3 Requiem at Christmas

by Melanie Jackson

  The brother rose suddenly to his feet and blundered out of the church. One of the satellites acted like he was going to rise and follow, but stopped when two other Buchanans got up and trailed the still weeping Joshua.

  “Instructive,” Raphael said softly as people began to applaud and whistle and the singers took a bow.

  Juliet wasn’t sure what to do. The music had been wonderful, but she had not been brought up to applaud in church.

  “But not instructive enough,” she muttered back, forcing her hands to strike one another as they made audible praise. “Let’s get some champagne.”

  Chapter 9

  The reception was crowded and the guests quickly recovered their holiday mood. Shedding a sentimental tear was cathartic, but after the crying there was champagne to drink, delectable foods to consume, clothes to be shown off, and others to be admired.

  One of the caterers offered Juliet a glass of champagne which she took automatically, though what she really would have liked was a ginger ale. People were five deep around the oyster bar, so Juliet wandered over to the dessert table where there were piles of decorated sugar cookies and a small mountain of red and green chocolates. They were not the round bonbons she had seen at the store. These were rectangles, thin like wafers but about half as long as the flash drive she had for her old portable computer. And she had seen them somewhere before. At the shop, certainly, but somewhere else.

  “Would you like to try a chocolate? We have caramel sea-salt and lavender-mint. We sold out earlier this week and only just got more made.” The pretty girl in a white blouse and a ridiculous poinsettia corsage offered her the tray she had been staring at.

  “Thanks.” Juliet took a red candy with her free hand, thinking it looked like blood.

  Cogs meshed, gears engaged, and the revolutions in her brain began. Juliet stared into the middle distance as understanding revealed itself. The woman who saw over horizons had gotten a peek of the coming sunrise.

  “You look entirely too thoughtful for being at a party. Though I suppose this is the equivalent of baked meats at a funeral and we should take a moment to reflect on our mortality,” Raphael said, rolling to her side. “Drink your champagne for tomorrow we may die.”

  “Better not, or I’ll die tonight. I’m driving.”

  “And the chocolate?”

  “Oh.” She unwrapped it and popped it in her mouth. Caramel sea-salt. It was very good.

  “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?” Raphael guessed, lowering his voice. No one was crowding them. His wheelchair was good for making hungry throngs mind their manners.

  “I think so. I don’t know the what exactly but I do have a general outline,” Juliet said, looking at the chocolate wrapper in her hand. “And I think I know where it is.”

  “Then let’s go while everyone else is busy,” Raphael said, obviously having no doubts that this was the sane and sober thing to do and planning to accompany her. Juliet was relieved that she wouldn’t have to go alone. She was great at theory but had some doubts about being well-suited to the job of a woman of action. “But slowly and unobtrusively. There is no need to excite undue interest from Mr. No-neck. Do you see Esteban?”

  “No.” She looked casually over the crowd. “I don’t see—oh. There’s Denver. He is with Mr. No-neck and company exchanging glares. But no Esteban.”

  “So, he’s off frying other fish.”

  “Poor fish.” As she looked at them one of No-neck’s satellites turned to stare at her. Her eyes moved over him without acknowledgment though he knew who she was. There was no sign of the weeping brother. Hopefully he was in the bathroom shedding his crocodile tears.

  “Do you want to wait for him?” Raphael asked.

  “No. All the other interested parties are here. We’ll never have a better moment to search. I’ll get the coats and fetch the car,” Juliet said softly and Raphael slipped her his coat-check ticket when she handed him her champagne. The movement was so natural they might have rehearsed it a hundred times.

  “Mingle for a couple more minutes. It’s best if we don’t leave together.” She raised her voice slightly. “I wonder where the ladies’ room is. You’ll excuse me for a moment?”

  “Of course.”

  She already knew where the bathrooms were. They were right by the cloakroom. Both were functional but lacking in the decorative inspiration that showed so beautifully in the rest of the church. She didn’t mind because the staff was efficient at fetching her cloak and Raphael’s coat.

  When she turned around, Ranger Nyland was behind her.

  “Well hello.” She forced herself to smile. “Did you enjoy the concert?”

  “Surprisingly enough, I did. Never been to a Mass before.”

  “It was a cut above the usual Sunday morning thing.”

  “You leaving already?” he asked, looking at her cloak and Raphael’s coat.

  “Yes. I have a friend who isn’t feeling well.”

  “I won’t keep you then. Actually, I won’t be far behind you. It’s supposed to snow tonight. I should try and beat it home.”

  “Oh goody—more snow,” she said but made herself smile again.

  She slipped outside when the foyer was empty and started for the parking lot, which had filled completely since her early arrival. Harrison had played to a full house. She was happy for him and hoped that the recording had gone well.

  Ranger Nyland was right about the weather report. It had begun to snow while they were inside, fat flakes that she had to wipe from her face because they felt like tears as they melted on her cheeks. It was just as well that they were leaving early. The flakes were piling up fast and Raphael’s smaller, portable chair didn’t do well in snow.

  And neither would Elizabeth’s.

  Juliet hesitated and then reached for her phone. The benefit of a small evening bag was being able to find things easily.

