“It does sound awfully coincidental,” Richard muttered.
“Richard,” I said, “how much time can you give me today, if at all?” I looked at my brother. “I don’t want to push the new father into work-related problems, but we might have no choice.”
“Vicki says she doesn’t want me to come back until around seven o’clock tonight. She and the baby need some rest. I’m good with that, so what do you need?”
“But how do they find Jake so rápido in Redding?”
Tío’s voice carried throughout the large room. All heads turned in his direction. My uncle rarely enters business conversations, but when he does he asks good questions. Tío went on.
“You and he are both experienced at not having the tail.”
“You’re right, Tío. I know I wasn’t followed, and I don’t think anybody followed Jake, either. He was too good.” I considered the alternative. “There must be a bug planted on the truck.”
“A bug could explain it,” said Richard. He opened his laptop. “I’m going to message Andy and have him send a team up to Redding to wipe down the truck before it gets returned to Penske.”
Andy is second in command in the IT Department and devoted to his job. Richard considered for a moment.
“It must be really hidden if Jake didn’t find it when he was looking for the prototype. We may need special electronic equipment. I’ll ask Andy to go, himself.”
I turned to our mother, being uncharacteristically quiet. “The police didn’t impound the truck, did they, Lila? It’s still at the storage unit, isn’t it?” I prodded further since I didn’t get an answer. “Lila? Jake did the usual procedure and rented a car to be delivered to the motel, right? The police don’t know about the storage unit or the yellow truck?” I touched her shoulder with my hand. “Mom?”
Her head snapped around at my touch and she looked at me. “In all the years we’ve been in business, we’ve never lost an operative in the line of duty. It is a very sad day for us.”
“I know, Mom. And I’m sorry,” I sat, covering one of her hands with mine. “But we need to get to the bottom of it. We can’t let it rest like this.”
“I agree with Lee, Mom,” said Richard. “We need to find out what happened.”
He reached out and took her other hand. She inhaled a deep breath, held it for several seconds then released it slowly.
“You’re right, children. We must take action. Time for mourning later. As to your questions, Liana, I don’t believe Jacob would ever break protocol. He was instructed to hide the truck in the unit at the storage company, and I’m sure that’s where it will be.” Mom paused then added, “Unless someone took it.”
“Richard, have Andy call first to make sure it’s still there.” I didn’t mean for my words to sound so much like an order, but they did. “And here’s a question to both of you. Who told you the chips and tester are missing?”
Neither spoke. Richard looked at our mother, who opened her handbag and extracted her cellphone. Pushing a few buttons she handed it to me. There was a text message to her from Jake. I read it aloud.
Helped load tester and boxes in black van. Couldn’t stop myself. I know I did it, but don’t know why. Help me. JG
“I found this message from Jacob on my phone only a short time ago, but it had been sent the night before.” Mom looked away, her voice filled with regret and guilt. “I’d been involved with the birth of the baby. I didn’t even think about looking at my messages. If only I’d seen it sooner, maybe I could have…” Her voice dropped off and she covered her face with her hands.
“From what I’ve read on the internet, Mom, the drug acts within minutes,” I said. “Nobody could have gotten to him in time.”
“Hermana.” Tío often addresses Mom as sister in Spanish in times of stress. “You have had the shock. Come to the kitchen and I will make for you herbal tea; Chamomile.”
Mom nodded and rose slowly. Together they passed through the swinging door and into the kitchen. I watched them go then turned back to my brother.
“This is bad, Richard. This is so bad.”
“I know. I’m still trying to absorb it.”
“Maybe after you call Andy about the truck, you can do a little of your cyber magic. Find out if Sharise, Collier’s ex-wife, came into the country from Germany two days earlier than her schedule says.”
“What?” Richard was clearly taken aback. “If you’re asking me to go into Homeland Security and check on her official comings and goings into this country, I can’t do that. Do you have any idea how tight Homeland Security is now? I can’t get into their systems the way I used to.” He paused. “It might take me days.”
