The Transmuter's Daughter

by Laurence Dahners

  Sounding contrite, Kiri said, “Thanks for explaining. I’m sorry I was so slow to move out of your way earlier.”

  “Yeah,” Morgan said softly, “I’m sorry I barked at you.” The drive started recording so he turned around and got up. He looked at her with worried eyes. “Adam said the detective was really hitting you with a lot of hard questions?”

  She nodded.

  “If he tries to do it again, remember you’re entitled to a lawyer when they’re questioning you. You should at least have me with you as your guardian.”

  She swallowed, “Thanks.” After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “I think… He seems to think I did it.”

  “But you didn’t, right?”

  She shook her head, “No!” Then, with a sag in her shoulders, “Maybe I’d just as well have. I hit that guy in the crotch and that’s what made him pull the trigger.” Her eyes dropped to the floor, “If I’d stayed out of the mine like they told me to… Dad’d still be alive.”

  Morgan hesitated, not sure exactly what to say. He ventured, “It’s… natural to blame yourself. But, it’s not actually your fault that bad people do bad things.”

  “But…”

  Morgan gathered her into a hug. “It’s not your fault.” He’d been gently holding her for a couple of minutes, feeling her shoulders jerking with little sobs, when he remembered her telling him that “she didn’t hug.” He wondered if she was mad about him hugging her, but she didn’t seem to be pulling away. He gave it another thirty seconds, then loosened up and searched for her eyes, “You okay?”

  She sniffed and nodded. “But I don’t like that asshole,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah,” Morgan sighed, “neither do I.”

  Kiri said she wanted to go up to her room. After she left, Morgan downloaded a data recovery program onto his laptop. He was about to turn back to Daryn’s finances when he got a call from Roger.

  After bringing Roger up to date on the situation in Asheville, he said, “What’s up down there?”

  “Treyvn says the big three are trying to play hardball.”

  Morgan frowned, “Does he think they can win?”

  “No, but he thinks they might hope to make things so difficult that we decide to negotiate.”

  Morgan’s initial reaction was to tell them they could go to hell. He could wait to get the money. Then he remembered that, even if he’d actually saved up money he could live on in the meantime; he didn’t really have access to much of it. Then he realized, I can just take the hit and start withdrawing my retirement. “Screw ‘em. I’m happy to wait ‘em out.” He had another thought, “How are we paying Trey?”

  “By the hour. He isn’t cheap.”

  “Thank God. I suddenly worried he was working on a 33% contingency fee.”

  Roger laughed, “I’m sure he’d like to be. He offered to do it for a 15% contingency fee since the case had a potential huge payout, but I ran the numbers and decided $45 million sounded like an awful lot, no matter how much he charges by the hour.”

  Morgan blinked, “Then we know how much they sold Matilda for?”

  “No, I’m just working from a round figure of 600 million. A hundred million for each of the five founders and a hundred million for the employees’ share.” He produced an uncomfortable chuckle, “Of course, if we lose, we’ll wish we’d gone with the contingency fee.”

  ***

  With a little time on his hands, Morgan started digging through Daryn’s finances. He found Daryn’s income tax returns which attributed about eighty percent of his income to invention royalties. Daryn also had some income from investments in a number of stock market index funds. The biggest expense by far was the property mortgage—of $4,862 per month! At first Morgan couldn’t imagine why it was so high. It was a half hour drive from downtown Asheville. The house wasn’t huge—he would’ve estimated 2200 square feet—or particularly modern. The view out across the valley was spectacular, but according to an online mortgage calculator, a loan with that kind of payment had to be for somewhere around $1 million. Then he realized that with the mine being so far up behind the house the property might be as big as 10 to 20 acres. He had a hard time believing that the mine was worth much, but a savvy businessman might be able to subdivide the land into a number of smaller parcels, each with its own great view out across the valley.

  Other significant expenses included property taxes, as well as quarterly income taxes that had to be sent in to the government since Daryn didn’t have a paycheck to have taxes withheld from. There were payments for what Morgan thought were surprisingly expensive music lessons for Lindl and tuition at UNC Asheville for the “dual-enrollment” courses for Kiri.

  Morgan paused to think about that. If Kiri was fifteen, he thought she should be a sophomore. Are sophomores allowed to take dual enrollment courses? he wondered. He’d thought only seniors and possibly juniors were allowed to do so. She might be a grade ahead of what I think? He blinked, Or two grades ahead, like her dad. I guess I’ll have to ask her. He decided that, at the moment, it didn’t actually matter. She was taking the courses, so he needed to figure out how to pay for them.

  Daryn’s truck and the kids’ car were apparently owned outright, at least Morgan couldn’t find any car payments. There were credit card payments, but Daryn paid them off each month so at least there wasn’t any credit card interest. Utilities were apparently direct billed to one of the credit cards. Astonishingly, the electrical bill fluctuated wildly. The most recent one was more than five times what Morgan’s electric bill had averaged back home. He lifted his head and looked around, wondering how it could possibly be so much.

