“Thank you, Captain Allen.” I clipped Rocky’s leash to his collar, pausing to run my fingertips over the smooth Charvet bowtie around his neck. Instead of removing the accessory, I left it on. I set Rocky on the floor and we left.
As I drove home, I couldn’t help feeling like an untethered balloon. I didn’t lack direction, but the changing winds of today’s events had scrambled my emotions. Anger? Sadness? Remorse? Guilt? I felt a combination of all of them. So I did what I always did when my emotions were in flux. I drove to my studio to work.
Mad for Mod was my port in the storm. I’d chosen the physical location because it was close to the apartment building I’d invested in when I first moved to Dallas. Greenville Avenue, Mad for Mod’s address, was a five-block walk from home at the time, and although I’d been recovering from a knee injury, I knew how important it was not to treat myself as a victim. I’d forgone formal physical therapy and used my fledgling business startup as the incentive to get out of bed each day and make something for myself. It had worked. Mad for Mod had a loyal client base, good word of mouth, and produced a steady stream of income, and the walk had done wonders for my spirit. Since those early days, I’d sold the apartment complex and moved into a house that I’d acquired from a generous stranger. That house, which I still (and would forever) call Thelma Johnson’s House, was on the opposite side of Greenville in the M streets.
I headed to Mad for Mod, parked in one of the three dedicated parking spaces behind the building, and let Rocky lead me inside. I unclipped his leash and he took off for the showroom while I headed toward my office.
Effie had tidied up before she’d left. The surface of my desk was clean, with active projects filed in folders along the credenza behind my desk chair. It appeared as though she’d even taken time to condition the custom wooden desk with a moisturizing oil. The well-sanded surface glowed with a soft radiance that was easily hidden under Post-its, colored pencils, and eraser dust. She must have viewed my hours working at the library as an opportunity to get me organized. Why was it people believed their own form of organization was better than someone else’s? It was one of the major conundrums of our time.
I flipped through the file folders until I reached the one with my original application to the VIP competition, and then sat down and leafed through the contents. Inside were printed out floorplans of Jane’s apartment building overlaid with sheets of acetate paper where I’d sketched possible fixture configurations and notations about electricity, lighting, and storage in colorful markers. Jane, who was familiar with the interior design software of her ex-husband’s company, had provided her own set of floorplan ideas after inputting the measurements of the building. Her way was more efficient than mine, since the program allowed her to drop and drag with the click of a mouse and mine demanded I started from scratch.
The biggest difference between Jane and my working style hadn’t been technology. It had been vision. My own decorating process started with an item. Find one item that represents what the client wanted and design from there. Sometimes that item was a flea market find. Sometimes it was a cherished inheritance. Sometimes it wasn’t discovered until we spent a day digging through the contents of the extensive inventory I’d accumulated since starting Mad for Mod. But people who loved mid-century design were emotionally connected to the aesthetic. It wasn’t like fashion, when a widely-respected industry source could tell you that for the next three months, your life would revolve around mint green. Mid-century modern enthusiasts didn’t change their interiors like trendy outfits. Once an atomic lamp lover, always an atomic lamp lover.
When Jane and I first had the idea to collaborate, I’d offered up my inventory of fixtures and furniture accumulated over years of making bids on estates sight unseen. She’d been enthusiastic and had run with the concept. I’d fast-forwarded through my collection of Doris Day movies to find the best interiors for inspiration, and Jane had pored over vintage design magazines she’d collected from eBay. The process had felt collaborative and organic—or as organic as sputnik lamps and futuristic white laminate pod chairs could feel. We probably should have written up a contract to define who was going to do what, but it hadn’t felt necessary.
I had no interest in revisiting Jane’s email, so I set to work my usual way, with sketches, markers, and lists.
I found a blank floorplan printout at the back of the folder and taped it to a large sheet of white oak tag. I taped a fresh piece of acetate to the top, grabbed a purple Vis-à-Vis erasable transparency marker, and sketched on the ideas that I’d submitted to the competition. Along the side of the oversized board, I wrote a list of items from Effie’s inventory database.
The design challenge would be easy, but not having access to Jane’s apartment complex was a problem. I needed a vacant building to renovate, and no property owner would agree to the loss of income without some form of compensation.
I called the realtor again.
“Kip Bledsoe,” he answered.
“This is Madison Night. I’m a local designer and possible client. I left you a message earlier today.” I explained my need for a vacant building to use in the VIP competition.
“You want to buy an apartment building for the competition?”
“No, I want to rent a vacant building for the competition. Vacant buildings aren’t collecting rent, but I would be happy to cover the mortgage on the property during the time in question.”
“I’ll ask around, but I can’t promise anything. Most of my sellers are looking for the sale so they can infuse the cash into the next property.”
“I’m well acquainted with the concept of house flipping.”
“Then you already know what you’re suggesting is a long shot.”
“Kip, I’m in a bind. My original property fell through. I’ve got one week to find a property and redesign it per the application the DIDI committee approved.”
