Case of the Chatty Roadrunner

by Jeffrey M. Poole

  And undoubtedly find dinner, I silently added.

  Just then, Sherlock’s head snapped up and he dropped the bone he had been chewing. Watson, for her part, cracked open an eye, saw that her packmate was already investigating, and promptly went back to sleep. Sherlock then gave a few warning woofs.

  “What’s gotten him riled up?” Vance asked, as he rose to his feet. He looked through the open windows and then through the steel security door on the casita. After giving the area a thorough check, he shrugged and sat back down on the couch. “There’s nothing out there, fella,” Vance told the corgi.

  Sherlock, however, wasn’t convinced. I watched as his hackles rose. I figured it was my turn to check, so I headed to the door to look out, only to come face to face with a woman wearing a pizza delivery jacket. We both let out a bellow of surprise, which set Sherlock off with his barking.

  “Sherlock, you need to be quiet, pal,” I told the corgi. “And relax. It’s the pizza man. Er, woman. Sorry.”

  The woman didn’t say a word. She opened up the large, insulated bag keeping the pizzas warm and pulled out several pizza boxes. She handed them to me and immediately turned on her heel and left, all without saying so much as a single word of greeting. Nor did she collect – or ask – for any money.

  “It’s a good thing she didn’t stick around for a tip,” I mumbled, as I retreated back into the casita. I hefted the boxes and nodded appreciatively. Nothing makes a hungry man happier than having a thick crust pizza loaded with toppings, just waiting to be consumed.

  Jillian suddenly held up a couple of twenties.

  “I was going to take care of dinner tonight, Zachary. How much was it so I can reimburse you? I wasn’t paying attention.”

  I shook my head, “She left so quick that I kinda forgot about paying. I’ve ordered so many pizzas online where I pay for them right then and there that I didn’t think about it. That’s weird, right? Who would deliver pizzas without getting paid for them? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Vance shrugged, pulled out a paper plate from the stack we found in the casita’s tiny kitchen, and helped himself to several slices of pepperoni. I was in the process of handing Jillian a plate with several pieces of her Hawaiian pizza on it when I caught sight of another pizza box, sitting underneath the pepperoni. Confused, I turned to look at Vance, but he wasn’t paying me any attention, as he was too busy wolfing down his pizza and going over his notes.

  I know I didn’t order any breadsticks, or wings, or anything like that. Perhaps the pizza place goofed? I was ready to ask Jillian when I saw that she had been waggling a finger at the dogs. After Sherlock whined with exasperation, my girlfriend looked down at the two corgis and sadly shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, guys. The answer is ‘no’. Ham is too salty, and is not good for you. I can’t give you any of this. I… Zachary? Is everything okay? What’s the matter, don’t you like the pizza? I thought you told me your favorite was Hawaiian, too.”

  “It is,” I said, as I set my plate of uneaten pizza down on the coffee table. I pointed at the third box. “What’s in that one? I only ordered two, namely the pepperoni and our Hawaiian.”

  “They probably made an extra one by mistake and figured they’d make our night by giving it to us,” Vance said, without looking up. “It’s happened to us a few times. The girls think an extra pizza, free of charge, is the greatest thing since the invention of peanut butter.”

  Vance and Tori’s two girls, Victoria and Stephanie, would say that about any type of free food, I thought with a grin. Then again, who wouldn’t? Curious, and partially hopeful there might be a third pizza in the box and not an assortment of plates and napkins, I cracked the lid and peeked inside. Never in a million years would I have guessed the contents. I thought the pizzas felt heavy. Now I knew why.

  A sleek, state-of-the-art laptop sat nestled within the box. Written with a black permanent marker on the underside of the lid was a string of characters I knew all too well: aoatmaobt. Now, to the outside observer, that would look like nothing but gibberish. However, I knew it for what it was, a password. This was Samantha’s work laptop! How in the world did the delivery driver get it?

  Wait. The driver! It had been a woman, and now that I think about it, the woman’s hair had been red, and almost concealed by the baseball cap she had been wearing. That meant our driver had been Red, the mystery informant! Damn! I had wanted to talk to her!

  So, what the hell was she doing, posing as a pizza delivery driver?

  Sorry, that was a rhetorical question. Her earlier message had said something about trying to find a way to get me something. Clearly, she had been talking about this laptop. She obviously believed she was being watched, and was taking no chances about being caught. How she knew we had ordered pizza was beyond me. Could she have been watching us? Could she have intercepted the real pizza delivery guy and arranged to deliver them herself?

  I sighed. The world may never know.

  Anyway, what about that gobbly-gook password, you ask? It was an acronym for one of Samantha’s favorite sayings: As old as the mists, and older by two. Red had given me Samantha’s password, in case I didn’t know how to unlock Sam’s laptop. In my defense, I probably could have guessed it, but not before the computer would have locked itself up tighter than a drum, figuring someone was trying to launch a brute force attack on it.