  She tried Elizabeth first but her phone was off. Elizabeth was polite that way. She tried Asher next. He wasn’t as polite as his mother and answered. His voice was clear but the background babble was loud.

  “Asher, it’s Juliet. Don’t say my name.”

  “Okay, but Carrie isn’t around. You’re safe.”

  “Huh. Look, I’m outside and it is starting to snow. Hard. Raphael and I are going to leave. You may want to ask Elizabeth if she wants to go too. I’d offer to take her,” Juliet said hurriedly, “but I don’t think I have room for three or four of us and two chairs with a full trunk.”

  “It’s alright. The inn has arranged for taxis. It won’t be a problem.”

  “Good,” Juliet said, glad that she wouldn’t have to come back to fetch them. “See you later then. Bye.”

  She disconnected quickly. Fortunately, her car was only two rows over and by the time she got back to the portico, Raphael was there. She got out of the car and helped him into his coat and then into the passenger seat. Raphael could stand on his own and was an old hand at getting in and out of cars, even those that didn’t have swivel cushions. Juliet stowed the chair in the trunk. She had lied to Asher about it being full.

  “Feel like giving me the general outline of what we’re looking for?”

  “So, do you know anything about the exciting world of microchips and flash drives and tech things in general?” she asked as they pulled away.

  “Very little, but I should probably learn. Apparently the silicon monsters are here to stay.”

  “I don’t know a lot either, not in detail, but there are a couple tidbits I have run across in other cases. Did you know that unless the government completely owns or is invested in a computer company that there is no obligation to report inventory thefts or discrepancies, assuming they are even audited—and many companies aren’t audited, not even internally? Nor are companies obliged to report tech developments. This is true, even when the chips they make can be used in all kinds of nasty things like weapon systems.” She peered through the windshield. The wipers were keeping up but she was glad t
hat this would be a short trip and that the inn was lit up like a Christmas tree. If they had gone overland it would have only been a trip of half a mile. Taking the road and bypassing the ski runs added another three miles on the trip. Three miles on a plowed road wasn’t bad, though there was one narrow stretch near the lake where they would be unable to see either the church or the inn.

  “That seems a bit careless.”

  “Yes, but if a chip is supposed to be used for coffee makers and no one thinks to ask if it can guide missiles, then it just slips by. Our security agencies are still not tech savvy so there is a lot of slipping. Okay, so back in the time of VCRs it used to be that memory cards were big things, but then came microchips. Of course, what we’re after might not be that kind of thing at all. We could also be looking at a database on a flash drive—something that could be used for blackmail. Plenty of people doing nefarious things they would rather the world not know about. But in either case, we are looking for something small and electronic and about the size of an after-dinner mint.”

  “Denver said that Columbus seemed to be protected. That could work for either scenario—stolen tech or stolen knowledge.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m not sure we can solve the specifics from this end—and it doesn’t matter. Not in terms of figuring out who the killer is and getting back the missing object before No-neck finds it. As Esteban and I discussed, the missing item could be anything from stolen art to nuclear weapons—though, come to think of it, neither of those would be on a computer chip—but you get the idea.”

  “So it’s definitely something on a chip?”

  “Or the chip itself. Some have very specific designs and they get smarter, faster, and smaller all the time. Even if a chip isn’t for weapons, just having the next generation of computer chip is worth millions—maybe billions to whoever gets it to market first.”

  “Okay. I accept the premise. How about some details? Elucidate. From the beginning, please. How did you figure it out?”

  Juliet turned up the heater. She felt very cold. Her cloak was lovely but not as warm as a parka.

  “Okay, feel free to throw rotten tomatoes if you don’t believe the story. This is one time when I would like to be proven wrong.” Raphael smiled slightly and nodded for her to continue. “Well, for starters, we have these two brothers—one a singer and one an accountant who works for a man of dubious moral character.”

  “Cain and Abel?” he suggested.

  She nodded, but didn’t take her eyes from the road. She didn’t have chains on her tires and it was getting slick. She had to slow down and check that the car was in all-wheel drive. She didn’t want an accident, not with Raphael in the car and the snow getting deeper.

  “And Brother Cain’s shady boss has acquired something special from an electronics firm that he would like to sell abroad where the market is, let us say, more free. Less regulated. Where he has no governmental watchdogs dogging his financial footsteps. Maybe the new boss is trying to make a name for himself since he’s the new thief on the block.”

  “The new shoes that don’t fit,” Raphael said softly.

  “Right. Now, the boss doesn’t want the thing in his house because he has these watchers who drop in occasionally to check up on stuff and might be upset if he had something that he wasn’t supposed to have, so he gives this special something to his trusted accountant and asks him to hang on to it for him.”

  “And Cain, who isn’t all that trustworthy after all, blabs to Brother Abel about this wondrous thing in his safe,” Raphael guessed.

  There were lights behind Juliet, bright in her mirror and slowly gaining on them. She hoped they belonged to a taxi carrying Asher and Elizabeth and that he kept back. She didn’t need her eyes filled up with headlights while driving a dark, curving road.

