Death of a Chocolate Cheater: A Food Festival Mystery

by Penny Pike

The screen lit up. The password prompt appeared.

  He tapped in several keystrokes.

  Seconds later he handed the phone back to Jake. “You’re in.”

  My mouth dropped open. “How did you do that so fast?” I asked.

  “Simple,” Dillon said. “I told you people tend to be lazy and predictable. The most common password usually has to do with your partner, your kid, or your pet, followed by a zero, one, or one, two, three.”

  “Does Reina have a partner, a kid, or a pet?” Jake asked me.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  “So . . .”

  “So the next most common passwords are ‘password,’ the person’s city, or something about their work or hobby. Then they usually add the last four digits of their social security number, their date of birth, or the numbers one, two, three, four. I got it on the fourth try. Hers was ‘SF one, two, three, four.’” He took another bite of his treat, then looked up at me. “What’s yours, Darcy?”

  Talk about predictable. Crap! I’d used the name of my parents’ dog—Frosty—plus the numbers one, two, three, four.

  While Jake fooled around with Reina’s phone, I pulled out my phone, tapped “Settings,” and changed my password to the name of Dillon’s rat and my aunt’s birthday month and date.

  Dillon grinned. “Let me see it.”

  I handed it to him.

  He tapped a few keys, then gave it back to me. “You might want to change it again.”

  I stared at him. “You already figured out my new password!?”

  “Ratty,” he said smugly. “Five, ten. Piece of cake.”

  “You’re incredible!” I said. “Nothing’s safe from you. Now what? Should I just make up a word, add a bunch of numbers, include a few symbols, then try to remember what I’ve done?”

  “You don’t have to go that far,” Dillon said, standing. “But if you want to keep people out of your personal online stuff—e-mail, texts, banking—you have to be smarter than the hackers. They won’t try your bank password. Instead they go to places most people use, like online shopping or e-mail invitations, because those passwords are easy to figure out. Or they might use a system like Brute Force Attack, or an Internet site like insecure.com or passwordcracker.com—places that try thousands of common user names and passwords to find the cookies stored in your web browser.”

  He was starting to lose me. “So what do I do?”

  “Make sure your password is strong by using special characters, like an asterisk or a dollar sign.”

  “And just hope I don’t forget which ones I used.”

  Dillon stuffed the rest of his I Scream Cake in his mouth and swallowed it. “Okay, first choose something you remember from your childhood, like a favorite toy or game. Then add random caps or change the letter O to the number zero, and include some symbols.”

  “This is too much!” I said, frustrated. “When did things get so complicated?”

  “It’s not that hard,” Dillon said, taking back my phone. “I use a trick that makes it hard for hackers to break in. It’s called a LEET code.”

  I frowned. Like I had time to learn some fancy code just to protect my password.

  “Tell me the name of your favorite toy or game,” Dillon said.

  I shrugged. “Clue, I guess.”

  “Now tell me a special date in history that’s not personal.”

  “Uh . . . 1930,” I said, remembering the first year that a Nancy Drew mystery was published.

  “Now, instead of typing regular keyboard letters, use symbols that look like letters.” Dillon typed in a few symbols on my cell phone keyboard, then showed me the screen. “What does that look like to you?”

  I studied the screen:( |_ (_) 3. “A left parenthesis, a vertical line, a horizontal line, another left parenthesis, another horizontal line, a right parenthesis, and the number three. I’ll never remember all of that.”

  “Now picture them as letters,” he said. “What does it say?”

  I stared at the symbols. “I have no clue.”

  Dillon grinned. “You’re close. Look again.”

  I shrugged and handed the phone over to Jake to see if he knew.

  “Clue!” Jake said after one glance. “The parenthesis looks like a C. The vertical and horizontal lines shape the letter L.”

  “U and E,” I said, finally seeing what I couldn’t see before. “Clever, Dillon. So this might keep me from being hacked?”

  “Bingo!” Dillon said.

  I smiled. I had to admit, this was kind of cool.

  “I’d better get back,” Dillon said. “Let me know what you find out.”

  “Will do,” Jake said. Dillon stepped back into the school bus.

  I turned to Jake. “So, now that you’re in Reina’s phone, what are you looking for?”

  He said nothing. Instead he tapped a few keys, then said, “Write this down.”

  I dug through my purse and pulled out the notepad I always kept for writing down recipes for my food truck cookbook. I found a pen and flipped open the pad.

  “Isabel Lau . . .” He reeled off a phone number and address.

  “Simon Van Houten.” Another number and address.

  He shut off the phone. “I’ve got to run this back. Stay here.” He disappeared, headed for Reina’s trailer. I wondered how he was going to return the phone without arousing her suspicion.

  Meanwhile I pulled out my phone and changed my password again, this time to something no one would ever be able to hack, but would be easy to remember—the name of my favorite reading material as a kid and the year Murder, She Wrote debuted—and then encrypted the words in LEET code:

  // 4 |) // 4 6 4 2 ! // 3—1984

  Try to hack that, Dillon.

  * * *

  “Did you return it?” I asked Jake when he came back.

  “Yeah. I said I had one more question and slipped the phone under some papers when she wasn’t paying attention.”