  As Morgan tried to get a sense for total expenditures versus total income each month, he got a little frustrated. The royalty payments varied significantly from month-to-month. Some of them were paid annually and some of them quarterly. The quarterly payments apparently depended on sales because they weren’t consistent. The credit card bills also varied widely. Morgan thought that was because Daryn intermittently bought expensive equipment for research and inventing projects using one of his credit cards.

  But there won’t be any more investments in expensive equipment, Morgan thought sadly. Unfortunately, that’s a decrease in expenditures that’ll eventually result in a loss of income.

  After spending more time on it than he wanted, Morgan decided that over a year’s time, income should approximately balance expenditures, at least until the royalty income dropped off some more. However, there would likely be months when income was significantly less than expenses. Apparently Daryn had used a money market account at the credit union to deal with such fluctuations, but it only had $8,800 in it at present.

  I guess I could sell some of Daryn’s stock, Morgan thought. However, he felt like part of the charge given him in the will was to preserve Daryn’s money for his niece and nephew. If I don’t sell some stock though, it’s going to be hard sending them to college out of declining royalty income.

  Suddenly he realized that he could markedly cut expenses by selling the property. Cutting out that huge mortgage payment would put them way ahead of the game. If they all moved into a smaller house the money would go a lot further. They’d be better off renting since Lindl, then Adam, then Kiri would each be moving out and going away to college over the next few years. If they were renting, downsizing would be easier.

  And they certainly didn’t need a mine.

  ***

  Trying to figure out what they could eat for dinner, Morgan was in the pantry when he noticed a small electronic scale. Intermittently, he’d been thinking about how the small block of metal that Daryn’d had in his pocket must be pretty dense to be so heavy at such a small size. Depending on how accurate this scale is I might be able to measure its density pretty closely, he thought.

  He pushed the button to turn the scale on, then fooled around with it until he got it to register weight in grams. He went back out to the kitchen nook where they had the house computer. There was
a little bowl full of change sitting on the desk. He searched through it and found a nickel, then went back in and weighed it on the scale, getting a result of five grams.

  He paused. He’d been told that a nickel weighed five grams, but he didn’t know whether that was exact. He opened a Google search on the computer and determined that a nickel’s weight should be five grams with pretty good precision. He searched through the bowl and found six more nickels. When he weighed all seven, the scale gave him a figure of thirty-five grams. He couldn’t think of another way to check its accuracy but decided it was probably close enough.

  He went upstairs and got the little block of silvery white metal and a wire coat hanger. The chunk of metal weighed 338 grams.

  He Googled how to measure volume by water displacement. He didn’t have a graduated cylinder, but knew there was some way to do it using a scale.

  Back in the kitchen, he found an empty jar and filled it most of the way with water. Stepping into the pantry, he turned on the scale, checked to be sure that it was still zeroed and set for grams, then set it on one of the shelves. He spent a couple of minutes bending the coat hanger into a shape that would provide a small cradle to hold the block of metal. He hooked his coat hanger cradle on the scale, adjusting its shape so that the cradle hung just a little way above the wide shelf beneath the one with the scale on it.

  He placed the jar with the water on the lower shelf and hooked his coat hanger cradle on the scale again so that the bottom end of the cradle was immersed in the water. Using the tare function on the scale he set it to zero with the coat hanger cradle hanging on it—but partly supported by the fact that part of the cradle was immersed in water.

  He paused and thought for a second, then decided everything looked correct. He lifted the wire out of the water, carefully placed the block of metal in the cradle, then immersed the block so that the hook was on the scale again. Now the scale said 323 grams. He subtracted 338 minus the 323. So it displaced about fifteen ccs of water. Dividing 338 grams by fifteen ccs gave him a figure of 22.5 grams per cubic centimeter.

  A Google search showed him that twenty-two point five grams per cc was between the densities of iridium and osmium, the two densest elements. However—he did some calculations—if because of the limited accuracy of the scale, it actually weighed 338.5 grams and its volume was 14.5 ccs, its density could be as high as 23.34 grams per cubic centimeter. That was denser than any known element, so obviously incorrect. But if it weighed 337.5 grams and its volume was 15.5 ccs, its density could be as low as 21.77 grams per cubic centimeter. That was a little denser than platinum, the third densest element.

  He supposed it could be some kind of mixture, all three elements were silvery, though osmium was supposed to be a little bit bluish rather than silvery-white like platinum and iridium. In any case, he didn’t know of any way to fake densities and a search showed him that all three metals were valuable. The little block of metal would range from $4,300 if it was osmium to $12,700 if it was iridium. Platinum would come in somewhere in the middle at about $9,800.

  If this scale was more accurate, I’d have a better idea what it is. Though that wouldn’t answer the question of what the hell Daryn was doing, walking around with a big chunk of precious metal in his pocket. Or where he got it. Or whether those guys killed him because of it.

  After some thought, Daryn logged onto Amazon and ordered a scale accurate to a hundredth of a gram. He wanted one with accuracy to a thousandth of a gram, but couldn’t find one with that degree of accuracy that also had sufficient capacity for a 338 gram chunk of metal. Right after he ordered it, he thought, Wait a minute. If Daryn’s been doing something involving precious metals, maybe he’s already got an accurate scale.

