Stocks & Blondes
1
Not the kiss I wanted
I GOT KISSED. It just wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I guess when I send those last-minute prayers into the great unknown, I should be more specific.
Case Opened
The knock on my door came a little before midnight. I was so sure it would be either Cinnamon or Jordan—or both—I almost didn’t bother to put my wig back on. Jordan is about the only man who has seen me without it—at least the only man who’s still alive. And Cinnamon thought my bald head was pretty sexy when I was masquerading as a man. But I paused long enough to pull it on snug, wrapped my robe around me and threw the door open without even thinking about what else could be on the other side.
Lars Anderson. My advisor for my master’s thesis. I could have died. Not only that, but he was standing just slightly in front of a guy who had to be at least as old as him.
“Lars?”
“Hello, Deb,” he said, practically pushing me out of the way to come into the little apartment. Maizie, of course, was no help at all since she knows Lars and likes him. She was dancing around waiting to be petted. “Sorry to barge in on New Year’s Eve and all, but my friend Grover has to fly back to Savannah tomorrow. Grover, this is Deb Riley, finest detective I’ve ever trained. Deb, meet Grover McFearin.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. McFearin,” I said. “Lars, what’s this all about?” I had a feeling these two old buddies had been out drinking but they couldn’t be expecting anything out of me. They’re both seventy if they’re a day.
“Oh look, it’s midnight,” Lars said. “Happy New Year!” And with that he leaned over and kissed my cheek. Well, so much for that brief fantasy. Kissed and disappointed at the same time. Blech!
“Lars…”
“I know, Deb. This is highly irregular and you want to know what the hell is going on. I’ll lay it out for you in short order.” He sat on the sofa and motioned Grover to a seat beside him, like he had done it a thousand times before. Well, maybe he had done it a thousand times before. I’m now resident in Dag’s apartment. Mrs. Prior said I could move in and she’d charge the same rent Dag paid. I wouldn’t have moved in here, even though Dag left everything he owned to me in his will, but my lease expired while I was off in Croatia and Cinnamon did the best thing she could: packed my stuff up and moved it here. I know it’s a little silly, but I can’t bring myself to sit in Dag’s chair. He died there, for God’s sake. I went into the kitchen and brought out a straight chair and parked myself in front of Lars and Grover to wait for his explanation.
“Deb, Grover came to Seattle because of the death of his daughter.” I looked at the other man and realized he hadn’t raised his eyes once since he came into the room. He was crying.
“Keep talking, Lars,” I said. I stepped back into the kitchen to put a kettle of water on for tea. Something finally told me this was a professional visit. I, for one, needed to be alert. It looked like Grover needed something comforting.
“Georgia McFearin died on Christmas Day,” Lars said. “The police have officially ruled it a suicide.” He reached over and patted Grover’s shoulder. Grover mumbled something to him and I got the impression he just wanted Lars to tell the story. “The police want to close down the investigation but Grover isn’t satisfied.”
“That’s pretty fast,” I said. “It’s only been a week.”
“They say it will be another week or ten days before we can have access to her house,” Lars continued, “but Grover can’t stay in town that long. He needs someone to handle the estate and to investigate further.”
“What? Lars, I do computer forensics. Why would you come to me?” Technically, I’d spent much of the past month running from or after rich people. I’d seen three people die in pursuit, not counting Bradley and Oksamma the month before. And Dag. I was really wanting to stay home and look at nice dependable computers for a while. And finish my thesis.
“The police report says there is a computer in every room of her house. They don’t see the computers as relevant to the suicide, so they aren’t doing more than a cursory check of them. They say they are all password locked and they have no reason to request a warrant to search them. As far as they are concerned, the cause of death was self-strangulation.”
“She hanged herself?”
“More or less.”
I brought tea into the room and set a cup in front of Grover. He looked up at me and the empty pleading in his eyes broke my heart. Damn! I was going to get in over my head again. If he made me his agent as executor of the estate, I could crack the computers as if they were mine and have no legal problems at all. But why? What did he think I’d find there?
Lars took a cup from the tray I was still holding and I sat back in my straight chair to contemplate what was going on. I really wish they’d just come to my office instead of telling me all this in my living room. Of course, I wasn’t going to my office today. It’s a holiday. So…
“What exactly do you want me to do?” I asked.