  “What are you, some kind of magician? How did you do that thing-up-your-sleeve trick?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Every boy learns a few magic tricks as a kid. I happened to be pretty good. I called myself Jake the Great.”

  I laughed out loud. “That’s the best you could do?”

  “Nothing rhymes with Jake except fake.”

  I could think of a few—snake, flake, rake. . . .

  “Later I’ll show you how to make a cream puff disappear,” he said.

  “I already know that trick.” I checked my watch. “So what now?”

  “Now we go talk to the two remaining judges.”

  “But Reina said they were hiding out somewhere,” I said. “Even if you have their addresses, they’re probably not home.”

  “She was obviously lying,” he said. “She just didn’t want us snooping around.”

  “How do you know she was lying?”

  “As attorneys, we’re trained to look for tells. She had a tell.”

  “A tell?”

  “You know, like when you play poker. A tell is an unconscious facial tic or expression or gesture that contradicts what a person is saying. You’ve heard the phrase ‘poker face’? That’s when you consciously try not to give away what’s in your hand by keeping a straight face.”

  Was there anything this dream puff guy didn’t know?

  “So you played poker as a kid too?”

  He nodded. “With my dad. He had his friends over for regular poker games. He taught me what to watch for when he played with his pals.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  “Well, like, if the person fidgets, or scratches his face, or blinks rapidly, he’s hiding a good hand. Or if he just stares straight ahead and doesn’t make eye contact. Or if he’s overly talkative. All giveaways. Sometimes it’s just a change in breath
ing. So while you’re trying not to let the other guy know what kind of hand you have, sometimes your underlying emotions give you away through physical signals.”

  “And you looked for these ‘tells’ in jury selection?”

  “Not just in juries. I looked for them in the person who’s hiring me to represent them. It’s a handy trick in a lot of situations.”

  I grinned. This was fascinating. “What kind of tell did you get from Reina that told you she was lying about the judges?”

  “Remember her hands?” Jake asked.

  I thought back. “Not really. She’d had a manicure. Wait! I think they were steepled at some point.”

  “Good memory. That’s when she asked what we wanted. It’s a sign of confidence, of being in command. She thought she had the upper hand. Then what did she do when we asked about the judges?”

  I thought for a moment, then shook my head.

  “She placed her hands flat on her desk, as if to keep them under control. Another dead giveaway for nervousness.”

  “Wow.” I suddenly wondered what kind of tells I’d been giving Jake, but decided not to ask.

  “You want to know what your tell is, don’t you?” Jake said, reading my mind—or my tells.

  My mouth dropped open. I knew that was a huge tell that meant, “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Aside from what you just did, you’re usually good at keeping your thoughts and feelings to yourself.”

  I took a deep breath, then wondered what that told him. This was getting to be too much.

  “Enough,” I said. “Let’s go find a judge.”

  Chapter 13

  We hopped in my VW Bug and Jake pulled out his cell phone. He dialed the number I’d written down for Isabel Lau. No answer. He tried Simon Van Houten’s number. Again no answer.

  “Did you get a number for the new judge—Delbert Morris?” I asked.

  “No. She didn’t have anything listed.”

  “What now?”

  “I say we head on over to Van Houten’s place first and check. Maybe they’re just not answering their phones. Then we’ll try Lau’s place.”

  He typed Simon’s address into his cell phone GPS. A map appeared, leading us from our current location to our final destination—somewhere in The Avenues. The woman’s robotic voice began giving us directions: “Turn left in two hundred feet.”

  We were on our way to see Judge Number One—Simon Van Houten.

  “Do you know anything about this guy, besides what Dillon’s told us?” I asked Jake as I followed the female’s instructions to the western side of the city.

  “Nope,” Jake answered.

  I punched in Dillon’s cell number using the car’s Bluetooth. He answered after four rings.

  “Dillon, can you find out anything more about the judges—Simon Van Houten and Isabel Lau?”

  “Gimme a couple of minutes.” It sounded like his mouth was full. Did the guy ever stop eating?

  “Must be nice to have a hacker in the family,” Jake said, squirming in the seat as if trying to get comfortable. Being taller than six feet, it was a challenge for him, but I loved my cozy car. There was plenty of room for my five-ten .

  “I guess he comes in handy now and then.”

  “Turn right in two miles and keep right,” came the GPS voice again. I started to say something, but she interrupted me again. I gave up and just listened for her next command. By the time we took the off-ramp and entered the Sunset/Richmond districts, known familiarly as The Avenues, the fog seemed denser and the air cooler. No wonder, since the area was close to the chilly waters of the Pacific Ocean, and winds gusted regularly off Ocean Beach. The Avenues is mostly residential, but it’s close to Golden Gate Park, the San Francisco Zoo, Lake Merced, and the Sutro Baths. It’s a different world from downtown San Francisco.

  The houses from Second to Forty-eighth are mostly tract and row homes, built after the 1906 earthquake. They’re simple in design—three stories with stucco facades—and looked small from the front but ran deep. The neighborhoods were middle-class, originally Irish but now mostly Asian, often handed down through generations, although there’s a small population of surfers, who rent, then don their wet suits and head for the waves.

