Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon (22 page)
Read Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon Online
Authors: Donna Andrews
Tags: #Women detectives, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Langslow; Meg (Fictitious character), #Women Sleuths, #Fiction, #Humorous, #Psychotherapists, #Receptionists, #Computer games
„And you think Jack has something to hide?“
„Everyone has something to hide,“ Luis said with a shrug.
We walked along for a little while in silence. On the one hand, I was feeling a little triumphant. My suspicions had been correct – Ted was blackmailing people. One person, anyway, and it stood to reason that if it worked on one person, he'd
try it again. I was making progress in unraveling the secrets behind Ted's strange little cache.
But I wasn't altogether sure I liked what I'd found. I couldn't imagine quiet, self-effacing Luis as a murderer, but I had a hard time imagining him as a daring hacker, either, and he certainly had been that. And he had a motive for the murder. For that matter, I couldn't see calm, sardonic Jack as a murderer, but he had motive, too. He was Luis's friend and mentor – if someone threatened Luis, I could see Jack intervening.
„What are you going to do?“ Luis asked.
„I don't know yet,“ I said. „Depends on what else I find out.“
He nodded. I thought some more and decided, what the hell. I needed someone computer savvy to help me. Why not Luis? Now that I knew his secret, I had some influence over him.
„You could help,“ I said.
„How?“
I dug into my bag, pulled out my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, and ripped out a sheet of paper. I flipped through it until I found the URL of the porn site I'd seen Roger tending and wrote that down on the sheet. Then I flipped through some more until I found where I'd stuck the sheet of paper with the IP addresses I'd found in Ted's basement, and copied those down, as well.
„Here,“ I said. „Check these out.“
„What are they?“ he asked.
„Porn sites,“ I said.
He looked up, surprised.
„At least two of them are,“ I said. „I have a feeling maybe they all are. I want to know for sure, and I don't want to
look at them if I can help it. And I want to know everything you can find out about them.“
„Like what?“ Luis asked, puzzled.
„Who owns them,“ I said. „Where they're located. And most important, whether anyone at Mutant Wizards has any connection to them.“
„Okay,“ he said.
„And don't tell anybody,“ I said. „Not Rob, or Jack, or anyone else at Mutant Wizards, or even your own mother.“
„Right,“ he said. „This has something to do with the murder?“
„Maybe,“ I said. „Or maybe I'm just on a crusade to stamp out pornography.“
„You going to stamp out Nude Lawyers from Hell while you're at it?“ he asked with a rare, fleeting smile.
„Maybe,“ I said. „Do you know who programmed it?“
He didn't say anything for a moment, and it suddenly hit me that I might have solved another of the small mysteries that plagued Mutant Wizards.
„If I knew, it probably wouldn't be smart to tell you,“ he said finally. „Look, on this porn thing – how far do you want me to go?“
I was opening my mouth to say, „As far as you need to go to get answers, for heaven's sake,“ but something stopped me.
„I'm not sure I understand what you mean,“ I said instead.
„Do you just want me to get what I can from legitimate sources?“ he asked. „What we could turn over to the police without getting in trouble? Or do you want me to go all the way? As far as it takes?“
„See what you can get legitimately first,“ I said. „If that's not enough – well, we'll worry about that later.“
„Right,“ he said. He looked relieved.
I wondered if he'd have agreed if I'd said, „As far as it
takes.“ Did he now have qualms of conscience about illegal hacking, or was he just running scared?
And what should I do if he couldn't find out everything I needed from legitimate sources? I confess, I didn't feel too guilty about using any means necessary to stop Roger's porn operation, which if not illegal was certainly distasteful and potentially risky for Mutant Wizards. But could I live with myself if I got poor Luis into trouble? Was encouraging a supposedly reformed hacker to relapse as morally suspect as, for example, serving bourbon balls to an alcoholic aunt?
And, of course, what if Luis was in cahoots with Roger?
„By the way,“ I asked. „What exactly does Roger do, anyway?“
„He's the sys admin,“ Luis said.
„And that is –?“
Luis blinked as if it had never occurred to him that someone might not know what a sys admin was.
„That stands for systems administrator,“ he said. He was talking in the same overly loud, slow way tourists talk when they can't quite believe that the hapless foreigners around them don't understand English. „He's in charge of all the hardware and software that runs the network.“
„Oh, is that why he's always sitting around in the computer lab?“ I said.
„Yeah, that's more or less his job,“ Luis said. „Not that it really should take as much time as it seems to take him. He even had Ted helping him with some of the stuff lately, and it still seemed to take him forever to do anything.“
„Are you suggesting that perhaps Rob needs to hire a more competent sys admin?“ I asked.
„Don't quote me on that,“ Luis said. „But yeah. Roger's pretty lame, not to mention a head case. As you found out last night.“
Interesting. Maybe Ted had been the one in cahoots with Roger.
I was still pondering this when we arrived at Luis's destination. Good thing I'd finished interrogating him. He was heading for the College Diner, a Caerphilly institution most people outgrew by their senior years, except for the occasional trip down nostalgia road. Or the occasional case of munchies at 3 A.M. since the diner was the town's only twenty-four-hour restaurant.
„Catch you later,“ I said. I continued on to a small deli that made an edible ham-and-swiss sandwich.
Then I headed over to the courthouse to joust with bureaucracy.
