“Who didn’t see ‘trap’ written all over that ploy? Geeze, how stupid is this guy?” Annie asked.
“I was a lot more subtle than that,” Greg said, flashing his perfect teeth. “I didn’t quite say it that way.”
“Ah, Miss Ottenberger we meet again.” Detective Addison said as he came into the conference room.
“You must be getting tired of seeing me.”
“Your boss looks like he’s getting tired of seeing me,” The detective said as he sat down.
“Of course, he’s getting tired of this. Someone is screwing with his business. One of his employees is dead—possibly murdered and another employee is missing and possibly dead. The person who is running production for him is in potential danger. We have a shop to run and don’t have time for this. I have a new lathe coming in and six tons of bar stock to ship by Friday. This is taking me from my job.”
“I thought you found this interesting,” Detective Addison looked surprised.
“On an intellectual level, it is interesting,” Otter said, “but it’s interfering with my life and has been deadly to the lives of others. I want this mystery to be figured out.”
“What makes you think it’s all related?”
“I don’t know. Clark and Ron Defray didn’t like each other very much, so it doesn’t make sense. It’s not like Clark would have confided in Defray.”
“I saw the tape,” Detective Addison said to Greg, “Would you tell me about the trap you set?”
And they went over it all again. The three of them were adamant that the image on the camera was not Rod Defray. They seemed to convince the detective, but he left shaking his head.
“Do you think he believed us?” Annie asked anxiously. “If people think that Ron took that security stuff and disappeared, they won’t look for him.”
“This doesn’t make sense; it’s not valuable enough to throw your career away for.” Otter said. “How much was that stuff worth, Greg?”
“I don’t know, maybe five hundred bucks.”
“OK, is your job worth five hundred bucks--if you were going to steal from your employer? For me, no amount of money would be worth it but not everyone thinks like I do.”
“Only someone who has no vision for the future would steal from their employer,” Greg said. “I don’t see Defray being that stupid.”
“He’s mean and spiteful,” Annie said, “But he’s also helped a lot of people out. He has fixed cars for most everyone here, and he isn’t stupid.”
“I hope he’s ok,” Otter said. “I hope he just went somewhere to get his head on straight and he’ll be back to work.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Annie sighed.
When Otter got home her house was full of dogs. Tempest was home with the puppies and Susan had brought Duke over to get re-acquainted with his buddies. Stella was in her element, jumping on tails and batting at noses. Fortunately she was light on her feet; otherwise she would have been trampled. Spooky was horrified. Mouse was on the top of the cat sculpture, peeking over the side, eyes dilated with shock.
The puppies called Jake and Mike, came over to her for pets and kisses. They were sweet dogs, but they were big and they were only three years old, so they had a ton of energy. Fortunately, Tempest opened the patio door and the room rapidly emptied of canines. Whew.
Tempest, Susan and Otter watched the three of them run for the pool and dive in. Tempest shut the door again.
“Good thing, we have an extra strong pool pump,” Otter said, “So that it can get all the dog hair out of the pool.”
“I wish we could get out there and swim,” Tempest said. “They look like they’re having such fun, but the water is too cold now.”
“Not to worry,” Otter said nodding through the glass at the shed, “I almost have the heater installed. Then that won’t be a problem.”
“Oooh, that would be nice,” Susan said. “We could be floating in warm water, even though its 18 degrees outside.”
“Brrrr,” Otter shivered. She didn’t like the cold at all. She walked away from the door, got the laptop and sat at the kitchen table.
“What are you doing?” Tempest asked.
“I’m going to see if I can figure out the password on this thing.”
“Why do you think you can do that now?” Susan asked.
“Well, we have a bunch of numbers and elements from the list. They might be the clues we need.”
“Makes sense,” Susan said.
Tempest put a few snack trays together—none of them had eaten—and they all fixed themselves drinks. Then within sight of the cavorting canines, they sat at the table and hunkered down for a couple of hours of working on The Mystery.
Otter tried the atomic number 40 for zirconium, she typed in zirconium, and she used Michael’s numbers and then Greg’s. The little keypad on the monitor didn’t budge. She tried combining them in some kind of logical fashion, but it didn’t do anything to get her in the computer.
Frustrated Otter passed it over to Tempest who was dying to try. She went and got the list and studied it while Tempest tapped away, cursing more and more inventively as she went.
“You know, it’s interesting that he called this the ‘Christ’s sword’ project.” Otter said to Tempest, as Tempest passed the computer to Susan, “Isn’t that a controversial quote in the Bible?”
“I think the one you are thinking of is Matthew 10:34: ‘Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.’” Tempest said. “Christians have argued over what it means for centuries.”
“And how did you know that?” Susan asked in astonishment.
“Did you know that Tempest’s greatest goal in life when she was young, was to be an angel?” Otter asked, “She kept breaking parts of her body or getting in trouble because she was always trying to figure out how to fly.”
“Seriously?” Susan asked Tempest, but Otter was reaching for the laptop.
