by Anna Castle
Finley shook his head. “It’s not very likely, Penny. Why would anybody want to hurt Jim Donnelly? Far as we can tell, he was a popular guy.”
“He was,” I agreed. “Everybody loved him.” A thought formed on the horizon of my conscious mind, involving pink cakes and blackmail. I couldn’t quite bring it into focus. “I can’t believe Jim could make a fatal mistake with dosages, that’s all. Pills were like his hobby.”
“That’s what his wife says,” Garza said. “She doesn’t believe it either.”
Finley rolled his eyes. “She doesn’t want to believe it. Nobody does. But the odds are a lot higher that he took one pill too many out of the pharmacy he kept in his house than that some nut job poisoned that one particular cake on the off chance Jim might happen to eat it.”
“Maybe it wasn’t meant for Jim,” I said, more to myself than to them. Finley shot me a sharp look.
“Some of the pills could’ve been tampered with,” Garza said, following his own train of thought. “Like that Tylenol guy, remember? Back in the eighties?”
I shook my head. I was still an infant back in the eighties.
Garza nodded enthusiastically. A tampering scandal would be lively news indeed. “Could’ve been tampering. Could’ve been that cake. They sent it and the apple juice to the M.E. along with the body, and a list of all the meds he had at home. The whole ball of wax, right, Mike?”
Finley nodded. “S.O.P. They won’t find anything, though.”
“They might.” Garza was on a roll. “Could be a lunatic poisoner. Or it could be contamination, like that Chinese dog food thing.”
“Ugh.” I made a sour face.
“Now you’re really out on a limb.” Finley flapped a hand, dismissing our wild theories.
Garza held his ground. “I’m just saying. Penny’s not the only person in this county who thinks Jim’s death might not have been an accident.”
Chapter 13
If I was crazy, at least I was not alone in the asylum. I couldn’t decide if Garza’s remark was comforting or disturbing. I’d gone to the sheriff’s department seeking reassurance that Jim’s death was nothing more than a tragic accident. Now I had to consider the idea that he might have been poisoned. Granted, rumors are not facts. But if that pink cake had been tampered with, I’d bet my new Canon SLR it had been meant for Greg. Someone in this town was trying to kill the blackmailer and they were going about it in a very covert way.
Why not just shoot the son of a bitch, if that was your goal?
This puzzle, if there was a puzzle, was missing too many pieces. I couldn’t do anything without more information, so I tried to focus on work for a change of pace. I managed to make a few mock-ups for the museum website that were good enough for starters. These things get tweaked a lot as you add content.
Tillie took off at five. At five fifteen, the bell over the front door jangled and the blonde woman from the Historical Society came in. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it with her hands on the knob. She wore jeans, an oversized hoodie and a ball cap. No makeup and flat sneakers. She looked like a supermodel pretending to be a normal person.
She shot a glance at the empty front desk and swiftly took in the rest of the room. Her expression was intense: brow furrowed, mouth pinched in a tight line. She spotted me at my workstation in the back and fixed her sapphire gaze on me.
“Hi,” she said, in a stage whisper.
“Hi,” I replied, surprised. From her expression, I’d been expecting something more like Hide! Quick! The aliens are among us!
I rolled my chair away from the computer to face her. “What’s up?” I had a pretty good idea: something to do with our mutual harasser.
“We need to talk.”
I nodded and got up to lock the door and close the blinds on the front windows. “About Greg, right?”
“Yep.”
“Want some tea?”
She relaxed as suddenly as if a switch had been turned off. “Yes.”
I cocked my head toward the kitchen door and led the way back. I put the kettle on and considered the options. “I’ve got red bush, chai, Sleepytime…”
“Chai. No milk.”
“Good, ’cuz I don’t have any milk.”
“You’re Penny, right?”
I nodded.
She pointed at herself. “Krystle.”
“I remember. From the meeting.”
