by Linda Barlow
One friendly and affable, with golden hair and a smile like an angel. The other shy and introspective, forced to adopt an outgoing style for business in order to survive.
One of them was everything that he seemed. And the other?
Yes, it fit. It was in line with everything she’d been telling herself for the past twenty-four hours. The other was a killer.
She sat beside Darcy and took one of her trembling hands. “I believe you,” she said. She looked at Matt, who had gone all tight and self-contained, his face a mask. She was reminded of that day in the courtroom when the jury had come in to announce their verdict. He had steeled himself then to control all his considerable fund of emotion. He was steeling himself now.
Annie held out her other hand to him. He didn’t take it. She shook her head and whispered, “You know the thing Sherlock Holmes used to say—after you’ve eliminated everything that’s impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth?”
Matt nodded.
“Sam’s being involved may seem improbable, but it’s been haunting me. He told me while you were away in Washington that Giuseppe was definitely Francesca’s lover. That he’d seen them together. That he’d suppressed it during your trial to protect you.”
“He’s lying,” Darcy interjected.
“I think so too,” said Annie. “I don’t know exactly why I didn’t believe him. It just hit me the wrong way. I felt as if I was being smoke-screened. But all of a sudden I started asking myself how much I really know about Sam Brody. And it occurred to me that I really don’t know him at all.”
“You’ve got good instincts, Annie,” Darcy said with a shudder. “A helluva lot better than mine. According to Barbara Rae, Giuseppe was gay.”
Darcy quickly related what she had overheard of Barbara Rae’s conversation with Sam. “He didn’t have a woman with him for the entire night, Annie. I know because I was stalking him at the time. I fell asleep in my car, as a matter of fact. When I woke up, it was well before dawn and the bimbo’s car was gone. She’s covering for him, whoever she is. In fact, now that I think back, I think maybe Sam’s car was gone too at that point. I wasn’t thinking straight—I had a breakfast meeting that day with a potential client down in San Jose, and I was upset because I knew I wouldn’t have time to get any real sleep before driving down there. But now it seems to me that Sam could have gotten rid of his date, gone to the cathedral, and killed Giuseppe, but because I was sleeping I never even saw him leave!”
“But why?” Matt cut in. “What could Sam Brody possibly have to gain from Giuseppe’s death?”
“If it’s structural fraud of some kind, he had plenty to gain,” Darcy said. “If he’s charging the owners for work that was never done and materials that were never used, he could be skimming tens of thousands of dollars from the project. Hell, hundreds of thousands.”
“Sam, stealing money from a church?” Matt’s voice was scathing.
“Sam, stealing money from you” Annie said softly. “A lot of the funds to build the cathedral came directly from the contributions you and Francesca so generously made. And the rest were raised through her energy and efforts.”
“You’re not suggesting that Sam Brody, my closest friend for over twenty years, is out to get me?”
Annie considered carefully before she answered. Was she suggesting that?
Yes, dammit!
Matted added, “I just can’t believe that Sam could be involved in some kind of complex conspiracy involving sabotage and threats and—”
“And murder?” Annie finished. “Why not? Everybody believed it of you.”
*
Ten minutes later, Matt was still resistant. Annie could see that pressing him wasn’t going to do any good, so she tried to change the focus of the conversation.
“Let’s look at the situation from another angle,” she said. “Suppose someone wanted to skim some money off a lucrative construction project. What would be the best way to go about it?”
“Cheat on the materials,” Darcy said. “Use cheaper stuff than was called for in the specifications.”
“Wouldn’t somebody notice?” Matt asked. “There are a lot of people working on a building like the cathedral. If you deliberately didn’t follow the plans and the specifications, a lot of people would know.”
“You could alter the plans,” Darcy said. “Change them on the CAD file—the computer aided design program that’s in your computer. No one would know, then. They would assume the plans they were working from were the right ones.”
“You could produce a second, inaccurate set of plans,” Annie said, warming to the notion.
“Right. You make up an original set of architectural drawings, get it approved, submit it to the city for the building permit, have everything ready to go, and then redraw the plans,” Darcy said. “That building was way overdesigned. I know, dammit—I designed it! The size, spacing, and detail of the seismic connections in the structural framing was significantly above the city’s code. But I haven’t looked at what they’re actually building. If the blueprints that the contractor received and built from are not the same as the ones that were submitted to the owner and the city, I’m not sure anybody would notice.”
“Well, wouldn’t somebody check?” Matt demanded.
“I’m talking about changing tiny technical details,” Darcy said. “But such details in the basic structure of the building are potentially very significant. As for the actual builders, well, you’ve got a set of plans, you assume they’re the original ones, and you go from there.”
“If the architect and the contractor were in collusion,” Annie said slowly, “it could work. The architect redraws the plans to make the building less expensive. The head contractor knows he’s not working from the original drawings, but he and the architect are in it together. They get the full sum they’ve agreed on with the owner, but they spend considerably less. Then they split the money they’ve skimmed.”
