Cyber Genius (17 page)

This was Monday. We had less than a week now to get Tudor
back to his London school. The timing on when the cops came after Graham was
unpredictable. I just knew I had better get cracking.

After I’d shipped EG off and sent Tudor back to work
upstairs, I directly called Patra, figuring I’d be dragging her out of bed at
this hour.

“What’s this about EG having her own limo?” she cried as
soon as she answered.

From Patra’s irate question, I deduced she’d already been up
and reading her messages and EG had told her about the limo ride. The brat had
probably been texting the world. I’d hear from Magda next.

“Graham’s call,” I said insouciantly. “We’ve got to get to
the bottom of this Stiles thing, and he didn’t want me taking time out.”

“BS,” Patra said succinctly. “She’ll be rotten. I need to snag
that DC job and move back in there. The flat here is hideous.”

Since I’d lived in Atlanta and was aware of the cost—Patra’s
entry level journalism job paid squat—I understood her complaint. “Tell me
you’ve found out about Tray Fontaine. Prove your worth, grasshopper. This is a
huge case and could be a career booster.”

She grumbled while she apparently opened her files. “Not
that you’re feeding me anything useful, but—Tray Fontaine just came through a
messy divorce and declared bankruptcy. He lost his house and his Ferrari and
partial ownership of some fancy LA restaurant. He’s clinging to majority
ownership of a small restaurant in Seattle and just bought a more modest condo
nearby, modest as in Seattle millions.”

I whistled. “He lost everything and now he’s buying
million-dollar houses?” Money inevitably raised my suspicions. “Any record of how
he got the funds?”

“Credit reports show two mortgages against the property that
nearly equal the purchase price. He must have wealthy friends the bankruptcy
court would like to know about.”

“Possible,” I agreed. “Million-dollar loans are fishy under
those circumstances.”

“Fishy, har-har. Since I was already in Seattle databases, I
ran some searches on the poisoned guys,” she continued. “Adam Herkness, the PR
guru who doesn’t like salsa, is part owner of Tray Fontaine’s remaining
restaurant. He’s recently divorced as well and is hurting for funds.”

“So it isn’t likely that he loaned Tray any.”

“Exactly, but—” She hesitated, apparently hunting for
another file. “Bob Stark, the financial officer who is still comatose, is
rolling in riches. Wealthy parents, never married, heavily invested in the
market—although he sold all his MacroWare options last week.”

Uh-oh. Remembering my thought on MacroWare’s stock plunging
even more once the police revealed the spyhole, I opened my suspect file and
started typing. “Do you have a date when he sold them?”

“Tuesday, the day before the poison dinner,” she reported.
“Why?”

“Because that’s when the internal problems started to
unravel.” I hadn’t told her yet about the spyhole, so I fudged. “Aren’t there
laws about insider trading?”

“Yeah, except Stark wouldn’t poison himself,” she pointed
out.

That had been the reason I’d left this research to Patra. I
figured the five poisoned men weren’t suspects. In theory, they had been a
danger to the real killer. So far, Tray Fontaine was the only connection to MacroWare
who had walked away—except he hadn’t been in DC. His stooge Kita had.

Tray went to the top of my suspect list—but he had utterly
no motive. He was a chef, for pity’s sake. What did he know about operating
systems?

“Any reason to believe a wealthy accountant like Stark would
loan money to a bankrupt chef like Fontaine?” I asked.

“Tray was blackmailing Stark?” she suggested. “I’m grasping
at straws, but Tray’s ex-wife moves in the same circles as Stark’s family.
Stiles liked his employees to be straight up good guys. Stark’s family are
heavy duty loan sharks who have skirted the law for decades. Maybe Bob was
involved in financial shenanigans and Tray found out.”

“Insider trading is not straight-up behavior, so you may be on
to something there, except I can’t see a chef and a finance guy communicating
on the same level. Stiles was an ass if he hired a financial officer with that
background, no matter how much he liked the guy,” I concluded.

“They went to the same school, different years,” Patra
added.

I pondered old school connections and tried to douse my
bias, but I read the papers and understood the old boy network of “you scratch
my back, I’ll scratch yours.” Had Stark “scratched” Stiles’ back at some point?
With funds, probably. Nothing new there.