“Let me see that thing,” Otter said as she turned it to face her. “Maybe that’s the password, the beginning of the whole thing.” She typed in Matthew 10:34, the screen changed and the squeal of the bar of a great gate pulling back sounded from the machine.
“We did it!” Tempest said, and she and Susan got up from the table and came around to look at the screen.
The screen was blank except for a blinking cursor. Otter tried to type something else, but the computer wasn’t responding.
“I’m starting to see why people hated this Clark so much,” Tempest said.
“Try getting an answer out of him when you were in a hurry,” Otter said. She thought a moment. “Hey Tempest, don’t you have voice recognition software that has something to do with dragons?”
“I do indeed.”
“Hmmm,” Otter leaned forward and looked into the screen. “Jabberwocky,” she said to it. Nothing happened. She thought a few minutes more.
“I’m going to need to go home soon,” Susan said. “It looks like Duke is getting tired and Bruce will be home in an hour or so.”
They looked out at the darkened yard and all three dogs, wet and happy, were panting on the patio.
It was something she was supposed to know, Otter thought. She leaned into the screen again.
“Twas brillig and the slythy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe:”[9] she said slowly. To her excitement the words appeared on the screen as she said them.
“What kind of language is that?” Susan wanted to know.
“Go ask Alice,” Otter said with a laugh of triumph. The speaker came on and Clark’s voice repeated the line back to her, which was creepy. She shuddered a little. The next screen flashed. The three of them stared at the screen for a few minutes.
“We’d better call Jeremy.” Otter said.
“I’m a prodigy with computer software,” Jeremy said matter-of-factly. He used the same tone of voice he would have used to tell someone his hair color or to discuss the weather.
“So why
was Clark so interested in sending you to school?” Otter asked.
“Because you can’t get a job by just being a prodigy,” Jeremy said, “There are a lot of prodigies out there. You need formal training and some kind of degree.”
“We got into the lap top that you left on my front porch.”
“Really? Wow, that’s amazing. You know, I designed that software.”
“You designed the software, but you couldn’t get into the computer?” Susan asked sharply. She had decided that she didn’t need to go home right away after all.
“Well yeah, it’s a quiz kind of thing, but I didn’t know the answers. Each section has an alpha-numeric code and then a voice password. After you finish the task, you put in the proper code and it takes you to the next section.”
“Do you know how many sections there are to this?”
“It can be as many as you want. There isn’t a minimum or a maximum limit.”
“I feel a headache coming on,” Tempest said.
“Oh boy,” Otter said. “Well, we’ll deal with that later. Right now we thought you should see what is in this first section.”
They crowded around the table and looked at the screen as document after document zoomed past.
“Did Clark ask you if you would show him how to use any of your programs?” Otter asked Jeremy.
“Yes, last spring he came by the house to see how I was doing and I showed him a facial recognition program I had just finished. He asked if I’d show him how it worked.”
“Facial recognition…” Otter said.
“Yeah, he asked if he could take a copy home with him to play with.”
“Did he take copies of your software often?”
“Oh yeah, all the time, he test piloted a lot of it for me.”
“Here’s what he did with your programs,” Tempest said putting a neatly polished nail in the screen and going down a column of numbers. “He sold it and the money he made he invested. See? The first account is for apps that Jeremy made, the second account is for the software. Wow, nice total. The third is the interest payments earned from the first two accounts.”
“He was quite a salesman.” Otter said.
“I don’t understand,” Jeremy said, “Uncle Clark took my ideas and he sold them?”
“Looks like it and he put the money in investment accounts under your name.” Otter said, “He made a huge pile of money for you, Jeremy. There’s your life insurance policy. I’ll bet that the receipts and papers I found were from brokerage accounts. Clark just wrote ‘life insurance policy’ on them.”
“I don’t understand why he would do that.”
“Were you going to sell your ideas eventually?” Susan asked.
“Well yeah, but this stuff wasn’t that good.”
“Did Clark ever tell you to go back and work on a particular piece of software a little more? Did he tell you that it wasn’t working right?” Otter asked.
“Yeah, he would come back on a few things. He thought they could be refined or more efficient.”
“How long has he been doing that for you?”
“Years,” Jeremy said. “He’s been doing it for about five or six years.”
“Shows,” Tempest said. “These accounts have been established for some time. The investment accounts show how much money you have, but the payment account shows your quarterly disbursements. Since only a few checks have been written against the account in your name, you have quite a lot of money waiting for you to use. There’s probably not a lot of interest on that account. It looks like a checking account. ”
“But I don’t have a book or any way to find that money.”
“It’s all right here,” Tempest said impatiently. “That’s what I’m telling you. Everything you need is right here. The account numbers, the financial institutions and the fiduciary that helped him set it all up. If you call this guy, he will probably help guide you through the steps.”
“You mean all that money belongs to me? I can go to school?”
“You can do anything you want to,” Tempest said. “You could live very comfortably off of this for a long time.”
“No,” Jeremy said firmly, “My dad and I made an agreement with him. If he helped me out, I would go to school. It would be a poor way to thank him to not keep my end of the bargain.”