“In a twenty-million-dollar project like this one, that could mean they each get a couple of million dollars,” Darcy said.
Matt raised his eyebrows. “That could certainly be a motive for murder.”
“If something like this has happened, we’ll need proof,” Annie said.
“Well, if the drawings submitted to the building inspector are different from the ones McEnerney is working from, we’ll have proof,” said Darcy.
“I tried to examine the original blueprints,” Annie said. “But Sam interrupted me. I do have my copy, though.” She went to her desk and took out the plans. Matt and Darcy spread the pages out on the coffee table and looked at them.
“This is a copy of the version that went to the city when we applied for the building permit?”
“Yes,” Annie said.
“And it’s also the version the builders are working from? Are you certain of that?”
“Well, I’m not certain. I’ve just always assumed…” She wasn’t an architect. She’d assumed she was looking at accurate drawings.
Was that what Sam had been counting on all along?
“We’ll have to check this against the drawings McEnerney is using,” she said. “But if he’s in on it—”
“The original drawings were generated by a CAD program, right?” Matt asked.
Annie nodded.
“On whose computer?”
“On the LAN network in the office.”
“And where is that program now?”
“I’m not sure. Probably still in our computer files.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Matt. “You think that the original computer-generated plan for the cathedral was subsequently altered by Sam. If you’re right, after he modified the original file, he replaced it with a new one. He then sent the amended file to someone at the contractor’s office who was in on the scheme. Possibly McEnerney himself?”
“Yes,” said Darcy. “But they’ll deny it, of course.”
“Still, if he did it—if
he altered the CAD file—can we expect to find the new file somewhere on the LAN network, too? Are there likely to be two different files?”
“If we find two different files, we’ve got proof of fraud,” Annie said. “Let’s go to his office now and see.”
“Break in to Sam’s computer, you mean?” said Darcy. “Well, I’d love to, but he’s a security freak. His office will be locked, and his computer is password protected.”
“I can get us into his office,” Annie said slowly. “Locked or not.”
Darcy raised her eyebrows.
“We may be best friends,” Annie said with a smile, “but there are a few things about me that you don’t know.”
“As for me,” said Matt, “I’m not nearly as good as some of the teenage hackers around, but I can still break in to the average non-government-secured PC. Hell, you folks are probably using a CAD program Powerdyme designed.”
Darcy grinned. “I knew you’d turn out to be good for something after all, Mr. Billionaire Software King.”
Matt shook his head, looking a bit bemused. But at least he was animated now, and he appeared to be open to the idea that his best friend might be involved in this, after all.
As if he read her thought, Matt looked up and caught her eyes. “You really believe that Sam is capable of something like this?”
“I don’t want to believe it. But it’s the only thing that really fits.” She slipped around behind his chair and began massaging his shoulders. His muscles were very tight. “You know him better than I do, Matt. As you say, he’s your oldest friend.”
“Maybe I don’t know him as well as I thought,” he admitted reluctantly. “Sam and I don’t interact on a regular basis. Hell, for years we’ve hardly seen each other at all. I knew the old Sam. I don’t know for certain what he’s become.”
“That company you started together, Matt—why did it fail?”
He turned his head and stared up at her. He ran one hand through his hair, then stared at her again. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean just that. I don’t know why our company failed. It was doing well. Sam was the business-minded one in those days. I was the technical genius. I left a lot of the operations details to him. Hell, all of the operational details. And when we went belly-up, I figured it was just one of those things. Eighty percent of all new businesses fail—no surprise.” He paused, then added slowly, “But now that I think about it, that company was doing extremely well. Why did it fail?” He looked off into the distance. “Shit, Annie. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.”
She rubbed his shoulders harder. Darcy got up and made herself scarce. Annie heard her heading quietly to the bathroom.
Matt was still staring into space, obviously deep in thought. She knew him well enough now to realize that if he wasn’t talking it was because he was thinking something through, and that he needed to do it in silence.
He looked back sooner than she expected. His expression was grim. “Listen, Annie. You know how sometimes you know something on a deep level, but you don’t know it yet in your conscious mind?”
She nodded.
“Then suddenly it’s like the proverbial light bulb going on. Illumination comes and you can see a landscape with perfect clarity that only moments before was hidden in the shadows.”
“Yes, I know what you mean.”
“Sam Brody is a good-hearted, affable guy. But that’s not all he is. As a college kid he occasionally showed another side. He could be very judgmental of other people. He could be cruel. He often lied to women to get them to go to bed with him…and laughed about it afterward. There was always another side. I knew that, dammit, but I conveniently allowed it to slip my mind. Why haven’t I ever asked myself this question: Whatever happened to Sam’s less attractive side?”
Annie didn’t say anything. She could tell he hadn’t finished speaking.
“There’s something else you probably don’t know. Francesca was his lover before she was mine. She left him for me, as a matter of fact. I haven’t thought about that in years—hell, we were kids—but I felt pretty guilty at the time. If he was upset about it, he didn’t show it, though. No big deal, he said. And certainly to Francesca it was no big deal. But then she never was the faithful type.”
