by Lisa Tuttle
‘Of course,’ said Olivia. ‘It wasn’t going to the ball he was interested in – it was going to the ball with me. But whatever made him think he could get away with it? Wouldn’t he realize I’d laugh in his face, and denounce him for a liar and a thief?’
‘Maybe the way the silver metal man acts is the way Malcolm thinks,’ said Rose. ‘Maybe he believes women respond well to caveman tactics – you know, brute strength and cunning, throw a girl over your shoulder and she loves it?’
‘Then he must be extremely stupid. What would give him the idea that I’d like being treated like a game animal?’
‘Um, I think your cousin might have something to do with it,’ said Farren diffidently. They all looked at him.
‘Which cousin?’ asked Olivia.
‘Toby. He’s been egging Malcolm on, daring him to ask you out, saying that you really fancy him—’
‘As if Toby would know!’
‘Who cares why he did it? He’s not going to get away with it. Let’s go find that creep and get my invitation back,’ said Simon.
Olivia put out a restraining hand. Simon caught hold of it. For a moment they looked at each other. Rose cleared her throat. Reluctantly, Olivia pulled her hand back. ‘I’m sorry, Roberto,’ she said. ‘I don’t like this any more than you do, but this may be our only chance to trap him. Computer crime is hard to prove. He’s been having fun at other peoples’ expense, and he knows how to cover his tracks. He’s very clever, but he’s not very smart. What he’s done proves that, at least as far as I’m concerned. I’m his Achilles’ heel. He badly wants to impress me, and I think that if I give him half a chance, he’ll say something that will give the game away. I’m going to let him think he’s impressed me. It’s just for one night.’
Dumbstruck, Simon watched her go. Then he groaned loudly, theatrically. ‘I can’t believe it! She’s really going to let him get away with it?’
‘She isn’t really,’ said Rose. ‘She wants to trap him. This is important, Simon. I know it’s not nice for you—’
‘But it’s even more not-nice for her! What if he tries something on … it’s not safe! If only I could get in! She needs somebody to look after her, somebody to help her, in case—’ Abruptly he caught hold of Rose’s arms and gazed coaxingly into her eyes. ‘Rosy, give me your ticket.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Orson.
Simon didn’t look at him. ‘I don’t want to do you out of your dance, but you must see – look, she’s your friend; you wouldn’t want her getting hurt.’
Rose felt like saying that Olivia was perfectly capable of looking after herself, or that she and Orson could look after her as well as Simon, but she was torn between her own desire to attend the ball and her sympathy for Simon’s situation. Before she could decide what to say, Orson had leaned in between them and was brandishing the thick, square card of his invitation in Simon’s face.
‘Here, take mine,’ he said abruptly.
Simon reached to take it, but hesitated. ‘Are you sure? You really mean it?’
‘Someone ought to look after Olivia, you’re right. And I – I can see how you feel about her.’
He didn’t hesitate any longer. ‘Thank you. I owe you one.’ Clutching the precious invitation to his chest, he hurried out of the room.
Rose stared at Orson, who was looking after Simon with a pained expression on his face. Feeling her gaze, he turned to meet it. He flushed. ‘Hey, I’m sorry, Rose, I wasn’t thinking … Now I’ve let you down. I didn’t mean to spoil the evening for you. Still, at least you can go in, have a few dances with your brother or something. I’m sorry I’m not going to get to dance with you myself.’
Rose looked at the floor. ‘I wish I thought Olivia’s plan would work, but I’m afraid Malcolm Watts has just spoiled the dance for all of us, while getting what he wanted all the time. Even if she gets him to brag about ripping people off he’ll just deny it later, and it’ll be just her word against his. If only she was wired for sound! Then we’d have some hard evidence.’
‘I have one of those tiny tape recorders,’ said Orson. ‘Voice-activated, you know, so big?’
Rose brightened. ‘With you?’
He grimaced. ‘Naw. At home. If we bombed back to town in my car, and I picked it up, and then bombed back out here, and you snuck it in to her …’
‘I don’t know. He’ll probably say something so offensive in the first fifteen minutes that Olivia will lose her cool and flatten him with one of her akido throws, and that’ll be the end of that.’
