Curse of the Kissing Cousins

by Kelner, Toni, L. P.

  As soon as he answered the phone, she said, “No, I haven’t found her.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” he said, sounding injured.

  “Sorry. Have you got a minute?”

  “Of course. What’s up?”

  “There is something very odd about this Have_Mercy guy.”

  “You mean beside the fact that he lies through his teeth?”

  “Lying is one thing—the guy sounds seriously deranged. What information do you have on him?”

  “I already gave you his e-mail address. That’s all we keep on file.”

  “You don’t have his real name?”

  “Some people enter theirs, but it’s optional, and he didn’t list his.”

  “Can you track down his previous posts in the archives? Maybe he let something slip.”

  “I’ll see.” She heard the tapping of keys. “Okay, here’s his user record.” He paused. “That’s interesting. No data.”

  “Lack of data is interesting? You must find The Jerry Springer Show fascinating.”

  “Seriously. Up until now, he’s just been lurking. The post during the memorial service was his first time posting, and that snide comment to you was his second and last. Of course, every list has more lurkers than posters—we’ve got some members who’ve never posted anything at all. But two years is a long time to lurk.”

  “Is that how long he’s been on the list? Trolls don’t lurk. How can you post outrageous comments and flame people when you’re lurking? Why would this guy hang around all this time?”

  “Do you think he’s the killer?” Vincent said, sounding panicked.

  “Two years is a long time to wait to start killing people,” she pointed out. “Mercy has been impossible to find, but the other cast members haven’t been. I suppose it could be another reporter, but that’s just as unlikely. Deadlines don’t wait that long.”

  “You’ve been on the list that long.”

  “I was a fan of the show long before I became a reporter. I don’t know what this guy is.” She thought for a minute. “I’m probably not asking this correctly, but isn’t it possible to track down people from their IP addresses or something like that?”

  “Sure, it’s possible, but I don’t know how.”

  “I thought you were a computer whiz.”

  “Tilda,” he said, exasperated, “that’s like saying you know how to write screenplays or kids’ books because you write magazine articles. I do Web design—I don’t do computer forensics.”

  “Well, shit!”

  “Javier could probably do it—that’s more his line.”

  “Shit,” she said again, but less emphatically. Javier was sleazy, but he did have his uses. After all, he’d set up her computer security system, which he claimed was a virtual Fort Knox to protect her golden prose. Since he’d been hoping to get into her pants when he installed it, he’d probably been telling the truth. She’d only gotten him out of her bedroom by threatening him creatively. Though she herself didn’t find toenail clippers all that frightening, obviously they stirred something primal in Javier. “Okay, I guess I’ll have to call him. Thanks, Vincent.”

  “Any time. And Tilda?”

  “I know. I’ll tell you right away if I find her.” She disconnected long enough to look up Javier’s number and dialed it. “Javier? Tilda Harper.”

  “Did you get the Kissing Cousins script?”

  She’d forgotten about his latest fixation, and briefly considered stringing him along, but decided it wasn’t a good idea to completely alienate him. “No, this is something else. I’ve received some e-mails, and I want to find out where they came from. Vincent says you can trace them.”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “It’s because of Mercy. This is the guy from the memorial service who claimed she slept around, but he won’t give me any details. I need to see if he really knows anything or if he’s just jerking me around.”

  “What’s in it for me?” he repeated.

  “Jesus, Javier, Vincent has spent hours tracking down leads, and he hasn’t asked for anything.”

  “And your point is?”

  She hadn’t thought it would work, so she already had an appropriate bribe in mind. “Did you hear that HBO is hosting a media event in Boston next month to hype their new season? I hear they’re going to be screening part of the new True Blood series.” She knew Javier was a sucker for vampires.

  “So? That show is based on Charlaine Harris’s books, which I’ve already read, including the galley for the next one in the series,” Javier said. “There won’t be any spoilers.”

  “Yeah? I hear Alan Ball has changed a few characters. Beefed up one or two, even changed the race of one.”

  “Which characters?”

  “I’m not telling. If you want to know, you’ll have to come to the reception.”

  “With you?”

  Her stomach churned, but she said, “I have an invitation for two.”

  “I don’t suppose I could sneak in a camcorder.”

  “Not on your life.”

  “I don’t know. . . . If all you media types are going to be there, there won’t be any spoilers left.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Did I mention that the woman who’s playing the female vampire—”

  “Pam? The assistant manager at the vampire bar?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. She’s going to be at the reception.”

  “It’s a deal!”

  “You will have to scrape up a suit.”