“At the very least, we could conceivably be dealing with
stock fraud,” I decided. “Check with the SEC. Still, Stark wouldn’t murder
himself to save his family.”

“You said there might be some connection to government
financial committees,” she pointed out.

She might be my sister but she was a journalist first and
foremost. So I was limiting what I fed her. Now that Graham had given our
information to the cops, could I tell Patra? The news of a spyhole in
government computers would create an international sensation and make her
career.

It would probably also cause a stock market crash and panic,
for all I knew—

Sorry, Patra.

“Possible connections,” I agreed cautiously. “But the Stark
family wealth doesn’t lead directly to government fraud.”

“Understood, but MacroWare’s current operating system
software is viewed as problematic by most businesses. Sales are way down, which
means there aren’t any lucrative government contracts pending either. Consumers
are waiting for the new roll-out. If MacroWare could tell corporations that the
government was upgrading to the new version they’re supposed to be testing—“

“Or vice versa,” I added, thinking hard. “I’m not making the
dots connect,” I admitted, “but I think you’re on to something. Except why
would Stark sell now if the new roll-out will put them back on top? Think Sean
can dig into the financials?”

“On it. I’ll send him what we have here. He’s pretty good
about sharing the glory.” This last sounded tentative.

There was roughly ten years difference in Sean’s and Patra’s
ages, but I wasn’t entirely certain there was a vast lot of difference in
experience. Patra had lived what Sean had only heard about.

I tried to give her what she wanted. “Sean still believes in
truth and justice and apple pie. He plays fair.”

I could almost hear her grin. “That’s what I thought. Keep
me updated. I want that DC bureau position.”

As I hung up, I wondered if the feds could tap our lines. I
had to hope Graham’s security prevented it—for now. If he’d really disappeared,
we were up the proverbial creek. Technology might be my friend, but I didn’t
have Graham’s expertise or maniacal preoccupation with keeping people out.

I was trying not to panic, but this scenario was playing too
close to my life before I ran away. Life and death with the kids in between and
no protection other than poor pitiful me... Not a road I wanted to travel
again.

How had I let Graham give me the confidence to think I had
someone at my back? That was crazy thinking.

Rattled, I stuck to researching from my underground office,
where I felt safest. I let my lizard brain ponder action while I read up on
everything that came in overnight. Somehow, Graham was still forwarding his
various feeds, so I knew he was alive—at least until I found and killed him.

The hospital report showed Enrique Gomez, MacroWare’s
security guy, had come out of his coma but wasn’t talking yet. Could I hope
they’d start ratting on each other and solve all our problems? Of course
not—because the bottom line was that even though Stiles’ close compadres had
the most to lose, they wouldn’t poison themselves.

So if I accepted the motivation for murder was that someone
didn’t want the spyhole revealed, the number of suspects was too huge and too
anonymous to investigate from that angle.

Which brought us right back to—who had the
opportunity
to poison? Kita and
Maggie—one dead and one not talking. Who else might have had access to both the
soup
and
the vegetables? Botulism was
far more likely to be found in vegetables—like canned tomatoes or minced garlic.
Anyone who made salsa from canned tomatoes and bottled garlic probably deserved
to be sent up for murder.

I was scrolling through the files on Tray Fontaine that
Patra had sent and thinking I really needed to get into the hotel kitchen—when I
struck pay dirt.

From the list of stockholders in Tray’s restaurant that
Patra had sent, it appeared our Seattle chef had borrowed or coerced all his
restaurant pals into buying a share. Kita had a tiny share, so did Adolph,
Kita’s boss here in D.C. And also—one Wilhelm Vokovich.

We had a winner! I didn’t need the hotel’s HR to respond to
my inane attempt to phish the new cook’s name from their records.

I gleefully dug into Wilhelm—and came up with almost zilch.
I needed Graham to hack through immigration files, because as far I as I could
tell, Wilhelm hadn’t been born here. He had no credit record and no tax files.
I opened the hotel’s HR database again but couldn’t find Vokovich on the
roster. No social security number would be my guess. Adolph was paying him
under the table. Why?