“You’re cutting things pretty close. You really think you can pull it off?”
“That should be for the judges to decide.”
He chuckled. “Okay, Madison, I’ll see what I can do.” He took down my contact information and enough details to either steal my identity or run a background check to ensure I was worth his time and promised to be in touch.
I turned back to my sketchpad and lost myself in the project. Twice Rocky ran into the office, noisily lapping up water from his bowl the first time and bringing me a “gift” that looked suspiciously like a pom-pom from the coverlet I’d draped over the bed displayed in the street-facing window. I traded the pom-pom for a faded Hacky Sack from a bowl on my desk (a collection recently acquired after I won a bid on the contents of a disbarred fraternity house in the SMU off-campus neighborhood).
When I finished, I felt good about my design. It was close to what Jane and I had brainstormed, but without her clear focus on a primary color palette, I pushed the whimsy factor. I scanned the sketches and switched on my computer to print out the contest confirmation and keep everything together.
That’s when I saw the second email from Jane. It had come through sometime after the first—between receiving her initial note and finding her body in the restroom room. The subject line said, “design files.”
I steeled myself and opened the email. It was a simple message that appeared to be an afterthought. Attached find my files for our collaboration. I’m submitting an entirely unique proposal and won’t be needing these, but in the interest of professionalism, it seems appropriate to let you do with them what you wish. -JS
The gesture was unexpected. Again, I felt the emotional cocktail of anger, hurt, loss, and guilt. I’d spent my entire day trying to outdo whatever Jane might have used on her application, and here was evidence that, despite her feelings toward me, her generosity had triumphed.
I clicked on the attachment. While I waited for the files to open, a small part of me questioned if I should scrap my new
plans and design Jane’s in her memory.
No. That’s not what this was about. This entry was to represent Mad for Mod. There was no need to print out Jane’s files. I’d submitted an entirely different concept, colors and all.
I hovered my mouse over the X in the top right corner of the computer screen and clicked. Nothing happened. I clicked again, and then hit the escape key. The internet wouldn’t close. I tried a few more times, unsuccessfully. My computer was frozen. I tried Ctrl+Alt+Del to open the task manager. Nothing. Time for a hard reboot.
I pressed down on the glowing blue button on the top of my PC and held, waiting to hear the engine shut off and the see the screen go dark. I didn’t like closing the computer in this manner for fear of losing work, but at least the only files that had been open were the ones Jane sent. After the tower went silent, I sat back and watched the sweeping hand of my clock make a full rotation before powering the computer back on. The monitor flashed through a series of boot-up screens, finally replaced with my screensaver, the same Mad for Mod logo on my business cards and the sign atop the front door. Satisfied that the files were now closed, I prepared to put the computer in sleep mode for the night.
That’s when it happened. The image of shattered glass appeared superimposed on top of my screen saver. One by one, virtual glass fragments broke away from the screen and fell to the bottom in a pile, revealing solid black. When all but two of the computerized glass fragments had left my screen, blurry words appeared, slowly coming into focus. I feared the worst before those fears were confirmed by the text on my screen.
You’ve
been
hacked.
SEVEN
I hit the escape key. The screen went blank. A second later, a daisy appeared in the middle of the screen, and one by one the virtual petals fell off, much like the glass shards had from the previous image. When all but two of the petals had fallen from the daisy, an evil smiley face appeared in the center. The same words as before came into view in a circle that rotated around the daisy’s depetaled stem.
Driven more by panic than common sense, I tapped the space bar. The daisy disappeared. I held my breath to see what came next, but nothing happened. With my index finger, I tapped a random sampling of letters. Each time I hit a key, the words You’ve been hacked! zoomed toward me from a different spot on my screen. It was like the machine that sends tennis balls to someone practicing by themselves. Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! Except there was no way to strike back, no way to beat the system. I was getting pummeled by words on a computer screen and I felt the impact each time. Even the power button did nothing. My last resort was to pull the electric cord out of the socket.
As if my computer were possessed with an evil force, I looked around for something to cover it with. There was nothing. I unbuttoned my coat and used that, and then dropped back into my chair to think. I didn’t know much about computers, but I knew enough. What I’d just experienced had been a virus. Computer viruses weren’t spontaneous. They didn’t just show up out of the blue (in this case, they did, but only because the background of my screensaver was a pleasing shade of aqua). Two immediate possibilities came to mind: Effie’s new inventory system, and Jane’s attachments.
I didn’t know enough about how Effie had set up the inventory website to understand if a virus could find its way from the new database to my computer, but if it could, then there were bigger issues. My entire inventory was on that database thanks to her efforts. Not only would we lose months of work, but my insurance estimates were based on the values in there. It had been the biggest argument in Effie’s arsenal and ultimately, the reason I’d caved.
The other possibility was Jane. She’d been mad enough to send me that original email. Had she been the kind of person who would follow up that email with corrupt files on purpose? And if she’d sent them to me, had she sent them to anyone else?