“Do you think he cared more than he let on?” Annie asked.
“It’s possible. He hides his feelings. But he is very proud, and back in those days he was the dominant member of our partnership. Although we were the same age, he saw himself as some sort of mentor to me. Henry Higgins, in some respects. If it weren’t for him, he believed, I’d still be tinkering in some garage.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
He smiled. “You don’t agree, huh?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, I don’t underestimate what Sam did for me when we were young. He taught me a lot. But in all honesty, I think I would eventually have learned most of what I needed to know without him. I’ve always been a pretty determined person, and I’ve always known what I wanted.
“But now that I think about it, our company crashed a couple of months after I took up with Francesca. Sam couldn’t get anybody to invest in us, he claimed.”
“Maybe he wanted to sever all ties with you, Matt. Maybe he lied about the investors. Maybe he sabotaged the company as a way to pay you back.”
“If he did, he must have regretted it later. If he’d stayed my partner, he’d be a billionaire now.”
He looked up and their eyes met.
If he’d stayed my partner, he’d be a billionaire now.
“That’s it,” she said softly. “That’s it, right there. He made one huge mistake in his life and he’s regretted it ever since. That’s why he hates you, Matt.”
He put his face into his cupped hands.
Chapter Thirty-six
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” Matt said to Annie, who was on her knees on the carpet outside Sam’s office, skillfully picking the lock.
“It seems to be a night for surprises,” Annie said.
“Ain’t that the truth. Where did you get those tools?”
“Bought ’em off Top Floor Jocko for really cheap.”
“Jesus.” Matt sighed. Darcy giggled. They were all getting punchy from stress.
One last, deft turn and she had it. The latch slid back. Matt went straight to Sam’s desktop computer and switched it on. “If it’s here, I’ll find it,” he vowed.
“What are you doing?” Annie asked a few minutes later as Matt’s fingers flew over the keys. On the screen were a mass of symbols, none of which she understood.
“I’m talking directly to the machine.” He pulled a floppy disk out of the drive and substituted another. “Sam’s using an encryption device to block entrance to his computer. It’s one of the commercial products, actually—a piece of software made by a competitor of ours.” He tossed her a grin. “It’s not totally Mickey Mouse, but it won’t keep me out for long.”
“So you’re breaking the code?”
“With the aid of some of my own software, yeah. I had some disks in my briefcase. That’s what I was in Washington for. It’s kind of hush-hush, but suffice it to say I was meeting with a certain government agency, giving them a little advice about computer security.” He paused, concentrating on the screen. “What? Oh, okay, okay, go ahead, do that.” He was talking to the computer now, shaking his head. His fingers danced on the keys. The screen changed and he smiled. Colors came up and then all sorts of little icons. “Here we go. We’re into the system. Now to find the file.”
“Cool,” Darcy said. “Breaking and entering and electronic invasion—you two are really on a roll. My friends, the white-collar criminals. I’m impressed.”
Within seconds Matt had the cathedral CAD file on the screen. They studied it carefully. “That’s the original one,” Darcy said. “The officially approved version.”
“But not the one they
’re building from?”
“Well, it’s the one they claim to be building from. But no, this is a legitimate file. What we need to find is an amended version.”
“There are a lot of files on the hard drive,” said Matt. “This could take a while.”
“There aren’t that many CAD files,” said Darcy.
“Okay, we’ll try sorting the files by type. Meanwhile, someone ought to be checking floppies and tape backups, not to mention having a look at the other computers in the office.”
“How do we know he saved it?” Annie asked. “Wouldn’t it have been more sensible to erase it and not risk leaving any evidence?”
“Even if he deleted it, I might be able to get it back,” said Matt. “The hard drive looks pretty fragmented, which means he hasn’t performed any maintenance on it for a long time. There’s all sorts of junk on here, but much of it’s old. I don’t see many new files, either. Doesn’t look as if he really uses this computer all that much.”
“Is that good?”
“If he deleted the file we’re looking for and nothing’s been written over it, I can probably get it back. So, yes, that’s potentially very good. But it’s still going to take a while to go through all this stuff.”
“I’ll make us some coffee,” Darcy said.
That night, Fletcher went again to the construction site. He’d waited long enough. The time had come to figure out exactly how to lure Annie to the cathedral in the middle of the night. He couldn’t wait any longer.
He decided not to park in his usual spot in the lot with the trailers. The murder of Giuseppe Brindesi was an open file, and there were bound to be cops cruising by on patrol. He didn’t want to alert them to his presence. Not tonight.
Cops or no cops, he could get quietly into the place from the underground passage that connected the cathedral basement to the youth center next door.
The passage had been there before the construction had begun. It had linked the old church on the site with what had been the main residence of the convent. The tunnel, dug through firm bedrock and reinforced several times over the years because of earthquake concerns, had remained after the demolition of the old church.
