Dark Time: Mortal Path (15 page)

Ace, jolted into action, pulled a notebook from his pocket.

“Then I stopped here to pack a few things and went off to Hawaii. I was behind on my writing and needed few days away to catch up.”

She gave them the address where she’d stayed in Hawaii, which Ace dutifully wrote down.

“Are you willing to supply a DNA sample to rule out your presence at the break-in?” Ron asked.

Do they have DNA or are they bluffing? Did Amaro change all the records? Can’t take the chance.

“No.”

Both detectives perked up at this. “Why not?”

“I live a public life as a novelist. I don’t get to keep many things private, but my DNA is one of them.”

“We could get a warrant.”

“Not without more than the fact that I interviewed Ms. Harvey and left town.”

“One of the guards reported that he shot the intruder in the shoulder. Another said there was a possible hit in the leg. A look at your shoulders might clear this whole thing up in a short time.”

“No problem.” She began unbuttoning her shirt.

“Uh, wait, I think we need to call a female officer.”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to make this short?” She finished with all the buttons, slipped off the 49 z 138

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shirt, and let it puddle at her feet. She wore nothing underneath. The smooth skin on her shoulders showed no trace of a wound.

Ace’s eyes fastened on her chest. Ron, with a little more self-discipline, attempted to meet her eyes and was mostly successful.

“No wound there,” he said, his voice tightly under control.

“I believe you said something about a leg wound?” Maliha’s hands moved to the button of her jeans.

“Front or back?”

“No, no, not necessary. You couldn’t be a suspect.”

He looked even more disgusted. If there was something worse than a trip on behalf of a North Carolina PD, it was a wasted trip on behalf of said PD.

She reached down, picked up her shirt, and slipped it on, but didn’t button it.

“Anything else I can do for you, Detectives?”

“No. Thank you for your time.” Ron turned to go. Ace was frozen in place. Ron elbowed him, and the two left together.

As she was buttoning her blouse, Yanmeng came out of the second bedroom. He was the oldest of her team of three friends—a team that excluded Randy, who didn’t know about her exploits.

Come to think of it, neither does Hound. One of these days he’s going to get suspicious.

“I doubt they’ll be back,” he said. “You handled that well.”

Yanmeng was in his seventies but wiry and active. They sparred sometimes, and his martial-arts skills hadn’t diminished with age. In fact, his movements had grown more elegant and spare. He was about her height, very strong but not bulky, as though all that wasn’t necessary had dropped away from him, in more than the physical sense. His face was solemn and wise in repose, but that impression vanished when he smiled—he managed to look like a mischievous kid. His head was nearly bald but he had a moustache that was white. He could wiggle it back and forth, so that it looked like a caterpillar crawling, and he was proud of that.

He and his wife, Eliu, had never had any more children after a betrayal by their only son. They carried in their hearts a memory of a son who’d condemned them to death, a son whose whereabouts they didn’t even know. Maliha had once offered to put her resources to work to locate the boy, now a man in his mid-forties if he still lived. Silence greeted her offer and she’d never mentioned Xietai again. She did wonder, though, if Yanmeng had ever tried to find his son in his own unique way—Yanmeng was a remote viewer—and encountered only the void of the boy’s death.

Amaro joined them. He’d been working on the files she’d copied gotten in Diane Harvey’s office.

“The lawsuit you mentioned was filed by the family of a young girl named Karen Dearborn, who died in a hospital with a PharmBots account. She was given the wrong medication. Everybody’s pointing fingers, and most of those fingers are pointing in PharmBots’s direction. They’re saying the new robot pill spewer had a programming error. Of course, PharmBots disputes that.”

“Ah. Nando and Hairy worked on that system, I’ll bet. Do you think they were killed to cover up negligence? Shoddy work?”

Amaro bristled. “I doubt it. They’ve worked for me before.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to imply that you’d hire losers.”