She nodded. That was done. She prowled restlessly around the kitchen, patting the tile countertops, stroking the white enamel on a cabinet door with one finger. I should have insisted on the Sleepytime tea.
“This place is cute,” she said. “I don’t think I ever even came in here when it was an antique store.”
“The kitchen’s the only part that’s the same.”
The kettle whistled and I poured hot water over tea bags. Sugar was on the table already. I set the mugs in front of two facing chairs and sat down. “Let’s talk.”
She pulled out a chair and sat. “OK. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, but you saw me in there and you saw what I was doing.”
I shuddered, waving my hands to ward off the memory. “Believe me, I—”
She cut me off. “We’re not going to mention it. The words will never be said. The thing is, from the vibes you were giving off, I’m betting you weren’t there for a service upgrade.”
“Nope. But I don’t want to—”
She cut me off again, holding out her hand like a traffic cop. “No sharing. I don’t want to know what he’s got on you and I’m sure as hell not telling you my secret.”
“Good.”
I felt relieved and disappointed in equal measure. If I could tell somebody sympathetic and impartial, like, oh, a best friend, it might give me the courage to confess to Ty. Krystle wasn’t really my type: too fashion-oriented, for starters. And what was the deal about needing ‘a thing?’ On the other hand, she was my age, more or less. She was single, probably. She’d gone to L.A. to follow a dream, so she had dreams. Definite friend potential. Maybe we could start a culture club.
She put her mug down with a clunk. “I can’t stand it anymore. I have to get that creep out of my life.” She shuddered suddenly, like a woman with a bad case of the flu. “Somehow I have to get my email back.”
“I want to know how he got our stuff in the first place.”
“I don’t care how. I want my thing back and him out of my life and then I’m never going to use the Internet again.”
“That’s not exactly an option for me.” I was planning to have a website for my studio and sell prints of my photographs online. “I’m thinking, if I could figure out how he’s doing it, I might be able to pressure him into stopping.”
She glared at me. “If, if, if!” Her voice rose to a shriek. “You’re not the one that has to touch those skanky feet! If I have to give that slimy, miserable, sleazoid scumbucket one more foot massage, I’ll go insane. In-sane!”
“I believe you. He’s repellent. But what can you do?”
She grinned the evil grin of a mad scientist about to launch her Doomsday Machine. “I’m going to break into his office and take everything I can find that has anything to do with me. And I want you to come with me.”
“Huh-whuh?”
“You heard me.” She gave me an appraising glance. “I’ve seen you running in the morning. You’re buff, you can get in that window.”
“What window?”
“I left the back window unlocked.”
I held my hands up in the universal signal for Whoa up there, crazy lady. “Now wait a minute.”
“Uh-uh. No waiting. We go tonight.”
“I’m not going to break into Greg’s office. It’s illegal! It’s immoral! We’ll get caught!”
“Blackmail is illegal. And totally immoral. And we won’t get caught: everyone in this town is asleep by eleven.” She tapped the table with her index finger. “Listen to me. I don’t know what he’s got you doing. You may think it’s not
all that bad. But believe me, once he gets you used to it, whatever it is, he’ll start upping the ante. Today, he said—” She shuddered again. “Today, he said, ‘Let’s think about a nice back massage for next time.’”
Vile. Beyond vile. “No way in hell.”
“That’s what I say. I’ll kill him first. So tonight I’m going in there and getting my email back.”
I could see her point. Her point was completely visible. But she was talking about a felony or a really bad misdemeanor, at least. That might be OK for her. She was probably related to the sheriff. I was new in town. I was supposed to be putting my best foot forward, not breaking into my new neighbors’ workplaces in the dead of night to rifle through their files.
I shook my head. She nodded. I shook bigger. She nodded faster. I drummed my fingers on the table, looking at her from under my furrowed brow.