“We don’t have days.”
“No can do.” He shook his head emphatically. “There’s no mercy for hackers. I’ve got a family to think of now. I can’t take the chance…” He paused again. “You know, there is something that might work, if they haven’t fixed it.”
He started pounding on the keys of his laptop. Honestly, how that poor computer stays in one piece is beyond me. Of course, he does go through them like candy.
“Hold it, Richard. Before you do that I’ve got a better idea. Remember me telling you Sharise was staying in Frankfurt to do a lip-syncing scene to one of her songs for a movie? Maybe you can find out which film company.”
“That’s easy enough.” He thought for a moment. “If so, maybe I can stream a copy of the scene from Germany.”
“Wouldn’t that mean somebody had to have pirated a copy?”
“Good chance of it; happens about ninety-eight percent of the time.” Richard let out a chortle.
“Why would they do that? For money?”
“Nah.” Richard was dismissive of the idea. “They do it because they can. Show off to their friends. It’s all kept underground, on the Dark Web, which only certain people know about.” Richard paused. “Like me. There are a couple of sites. If a studio engineer made a copy, it should show up on one of these. Let me see.” The pounding on his laptop commenced again. I watched him with one raised eyebrow.
“Great…I think. You all sound pretty weird to me. While you’re doing that I’ll go see about making us some coffee.” I stood and stretched. “I don’t know about you, but I need about as much caffeine as I can get.”
The kitchen door swung open and Tío entered carrying two mugs of steaming coffee.
“Tío to the rescue,” I said to my uncle. “You’re a life-saver. Thanks so much.” I gushed while reaching out for the life-giving brew.
“De nada,” He said, handing a mug to me then setting the other on the table in front of a preoccupied Richard. “I will have el desayuno ready in twenty minutes for all of us. You will eat the meal, niños, whether you think you are hungry or not. You need the strength.”
“Breakfast sounds great, Tío. Gracias,” I said, flashing a quick smile in his direction. “How’s Mom doing?”
He smiled back. “Your mama, she drinks the tea and then she goes to her room to rest. Jacob was an old friend of sus padres. She takes this hard, very hard, but she will be all right.”
I drank down about half the coffee before Tío made it back through the swinging door. The coffee was perfect; slightly creamy, slightly sweet, just the way I like it. Tío’s a marvel. I set down the half-drunk coffee on the table and picked up my phone.
“Time to call Mr. Talbot and see if I can get a copy of Collier’s will.
“Good luck,” Richard muttered without looking up from his keyboard.
“You ain’t kidding.” I dialed the number. But I did have a bit of luck. Not only was Talbot in, but free to talk to me. He came on the line within a minute.
“Liana Alvarez, dear girl, how are you? How’s your mother? How’s the rest of the family?” All of this was said in one jovial but run-on sentence.
“Fine, fine, Mr. Talbot; thanks for asking. I know you’re a busy man --”
“Not so busy these days. I’ve cut my practice in half. Benjamin an
d Clarence have taken over the bulk of it. I’m virtually a man of leisure now. But I’m sure your own time is precious, dear girl, so what can I do for you?”
“Well, I’m hoping this is something you might know about, personally. I’m working on a case involving D. H. Collier’s daughter, Skye --”
“Such shocking news,” Mr. Talbot interrupted. Then he tut-tutted for all he was worth. “But you came to the right Talbot. I am still handling his affairs. He started with me about twenty-years ago and he was never a man to change horses mid-stream.”
“Great, because here’s the deal, I need to see Collier’s last will. I can’t go into specifics, but --”
He interrupted me again. For a man who had a lot of time on his hands, he didn’t seem to want to let anybody complete a sentence.
“Miss Collier is your client?”
“Yes.”
“Nonetheless, I can’t impart any information to you; it would be breach of ethics. But, dear girl, why don’t you just ask her for a copy of the will? That seems the most expedient approach to me.”