“Depends on how you define losers. Anyway, there are some emails on the disk that implicate the two hired coders. The police confiscated the robot in question and PharmBots is refusing to give them access to the encrypted software that runs it. They claim, and rightly so, that it’s proprietary. So far, that’s holding off the law and shoring up their claim, but it probably won’t for long. Lawyers are scurrying about on both sides.”

“Are Nando and Hairy mentioned by name?” Maliha asked.

“Yeah. Numerous times. Seems they were responsible for some of the coding and all of the software quality-assurance testing. Diane kept copies of their certification memos to produce at just the right moment for maximum impact. Her only problem was that she also kept memos that show that she knows the coders are innocent, but she’s plotting with the corporate legal staff to blame Nando and Hairy.

PharmBots is guilty as hell. It was a mechanical glitch, not a software one, and Diane Harvey knows it.

They took a low bid on some parts for their pill robot from overseas and didn’t bother to check out the sloppy quality control on the machining specs. The almighty dollar trumps human lives again.”

“Anything else of interest on that disk?”

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“Now that you mention it, yes. Those clay pot things in her office are real. She’s got records on the disk of black-market purchases. And there’s one more thing. She kept a diary. She’s having an affair with a married employee on the scientific staff. Steamy stuff. Good fodder for
A Lust for Murder
.”

“Anything else? She’s a shoplifter or something?”

“Nope. That about does it. Ms. Harvey’s corporate and private life in a very untidy little basket.

What’s next?”

“I’m going to a charity event tonight. I invited Greg Shale of ShaleTech.”

“You get to dress up and drink champagne and what do I get? A lousy disk drive.”

M
aliha selected a deep blue off-the-newly-healed-shoulder dress for the charity event, and paired it with sparkling open sandals with laces that wound up her bare calves. Her hair was piled on top of her head in an intricate weave that demurely concealed a two-inch knife. The same red color that flashed from her toenails brightened her succulent lips.

The event was sponsored by the Vitality for Life Foundation, which Maliha had started fifteen years ago. The foundation supported research into how elderly people could improve the quality of their lives by remaining active, healthy, and independent. Maliha was deeply interested in the cause. She didn’t know what she’d face as she aged, and it occurred to her that many other people didn’t know that either. Age just snuck up on them. They were vital and going along full steam in their lives and suddenly, it must seem, they were using walkers and wheelchairs and dealing with diminished expectations. There had to be a better way.

Checkbooks were whipped from pockets and evening bags, dollar amounts with a lot of zeros were written, and the checks were dropped into the collections container—a shiny steel bedpan.

The event was in the ballroom of a luxury hotel. The foundation’s director, a shrewd woman who could wring a dollar from a beggar, had managed to get not only the space donated but the finger foods and drinks, too. Maliha paid for the string quartet that had finished an hour ago, and for the gaudy champagne fountain featured in the room. It was tacky, but having something tacky guaranteed media coverage.

With the music over, people talked in small clumps, reaffirming their own youthful lifestyles whether they were young or not. Among them was Greg Shale. Maliha watched him from a distance.

Greg had an athletic build and moved with an ease that was more insolent than graceful. He was a little shy of forty, and had a distinctive scar that ran from the base of his left ear to the corner of his mouth. Its shape suggested the ragged edge of broken glass, and it made an otherwise ordinary face interesting. His left hand rose to touch it occasionally, a habit he didn’t notice. He had a strident laugh that clashed with his otherwise deep, pleasant voice.

What wasn’t pleasant about him was his complex and roiling aura. Dark, dull red was streaked with black and brown, making a swamp of selfishness and hate, with a little dollop of revenge seeking stirred in.

Judging by his aura, Greg Shale was a horrible man.

Still, there were many such people in the world, and not all of them were murderers. It was possible to be hateful and not do anything about it.

Maliha caught Greg’s eye from across the room. After she was sure she’d been noticed, she walked over and joined the group around him. Lily Eddings, a friend and frequent donor, welcomed her. Lily was a wealthy widow who’d turned to philanthropy to stay involved in the community and fill the hole in her life that her husband’s death had created. She was a welcome fixture at charity events, and a kind, caring woman. Maliha admired the broad range of her interests.