  We pulled up to the address I had for Simon Van Houten, a modest narrow three-story home with a one-car garage underneath.

  My cell phone rang.

  Leaving the ignition on, I answered on the first ring. “Dillon? What did you find out?”

  “Not much more than what we already knew,” he said. “His father owns a bunch of chocolate companies, all under various corporate names. It won’t be easy uncovering every company he owns, since he’s got lawyers protecting his business filings. His father is loaded, but most of his money is tied up.”

  I looked up at the small vertical home we’d parked in front of and frowned. If Simon Van Houten’s family was so rich, what was he doing living in a simple home like this? Granted, housing prices were inflated, but this was no Pacific Heights.

  “Are you sure he’s rich?” I asked.

  “On paper, at least. By the way, Simon Van Houten the judge is Simon Van Houten the second.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “They have the same name? Have you been checking on the right guy?”

  I heard computer clicking noises on the other end of the line, then an airy whistle. “Yep. Simon Number One is the rich dad, and Simon Number Two is the judge who works for his father’s company. Everything I can find seems to be under his dad’s name.”

  “Thanks, Dillon.”

  “Later,” he said, and hung up.

  “That’s odd,” I said to Jake, who’d been listening to our call on the car Bluetooth. “Simon’s dad is the actual owner of all those secret corporations, but he doesn’t seem to be sharing much with his son. If Simon the judge is part of the business, why does he live in such a modest house? And why does he act like he’s a bigwig in chocolate?”

  “He didn’t look too poor at the party last night,” Jake said. “He was wearing an expensive suit like the more-affluent attorneys wear.”

  “Maybe it was for show,” I said.

  “Or maybe he’s got money on paper too, like his father, and can’t spend it.”

  I shrugged. “Well, let’s go talk to him and see what he has to say.” I opened the door. “I hope he’s home.”

  “He’s home,” Jake said, getting out of the car.

  I closed the driver’s side door. “How do you know? You have ESP now too?”

  “Nope,” he said, waiting for me at the curb. “I saw him peeking out of his window upstairs a minute ago.”

  I glanced at the window. The curtain fluttered. Hmm, I thought. Nosy? Paranoid? Expecting someone?

  “Well, he knows we’re here. Let’s go,” I said, leading the way.

  I headed up the front steps and rang the push-button bell. I could hear a muffled ring. After thirty seconds with no answer, I rang it again.

  “What do you want?” came a voice from overhead.

  I looked up to see Simon leaning out of the second-floor window.

  “Simon?” I called up. “It’s me, Darcy Burnett, from the chocolate party last night. Remember? And Jake Miller, the Dream Puff guy.”

  “I know who you are. What do you want?” he repeated. The wind caught the top of his thinning hair and flipped it.

  “We wanted to talk to you about something. Can we come in?”

  “What about?” he called down.

  “I’m not sure you want me to yell it out in front of all your neighbors, but it’s important.”

  He patted his hair down, pulled his head in, and closed the window. I raised an eyebrow at Jake. He shrugged.

  Moments later I heard a click at the front door as the door popped open. />
  I grasped the old-fashioned knob and slowly pushed the door open.

  The tiny foyer inside was empty aside from a small table that had collected a stack of rolled-up newspapers. Apparently, reading the Chronicle wasn’t high on Simon’s priority list.

  I looked up the stairs. Seeing no one, I called tentatively, “Hello?”

  Simon’s head appeared again, this time hanging over the short rail at the top of the second floor. “Come up. And lock the door behind you.”

  We did what he said and climbed the stairs. When I reached the top step, I noticed a lever attached to the wall. It was much like the one my friend had in her Avenue house. Like Simon, she used to look out the second-floor window when anyone knocked on the door in order to make sure her visitor wasn’t a serial killer. When she pulled the lever, the door at the bottom of the stairs opened, so she didn’t have to run down and open it. It was one of the unique touches of the old Avenue homes that I loved.

  “Hi, Simon,” I said, entering the main living area. The room was long and skinny, decorated in mismatched Ikea-looking furniture, with bare walls and meager offerings of comfort. This was a single guy’s home for sure, and temporary at that, with just the basics.

  “How did you find me?” he asked, frowning, hands on his narrow hips. According to Dillon’s information, he was about forty, but he looked ten years older, with his thin, drawn face and floppy comb-over that barely covered his bald spot. He was dressed for comfort, in gray sweatpants and a flannel shirt.

  “Uh, Reina had your address,” Jake said. “She said you were keeping a low profile since the murder, but we need to talk to you.”

  “What about?” Simon said, not moving.

  “You know they have someone in custody, don’t you?” Jake asked.

  Simon nodded. “Supposedly, although I’m not so sure.”

  “Any chance you’ve got a beer?” Jake asked. “Been a long day.”

  Simon seemed to think about it, then gestured for us to sit in one of his prefab chairs, none of which looked inviting. I had to clear away a couple of jackets from the seat I chose, while Jake moved aside a pizza carton and some used napkins.

  Simon returned with three cans of beer, handed one to Jake, then one to me. He sat down on a low-slung futon, popped open his beer, and took a long swig.