But it didn’t hurt to use Top Hat’s example to terrorize the jerk after he and his kind had terrorized Patra. Harry. I’d have to remember that name. Bullies with guns were fair game in my book.
Nick was chatting up a stern administrator type with a clipboard when I emerged. Sean and the policeman were sipping coffee. I nodded at the administrator. “Mr. Toreador is awake now. You can go in.”
Then I sauntered off as if I worked there.
I could blend in almost anywhere. I just never really belonged.
* * *
I gave Sean just enough information to persuade him to leave in a taxi and do his own digging. Nick and I took the Metro home.
We found Patra and Mallard in the cellar kitchen, drying paper on a clothesline strung just under the low ceiling. They were ironing the more interesting bits.
“Look!” Patra cried as soon as we entered. “Invoices to R&P for services rendered three years ago regarding Broderick Media! And here’s Bill’s index number referencing his files — from his computer, maybe? Didn’t some of his CD’s have numbers like these?” She gestured at one of the papers.
“We can look. But we have to remain objective and not rush to conclusions. As far as we are aware, Bill was running a legitimate business analyzing speech patterns, not a spy agency. R&P could have just been testing someone’s speech-making talents. Without Bill’s computer, we’re up a creek.” I helped myself to one of the lovely canapés Mallard had been preparing, probably for Graham. “Ummm, mango and salmon, well done.”
Mallard glowered instead of beaming. He produced another paper and waved it in my face as I licked my fingers.
My eyes widened. I grabbed a napkin and used it to hold the paper.
Nick peered over my shoulder. He whistled.
It was a print-out of a series of emails between Bill and someone at R&P with the email address CS1%@RP.org. Bill liked his back-ups. Ironic that it was old-fashioned paper that had survived. RP.org? Righteous and Proud?
The contents of the audio you provided contains politically sensitive material, Bill had carefully noted. I am returning it in its entirety. You will not be charged for my examination.
The reply time had been within minutes of Bill’s refusal. For the sake of your country, we must have the identity of the speakers. If we cannot trust you, who can we trust?
Bill’s reply was almost twenty-four hours later, to the minute. I was beginning to recognize the caution. Had he called his mother? Started asking questions about CS1%? Talked to some of his liberal friends in the media?
From my research, I knew Bill had dropped out of college and set up his own business four years ago. These emails had been from over five years ago, before he’d moved out, when he had been living with his mother, the flag-waving upholder of the Righteous and Proud. I supposed the R&P had had reason to believe he was one of them.
It was pretty arrogant for the writer to associate himself with the 1% that his crowd theoretically didn’t belong to, but I didn’t own a corner on the irony market.
I have copied enough of the voices to begin an analysis, Bill’s return mail replied. I do not wish to have the rest of the material in my office. I am deleting the full audio file.
There were a few more brief emails negotiating the deal. And then the final email from Bill: The voices on this recording match that of the VP of the US, Senator Paul Rose, and Sir Archibald Broderick. A fourth person as yet unidentified appears to be on a speaker phone and not present. His voice is not matched in any of my files.
In Bill’s handwriting at the bottom of the page: “#1143 manipulation of media.” He added no further comment on the content of the discussion that had him deleting the file.
Paul Rose and Broderick. Rose was the conservative candidate running for president, the apparent brains behind Top Hat, the wealthy shadow group who had almost certainly prodded Reggie into killing our grandfather. Rose and Broderick — speaking to the vice president of the United States.
Damn, I needed to know what had been on that recording.
Poor Bill had been seriously in over his head. If Broderick or Rose knew he’d heard that conversation, he’d been in serious danger from day one. And now I had to wonder about the morals of a VP of the US — as soon as we figured out when this was and which VP. The emails were five years ago. That didn’t mean the audio file was.
“How much do you want to wager that Bill didn’t delete the audio file?” I asked the room at large.
Patra was running for my office before I finished speaking.
Before I could follow, the food processor spoke.
“I expect my dinner on time despite this fascinating digression into a topic everyone already knows about.”
“Of course, mein Führer.” I patted the processor. “And when we find Bill’s killer, you can say you knew that, too, just the way EG does.”
I didn’t linger for a response. Graham knew how to find me if he wanted. I think our game was as much sexual frustration as psychological warfare.
I shrugged at Mallard in regret. “Thanks for the help. We’ll get out of the way and let you know what we find.”
Our stuffed penguin of a butler almost smiled.
When I reached my office, Patra was flipping through the stacks of disks she’d rescued, organizing them in numerical order.
“Assuming Dr. Charles Smythe of the R&P is a sarcastic bastard using the name CS1%, why would he need to analyze audio files of Broderick and Rose discussing media manipulation?” I asked, pulling out our earlier files stolen from Bill’s apartment and handing half to Nick. “Better yet, why would he poison Reggie?”
Patra dropped a disk and stared. She hadn’t been around when Nick and I had discussed this. “The religious leader of the Righteous & Proud killed our grandfather’s thieving lawyer?” she asked.
“That’s our theory, and we have a witness. Story at ten,” I said, flipping through files.