  “I have a suit,” he insisted. “And you better dress hot. I want to impress Pam.”

  “Javier, you remember what I told you the last time you tried to cop a feel?”

  She swore she heard him swallow. “The toenail clippers?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Message received. Will you at least dress semihot?”

  “Javier, I’ll dress so hot you’ll be sweating all night long, but I’ll have those toenail clippers in my purse.”

  “Jesus, you are such a ballbuster!”

  “It’s part of my charm. Now, about this guy . . .”

  “What’s his e-mail address?”

  “Have_Mercy@hotmail.com.”

  “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you know what hotmail is?”

  “Sure, it’s a free e-mail service.”

  “Right. Which means he didn’t have to give his real name or address or credit card number when he created the account.”

  “Does that mean you can’t find out anything about him?”

  “Did I say that? It just makes it harder. You say he sent you e-mail?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good. I want you to send the e-mail to me, but you have to do a couple of things first.”

  Though Javier’s words were mostly gibberish to her, Tilda had to admit that he walked her through it smoothly enough, and she sent it along as instructed. Then she listened while he muttered to himself as he received the info and did whatever it was he did. He really was good at his job, despite the high sleaze factor. The security system he’d installed had protected her data from Heather’s boyfriend du jour the other day—no telling what Doug could have accidentally done to her hard drive while he was trying to get his e-mail or whatever he’d been up to.

  After just a few minutes, Javier said, “You’re out of luck.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s sending from an Internet café, not his home system.”

  “Shit! Then I’m screwed.”

  Javier must have been concentrating—he didn’t say anything inappropriate in response. “Pretty much. Unless you want to stake out the Internet café to see if he shows up again. Wait, didn’t you say he’s sent you more than one e-mail?”

  “He sent the first one the other day, and two today. I only sent you the most recent one.”

  “Forward the other two to me, same procedure as before.” He had to explain the steps to her again, but i
t was faster the second time around. The pause as he typed was shorter too. “Damn, he’s a sneaky bastard. He sent the first message from a different Internet café.”

  “Great, so unless I stake out every Internet café in the country, there’s nothing I can do!” For a moment she wondered how many Kissing Cousins fans she and Vincent could round up for the job, so it took a while for Javier’s next words to sink in. “What did you say?”

  “I said you’d only have to stake out the ones in the Boston area. The first message came from Boston, and the other two were from Cambridge.”

  “Have_Mercy is local?”

  “He could have enlisted somebody around here to send you the e-mails locally, just to mess with your head, but why bother when there are so many cafés around? Not to mention wifi zones.”

  It had never occurred to Tilda that Have_Mercy would be local—with his claims of insider knowledge, she’d assumed he was in Los Angeles. The idea of him being closer to hand made her uncomfortable, especially considering how snarky her last e-mail to him had been.

  “Tilda, are you okay?” Javier asked.

  “Yeah, fine. I’m just not happy about this guy being nearby.”

  “He doesn’t know where you live, does he?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “All he’s got is my e-mail address. He can’t get into my system with that, can he?”

  “Not with the security I put on your system,” Javier said confidently. “You’re bulletproof. There’s no way he could hack you remotely.”

  “Good.” Then she had a chilling thought. What if it hadn’t been Doug who’d tried to get into her computer? What if Have_ Mercy had been in her apartment? “Javier, what if he was here? At my desk?”

  He paused. “It’s still nearly bulletproof, but I could break it, so somebody else could too, if they were good enough. You think you’ve been hacked?”

  “I don’t know. Could you tell?”

  “Probably, but I’d have to look at your system. What’s in it for me?”

  “Javier, I’m already getting you into an exclusive party to meet a sexy starlet!”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that the guy who’s doing the vampire series is the same one who did Six Feet Under. If you come check out my system, I’ll forget to mention to him that you’re the one who ran the spoiler about what was going to happen on the series finale three nights before it aired.”

  “Shit! You play dirty.”

  “And you love it that way.” But she relented enough to add, “I’ll throw in dinner.”

  “Deal. I’ll be there after work.”

  She hung up, then looked around her room, as if a historical marker proclaiming “Have_Mercy Was Here” was going to lower itself from the ceiling. It hadn’t occurred to her that anybody other than Doug or Heather could have been in her room—nothing had been stolen, after all. Of course Heather had denied it, but that meant nothing—she’d have denied it if she and Doug had filmed a remake of Debbie Does Dallas on Tilda’s bed.

  Tilda went to the living room, opened the apartment’s front door, and looked at the lock. Had those scratches always been there? Was the lock one of those that could be opened with a credit card? How could she be sure somebody hadn’t broken in while she was in New York and Heather was at work?