Orson blinked. ‘Olivia knows akido?’
‘Yeah, she’s been taking lessons for three years. She’s really into unarmed combat. But she’s also got her Southern Belle act down to perfection … probably she couldn’t let the CyberQueen out on the dance floor if she wanted to. She’ll have to smile and bat her eyes and keep on dancing no matter what that creep says. Maybe we should try for the tape recorder – it’s a chance, anyway.’
‘Come on, Farren,’ said Jenny, her voice rising in annoyance. ‘I want to go to the ball, not hang around talking about Olivia and her ex-butler.’
‘I want to know what’s going on,’ said Farren. ‘I’m trying to figure it out. Is old Malcolm Watts really a criminal mastermind? Did you hear those rumours about him getting thrown out of college ‘cause they found out he didn’t have the grades to get accepted? He’d hacked his way into the computer and forged the whole thing! He claimed somebody had set him up, so they didn’t press charges – couldn’t prove anything, anyway.’
‘Yeah, we need proof,’ said Orson. ‘I wish I could think of a good way to get it.’
‘How about searching his room while he’s here at the dance?’
‘Yeah, that would be good,’ Orson said. ‘If I had the least idea where he lived – which I don’t. And if I didn’t mind committing the crime of breaking and entering – which I do.’
Farren smiled. ‘He rents a room from my aunty Billy. She’s out at the big bingo jamboree tonight, so there’s nobody home. And you don’t have to break in, because I know where she keeps her spare key.’
16 Unmasking
Orson parked the car in front of Farren’s aunt Billy’s house. It was quiet and there were no lights showing: it seemed unlikely that anyone was home. He exhaled heavily and tried to think it through, to anticipate every possibility. It was no good; he wasn’t the criminal type. If they were caught …
‘Pretend you’re on-line,’ said Rose.
He looked at her in surprise. ‘You do that, too?’
She smiled and shifted slightly in her seat, dress rustling. He could smell her perfume. ‘It makes it easier if you don’t worry so much beforehand.’
‘Right. Well, we know where the key is, and if we’re caught we say Malcolm sent us to get something …’
‘Let’s just do it.’
Orson shut up, embarrassed, wishing he could do something to impress Rose, for once, instead of always letting her down. He opened his door a half-second after she’d opened hers.
They found the key where Farren had told them it would be, beneath a corner stone of a raised flowerbed beside the front steps. They rang the doorbell and waited, just in case.
‘People are always coming and going from here,’ Orson said. ‘She rents out three rooms, mostly to students. The neighbours wouldn’t think anything of it if they noticed us going in.’
‘Well, we’re not very likely-looking burglars, are we?’ said Rose, fluffing out her skirt. ‘Let’s go in.’
By the time Orson had found the light switch beside the door and turned it on, Rose was already halfway to the stairs.
The first bedroom they looked into obviously belonged to someone female. The second was bare, tidy, so neutral it was probably unused. The third was littered with half-eaten bags of Doritos and empty Dr Pepper cans, dirty socks and t-shirts, piles of magazines and notebooks. Next to the unmade single bed was a table set up with a small PC, modem and telephone.
‘Bingo,’ said Orson.
Rose went straight to the computer and her hands hovered above the keyboard for a moment before she turned away. ‘What are we looking for?’
‘Scraps of paper, a notebook, something like that. If he has a list of fake credit card numbers or phone numbers, or passwords into private systems – any of that would be evidence.’ He went to the desk in the corner which was covered with untidy piles of paper and picked up a small notebook. There were lists of what seemed to be telephone numbers, unidentified except for dates marked beside them. ‘Something like this.’
Rose pulled open the table’s single central drawer and looked inside. Then she said quietly, ‘I think I’ve found our evidence.’
Orson moved across to have a look. Neatly stored away, in contrast to the mess that prevailed throughout the room, were a stack of computer discs and a stack of plastic cards bound by a rubber band. He picked up the second stack and looked through them. There were three credit cards, each made out to different names, two student ID cards – one of them Farren’s – four telephone credit cards and one ATM card, none of them in Malcolm’s name.