Felony aside, the idea did have a certain appeal. Get the incriminating files and be free of the sumbitch once and for all. I’d have to be careful about what went out over the wire until I could get myself some quality spyware, but I’d never have to tell Ty what happened and after a while, it would just be one of those bad memories we learn to live with.
I thought about the MIS offices. The three-plex sat in a gravel lot on Highway 331 right at the town limit, with nothing on either side but fields and hackberries. At midnight, it would be dark and deserted.
Krystle watched me work it through and recognized the moment when No became Yes. She got up and put her mug in the sink. “One A.M. I’ll meet you behind the building.” She paused on her way out the back door. “Wear something sneaky.”
Chapter 14
“Ow!” The metal edge of the window frame bit into my shin.
“Shh!”
Krystle was right behind me. Too close: she wasn’t giving me room to maneuver.
We had dragged a couple of cinder blocks from behind the dumpster to give us a boost. It was pitch dark back here. The building cut off the light from along the highway and the waning moon didn’t help much. The window was one of those two-part metal kinds that slides halfway open. The bent screen had been easy to pop out. Krystle told me in barely audible whispers that there was a sink right under the window. I should step into it and then turn around and climb down.
Easier said than done. I scraped my way through the narrow opening and crouched in the sink, trying to figure out how to turn around. I got my right knee on the countertop and knocked something to the floor with a clang.
“Shhhh!”
Finally, I got both feet on the floor. I took my small flashlight out of my pocket and shone it on the floor to see what I’d knocked down.
“Turn that off!”
Krystle’s slender shape filled the window. She swung herself through the frame and into the sink like an acrobat, making me feel like a lumbering ox. I’m usually the athletic one. She had worn black ballet flats, instead of clunky Doc Martens like me, which gave her a decided advantage. Otherwise, we were dressed identically in black leggings and hoodies: your basic contemporary burglar-wear.
I found the thing I’d knocked over: a cookie tin. I tucked my flashlight under my arm, pulled off a glove and opened it. It was full of little round cookies thickly dusted with powdered sugar.
“Pfeffernüsse!” I popped one in my mouth. It was so good I had another.
“Focus!” Krystle slid the window shut. “We’re not here to eat cookies.” She peered over my shoulder and whipped off her thick mitten before grabbing a couple for herself.
Well, they were small. And breaking and entering burns a lot of calories.
“First thing is to make sure the front blinds are closed,” she whispered. “Stay low.”
“Where’d you learn to do this?”
“TV, where else? Now turn that off.”
I so sincerely hoped she didn’t mean reruns of I Love Lucy.
We each scarfed a couple more cookies before I closed the tin and clicked off my flashlight. We bumped into each other twice trying to find the door to the hall. After that it was easy: we could trail our fingers along the walls toward the pale rectangle of the glass door at the other end.
Krystle forged ahead through the reception area and tightened the blinds across the front windows. The pale rectangle darkened. I felt my way to a door in the middle of the hall. Streetlight coming through the chinks in the blinds was enough to keep me from stumbling into things as I made my way to the window along the side wall and found the cord. I closed those blinds tight and clicked my flash back on, aiming it at the floor like a good burglar.
“Now what?” I said, in an almost normal voice.
“Now we search the place from top to bottom.” Krystle was wearing a black backpack. She shrugged it off and took out an extra-large flashlight. She turned it on, aiming it right at me.
“Hey!”
“Sorry.” She aimed the beam around the room, lighting up a ceiling-high rack of computer equipment and a long table along one wall with a single monitor and keyboard. Tangled skeins of cables ran from the rack up into the ceiling like skinny black snakes.
Looking at all that high-tech equipment gave me a bad feeling. This was going to be way beyond our abilities. On TV, the good-guy burglars had advanced degrees in computer engineering and childhoods spent in martial arts monasteries. We were a photographer and an out-of-work actress who knew just enough about the Internet to get ourselves into trouble.
I touched the keyboard and things in the rack started making whirring noises. We both jumped at the sound.
