2 Pane of Death (17 page)

“Maddy?”

She brought her eyes into focus, with some effort. “Huh?”

“I think it’s time to go now,” I said, enunciating very clearly.

It took her a while to process the thought. “Oh. Right. It’s late. Hope I didn’t keep you from anything.”

With Matt pursuing a killer, I probably wouldn’t see him for days. “Nope, but I’m an early bird—I need my rest.” I tossed some bills on the table, stood up, and waited for the floor to stop moving. “Upsy-daisy!”

It took more than one try to extricate Maddy from the depths of the booth, but we managed to make it out the front door into the crisp night air. I inhaled deeply, savoring the hint of mesquite smoke. I was very glad I had walked to the bar rather than driving, although I had no clue how Maddy planned to get home. For that matter, I had no idea where Maddy lived. But whether or not we had gone through some sisterly bonding this evening, no way was I going to offer her my couch, much less a ride home. I’d rather pay for a cab.

“Maddy? How are you getting home?”

The cool air seemed to have had an equally sobering effect on her. “My car’s at my shop, but maybe I should find a cab.”

“Good idea!” I agreed, a bit too heartily. “Well, it’s been an interesting evening. Hope you make it home all right.”

With that I turned and marched away, without looking back. Maddy was a big girl—she could find her own way home. Me, I wanted time to think about what had gone on tonight. I hadn’t learned much. Maddy was deluded, apparently about a lot of things, including her relationship with Peter. But I’d already had an inkling of her limitations—and her blindness to them—when I saw her work. Maybe she didn’t have many female friends in Tucson. Maybe, I added charitably, she really was grieving for Peter and just wanted someone to talk to.

Why didn’t I believe that?

When I reached home, I made my way slowly up the stairs. The dogs greeted me with muted enthusiasm, which I interpreted to mean that they had already been fed and weren’t desperate for a walk yet. “Cam?” I called out. No answer. When I reached the kitchen area, I saw a note on the table: “Nat asked me to dinner, back later. Love, Cam.” No time mentioned. I looked at my watch: It was almost ten. Must be a good dinner. As I was standing there with the note in my hand, trying to figure out what to do next, the phone rang and I picked it up.

“Em?” Matt’s voice.

“That’s me,” I replied cheerfully. “How are you?”

“You weren’t home earlier.”

Was he keeping tabs on me? It occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t mention I had been with Maddy—maybe there was some police rule that two people involved in a crime shouldn’t hang out and let their hair down together. “Nope, I was out. You’re a great detective, you know that?”

“Em, have you been drinking?”

“A little. After all, I’ve been accused of murder, so I had to drown my sorrows. I am still accused of murder, aren’t I?” It might have started as an innocent question, but I found I was curious to hear what he had to say.

“Em, you know I can’t talk about it.”

Neither yea nor nay—that wasn’t very satisfying. Well, I could play the same game. “Yup, you told me. Well, I guess I won’t keep you—you have a murderer to catch. Call me when you have him.” And then I hung up. Not very mature of me, I know, but it felt kind of good. For a moment. Then I felt bad—after all, he had to do his job. I debated calling him back and apologizing, but in the end I decided I could sort things out better in the morning, in a slightly more sober state.

I took the dogs out, came back and showered, and went to bed. Cam still hadn’t come home by the time I fell asleep.

I like to sleep in on Sunday mornings, since the shop doesn’t open until noon, and last night’s carousing with Maddy had left me sluggish. When I woke up, I lay in bed listening for a bit and was relieved to hear the clicking of computer keys. Cam must have returned during the night, although I hadn’t heard him come in. But I was curious to know what he had discovered—and what he had told Nat. Or she had told him.

Once I had dressed, I made my way toward the kitchen. “Hey, Cam. Late night, eh?”

He held up one finger, indicating he was in the middle of something, and I heard my printer whine. When it was done, he came over and sat at the table, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He looked very pleased with himself.

I poured coffee and scrounged up a stale bagel, stuffing it in the toaster. “So, you going to tell me what you’ve got?”

“Get some coffee into you first—I know how your mind works. Or doesn’t. And when did you get back? Allison said you disappeared with Maddy about five last night.”

Dutifully I sipped coffee and waited for my head to clear. It was a slow process. “So you talked to Allison before you hit the town with Nat?”

He had the grace to look sheepish. “I told her it was business. It was. Anyway, what did Maddy want?”

“She said she wanted to apologize, which she did about six times. And then she wanted to tell me her entire life history, particularly the part where she and Peter were passionately involved.” I snorted.

“You don’t believe that?”

“Not for a minute. Peter tolerated her, no more. He gave her the commission as a favor to his mother, and then he called me in as backup.”

“He told you that?”

“He did. I admit I wondered why he had picked such a no-talent for an important job.”

Cam grinned. “Don’t hold back.”

“You know very well that I have never liked Maddy or respected her work, even before she accused me of murder. And now, apparently, I’m her new best friend.”

“What did you two find to talk about?”

“Maddy, mostly. She is just devastated by Peter’s death, because they were soulmates, blah blah blah. I get the feeling she doesn’t have anyone else to talk to—not that I’m surprised. I’ve seldom met anyone so completely self-absorbed, with so little justification.”

“That’s right, Em, let it all out. So, you think she just wanted to vent, or did she want something else from you?”

“My question exactly. I think she hoped to find out how the murder investigation was going, and she was disappointed when she found out that Matt had shut me out—which was her fault in the first place. I didn’t say anything about the FBI part of it—I think. Things got a little fuzzy toward the end there.” I swallowed some more coffee. “So what did you come up with? Or, wait—how did you end up going out with Nat?”