Admin
In the office of the Recorder of Deeds I learned that the house where Ted had lived – if you can call his basement lair „living“ – was still listed as belonging to Mrs. Edwina Sprocket.
„How often are these records updated?“ I asked the clerk.
„They're updated as soon as we get the information.“
„This property is listed as belonging to someone who died a couple of months ago,“ I said. „At least I think she died.“
„Then it probably still belongs to her estate,“ the clerk suggested.
„How can I find out for sure if she's dead,“ I asked.
„Environmental Health Office,“ he said. „Room 414.“
„Why the Environmental Health Office?“ I asked. „As far as I know, she died of old age, not pollution.“
„That's the name of the office that keeps all the death certificates,“ the clerk said with a shrug.
For eight dollars, the ominously named Environmental Health Office gave me a copy of Mrs. Sprocket's death certificate. Cause of death was heart failure, which wasn't particularly helpful, but at least I had the attending physician's name and could sic Dad on him if it seemed useful.
And then, down in the Circuit Court office, I managed to find out the name of the attorney who was handling her will.
It all took an hour and a half, which seemed maddeningly long to me, even though I had the feeling it would have taken
twice as long if Caerphilly were a larger, busier county. Of course, a larger, busier county might have bothered to air-condition its offices. I felt I'd done a whole day's work and had an overlong stay in the sauna by the time I headed back to the office to eat my wilting sandwich.
The world hadn't come to an end while I was away from my post, so I decided I'd repeat the experience later in the day. As soon as I figured out something useful I could do with my time away from the switchboard. And I could check out what kind of construction was going on; I'd heard hammering from someplace in the back when I walked in.
But for now, I cleared out the accumulated messages and started on my sandwich. I'd picked up a copy of the
Caerphilly Clarion
while I was out and I opened it to – well, not my favorite section, but the section with which I'd grown most familiar: the real estate section.
Slim pickings as usual.
„Damn, and here I was going to see if I could whisk you away to the steak house for lunch.“
I looked up to see Jack in the doorway.
„Thanks,“ I said. „But I'm trying to stick pretty close to the office except for really important things. Like going to visit any houses for sale or rent.“
„I'm house-hunting myself,“ he said.
„Isn't everyone?“
„Everyone at the Pines, anyway,“ he said with a shudder. „Anything interesting?“
„Nothing Michael and I didn't already see this weekend,“ I said, handing him the paper.
„You didn't like the 'luxurious lakeside retreat'?“
„You mean the million-dollar starter castle on the handkerchief lot?“ I said. „A little steep for our budget.“
„Especially since they're asking two million for it,“ Jack
agreed. „The 'dynamite fixer-upper' was a holdover from last week, too. What's wrong with it?“
„They had a serious house fire,“ I said.
„Needs a whole lot of fixing up?“
„Needs bulldozing, if you ask me,“ I said. „It's a charred shell – no way you could ever make it habitable. You'd need to bulldoze the ruins, haul away the rubble, and build a new house.“
„You're not interested in building?“
„Maybe, if we could find a reasonable lot,“ I said. „We're not interested in paying the cost of a house for a lot that would still need thousands of dollars of demolition work before we could even begin building.“
„Check,“ he said. „Hey, this one's new – 'unique rambler in woodland setting' – sounds promising.“
„Yeah, belongs to a friend of Michael's,“ I said with a sigh. „We got a chance to see it before it went on the market. Could have made an offer if we wanted to. Beautiful lot. Beautiful house. Just one problem.“
„Price too big?“
„House too small.“
„I don't care how small it is, it has to be bigger than the motel room I'm sharing. See – three bedrooms.“
„Trust me, it's too small. The owner's only three and a half feet tall. He had it built to scale. Five-and-a-half-foot ceilings.“
„You're kidding, right?“
I shook my head.
„So why's he selling?“
„He got married. His wife's almost my height; she's tired of crouching.“
„Now I know you're kidding,“ he said. „Trying to keep everyone else from jumping on the place, right?“
„Go see for yourself.“
„I will. Mind if I borrow this to make a copy?“
„Keep it. Nothing I can use,“ I said. „Listen, what do you know about Ted's house?“
„I know he found someplace to rent outside town,“ Jack said.
„You never saw it?“
„No – have you?“
„Yes,“ I said. „I went over to see if I could find any work papers or files that the police hadn't taken.“
„Was it a dive?“ he asked. „I figure, as quickly as he found it, it must have been a real dive.“
„Not really,“ I said. „Was there any talk about his finding a place to live? Resentment, jealousy?“
„Not that I remember,“ he said. „Of course, I bet a lot of people probably thought what 1 did – that there must be something really wrong with it if he found it so quickly. He was only at the Pines maybe a month. Even when he was there, he didn't really socialize much with the rest of us, so it's not as if he invited people over for a housewarming party or anything. I don't think most people even knew where he'd moved.“
„A couple of people did,“ I said. „A couple of staffers showed up there while I was doing my search. I think they wanted to see if they could snag the place before someone else did.“
„You're not really thinking that one of them killed Ted so they could get his house, are you?“
„Why not?“ I asked. „I know at least three quarters of our staff are still living at the Pines or bunking with friends or maybe driving an hour or more to get to work. And here Ted snags a place in the country after a few weeks?“