“Shh!” Krystle hissed at the rack of computers. We giggled, then we hissed at each other and giggled again.
The monitor went from black to pale gray with one line of black print that said /home/MIS::> followed by a blinking cursor.
Not good. Not good at all.
I had no concept of a computer without icons. Where was the Fetch puppy and the little trash can? “These must be the servers. He wouldn’t keep sensitive stuff on here, would he? His assistant might find it.”
Krystle stood beside me, gazing at the gray screen with a deep frown. “We better hope you’re right, ’cuz if this’s where it’s at, we’re screwed. Unless you know what that means.”
“Not me. I was hoping you’d been moonlighting as a computer whiz out in L.A.”
Krystle snorted, loudly, and then clapped her hand to her face in surprise. “Not hardly.” She shone her flashlight in my face again.
I winced and pushed it aside. “Let’s look in his office. I’m betting he’d keep our secrets close to hand.”
We crossed the hall to Greg’s office.
“OK,” Krystle said. “I’m going to plow through these files.” She nodded her chin at the tall cabinet by the door. “Maybe he kept hard copies. You check out his computer.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I snapped a salute, clocking my forehead with my flashlight. “Ouch.”
“Huh?” Krystle sounded like she was very far away.
“Nothing.”
I moved into Greg’s U-shaped workspace and sat in his executive-style chair, catching a whiff of bourbon and stale sweat. “Ugh.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Chair’s stinky.”
“Stinky pinky.”
“At least it’s not kinky.”
We giggled. Krystle waved her hands to make us stop. Surely professional burglars had less trouble controlling their nerves.
I clicked the mouse. The screen lit up and I discovered yet another flaw in our clever plan. “This isn’t a Mac,” I whispered loudly.
“Why would it be?”
“That’s all I know how to use.”
“You are so lame!” Krystle squeezed in beside my chair. She smelled like roses with a hint of musk. For some weird reason, it made me hungry, which made me wish for another cookie.
“We have PCs at the clinic,” she said. “There should be a thing at the bottom that says Start or a folder-looking thingie somewhere.”
; We studied the screen together. It was liberally studded with icons, but no Start button at the bottom and no folder-looking thingie, whatever that was.
“Firefox,” I said, pointing.
“What’s that?”
“Internet browser.”
Krystle clucked her tongue. “We’re not here to play.” She poked her finger at an icon of a star with a label that said Welcome. “How about that?”
“Or that,” I said, pointing with the mouse at an icon of a house that said Home.
We looked at each other. The blue glow from the screen made us look pasty, like Greg. I noticed that Krystle’s eyes turned up at the corners and her pupils were dilated. With her heart-shaped face, in the blue light, she looked like a demented elf. Or a blue Vulcan.
“Try ’em both,” Krystle said.
The one that said Welcome opened up a window with lots of icons with weird names, like main.cpp. Not helpful. The one that said Home opened up a window with folder icons in it.
That was more like it.
“OK,” I said. “This looks like some kind of Finder dealio.”
“Go for it,” she said.
She went back to the filing cabinet and we settled to our tasks. I could hear her opening file drawers and shuffling through papers. I clicked on folder icons, finding cryptic stuff that looked like guides to systems management. I had to force myself to pay attention. My head felt heavy, like it was tilting to one side.
Eventually, I figured out how to search for files by name. I tried entering jpeg to look for pictures and found tons of them in a folder labeled diagnostics. I opened one of the photos.
“Eew!”
“What?” Krystle nipped into the U and looked over my shoulder. “Eew!”
The photo was standard issue pornography: man, woman, naked body parts in close focus.
“Anyone you know?” I asked.
“No, thank God. They look like pros.”
How would she know? “He probably got it off the net.” Now I knew where Greg had gotten the snippet he’d pasted onto Ty’s photo.
Krystle went back to the file cabinets. I studied the labels on the other jpeg icons, but didn’t find anything that looked like my photographs.
