Daisy Wong, Space Marshal: The Case of the Runaway Concubine (3 page)

Daisy asked her aunt, "What happened to the things Meizhen
didn't take with her?"

"What sort of things?"

"Her extra clothes, personal effects, electronics. 
Anything she may have left behind."

"Forwarded."

"To where?"

"New Telluride, the Moon."

"Do you have the address?"

"I'll provide it to you before you leave."

"Please," Daisy said.  "One more favor.  May
I question the servants?"

"Certainly, for all the good it will do you."

#

Daisy and Muffy used the servant's dining room.  They called
the staff in one at a time, questioned them about Meizhen, and then sent them
on their way.

Aunt Hester had been right about all the good it would do
them.  It did them none at all . . . until they came to
Bradwell, the junior gardener.

Boniface Larson Bradwell gave them the usual spiel about
Meizhen: polite, friendly, but distant.  Held up her end.  Had her career at Celestial
Cybernetics and Robotics to worry about.  Tended to be headstrong.  Snappish at
times, but that was understandable, what with the miscarriages and everything.

Everything
?  This was new.

"What
everything
?" Daisy asked.

Bradwell, who looked to be all of twenty and not
particularly bright, blushed.  "Nothing special.  Mr. Wong wanted a baby
and she was doing her best to give him one.  Work was piling up at Celestial. 
Meizhen was under a ton of pressure."

Daisy leaned in close to Bradwell.  "That's
not
what you meant.  What
else
was going on?"

"Nothing but what I told you.  She was getting kind of
frantic, you understand?  Frantic?  Those miscarriages did a real number on her."

Daisy slouched back in her chair.  No doubt, the
miscarriages had thrown Meizhen a horrible curve.  No doubt, she'd been grieving
over her dead babies and terrified about what might happen to the one she'd
been carrying.  But the gestalt was wrong, and the kid knew why.

Daisy said, "Tell me, Bradwell, have you ever heard of
the Hell of the Harrowed Gardeners?"

"No.  What's that?"

"It's where tong bosses like my uncle send lying little
shits like you."

The color drained from Bradwell's face and a sheen of oily
sweat popped out across his forehead.  "She, uh, she was cheating on Mr.
Wong."

Daisy's stomach clenched.  Maybe this job was going to turn
out to be a hit, after all.  Maybe she'd have no choice but to go through with
it.  Maybe there really was no way for her to be both a cop
and
a tong
brat.  "An affair with whom?"

"One of the guys at Celestial.  I don't know his name,
but I tend the plants over there at their building and I've seen him around
plenty of times."

"What does he look like?"

"White guy.  Tall.  Has a blaster scar running across
the left side of his face."

"A veteran," Muffy said conclusively.  "Is
this being a fresh scar or is it an older one?"

Bradwell shook his head.  "It's still pink.  It's not
fresh, but it hasn't bleached out, either.  It's hard to tell on white
guys."

"This is most assuredly true."

"How do you know about the affair?" Daisy asked. 
"Did you catch them doing it in the gazebo?"

"No, nothing like that.  The night she left, he was the
one who picked her up.  I was walking back from the local strip joint and saw
them pulling away from the house.  I thought they were off on another business
trip."

"Did she often travel on business?"

"Yeah.  It wasn't until later that I put two and two
together."

"Did you tell anyone what you'd seen?" Daisy
asked.

"Mr. Wong already knew.  He had to know, right?"

"How, if you chose not tell him?" Daisy asked.

"I never thought of it that way.  The security around
here is so tight.  Cameras.  Motions detectors.  Genetic sniffers."

"Security systems aren't infallible," Daisy said. 
"Nothing beats an alert watchdog."

"Shit.  Am I in trouble?"

"Let's just say that I wouldn't sell you a new
life-insurance policy."

#

On the taxi ride back to their hotel, Muffy asked, "The
Hell of the Harrowed Gardner?  You are being unusually inventive today." 
She laughed merrily.  "I wish we had taken a holo of that interview.  It
would be most amusing at parties."

"Yeah, we could laugh ourselves silly," Daisy
said.

She touched the slip of paper her Aunt Hester had given
her.  Irrationally, she wanted to reassure herself that she hadn't lost it,
that it hadn't slipped out of the pocket of her uniform tunic.  The paper
crinkled.

Muffy's mood shifted yet again.  "Has that young man pitched
himself into grave trouble?"