‘It’s Olivia’s,’ said Rose quietly. Orson followed her gaze. There, in the corner of the drawer, was a purse-sized perfume spray and a necklace – a gold heart on a gold chain.
‘I was with her when she lost it at the mall. Malcolm was there, too. I remember … she didn’t want to go back to look for it.’
‘She didn’t lose it. I’ll bet he lifted it, like he lifted your brother’s invitation and Farren’s ID card and these …’ he gestured. Then Orson noticed an envelope marked OLIVIA. He picked it up and opened it. Inside there were several lined sheets of loose-leaf notebook paper written on in Olivia’s hand. He read some of it aloud. ‘Cyberwoman? Cyberqueen … razor-nails, black leather, red eyes? Fangs? Always wears mask. Amazon-type. Akido, judo, karate, other? “I eat men like air.” She’s NEVER polite!’
‘That’s how Malcolm knew she was the CyberQueen,’ Rose said triumphantly. ‘He found the notes she made when she was still working out her idea of the character.’
‘Whew,’ said Orson, folding the pages and putting them back inside. His skin crawled as he imagined Malcolm spying on Olivia, creeping around after her to pick up anything she dropped. ‘He was in her house all that time. He could have gone into her room when she wasn’t there; he could have taken anything. Come on, Rose, let’s get out of here.’
‘What should we take? All of this?’
‘No! Leave it!’
She looked at him in surprise. He fought down the thought that they were no better than Malcolm, prying into his belongings.
More gently he said, ‘It’s not evidence unless the police find it here. If we take it, it’s back to our word against his about where we found it. I say we go to the police right now and tell them what happened at the ball, and that we suspect Malcolm’s been stalking Olivia all the time. Then maybe they’ll take him in for questioning, or maybe they’ll search his room.’
Frowning slightly, Rose pushed the drawer shut. ‘Will they take us seriously? The police, I mean.’
‘One of my cousins is a policeman. He will.’
‘Thank goodness for small-town life,’ she said, and they left the room together.
Orson’s heart was thumping and he felt close to panic. Knowing what they did, he felt it would be harder to lie convincingly if they were caught now. They got out of the house without mishap. Orson had just locked the door when a car turned the corner onto the quiet street. As a beam of light from it rolled across the lawn, he realized it was a police patrol car. Before he could move or decide which of the options – bolting or freezing – would make them look less guilty, Rose had taken matters into her own hands. To be precise: she had flung her arms around him, pressed her body against his, and was kissing him.
Orson thought his brain was going to explode. Luckily, his body was quite independent of rational thought when it came to knowing what it liked. Of their own accord, his arms went around her, pulling her even closer, and he kissed her back. She felt, and smelled, and tasted, wonderful. It was a moment of pure, unimagined bliss.
Then she pulled her head back slightly, to breathe. Orson felt his mouth stretch into a foolish, delighted grin, and he leaned forward, meaning to resume that wonderful kiss. But she’d dropped her arms and was definitely pulling away. ‘It’s OK. They’ve gone.’
He couldn’t quite make out the emotion in her slightly breathless voice, but he thought she was annoyed with him. His mind, which had been so joyfully spinning, clunked to a halt. He gazed at her dumbly.
‘I thought it would look less suspicious if they saw us like that.’
‘Oh, right.’ He felt as if she’d slapped him. Sober up, Banks. It hadn’t meant anything; the kiss had been an evasive action, a tactic to confuse a possible enemy. Only in his head had it been an especially wonderful moment; she’d been acting. ‘Quick thinking, Batgirl,’ he said.
She gave a shaky laugh. ‘Remember when you asked me if I was really Ro—’ she broke off abruptly. ‘Come on, let’s get going.’
‘Huh?’
‘The police,’ she said sharply. ‘Remember?’ and marched off down the path.
As Orson paused to hide the key beneath its customary stone he puzzled over what she’d nearly said. It reminded him of joking with Roberto by e-mail, asking if ‘Ro’ stood for Batman’s Robin. It wouldn’t be that surprising if Simon had told her, but even if Simon had told her it didn’t explain why she’d said ‘me’. Suddenly thoughtful, he strolled down the path to join her in the car.