I really needed into that kitchen, which reminded me of Euon
Yung’s resume. I texted Nick to ask if she’d found a job yet, and on a whim, I
asked Mallard if he knew of anyone who needed a cook. I really wished she hadn’t
quit her job. I needed inside information on that hotel restaurant.

Mallard studied her resume and nodded solemnly. He occasionally
met at the pub with a bunch of other upper crust household personnel. If anyone
needed a cook, he’d know about it. Even if Euan turned out to be useless, I
could feel as if I’d held up my part of the bargain.

And then from the depths of cyberspace, Graham sent me the
Holy Grail—a pass into a memorial service for Stephen Stiles and Henry Bates,
in the hotel in which they’d been poisoned. Holy Irony, Batman.

How did I work this.... Let me count the ways.

I studied the invitation. It appeared to have been on formal
paper originally, but there was a barcode on it for electronic use. The geeks
quite possibly could have assigned a different code to each invitation to
identify the guests as they entered rather than ask everyone for their ID. Or
possibly not.

However—the disadvantage of barcodes is that if they’re bent
or damaged in any way, a scanner can’t read them. Or . . . if I
ran the image through my photo program and smudged the code, it would force
security to ask for ID. This wouldn’t work for expensive theater tickets, but
this was a memorial. If I had the bad luck to meet a truly anal guard who knew
how to track down a guest list, I’d lie—or hope Graham had my ass covered.

He’d sent this invitation expecting me to use it—and as
Thomas Alexander, he probably controlled security.

The service was scheduled for two, today. Even though the
memorial was likely to be nerd city, I couldn’t go in as my normal nerdy self,
not with the feds believing I was out of town. My distinctive black braid was
probably on every wanted photo in their system.

My slanted eyes and high cheekbones were also giveaways, but
they could be played down with make-up and glasses. I’d already used the
Russian hat. I didn’t want hotel management recognizing me.

I was seriously conflicted. I wanted in the hotel kitchen, but
I also wanted to hobnob with the people who had known Stiles. For all I knew,
the murderer would attend. How did I dress for both?

I ran upstairs to contemplate my limited wardrobe.

I had the dorky black designer silk suit that Nick had made
me buy to impress EG’s last fancy-schmancy school. With that, I could wear my
hair up in a roll and slap a veil on it. Not that I owned an actual veil, but
Nick had also shown me the value of accessories. I had a lacy black scarf that
I hadn’t figured out how to use until now. Bunched up with pins and stuck on
top of my hair—it would conceal my widow’s peak and eyes.

With my face hidden, I could circulate in the memorial
reasonably well, but not in the kitchen. Maybe I could bring the kitchen to me.
It had been a long time since I’d exerted myself to mischief. I was supposed to
be a grown-up now. But old habits are ingrained and a natural fallback
position.

Humming to myself, I returned to my computer and began
multiplying the pass to the memorial service. Stiles had invented cut and paste
for good reason, I’m sure. He would be proud of me. By the time I was done,
Graham’s invite had been copied onto good card stock. I was wagering the fancy
stock went on the invitations to special guests, and security wouldn’t even ask
for ID when the smudged barcode failed.

If they didn’t get past security, I’d come up with another
solution. Half of my job relied on luck anyway.

A list from Tudor on additional corrupted websites reminded
me of how hard he was working. He deserved a reward. I IM’d to ask if he’d
brought anything suitable for a funeral. He returned the graphic of an upraised
middle finger.

I laughed and saved the graphic. Then I ran back-upstairs to
rummage in his backpack and Nick’s leftover wardrobe. I left khakis, a black
t-shirt, and Nick’s blazer on the geek’s bed.

Tudor’s hair was as much a problem as mine, though.

I ran up to where he sat alone in that ugly room, staring at
his monitor. I dropped the cardboard invite on his desk. “If you want to go,
you have to get your hair cut.”

His eyebrows rose to the aforesaid curly mop. “Really? An
official MacroWare invite? All the local office will be there!” he said in
drooling awe.

“Exactly,” I said in satisfaction. “And possibly the
families of some of the poison victims, since they’ve flown in from Seattle for
bedside duty. Opportunity knocks.”