  I gingerly took the laptop out of the box and held it out, as though it was the Holy Grail itself. How many times had I seen Samantha typing away on this thing? Or working on this laptop until the wee hours of the morning? This device, I knew, contained lists of all her contacts and more than likely, records of her many sales. No, I had never seen it for myself, nor had Samantha ever confided in me what was on this thing, but what you have to understand is, I know my wife. Er, late wife. She was the epitome of OCD. She kept meticulous notes about everything.

  She would have kept notes about when she called, how long she was on the phone, who the client was, and on and on. No wonder Red had kept this hidden. No wonder she thought she was being watched. She was evidently right! If this laptop contained what I think it did, then Semzar Pharmaceuticals would stop at nothing to get it back.

  “What’s that?” Jillian finally asked, as she looked up from stroking Sherlock’s fur. “Is that a laptop? Where’d you get it?”

  “It was in the third pizza box,” I declared.

  Vance’s head snapped up so fast that I swear I heard his neck crack.

  “Would you run that by me again?”

  I pointed at the empty third pizza box, “It was in there. Remember, we ordered two pizzas, right?”

  “Whose is it?” Vance wanted to know.

  “Samantha’s,” I softly answered. “It’s her work laptop.”

  “What?!” Vance sputtered, as he scrambled to his feet. “How in the world did that pizza driver know to deliver that to you?”

  “I’m pretty sure the driver was Red, the mystery woman who has been calling me at 3:30am every morning. She said she had something she knew I’d want, remember? This has got to be it.”

  “What’s that word there?” Jillian asked, as she caught sight of the open box and the underside of the lid. “I can’t quite make out what it says.”

  “It’s an acronym,” I answered. “It serves as Sam’s password. ‘As old as the mists, and older by two’. We used to say that to each other all the time.”

  Vance hastily set his notebook to the side and made room on the coffee table.

  “Let’s fire that baby up. I want to see what’s on it.”

  I helped myself to a few slices of pizza while the laptop booted up.

  “Do you know what we’re gonna find?” Vance asked.

  I shrugged, “Not really, but I’m sure I can guess. Sam was always on this thing, sometimes for hours and hours on end. If she was selling that gluck... gluco... that wonder drug, then I’m sure she kept some very detailed notes on how much she sold and who purchased it.” />
  “This thing is gonna be worth its weight in gold,” Vance cackled.

  A familiar prompt appeared. The computer was demanding the password before it would boot any further. I carefully typed the letters in and watched as the laptop beeped merrily and continued to boot into the desktop.

  The wallpaper appeared, which was a picture of me and Sam trying our luck with a selfie, only Samantha had her hands over her mouth and was clearly in the midst of giggling. Poor Sam could never figure out where she was supposed to look, which boggled my mind since all you had to do was look at the lens. In this particular instance, we had tried several selfies in a row, only to discover Samantha had first looked left, then right, and after the third unsuccessful attempt had been taken, she had burst out laughing. Naturally, that was when I had snapped the picture.

  That was the picture looking at me now. An overwhelming feeling of sadness washed over me as I gazed at the picture of my dead wife. Never in a million years would I believe I’d be where I am today. Living in another state, owner of a winery, owner of two pint-sized dogs, and starting another relationship with a woman every much as attractive as Sam had been, and just as intelligent.

  “That’s a wonderful picture of you two,” Jillian softly told me. “Can I ask what she was laughing about?”

  “Her inability to take a selfie,” I answered, as a smile appeared on my face. “We tried several times, and she always ended up looking in the wrong direction. After the third time, she couldn’t stop laughing, which was when I took the picture.”

  “May I?” Vance inquired, as he held out his hands.

  After a few moments I nodded, and slid the laptop over to him. The detective glanced at the screen and jotted a few notes down. Then he started clicking on folders, of which there were many.

  “Here’s one that’s simply entitled, ‘Clients’. Let’s see what’s in that one. Hmm, looks like we have several sub folders. One says ‘graphics’, but the only thing I see is generic medical clip art.”

  “Weird,” I decided. “I wonder what she needed that for.”

  Vance shrugged, “You’d know better than I would. Okay, this one says ‘Misc’. I see some text files, which looks like they were copied and pasted from various medical sites. Here’s something from WebMD.”

  Jillian stood behind Vance and stared at the screen. She leaned forward to tap one of the icons.

  “This one is a database file.”

  Vance leaned forward and squinted at the insignificant icon.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I have a variation of this program in my store,” Jillian answered. “I use it to keep track of new cookbook titles that are released from Amazon.”

  Vance immediately double-clicked the icon. There was a two-second pause before the computer beeped and brought up another password prompt. Vance grunted irritably, glanced over at the pizza lid, and carefully typed the same password as I used to boot into the desktop.

  Almost immediately, the laptop buzzed angrily and the prompt reappeared. Clearly, the acronym was not the database password. Vance slid the laptop over to me and gestured at the screen.

  “Think you can crack her password?” my detective friend asked me.

  I stared at the screen and thought about what passwords I knew Sam had used. After the second incorrect attempt, the program promptly informed me that, if a third incorrect answer was entered, then the database would become locked and would require the user to contact the software-maker’s technical support line to unlock. Swell.