*
The only possible topic of conversation as they drove to the police station was Malcolm and Olivia and what they were going to say to the police. They had to get their stories straight: no mention of visiting Malcolm’s room, just the mysterious hacker who had been stalking Olivia – using the ID number on Farren’s lost or stolen card and Olivia’s personal unlisted telephone number – and the incident at the Midwinter Ball which had led them to suspect Malcolm.
‘So we agreed we’d come straight here, while Olivia played along with him there,’ Orson concluded. The officer on duty that night was not his cousin, but, just as good, was an old friend of his father’s, Officer Wozzeck.
Rose let Orson do the talking. She was still feeling shaky after that kiss, and didn’t really want to do anything but watch him and wonder if it had felt as good to him as it had felt to her.
Officer Wozzeck sat up in his chair. There was a definite gleam in his eye. ‘Well, well,’ he said softly. ‘This is very interesting … so y’all reckon this boy is one of these here hackers? Getting his kicks out of getting into computers where he shouldn’t be?’
‘Uh, maybe,’ Orson said cautiously. ‘It seems likely. We know he got into Illyria; I don’t have any proof of anything else he might have done.’
‘You let us worry about the proof. I think what we’ve got here is probable cause – reason enough for a search warrant, after I make a call to Atlanta. Y’see, what y’all don’t know is that there’ve been some complaints from several universities throughout the south, all of them about unauthorized entries into their systems over the past few months. On a couple of occasions – at least – files had been tampered with, data either added, changed or erased. Now, I don’t know why, exactly, because they tell me the way these guys use the telephone system and computer link-ups the originator could be in Finland or down the road and you’d never know the difference, but maybe the guy got careless. For some reason, they got a fix on this particular area just last week. And now you come in with our first suspect …’ he beamed happily. ‘Now, I think that’s got to be something more than just coincidence, don’t y’all?’
‘I’d call it synchronicity,’ said Orson.
‘Say what?’
‘Or telepathy,’ Rose suggested. Orson looked at her as if he’d been thinking the same thing, and she felt a warm shiver run through her as their eyes met
.
‘Whatever,’ said Officer Wozzeck. ‘I can’t thank y’all enough for doing your duty as good citizens and coming in. Rest assured we’ll look into it. Y’all go on back and enjoy the rest of your dance, now, hear?’
On their way back out to the old plantation they were overtaken by a police car with flashing lights and a siren. Rose’s heart gave a lurch. ‘Do you suppose …’
‘I can’t believe they’ve already searched his room and found anything so incriminating that it wouldn’t keep,’ said Orson. ‘On the other hand, I can’t believe that car’s headed anywhere else.’
‘She’ll be all right,’ said Rose, suddenly anxious. ‘I’m sure she will. He wouldn’t try anything, not with all those people around, and she wouldn’t be stupid enough to go off with him or anything.’
‘Of course she’s all right,’ said Orson. ‘Aren’t you the one who told me Olivia could take care of herself? Karate or whatever it was? And Simon won’t let anything happen to her. He seemed awfully … interested, considering he’d never met her before tonight.’
‘Not in real life, no, but …’ began Rose before she thought.
‘You mean they’d met on-line?’
‘Uh, yes. Of course they had.’
‘Of course. Roberto and the CyberQueen. She was always flirting with him, but he never responded. He couldn’t understand why she picked him out. He told me so. What are you telling me – that he was lying to me? That he was pretending not to be interested, because he knew who the CyberQueen really was, and he knew how I felt about Olivia – so he went behind my back and met her, and this whole intense romantic relationship developed which he never had the decency to tell me about – yes, I saw how they looked at each other, Rose, I’m not stupid; that was not one-sided. God!’ Orson groaned loudly and pounded the heels of his hands on the steering wheel. ‘No wonder he’s been avoiding me since he got here! How could I be such an ass? How could I get it so completely wrong about somebody? I thought he was my friend!’