“We’d like you to go over to her house when the police release it and dispose of Georgia’s things, pack up personal items and ship them to Grover in Savannah, and look inside the computers to see if there is any indication as to why Georgia might have taken her own life. And—lacking that—see if there is any evidence someone else might have been involved.”
“You think she was murdered?” I asked. Now I was really thinking I didn’t want to do this. Grover looked up at me. Tears still fell from his eyes.
“My daughter wouldn’t commit suicide,” he said. “I just need to know what really happened. Please, Miss Riley, I can’t pay much but I can give you the proceeds of her estate. There should even be some sort of pension from that company she worked for.”
Well, what father would ever believe his baby would kill herself? I don’t want to go down that path. I’d have to look for evidence it was an accident.
“What company was that?” I asked.
“Allied Computer Network Solutions,” he said. “She moved out here five years ago to take a job with the company. They recruited her. She always sends money for the mortgage. It’s a good job.” The company had its ups and downs in the past five years but most high-tech companies had. It looked like it was going to be one of the successful ones in the long run.
“How old was your daughter?” I asked. It suddenly occurred to me that he was old and his daughter must not have been recruited out of college.
“She was fifty-one in November,” Grover said. “She came out to see me on her birthday and made me promise to come out here in the spring.” Geez. Would I even know what to look for on a fifty-one-year-old’s computer? I had my doubts. What did she know about computing? I supposed I’d have to contact her employer and find out if there was a 401k. Maybe stock options. If she was paying her rent or mortgage here and sending mortgage payments to her dad in Savannah, she must have been doing pretty well. I could at least get the guy some money for his old age.
“I guess I could take a look but I can’t promise anything,” I said, non-committedly. “If she was a programmer, she might have encrypted everything on her drives.” I was already formulating a strategy for getting into the computers. I would follow Dag’s procedures and bring them to the office, pull the drives, and peek in from a different computer. It really wasn’t that hard… if she hadn’t encrypted her files.
“Deb, I think you should visit Savannah,” Lars suggested.
“Hmm?”
“The police won’t release the house for seven to ten days. You’ve gone through a lot lately and a little trip to the old South would do you good. More importantly, it would give you a chance to get to know the woman you’re investigating, how she was raised, even who her friends were. When you get back, you’ll have a better idea of what to look for.” Lars was being extra persuasive in his approach. Not like him at all. “I’m suggesting this as your advisor,” he finished. Yeah, there’s the other shoe. Lars was worried that I’m too stressed out after Dag’s death and my chase halfway across the globe to save his best friend. Like that turned out well. “You should try out Peg Chester while you are there. Older women will talk more freely with a woman their own age.”
There it was. Lars is one of the few people who knew my aliases. Most of them. Peg Chester is a persona I put together in his class on undercover identity. I haven’t used her much. In fact, not at all since the class. I’d been going through aliases pretty quickly over the past two months. Wouldn’t be bad to have such an easy one cleaned up and available. I could even swing by her home on the way back from Savannah and update my records.
What was I thinking? I was seriously already believing I’d taken this job. WWDD? What would Dag do? I knew the answer to that question instantly. If he had a friend in trouble—or even a friend of a friend—he’d do whatever was necessary to help them out. Even die.
“I can’t go until the weekend,” I heard myself saying. Damn damn damn!
Party time
If it weren’t for Maizie, I still wouldn’t be awake. Of course, she dragged me out for a walk at seven this morning. She was so disappointed that Tovoni’s was closed. Hey girl, it’s a holiday. Everybody deserves a day off. I swear she was in a huff when we got back home. She had her breakfast and sat in Dag’s chair looking at the TV. I turned it on and she kept barking until I found a football game. Then she settled down, watched for a while, and went to sleep. My little girlie-dog is a football fan!
I spent the rest of the morning trying to get ready for Jordan’s party this afternoon. I can’t believe I’m even going, let alone that I care what I look like. Last night, I was ready to meet him and Cinnamon au naturel. Now I’m trying on wig after wig, looking for… something. I think it might be time to get a new look. Simple brunette? Replace the black China doll wig Oksamma knocked into the Sound?
Anyway, Jordan invited a bunch of people over for oyster stew on New Year’s Day. Says it’s an old family tradition. It sounds kind of old fashioned, which is cute, I guess. But I still don’t know how I fit in. Just that I’m going to go, damn it. I’m going to go and I’m going to have fun. And I’m not going to think about anything else.
Now put some clothes on.
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