  I looked down at the keys and tried to imagine Samantha sitting here, typing away on her laptop. What password would she have chosen? Would it have been something that could have been guessed by an outsider? Or would it have been something known only to her? If I knew Samantha, and I did, then she would have chosen something significant to her, and more than likely, us.

  Suddenly, I realized I knew the answer. I leaned forward and carefully typed in, ‘alwaysandforever’. Now, if you think that’s a strange password, then clearly you’ve never been in love. Samantha and I almost always said ‘always and forever’ after saying ‘I love you’ to each other.

  Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s sappy. But, do you know what? I don’t care.

  The computer softly chimed and the screen changed to show a list of choices.

  Enter new record

  View existing records

  View reporting

  I slid the laptop back over to Vance, who was now rubbing his hands excitedly.

  “Way to go, Zack! All right, let’s see what we have here. Existing records? Let’s take a look. Damn, you called it, pal. It’s a database, and she has notes on just about everything.”

  “She even noted the difficulty of the sale,” Jillian observed, as she read the screen over his shoulder. She slowly nodded, “I’m really liking how Samantha’s mind worked, Zachary. She took some very detailed notes. Look at this record. It’s a doctor’s office in Tempe. It says she spoke with both the doctor and the office manager, and it was the office manager who offered the most resistance.”

  “That will definitely come in handy,” Vance said, as he scribbled more notes. He closed that record and opened another. Leaving the database open, he minimized the screen and clicked on another folder, this one titled ‘Concerns’. His eyes widened with surprise as he started opening web pages Samantha had saved onto her computer.

  Trying to find certain web pages, after you’ve originally found them on the Internet, can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Therefore, the makers of practically all web browsers have several ways to locate those specific web sites again. First, and the most popular, is to simply bookmark them. The browser notes the web site’s URL and will take you straight back there once the link is clicked. However, that’s assuming the web page still exists. If, for some reason, the web page is taken down, then you’ll get the standard ‘this page cannot be found’ message.’

  The second option is lesser known. Most browsers have the ability to save a complete copy of the web site to your local computer. Everything you see on the screen will then be bundled up and stored in a single file, or several files depending how it’s saved. That way, if the web page were to disappear, then the data wouldn’t be lost, because a copy of the data would be sitting on the viewer’s computer.

  That’s exactly what Samantha had done with a variety of websites. Sure, that takes up room on a computer’s hard drive, but apparently she thought it was worth saving. Reading over Vance’s shoulder, I could see no fewer than two dozen web pages had been saved onto Samantha’s laptop.

  Vance clicked the first one.

  The browser opened and the web page appeared. It was an informational page, outlining the history of the flu, its warning signs, and what the symptoms were. Chills, coughs, sore throat, body aches, fatigue, and headaches were just a few of the wonders waiting for you if you were unfortunate enough to contract the flu. No wonder so many people lined up to get their flu shots each year.

  One saved web page was from a local clinic, but as I noticed the town, my eyes shot open with surprise. Plano, Texas? That was an odd page to save.

  I watched Vance open several others. The next three were also from small doctor’s offices, only each of them were from a different city. And a different state, for that matter. One was from Twin Falls, Idaho, while another was from Bar Harbor, Maine, and the third was from Rocklin, California, which is a suburb of Sacramento. What those locations had in common was beyond me, at the moment.

  “It looks as though Samantha was researching something,” Jillian observed. “I just don’t know what.”

  “That makes two of us,” I added. “Vance, go back to the database, back to that list of records. Yeah, right there. Do you see how each one shows the name of the company, or doctor, and then shows where they’re located? See if you can find one from one of those four places.”

  Vance nodded, “Roger that. This might take a while. There are over 7,500 recor
ds in here. Your wife was clearly a helluva salesperson, Zack.”

  “She was good at her job,” I agreed.

  Movement in my peripheral vision had me looking to my left. Sherlock had abandoned his chew toy (again) and had wandered over to the nightstand to the left of the bed. The corgi looked at the open, lower compartment of the nightstand and thrust his nose forward, as though he was looking for something. A few moments later, I heard a soft thud as something fell to the ground.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, as I rose to my feet. “Keep your nose out of there. That stuff doesn’t belong to you.”

  “What is it?” Jillian asked.

  “Sherlock pushed the phone book off the stand there and onto the floor. I’m not sure what he’s doing. Knock it off, you knucklehead. Umm, scratch that. Poor choice of words. Leave it alone, ‘k? It’s not yours.”

  I replaced the phone book, took two steps back towards the couch, when I heard the telltale thud. Turning, I saw that Sherlock had knocked the phone book off its perch again. And, to top it all off, the corgi was regarding me as thought I was once more wearing my Dunce cap.

  I slowly looked down at the phone book. It had fallen upside down, so now I was looking at the back cover. On the back cover was a glossy advertisement for a law firm which specialized in personal injury cases and wrongful death lawsuits. Holding the book in my hand, I turned to my friends and waggled it in front of them.

  “What?” Vance asked, as he looked up. “It’s a phone book. What about it?”

  “Sherlock knocked this over. Twice. It landed so that I could see this. Significant?”