“Well, she came by yesterday as promised to check on my progress. She said she didn’t know much about Tucson, so I volunteered to show her a few places, and then we ate dinner.”

Oh, shoot—I had completely forgotten our vague dinner plans when Maddy showed up. Poor, innocent Cam. I didn’t for a moment believe that Nat was a lonely, vulnerable tourist. “What did you two talk about?”

“Let’s back up a bit. Don’t you want to know what’s on Peter’s computer?”

I sat up straighter. “Of course I do. Just explain it in English, will you?”

“I’ll give you the junior version. Access wasn’t hard, probably because he didn’t have a whole lot of top-secret stuff on there, and not a lot from PrismCo. I don’t know whether he had some other place to stash that or he really was out of the business. Still, he used reasonable protection—he didn’t count on someone like me digging into them.” Cam allowed himself a moment of glory, looking quite pleased with himself. Then he went on. “The files I found fall into a few main categories.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “One, files pertaining to the company PrismCo—personnel, finances, reports. From what little I’ve read of them, everything looks kosher, but I’ll let you take a look at all that—it’s probably more your speed. Two, files relating to his personal finances—bank accounts, taxes, and so on. Three, items relating to his collections. Here’s where it gets interesting.”

“Really? How?”

Cam sat back in his chair and prepared to expound on his discovery. “There are nice tidy records of what he bought, where he bought it. Also insurance information. That should be a big help to Nat. There’s a lot more stuff here, and I need some time to work through it. But I do have one observation.”

“Which is?”

“There’s one name that keeps popping up in the company files and also in the press: Peter’s CFO, Andrew Foster, the guy who was the most outspoken about Peter’s decision to dissolve the company. And he wasn’t shy about talking to anyone who would listen.”

“Well, if he was pretty high up the food chain, he might have felt he had a lot to gain financially if the company went public. Did Peter keep any correspondence or anything?”

Cam shook his head. “Not here. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t any, just that it’s not on this computer. It looks like this was a secondary one—something he kept on hand at the house, with the basic files he wanted to have quick access to, but not the whole array. Or maybe he had those stored off-site. Or, heaven forbid, in hard copy.”

“So you can’t tell me anything about Foster?”

“Nope, just what’s in the press. Although it looks like he and Peter go way back. He was with the company for quite a while.” Cam handed me a printout. “Here—this pretty much summarizes the situation. If you read between the lines, Foster was mad as hell—felt that Peter had cut his legs out from under him, and gone behind his back to do it.”

“Cam, you’re muddling your metaphors, but I get the idea. He was not a happy camper. So here’s something else that’s interesting: Matt said that Foster had arrived in Tucson just before Peter died, and then he fell off the map.”

“I thought Matt wasn’t sharing information with you.” Cam’s tone was incredulous.

“Actually, he told Nat, and I happened to be in the room.” I looked at the page Cam had handed me: a printout from the
Wall Street Journal
with a small and grainy studio photo of Andrew Foster, looking very preppy, far more than Peter had. At least, the Peter I had seen. Maybe Peter had undergone some sort of epiphany—or a psychotic break—when he decided to dissolve the company. Maybe up until that point he had been as starchy as Andrew looked.

Maybe I was fantasizing far ahead of my sparse data. “I wonder if Matt’s tracked him down yet? Not that he’d tell me. Can you tell where he lives now?”

Cam clicked a few keys. “Colorado. You want a phone number?”

“No. As Matt delights in pointing out, it’s really none of my business. Let him and his crowd take care of the obvious leads. If Foster’s been that vocal about his complaints, I’m sure he’s high on their suspect list. Anyone else at the company have a known gripe?”

“Not that I’ve seen. You know, I think I had the wrong impression. It looks as if Foster was really the only one to make noise publicly. But he wouldn’t let it go, and he’d talk to anyone in the press that would listen, at least until they lost interest. From what I’ve seen here, Peter did a decent job of shutting things down gracefully. The rest of his staff walked away in good shape, and most of them landed somewhere else pretty fast.”

“So as far as you know, Peter didn’t loot the coffers and sneak away, letting the whole organization self-destruct.”

“No, not even close. From what I can tell, the company was in good shape—I can print out the most recent financials if you want to take a look at them. It looks as though PrismCo could have kept going fine. The story Peter gave out for public consumption was that he thought he’d taken it as far as he could. Read: He was getting bored. Sometimes computer types, even the good ones, just burn out.”

I was obscurely pleased that there was no hint of illegality or bad management, although I probably shared with Cam an unspoken question about why a vital, intelligent man like Peter would have withdrawn from the company he had founded and steered so ably, without a particularly convincing explanation. But knowing Cam as I did, I admitted freely that I didn’t understand the mind of computer geniuses, and Peter obviously fell into that category.

I sighed. “We should give this to Matt.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’ve got information on that laptop that may suggest a motive for killing Peter. Former employees—maybe Foster’s not the only one who was unhappy, although he was the most vocal about it. Who holds the patents, if there is such a thing? What about the former Mrs. Ferguson—did you see anything about her? Did she think she was getting stiffed when Peter sold the company? And that’s just off the top of my head. This is stuff that Matt needs to know.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Poor Cam looked deflated. “But Nat’s not going to like that, since the machine is her territory.”

“I’m not sure it is ‘her territory.’ ” This was really murky: Nat had appointed Cam an FBI consultant in this area, not me, so it was technically his decision what to do with whatever he found. But the information on the laptop could be important to the murder investigation, and Matt certainly wouldn’t like that Cam was digging around in it. “Nat’s area of expertise is art theft, not homicide.”