I’d known Jane for six months and we’d gotten along so well that I’d overlooked the anger that clouded her face when she spoke of her ex-husband. But now, after everything—everything!—that had happened today, I was forced to see that maybe I’d never known Jane as well as I’d thought. And if she was capable of actively destroying my professional files after a six-month friendship went south, was she also capable of doing something that had brought on her murder?
The clock told me it was almost ten. It was on the cusp of being too late to call an employee under normal circumstances, but today could hardly be considered normal. Besides, Effie was twenty-four years old. Ten o’clock probably wasn’t all that late in her world.
She answered on the third ring. “Hey, Madison,” she said. “Did you like what I did to the computer?”
Tentative relief flowed over me. Was this simply a stunt Effie had played? I didn’t begin to understand half of the tricks being done with computers these days. I considered myself lucky to have figured out my drag-and-drop website design software after watching an hour of YouTube tutorials.
“You’re saying it’s a joke? I can undo it?”
“It took me a lot of time to do that,” she said. For the first time since she’d started working for me, she sounded annoyed at my lack of technical knowledge. “If you want the company to grow, Madison, you’re going to have to stop questioning my work.”
The problem with her attitude was that it didn’t match the hacking message I’d seen on the screen. I chose to proceed with directness. “Effie, did you or did you not program some sort of screensaver that appeared to take over my computer and make my screen imitate broken glass?” Effie was silent. “Effie? Are you still there?”
“Tell me you’re joking. I mean, how do you even know about that?”
“I’m not joking. What’s going on, Effie? Did you do this or not?”
“No, Madison, I didn’t do that. What you’re describing is the personality animation virus. It infects your hard drive, builds a profile of your business, and then animates images to fit that profile and inform you that you were hacked.”
“That’s it? This was all an elaborate joke?”
“No, that’s not all, Madison. In the time it takes for the virus to cycle through a couple of different hacking messages, your files are either corrupted or deleted or both. But you only saw the glass, right? So that means you might be okay. The virus didn’t have a chance to build a profile for the customized hacking message.”
“After all the pieces of the glass broke away, a daisy filled the screen and the petals fell off one by one. That’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Don’t go anywhere. I’m on my way.”
Effie didn’t arrive empty-handed. She came into the studio from the back door and dumped a bag of premade sandwiches on the corner of the desk. “Take whatever you want,” she said. She glanced at my slip but didn’t comment on it. “I know you. When stuff happens, you forget to eat.” She sat down in my chair and tapped the space bar, much like Tex had done to his computer earlier today.
I pulled my coat back on. “I turned it off,” I told her. “It seemed like a good idea. Actually, it was more of an instinct, like slapping away a bee. When I shut the computer off, the images went away.”
“It was a good instinct,” she said. “The virus is automated, so once it has access to your computer, it can feed off your files indefinitely. It’s kind of like somebody made a copy of the key to your back door and now they’re stealing from you at their leisure.”
“Great.” I tore the wax paper off a sandwich and took a sizeable bite out of the sourdough bread. The salty taste of ham blended with the acidic flavor of Dijon mustard. I chewed with the pent-up aggression I needed to release. The sandwich was as good a target as any.
“The good thing is turning it off was like barricading the door.”
“But whoever did this still has a key, right?”
“Yes, but when the computer is off, it’s like you put an armoire in front of the entranc
e. Just because someone can get past your locks doesn’t mean they can get in.”
“What happens when we power it back up?”
Effie looked uncomfortable. “That’s the tricky part.” She leaned forward. Her fingers hovered over the power button, and then she pulled them away. “I’m sorry, Madison. If you want to fire me, I’ll understand.”
“It’s ten o’clock on a Friday night and you’re in my studio trying to help me. Why would I fire you?”
“Because this never would have happened if I’d remembered to reinstall the firewall on your computer.”
I remained calm. I trusted Effie enough to know she hadn’t done this on purpose. Since meeting her years ago, I’d watched her go from being a shy college student to a focused computer whiz. It was after her then-boyfriend had been exposed as an opportunistic employee of a local security company that she’d realized the value of not being dependent on anybody but herself. She’d broken up their relationship, moved into a new apartment, and continued her education with a series of night classes while she spent days working the registers of Best Buy. Two years had passed since then, and Effie had been prouder of that training certificate than her college degree.
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “If anything, my systems were so out of date it’s a wonder this didn’t happen sooner. I’m used to doing business without these bells and whistles, so Mad for Mod can continue to function while we get this worked out.”
“You’re sure you’re not mad?” Effie asked.
I put my hand on Effie’s shoulder to comfort her. “It’s been a long day, and far worse things than this happened.”
“That’s right!” she exclaimed. “I forgot to ask you. What happened when you saw Jane? Did you two have it out? I bet you really put her in her place. The word is out on you. Don’t mess with Madison Night—she will take you down.”
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