“You mean the kid has a copy of her father’s last will and testament?”
“Precisely. I didn’t approve of such a thing, of course. But Mr. Collier insisted that his young daughter have a copy of the most recent will at all times.” He went into a stage whisper. “I don’t think the man trusted anyone else and he certainly didn’t trust the girl’s mother. He told me his ex-wife might ‘try to pull a fast one’. Direct quote. Not that it was possible with the way I had drawn up the will but - and you didn’t hear this from me – Mr. Collier was an unusual man with what could be called an obsessive personality. I earned my money with that one. Well, I must fly now. Anything else, dear girl?”
“Yes, did Collier have any other recent activities with your office?”
Mr. Talbot tut-tutted again then was silent for a time. “Now, now, Liana. If there were any impending lawsuits, do you think I would be able to tell you about them?”
“No, no, of course not. I --”
“In that case,” he interrupted me again, “I shall bid you adieu.”
He disconnected before I could say thank you. Bless his dear little lawyer heart. Without breaking any of his ethics – almost - he managed to hint there was a pending lawsuit in the air. Was it against Rameen Patel, as the CFO feared? Or Craig Eastham? According to Rameen, both of them screwed him over.
I glanced at my phone and noticed a text message from Gurn! My excited fingers brought up the message. I saw, not words, but an Emoticon, a drawing of a popped bottle of champagne. Wherever he was, he got my message about the baby and was able to respond. I held the phone against my heart, feeling it brought me a little closer to the man I loved.
“Hey, Lee, come on over here and look at this.” Richard’s voice brought me back. “You got to see this. It came from Spitze Produktionen, Frankfurt, Germany.”
“You’ve got something already?”
“It’s all over the German Underground. Sharise is hot in several European countries, as well as Latin America.”
Clutching my phone, I went around the other side of my brother sitting on the couch. When I sat down, he placed his computer on the coffee table so we could both see the screen. Then he pressed a key. A second-generation video of Sharise singing and gyrating around on a stage began to play.
“Wow!” I leaned down for a better view of the small screen. “She’s certainly got energy. And look at that costume.”
“What there is of it. You can hardly see her face, between her hair and the hat.”
“Those are her trademarks, Richard. She’s known for long, curly blonde hair and red bowler hats.”
“Well, most of the dudes I know aren’t looking at her hat.”
“Richard!” I teased. “And you the father of a brand new baby girl.”
“If my daughter ever wore something like that I’d have a heart attack.”
“Richard, did you hear what you just said? ‘Your daughter’. It’s a miracle.”
I choked up looking at my kid brother, not such a kid anymore.
“It is a miracle, Lee. I’m blessed and won’t forget it.” He smiled, his blue eyes burning with the same intensity as our father’s. “But let’s get back to work. See those?”
Richard pointed to a set of small numbers at the bottom of the video.
“December twentieth at eight forty-five pm, European time. Sharise was in Germany shooting this scene for a movie last night.”
“And there you are,” I said, trying not to show my disappointment. “Our non-smoking gun. Skye may be right about her father, but not her mother.”
“She could be a kid with a big hate on for her mother for deserting her.”
“Could be.”
“Okay, sis, now that we’ve established Sharise’s alibi, what’s next?”
“I asked Skye to let me have the dossier Collier collected on Sharise and her band members. We should check it out, see how accurate it is.”
“That info’s pretty much all over the internet, but it’s nice to have it in one place. You know, she has one of the biggest and best touring companies in the world. She travels with an entourage of sixty-six.”
“Sixty-six musicians?”
“She has an orchestra of twenty, plus eight backup singers, and a musical director. The rest is the backstage crew; roadies, lighting, sound, costumes, advance team, and a company doctor. And I’m not including locals hired in each city to help load in, put up, and break down the sets. That number is usually more than a hundred.”
“Sounds expensive.”
