile on my face.
Natalie Scott would be a beautiful woman if she didn’t have such a pinched look about her. She had beautiful hair, long and in corkscrew curls, but it framed her face in such a way to make her look thinner than she really was. She stood about five foot seven, a giant in my books, and she held herself ramrod straight with her arms across her chest. Such body language. God, I thought once again, what did Tommy see in her?
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello,” she said back. I held the door open and invited her in. I introduced her to Jay who was sitting in the living room and she barely acknowledged him. Personally, I think he’s great to look at and wondered why she didn’t show any more interest.
“So,” I began. “What brings you by?”
“I’m here for my things. The doorman told me you had moved in today.”
Again, was nothing sacred and secure in this building? Geez! And what things, I wondered. I had just carried out a search of this apartment that would have made the FBI proud. I didn’t recall finding any of her things.
She must have assumed, or been told, that I knew about her relationship with Tommy because she wasn’t shy about the implication of the meaning of “my things”.
“Uh, sure,” I said. “What things and where would they be?”
Nat quickly glanced at the aquarium as if she knew there was something behind that wall. I played dumb. Years of practice, you know.
“Oh some CD’s, and a few files from the office,” she said, a little too casually.
Yeah right, I thought. She wanted into those filing cabinets, or the computer behind that wall, and the only way she was getting in that room was over my dead body. I shuddered as the thought passed through my brain. Cut it out, I told myself. Stop jinxing the pitcher!
I pointed at a stack of CD’s sitting on a side table. “Help yourself,” I offered. “As for office files, I wouldn’t know where they would be. I went through Tommy’s desk and there weren’t any business files.” I nodded at the desk at the far end of the room.
She picked up the pile of CDs and started shuffling through them. She wasn’t looking at the titles, she was only going through the motions of looking. “Nope, not here,” she stated as she put the stack back on the table. I caught her glancing again at the aquarium.
“Well, the files must be at the office then,” she said. “I’ll check with Carrie on Monday.”
She headed back to the front door, and said goodbye over her shoulder. She was making a fast exit and I was glad. The woman gave me the creeps. I stared through the peephole in the door until she got on the elevator and the doors closed.
“Okay,” I said to Jay as I walked back in the living room. “Something’s up and she knows about that hidden room. We’ve got to do something about all that stuff in
there.”
“Well, it’s probably a little late to do something tonight, but we could move it all out of here tomorrow to a secure place.” He stood in the middle of the room, with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking smug.
“What?” I said.
“I found his password file on the organizer. And these are serious passwords. Letters and numbers combined, upper case and lower case. Probably randomly generated by a computer program so they’re harder to break. I think I have the password to the computer. Good thing you told me our visitor was arriving because I was just about to yell out that we had hit pay dirt!” He grabbed the remote and opened the wall again.
The computer opened up on Jay’s first try with the password. There were thousands of files on the computer, all seemingly related to Phoenix Technologies. I recognized some of the hundreds of sub-directories that were labeled by project names but that was the extent of my knowledge.
“Oh, my, gawd,” I said slowly. The enormity of what lay before me was sinking in. How was I ever going to sift through all of this information when I didn’t even know what I was looking for? I felt defeated, discouraged and dead tired.
“Let’s call it a day,” I suggested, “and go find something to eat.”
chapter twenty-five
Over dinner, Jay and I talked about my big, pending decisions. Staying in New York. Staying on as Chair and CEO of Phoenix. Jay staying in New York.
Jay was no help at all on the first two issues. He kept telling me I had to do what I thought was best. He was so damn supportive! I was hoping for a little push-back but he wasn’t forthcoming. He was convinced that I could succeed as the head of the company and that I would adapt to New York. Jay had a blind faith in me that on the one hand was encouraging and flattering, but on the other hand, left me a little doubtful that things would be as easy as he made out.
On the question of Jay staying in New York, I was a little wary of how to broach the subject.
“So I stay in New York. What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?” he teased.
Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions Page 13