“Makes sense,” Otter said. “Did Clark give you any feedback on the facial recognition software?”
“Um, yeah,” Jeremy looked a little unfocused. “Let me think for a minute. He said that he put in the face of a friend and he found that guy’s childhood friend. He was really excited that the guy was another Mormon bishop. He had plans to go to a conference and this guy he found was going there too. Uncle Clark said they were going to meet.”
“Bingo,” Otter said, looking at Susan. To Jeremy, who was still staring into space she said: “Did Clark tell you who the friend was? The person whose face he put in your software?”
Jeremy shook his head a little, still looking like he was trying to focus. “Uh, no, he didn’t, he just said it was one of his shooting buddies. Listen, I don’t mean to be rude but I need to go home. I need to tell my grandma about all this. I said so many nasty things about Uncle Clark all this time; I need some time to give him my apologies.”
“You might want to know, Jeremy,” Otter said, “but Clark didn’t take any of your money for himself. You can go through the documents and see if I’m wrong, but it looks like everything was saved for you.”
“There are a few checks written against the account,” Tempest said. “They’re made out to you, Jeremy.”
Otter installed her printer and connected the laptop to her Wi-Fi and printed all the documents to give to Jeremy. When the documents finished printing, the keypad came back on the screen. After she handed the sheaf of papers to him, she gestured to the computer with her head.
“Jeremy, would you finish up this section for us so we can continue?”
“I’ll try,” he said. He sat down at the keyboard and played with a few words. It was only a few minutes and the sound of an opening gate played. He thought for a moment and looked at the computer. “Thank you Uncle Clark. I got it.”
“You’re welcome Jeremy, have a good life.” Clark’s voice floated into the room.
And the section was finished. Another password keypad floated on the screen.
“You know, Tempest,” Otter said when Jeremy stepped outside, “If Clark was that good at investing, it may explain the question we had a while back. How they lived for a year when he was so sick.”
“Could be,” Tempest said. “By the look of those accounts, he definitely knew what he was doing.”
“Susan,” Otter said as they watched Jeremy leave.
“Yes?”
“Can you look in Clark’s appointment book and find out where he went shooting on the day he died?”
“Yeah, let me make a call. Do you remember the date?”
“The Sunday before Labor Day, whatever the date that was.”
“That’s right. Hold on.” She dialed a number then spoke to someone for a minute. She swung the phone away from her mouth, “he’s checking.”
“Why do you want to know that?” Tempest asked.
“Because most shooting ranges are attached to a gun club, all gun clubs have a membership list. We need to know the member who took Clark shooting.”
“Oh, OK, that makes sense.”
“North Scottsdale Pistol and Rifle Society,” Susan sad as she hung up the phone, “Very fancy place that one. I’ve been there a time or two.”
“I have too,” Tempest said. “It’s very beautiful. All dark wood, marble and granite in the club area, but the ammo is way too expensive.”
“We need to call Detective Addison and find out if Jameson Pennell is a member and if he took a guest on that day.”
“All right, “Susan said, dialing her phone, “I hope that whatever you’re thinking, that you know what you’re doing.”
“I
hope so too, Otter said. “If everything happened the way I think it happened, then we can figure out who the killer is.”
“Hi Chris, it’s Susan. Doing ok, how are you? Listen on the McCarthy case, did you check out the gun club where he went shooting the day he died? You did? Clark wasn’t listed on the sign in sheet. But Chris, do you know if there was a Jameson Pennell on the sign in sheet? If there is, did he bring a guest? Yeah, sure, I’ll wait.”
“Clark went shooting with this guy several times before. I’m thinking as far back as last January maybe.” Otter said, “One of those times his shooting buddy flashed an ID card that has this Jameson Pennell name on it, but it’s not the proper name of the person he’s with, so Clark starts digging into this friend and doing his research trying to get some information on this person so he can be a hero.”
“So he started the periodic table thing?” Tempest asked.
“No, I think he started that a long time ago. Kind of a personal score sheet, he probably giggled to himself over it from time to time.” Otter paused and shook her head. “Once he found out about this Jameson character, he added him and juggled everyone around as support characters to his mystery.”
“Why didn’t he just go to one of the managers and tell them?” Susan asked.
“Because that’s not Clark’s way, he wanted to be in the thick of things. I’m guessing he wanted to figure this all out before he told Michael. It would be a kind of a way to pay Michael back for employing him again.”
“So he started to try to blackmail people for information.” Susan said.
“He may have tried bribes.” Otter said, “But that really isn’t his style. He liked to piss people off.”
“What a prince of a guy,” Tempest said.
“Deep down, he was a good man.” Otter said, “But his personality was so abrasive, many people didn’t see it.”
“He kept his word, as we’ve just seen,” Susan pointed out.
“I need to go back to Tonya,” Otter said, “And apologize to her about what I said about Clark before. She needs to know what this Christ Sword thing was really about.”
“We still don’t really know,” Tempest pointed out. “We’re just speculating.”
Otter Under Fire Page 23