“Smythe worked for the VP’s office a decade ago,” Nick reminded us. “Is there any chance that he was the undetected voice on the tape? Maybe he was testing Bill.”
“Number 1143 isn’t in here,” Patra said in disappointment, restarting her search of the disks.
“You saved what, a few dozen CDs? And if he was already at 1143 years ago, he must have had thousands we didn’t save,” I said. “We really need his computer.”
“There weren’t any more CDs on his desk,” Patra said. “He had no filing system for his disks. I looked. Maybe he cleaned and reused them when he was done?”
“Not if there was any liability attached to his work,” Nick argued. “He’d either store them on external drives or keep a vault for the CDs or both.”
“It was a crappy little one hole apartment. No vaults. And any drives went with the thieves,” Patra said, sounding depressed. “I hate this.”
My overactive brain cells were dancing with ideas. “We’re pursuing too many balls at once,” I told them. “Nick, you follow up with our lawyer and Lemuel on Reggie’s death. Patra, stick with Broderick and following anything you can find out about your father. I’ll keep digging into Bill. But we have Smitty connected to Reggie and Bill, so he’s fair game all the way around. Make sense?”
“And Broderick, since Smitty requested analysis of that tape with him on it,” Patra added. “I need to get into BM’s computer files.”
I was thinking that was a really bad, very Magda idea.
Twenty
I stayed up all night decoding Patrick Llewellyn’s paranoid notes. He must have known there were people like Graham around who could disentangle his cryptograms. Even after I decoded his stupid laundry lists, he’d made his notes meaningless to anyone but him.
I had what I assumed were times and dates and initials that might represent people or places or both. I was leaning toward the latter. I set up a spreadsheet to look for a pattern.
My expertise is research, not field work. I really hated leaving my basement and the lovely puzzle for
anything less than an emergency or a family outing.
But I’d end up like Graham if I didn’t force myself to interact with the rest of the world. I didn’t want to be the spider in the cellar, so I spent equal time designing a task to get out of the house.
While the computer ran code programs over the weekend, I’d had time to poke around more in Bill’s bank account. I’d only recently learned how to perpetrate this illegal act through the internet money-laundering class I’d taken.
So far, the college course on literature hadn’t taught me anything as useful.
Sunday night, while the others were off on their own expeditions, I dug into the information I’d gathered. Bill had an on-line bank account. I figured out his email password from a list he’d kept in the files Patra had retrieved. The girl had a good eye for damaging goods.
As a result of my research, I would have to make a foray into the real world.
* * *
Monday morning, I showered and changed while Nick and Patra slept. I left Nick a note reminding him to keep in touch with Lemuel’s bail bondsman so he could escort our stool pigeon to his new abode. Then I walked EG to the Metro where she caught the train to her private school. She was worried her bat report wouldn’t be sufficiently detailed. In my opinion, it would have passed for a PhD, but what did I know? I just had a GED.
I caught the next train down to the city neighborhood where Bill had lived, and I was waiting at the door when his local tech store opened. Really, if I hadn’t been so busy, I could have figured this out on my own without plundering his bank account to see who he’d made the checks out to.
I asked for the store manager, flashed my fake ID, and handed him my fake Linda business card. “I’m William Bloom’s attorney and executor for his estate. I’ve come to clear out the disks he stored here.”
I was fishing and hoping that Bill liked hard back up as well as cloud back up, which I hadn’t located yet. I played nonchalant while the store manager looked at my card.
“He had an honest-to-God lawyer?” the tattooed manager asked. “I didn’t think he owned his own socks.”
“Family lawyer,” I said with a shrug. “He made arrangements for passing on his business assets, and that includes the CDs. I assume they’re not just music.”
“He just kept a lock box here.” The manager couldn’t have been more than college age. He sauntered down the aisle to the employee entrance.
Oh, hell, he could have kept old comic books in this place. And here I thought I’d been so smart.
He led me into their storage area. Metal shelves with labels filled the space. We had to go all the way to a dark back corner where the manager dragged one of those heavy asbestos fire-proof security boxes from beneath a bin. Big enough to hold a file drawer, it had to weigh over fifty pounds.
“Bill used to work here. He asked if he could store this. He paid the store fair and square, so the boss said it was fine. Can’t imagine why he kept it here.” The guy looked expectant as he handed over the awkward box.
“Backup in case of fire,” I said with a straight face, not accepting the burden. I didn’t know how I’d get the box out the door without a forklift. “I’ll need a taxi. Would you carry that to the door for me while I call one?”
Reminded he was big and strong and manly, he shrugged and did as asked. I didn’t even have to resort to Magda-flapping eyelashes. Good thing, because I was in my lawyerly khaki and not very vamp like.
I grimaced in annoyance when I checked out the plate glass window for my taxi and noticed Leonard Riley hanging out on a street corner. Now really, did I look like Patra? Patra should be dutifully reporting to Broderick Media shortly. What was the point in his spying on me? Pure meanness would be my supposition, but I wasn’t taking chances.