  “Right, or Abel finds it on his own when he’s having a break from making joyful noises. Anyhow Abel says to Cain, golly, what a coincidence! I’m going to China next month on a musical tour which was arranged a year ago and isn’t getting any governmental attention. I bet I could find a buyer there.”

  “And Cain listens at first?”

  “Sure. After all, why should the boss be the only one to benefit from this special thing when it is Cain who is taking all the risk of holding it?” She paused. “It is possible that the boss was already considering using Abel as a courier. Or using Cain, who would have an excuse to be in China with his beloved brother performing. Abel may just have borrowed an existing plan.”

  “Plausible,” Raphael said.

  “It’s a good strategy that Abel concocted or borrowed, but Cain knows his boss better than Abel—and he is less devoted to the cause of Scottish independence, which is where Abel reveals he wants to use most of the money. Money that Cain knows they will need to hide out in—oh, Bolivia. Forever. If they actually steal the boss’s special thing. Because his boss isn’t a forgiving man and Scotland isn’t that far away—especially if the Feds were to discover what happened and decided that the chip really belonged in their hands. But Abel says no-no, we must go on. We must play Robin Hood. We are not common thieves. We only rob the rich and crooked to give to the poor and Scottish.” Raphael snorted. “Cain gets colder and colder feet and tries to call off Abel’s campaign, but to no avail.”

  “Because Abel has a kind of mania about Scotland, and maybe he acts without his brother. When Cain discovers the chip is gone he knows who took it and who will be blamed when it turns up missing—and it isn’t Brother Abel. At least, he won’t be blamed for everything, and Cain is the only one within reach who can be punished.” Raphael shook his head.

  “Right. He may have discovered it was missing because the boss announced he was stopping by to look at his treasure. Maybe he had a buyer or some expert who wanted to see the goods. Anyhow, Cain panicked and rushed off to confront his brother. They quarreled,” Juliet added. “With the usual tragic results.”

  She checked her mirror again. The car was definitely getting closer.

  “And there was the additional problem of not finding the chip on his brother’s body after he had gone to the trouble of killing him,” Raphael said. “You think that the death was an accident?”

  “Yes and no. He didn’t mean to kill his brother with his own knife while they were driving in a bad storm. It was a fight that got out of hand and almost dumped both of them off a cliff. I think they were meant to stop at that cabin and ‘meet’ someone. But even if I am wrong about the location, I think Cain had decided that Abel was going to have to go to the great ceilidh in the sky. Even if he returned the chip. Abel knew too much about the boss by then and was hell-bent on finding some way to finance the Scottish freedom movement. That was why Cain laid on extra gasoline at the empty cottage and set up his trap where he did.”

  “He probably lured the brother by promising a meeting with someone important from Scotland.”

  “That would do it. And it all would have worked out fine, the death written off as another casualty of the storm, except for the weather turning lethal and my stupid shortcut which left them with a witness who could say it wasn’t an accident at all.”

  Raphael grunted.

  “And, in the meantime, the boss, who wanted to see his treasure and couldn’t, got the message that his accountant had rushed off without a word to attend his brother’s concert—and being a suspicious person, decided to follow posthaste. He has probably been threatening his accountant since he arrived and Cain has been insisting there is no problem, that he’ll have everything as soon as the police release the brother’s effects.”

  “Yes. And everyone is crossing fingers that the boss’s watchdogs don’t arrive on the scene. Which they will eventually if he left town unexpectedly.”

  “And you fear that the boss may be getting ready to be more proactive,” Raphael suggested.

  “He may not have a choice. He may have a deadline of his own. Cain is still alive because the boss has been led to believe that Cain has a better cha
nce of recovering the chip among his brother’s things as the next of kin—and they would be right in thinking this. After all, they can’t keep the room locked up forever. The inn has other bookings. Nor would they keep belongings that weren’t part of the crime scene—not without good reason. But they wouldn’t hand over the dead man’s things to a stranger. This is why the boss has waited so patiently.”

  “You don’t think the boss has managed to search the room yet?”

  “Only superficially. They have needed to be careful that they don’t alert the police that there is something to find in there, lest Denver call in lots and lots of law enforcement and the Feds get wind of it and discover the chip first. Instead they wait and follow.”

  “And are we being followed as well?” Raphael asked.

  “Yes. But it may just be a taxi for Asher and Elizabeth. The inn arranged them for tonight and it’s the only road back to the hotel.” Juliet took a breath and tested her inner guidance system. Not good. “But the Glock is in the glove compartment. If we need it.”

  The wind had picked up, causing the snow to come at them sideways. It was nowhere near as intense as it had been during the blizzard, but it rendered the full moon’s attempts to shine completely ineffectual and the clouds were piling under it.

  “And it was the chocolate that set you off?”

  “Yes—the foil. It isn’t actually made of metal. It’s a kind of plastic mylarish stuff. Good for protecting sensitive electronic things from static as well as hiding something in plain sight.”

  “And he had these chocolates in the car as well?”

  “Yes—and he gave them to Harrison and the other singers. But even if he had eaten a box a day, he still couldn’t have consumed everything in his order from the candy store. I am betting that they are sitting in his hotel room, hiding in plain sight.”