  Morgan put the Amazon order on hold, then went to look for Kiri or Lindl.

  Kiri wasn’t in her room, but Lindl was. He was playing another melancholy but soothing tune on his guitar. Morgan listened patiently, thinking once again that Lindl’s playing sounded professional. Lindl had a tube on one of the fingers of his left hand and was sliding it up and down the neck of the guitar to produce gorgeous sounding glissandos and vibratos. Is he as good as I think he is? Morgan wondered, wishing he knew more about music so he’d be a better judge.

  As the piece Lindl was playing came to an end, he sang along with the last couple of lines. Morgan’s nephew had a rich baritone voice and Morgan thought he was perfectly on key. The lyrics had a mystical and profound sense to them, and Morgan thought he’d surely remember them later.

  Sadly, he didn’t.

  Lindl looked up and appeared surprised, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were waiting. Don’t worry about interrupting me if you need something.” He shrugged, “I don’t notice much when I’m playing.”

  Thinking Lindl had inherited that intense concentration from Daryn, Morgan shrugged, “I like listening to you play, but I did come up here with another goal in mind. Do you know if your dad had any digital scales? I need to weigh some… little objects.”

  If Lindl thought the question was bizarre, it wasn’t evident. He shrugged, “There’s a digital scale in the pantry.”

  “Yeah, I found that one. It’s not quite accurate enough. I’m looking for something like you might use for jewelry or science. Something like that. Accurate to less than a gram.”

  “You might look in the basement. There’s a lot of science stuff down there.”

  “There’s a basement?” Morgan said, somewhat surprised. “How do I get down there?”

  “The basement stairs are beneath the stairs that come up to this floor. There’s a door into them off the hallway on the main floor.”

  Morgan shook his head, thinking that he knew exactly the door Lindl was talking about. He’d thought it was a storage closet. “I know which one you’re talking about, thanks.”

  Morgan went downstairs to check out the basement. When he opened the door and clicked on the light he felt astonished. It was huge, and absolutely filled with tools. At first glance he saw what looked like a commercial drill press, metal cutting band saw, a small CNC mill, a laser cutter, and a 3-D printer. There were sturdy benches with racks of tools suspended on the walls behind them and a bunch of large rolling tool cabinets. I guess if he made a living as an inventor, he must have needed this much equipment so he could fabricate prototypes.

  Morgan found a precision digital scale on a counter with a lot of other electronic equipment. It weighed with milligram precision, but its capacity was only fifty grams.

  He went back upstairs and tried to place the order for the 0.01 gram scale from Amazon. Even though he should have expected it, he was still surprised when the order didn’t go through. My credit cards! Irritated, he got up and went to ask Adam if he could borrow his debit card.

  Finding Adam was difficult and Morgan had to resort to calling his name. A door opened upstairs, and when Morgan looked he found Adam coming out of Kiri’s room. A little nonplussed, he said, “Um, I’m trying to order something from Amazon and need to borrow your debit card.”

  “Okay,” Adam said, coming down the stairs in his stocking feet.

  As Adam was putting his debit card number in the order form on the Amazon site, Morgan said, “You and Kiri getting along?”

  Adam didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, without looking up, he said, “Yeah, she’s… she’s pretty amazing.” He got up from the desk and headed for the stairs.

  Morgan finished the order, then resumed trying to figure out what they’d have for dinner.

  Morgan made pasta Alfredo with Italian sausage. As they were eating, he saw several police cars and a van drive down the hill from the mine. Two of the police cars, one unmarked, stopped in front of the house, but the others went on. The detective got out and walked up to the door. A cop got out of the marked car and followed him.

  Morgan got up, “Adam, why don’t you answer the door. I’m going to go check to see what the data recovery program came up with.”

  Lindl pushed h
is chair back, “I can get the door.”

  Morgan said, “I’d rather you and your sister didn’t talk to the detective without me standing beside you. Let Adam do it, if you don’t mind.”

  Adam went to the door while Morgan checked on the program. It’d been running for hours now and, when he looked, he found it’d detected a lot of deleted files, but as he skimmed through them he didn’t see any that looked like video files from the security camera system.

  Adam appeared at Morgan’s side, “The detective wants to talk to Kiri.”

  Morgan sighed and stood up, “Let me talk to him first.”

  He went to the front door. Morgan again thought the detective looked stressed. His hair was a mess and his eyes looked a bit wild. Morgan had the distinct impression that Chatfield hated being in the mine. Or, could this be the way he always looks? Morgan glanced at the uniformed policeman and thought the man was working hard to maintain a neutral expression. He said, “Hello Detective… Chatfield right?”

  The detective nodded, looking mulish. “I need to talk to the girl.”

  “I’m her guardian. What do you need to talk to her about?”

  “She claims her dad set up some kind of video recording system that kept the videos from the security cameras up there in the mine. She said she’d get copies for me.”

  “Yes sir, I’ve been trying to help her with that. Unfortunately, the system only stores the video for twenty-four hours. I’ve been—”

  Chatfield looked pissed. “Yeah, right. I’m putting her under arrest, bring her out here.”