If I’d been in Marrakech, I would have simply walked out and kicked his balls until he cried. But this side of the pond pretended to be more civilized, and I’d be arrested for assault if I tried that. Redirecting a taxi isn’t easy. So I just let the boy hand the vault into the taxi’s back seat, waved at Riley, and climbed in. Lesson #2 in city living. It’s hard to follow a cab unless you have a car of your own.
As a safety precaution, I had the cab let me out at Sean’s newspaper office rather than endanger the family by taking it home. Besides, I didn’t have enough manpower to handle a few thousand audio disks, if that’s what was in here.
I lugged the fireproof vault — I do love irony — into the lobby and dropped it on the floor. The building stunk of wet charred wood and plastic. Anyone who has ever burned a Barbie would recognize the stench.
Maintenance men were all over, cleaning up the mess. Huge fans were running to dry the place out. I hoped Sean got to keep his job. Maybe the vault would work toward that end. I liked paying my debts.
I didn’t know if Sean would remember my fake persona, but I gave the security guard my Linda Lane name, along with a request for an appliance dolly. That got their attention. Two helpful gentlemen in rumpled suits arrived in record time.
They eyed the vault with appreciation and interest. “Gold, diamonds, or jewels?” one asked.
“Sean’s not getting around so hot right now,” the stouter of the two said. “He said you’d understand.”
“I do understand, gentlemen, thank you. This is my gift of gratitude for his quick thinking yesterday. He’s a hero, and once this story breaks, the city will know it.” Yeah, I learned to lie in my cradle.
They lifted the vault to a dolly and rolled it into the elevator, which was fortunately still operating. Upstairs, the cubicle farm had been dismantled while the fire clean-up people did their thing. It looked like the worst of the damage had been done to the conference room. Maybe Patra had done them a favor and insurance would buy them new computers.
Work had apparently been moved to the unscathed executive offices. Salvaged metal desks were crammed into carpeted offices beside polished mahogany ones. It made for a claustrophobic anthill, but the inhabitants seemed to be enjoying the heck out of it.
One of the exec desks was covered in coffee makers and donuts.
People watched with curiosity — these were reporters, after all — as the vault was wheeled to a tight corner where Sean sat, his bandaged foot propped on a drawer pulled out from a nearby desk.
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t stand,” he said without sarcasm, for a change.
I don’t like spies, but he’d been on our side often enough that I tolerated him. And he had prevented Patra from getting her head blown off. That was worth something. “Got a screwdriver?”
Not even raising my voice, I had everyone in the room hunting drawers for tools. Definitely not the time or place for trading secrets. But I had a more evil idea in mind — provided, of course, there was more than comic books in there.
“If those are Bill’s files,” I pointed at the box as a screwdriver was passed across the room, “I need #1143. I give you free rein to access all the rest. The name of the people who set the fire could be on one of them.”
Sean’s eyes widened in appreciation. I’d just set some of the world’s best investigative reporters into hunting through audio files for revenge. I only knew that one of Bill’s clients was Smitty, and that was the CD I wanted. I didn’t have time to listen to all the files to find other relevant ones. But a roomful of reporters…
Popping the lock was a piece of cake with the screwdriver. Once upon a time I’d amused myself by placing childish scribbling in one of these and leaving it locked in a closet to see which of the servants couldn’t be trusted. The answer — most of them. Vaults simply summon visions of glimmering jewels and gold for some reason.
Bill’s stacks of CDs, USBs, and a few external drives brought crestfallen expressions once I had the box open. Even experienced reporters fell for the exciting prospect of Aladdin’s treasure. But they quickly returned to business, understanding that I’d brought them information — the next best thing to gold.
Sean passed out stack
s of CDs while searching through the neat labels. He produced #1143 and handed it over.
“Will you tell me what’s on it later?”
“If I can. It may be of national security importance, so I make no promises. I’ll ask the same of you.” At his agreement, I left a room full of slavering reporters happily dividing the stacks.
I didn’t see Leonard anywhere outside when I headed for the Metro, but I made sure to check over my shoulder when I got off. He knew where I lived, so the precaution was simply to determine how successful I’d been with the taxi trick.
I didn’t see him anywhere, but I entered the house through the back alley and the kitchen anyway. Of course, Graham knew the instant I returned.
Patra’s perspective
Reporting to Broderick’s Human Resources office promptly at nine, Patra wondered if any of the people watching her knew she’d been in the competition’s office the day before. With Riley spying on her, she felt as if her every move was observed. Wearing her highest heels, she gave them lots of hip-swaying motion to follow. Her office attire today was a red pencil skirt cut above her knees, a matching bolero jacket that barely skimmed her waist, and a tank top that showed cleavage.
The dragon lady in HR scowled at Patra’s attire. The tall, portly, gray-haired gentleman reading through a file showed far more approval. “The new hire?” he asked, indicating Patra with a tilt of his head.
She hated being dismissed as an object. Donning a brilliant smile, she held out her hand. “Patra Llewellyn, sir. May I have the pleasure?”
He barely gripped her fingers and gave a single handshake hinting of disapproval at her brashness. “Archibald Broderick. You’ll be working in entertainment?”
Oh, rats, she should have had her tape recorder turned on to capture his voice for analysis.
“Sir Archibald Broderick,” dragon lady inserted with an air of importance.
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