“Marsha, so good of you to join us. Everyone, this is Marsha Winters, local author extraordinaire and hostess of this event. You know everyone here, dear?”

Before Maliha had a chance to say anything, Greg stepped up and introduced himself.

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“Greg Shale, Ms. Winters. I’ve read your work.”

Maliha’s eyebrows shot up. He didn’t seem the type. She couldn’t picture him curled in an easy chair, a mug of hot chocolate in hand, perusing the guilty pleasures of books like the forthcoming one—should she ever finish it.

Greg cleared his throat. He’d seen her reaction; no one in the group could have missed it. “That is, I’ve always intended to read your work,” he said, with a disarming, albeit lopsided, grin.

She thawed a little.

Maybe he’s not so horrible. He could just be having a bad aura day.

“I’d like to thank you for the invitation to come tonight,” he continued. “I wasn’t all that familiar with the foundation, but the more I learn from talking to everyone here, the more I think I’d like to become involved.”

“Got your checkbook handy?” The small group laughed, included Greg.

“Actually, I’ve already used the bedpan.”

She let him lead her away from the group and get her a glass of champagne.

“I was serious about becoming involved. I’ve been charity shopping for some time, looking for something that would become the focus of my company’s philanthropic activity. If Gates and Buffet can lead the way, I can follow.”

“The foundation welcomes your participation at any level. I’ll put you in touch with our development director.”
Who will milk your company dry, and do it with a smile.

“I’d rather talk to you.”

“I’m flattered. Who’s your legal counsel, then? I can have some papers sent over.”

“That would be me. I wear two hats. How did you get interested in aging issues?”

“You want the real story, or the one I tell the media?”

“Real, of course.”

“I’m over three hundred years old and my age is catching up to me. It isn’t other peoples’ quality of life I’m worried about as much as my own.” Only four people knew the truth about Maliha: Amaro, Rosie, Yanmeng, and Eliu. Officially, there was now a fifth.

Greg laughed that jarring, abrasive bark of his. “And I’m an extraterrestrial from two hundred light-years away.”

Wouldn’t it be strange if we were both telling the truth?

“I guess I’ll take the story you tell to the media. I can see that you want to keep your real reasons to yourself. All of us have secrets.”

“I got interested in elder issues about quality of life because I had to face some tough decisions about my own parents.”

“Fair enough. Marsha, would you consider paying a visit to ShaleTech? I’d like to get more facts before I put my money where my mouth is.”

“Our director…”

“No, I mean you. To tell the truth, it’s a ploy to spend more time with you.”

Aack! I’m being hit on by the bad guy. At least I think he’s a bad guy.

She double-checked his aura. Same dismal picture, with the addition of a large splash of deep crimson—sexual urges. She smiled and linked arms with him.

“When you put it that way, how can I refuse?”

Maliha spent the next ninety minutes at the Vitality for Life Foundation’s fund-raiser glued to Greg’s arm. Now that she knew the approach to use with Greg, she needed to make a strong impression on him.

A quick touch on the shoulder, gossip about another attendee whispered in his ear, a brush of her thigh against his when she moved past him, an accidental contact of her breast with his arm. When he was drunk on the ambrosia of sexual teasing, she handed him off to Lily, who knew everyone there and loved to have a newcomer to drag around for introductions.

Maliha had accomplished what she came for, and was about to slip out of the event when the hotel manager approached her. He said that a man in the lobby wanted to talk to her. “He’s from the police,” he said in a discreet tone, “and he’s very persistent.”

More likely my stalker.

She patted the knife nestled in her hair and slipped out of the charity event. Lily had been waving in her direction, but Maliha pretended not to notice.

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When they arrived at the lobby, the hotel manager frowned. “He was right there, sitting on the end of that sofa. I’ll check at the desk.”

He came back a minute later carrying a small box, poorly wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. “He couldn’t wait any longer, but he left this for you.”