“It is. And she’s hired some legends away from other bands just to back her up. They don’t come cheap and they’re all top notch.” He paused and looked at me. “Don’t you know any of this?”
“No, and I’m surprised you don’t know my taste in music better. I hate punk rock.”
“Sharise started out as a punker, but graduated to pop outlandish.”
“Is that anything like her graduating into the world of perfume? I only ask because the perfume called Sharise, a stinker of a smell in a guitar-shaped bottle no less, came out about two years ago.“
“It seems like every well-known female has her own scent.” Richard said, his voice taking on a jaded tenor. “I’m surprised you haven’t come out with your own perfume line called Lee’s Escapades or something like that.”
Then he had the nerve to laugh. And with gusto. I tried not to be offended. Lee’s Escapades, indeed.
“If I did, it wouldn’t be anything like her stuff. I remember going into a department store, being sprayed with a sample, and almost becoming asphyxiated. I could not get rid of the smell. How something can be exotic, spicy, and yet cloyingly sweet all at the same time is beyond me.”
“I take it you don’t wear the scent…and yes, I’m being sarcastic.”
“Not a first for you. But back to her music.”
“Back to her music.” My brother barely managed to contain a smile. “Some of the songs Sharise does are her own compositions; they’re okay, but she does a lot of other artists’ work. Touches on every style and has a good voice. What really makes her shows work is the quality of musicianship between her and her band. That’s one of the reasons she’s had so much success. Although, lately I’ve been seeing less of her. I hear her record deal got cancelled.”
“Well, I had no idea. When I find a minute, I’ll go on itunes and get one or two of her songs and listen to them. Meanwhile, I’ve got a list of fourteen – no, sixteen – names I have to check out at Read-Out while I’m still supposedly employed there. Can you have someone in your office check out Rameen Patel and Craig Eastham’s backgrounds?”
“Anything in particular you’re looking for?”
“Concentrate on their finances. Just how tight was either of them for money? And Katie Hall, too. Check her out. I found out yesterday Skye is her ward for the next four years. That means Katie has access to millions if not billions of dollars
in the interim. It’s a strong motive for murder.”
“But how would any of them get their hands on Devil’s Breath? We’ll need to find out just how impossible it is to come by in the states.”
“And let’s not forget, we have to find the tester and computer chips, a task which might jump to the number one spot. Jesus, we could lose everything, Richard.”
Richard ran a hand over his tired face. “I know.”
“This isn’t Read-Out’s loss now. It’s D. I.’s. That means if we don’t recover them, Read-Out’s going to put in an insurance claim against us for fifteen million dollars.”
“Plus if word gets out, we can kiss the company’s reputation goodbye. There’s no telling how far-reaching the effect would be, Lee.”
High level depression sucked us both down. I let out a sigh.
“Do you think any of this has dawned yet on Lila?”
“Not much gets by Our Lady.”
“Under ordinary circumstances, Lila would be chomping at the bit to go with me to Redding, but between dealing with the wedding and Jake’s death…” I broke off.
Neither of us said anything for several seconds. Richard weighed his words with care.
“Lee, I’m usually more office bound on these investigations as a rule, but how about if I tag along with you? I’ve always wondered what goes on in the field.” He reached out and touched my shoulder. “What do you say?”
“I say let’s have some breakfast and head up to Redding. I want to talk to the clerk on duty. But first, we’ll need to check out the storage unit. Maybe we can learn something.”
If the Ivy League was the breeding ground
for the elites of the American Century,
Stanford is the farm system for Silicon Valley.
Ken Auletta
Chapter Sixteen
The two hundred and forty-five mile trip to Redding took a little over four hours. Richard slept the entire way, which was good. Somebody needed to be rested when we arrived. If Gurn had been here, he could have flown us in his Cessna in under an hour. The thought depressed me. I was doing a lot of thinking as I drove up I-5. And not one single thought was of the upbeat variety.
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