  She closed the door, making sure it was locked, and went to get her phone. She’d called Javier to check out computer security, and it just so happened she knew somebody she could consult about personal security. But she stopped in the middle of dialing Nick’s number. Nick was in the Boston area. He was a Kissing Cousins fan, and even admitted to having known Mercy. How did she know he wasn’t Have_Mercy?

  Okay, that was crazy. Irv Munch was in the Boston area, at least temporarily, and he’d definitely known Mercy. Why not suspect him? Or even Noel Clark—he was in LA, but as Javier said, he could have used somebody in Boston. What about Vincent? She snorted. Okay, not Vincent.

  Still, she had no idea who Have_Mercy was, and there was no more reason to suspect Nick than there was to suspect anybody else connected with Kissing Cousins. So she dialed his number and asked him to come over to check out her door. He responded with both concern about her problem and enthusiasm for seeing her again, both of which were gratifying and only mildly suspicious.

  Tilda was worried enough about her computer security having been compromised that she didn’t want to touch it, not even to play games. She could have used her laptop, but she’d recently hooked the two systems together to transfer files, so that didn’t seem safe either. A nap would have been nice, considering how little sleep she’d had the night before, but she couldn’t stop wondering how secure that locked front door really was. Short of jamming a chair under the knob, which wouldn’t have been a good thing if Heather showed up, she didn’t know how she could make it safer. So, without admitting the reason to herself, she spent the rest of the afternoon watching the door. Sure, the TV was on, but she was a lot more interested in that door than she was in the shows she’d recorded.

  Nick showed up before Javier, and once she saw him again, all her suspicions melted. It was hormones, she knew it was hormones, but she couldn’t help it, any more than she could help falling into his arms. She didn’t know if he interpreted it as wanting comfort, but comfort was the last thing on her mind. It was those damned hormones! They made it difficult for her to disengage, but she forced herself to do so.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “A little freaked,” she admitted. “I’ve never had a break-in before. Not that I know for sure that I’ve had one now, but just the idea has me antsy.”

  “Then let’s take a look at this door and see what we’ve got. Is this the only door into the place?”

  “It is, but there’s also a window that opens onto the fire escape. The fire escape is on the front of the building, though, so I don’t think anybody would try to sneak in that way.”

  “I’ll check it too, just in case.”

  He’d carried in a soft-sided leather briefcase, and he unzipped it to pull out a small but powerful flashlight and a large and powerful magnifying glass. Tilda stood out of his way as he took a full five minutes to examine the door lock. Then he pulled two odd-looking wire doohickeys from his briefcase and started fiddling in the lock.

  “Are those lock picks?” she asked.

  “That’s right. You’d be surprised how many stars forget their keys or lock themselves out when they’re distracted by their work.”

  “Not to mention when they’re drunk or high.”

  “Oh, I’d never mention that.” He fiddled some more, until Tilda heard a click. “Did you know that this lock is extremely easy to pick? It must be thirty years old.”

  “Don’t tell the landlord—he’ll call it a classic and raise our rent.”

  “Come here and look at this.” He pushed the pick toward the door, missing on purpose, which left a tiny scratch on the metal of the lock. “Same kind of scratches. I’m afraid somebody did pick this. He wasn’t very good at it, though—I’d never scratch up a lock this way.”

  “Somehow an incompetent burglar isn’t terribly reassuring.”

  “I’d have to agree,” he said. “You always know what a pro is after—amateurs aren’t as predictable.” He closed the door and locked it. “Let’s look at that window.”

  It was of doubtful comfort, since whoever it was had come in the door, but Tilda didn’t mind that Nick checked most of the windows and verified that nobody had come in through any of them. The only ones he didn’t check were in Heather’s bedroom.

  When he started to open that door, Tilda stopped him. “Better not. I can’t very well complain about her letting her boyfriends come into my room if I let mine into hers.”

  Nick grinned. “Does that make me your boyfriend?”

  “Not yet. It takes serious work to earn that title.”

  “Such as?”

  She was demonstrating some of the requirements when th
e doorbell rang. “Hold that thought for later.”

  After making sure it was Javier and not a burglar returning to polish the scratches on her door, Tilda buzzed him in.

  He entered with a smirk on his face. “So, I was thinking that if you buy the dinner, maybe I can supply dessert.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, but then saw Nick. The smirk disappeared and the eyebrows wilted. “Who’s this?”

  “Nick, this is Javier Rivera, my expert in computer security. Javier, meet Nick Tolomeo, my expert in physical security.”