"He is."

"Snakeskin couldn't possibly be as small-minded as
that."

How little Muffy understood.  "Someday when you're in
the mood to learn a little more about life in the tongs, remind me to teach you
about the Hell of the Silent Watchdogs."

Muffy's face went blank.  "But he's only a gardener. 
He isn't the one who's responsible for security."

"No matter.  The moment he realized what he had seen,
he became responsible.  And he did not act."

Muffy was silent for a long time.

Finally breaking her silence, she said, "I suppose we
will be leaving for New Telluride immediately."

"Almost.  We have one last stop to make."

#

Their stop was at the corporate offices of the Celestial
Cybernetics and Robotics Corporation.

The personnel director was a middle-aged Caucasian woman
with spikey blond hair and overly glossed, overly full lips.  She had a gold
ring in one nostril and a diamond stud in the other.  Her ears looked like two whorehouse
chandeliers, and at some point, she'd had epicanthic folds added to her eyes.

But she was cooperative.

"We have several veterans working here, but you must be
talking about Ray Gilmore.  He's the only one with that kind of scar.  He and
Meizhen were on the same project team."

"I'd like to speak with him," Daisy said.

"He's no longer with us," the director said. 
"He left shortly after Meizhen disappeared, not right away, but shortly. 
Nothing suspicious there.  Around here, researchers come and go.  It's the
nature of project work."

"Did he leave a forwarding address?"

"Indeed he did."

The director punched a few keys and a holo screen snapped to
life above her desk.  She poked at it here and there and a picture of Ray
Gilmore appeared.  He was handsome, not drop-dead-gorgeous, but credible.  The
scar added a certain bad-boy appeal, but he certainly wasn't worth risking the
wrath of a major tong boss.  No one was.

He'd given his forwarding address as Timberline Lodge,
Oregon, Earth.

"Timberline Lodge?  Never heard of it," Daisy
said.

"It's a ski resort.  Ray's an avid skier."

The pieces were beginning to slide into place.

"Tell me about the project," Daisy said.

"Same old, same old.  Biological computing and human
augmentation.  I don't have the details of the project they were working on." 
She made a face.  "I wouldn't understand them if I did."  She made another
face.  "Silly me.  I'm management, not research and development.  They do
the work and get paid the big bucks; I fill out the forms and don't."

"There must be something you can tell us about their
work," Daisy said.

"Well, I can tell you this, without Ray working on it,
that project has fallen
way
behind schedule."

"Can you give me a copy of his personnel file?"

"Sure thing."

#

On the flight from Los Angeles, Mars, to New Telluride, the
Moon, Daisy and Muffy had lots of time to read files and burn up the net.

As it developed, Ray's full name was Raedan William Gilmore,
and his transcripts, military record, and employment history were enough to put
anyone to sleep.  The only glitch on his otherwise exemplary record was his
apparent decision to run away with Meizhen.  Or to help her run away.

But why would he do that?  He must have been aware of the
risks.  What could have persuaded him to take them?

If Meizhen had been carrying Ray's baby, it might have added
up.  But she hadn't been, and so it didn't.

And why would Meizhen have chosen to run away with a nobody
from nowhere?  True, Gilmore was well educated and belonged to several
professional associations, but he had no connections, no family, and no money. 
How did she expect to survive?  For that matter, how had she survived for the
last ten months?  The funds Snakeskin had sent her certainly wouldn't have been
enough.  Where was her money coming from?

#

Once settled in their hotel room, Daisy and Muffy brought up
the local business directory.

"Fun and games, or basic survival needs?  What's our
girl after, do you think?" Daisy asked.

"Most definitely survival," Muffy said.  "She
cannot afford fun and games at this point."

"Survival it is," Daisy said.

They soon found the Willamette Genetics Foundry.  It was one
of only two high-end genetics outfits on the Moon, so it seemed like a
reasonable place to begin.  They occupied an entire building on the outskirts
of New Telluride.  According to the company's profile, the core of their business
was "fertility and life-enhancement solutions for the genetically
challenged."

"Do tell," Daisy said.

"I am thinking Meizhen did not come all this way to
have her breasts enlarged."

Imitating Muffy's accent, Daisy said, "I am thinking
you are being absolutely and most perceptively correct in your wonderful
observation, Officer Chatterjee."

They grinned and giggled and caught the next transport
across town.

The Willamette Genetics building was made out of stainless
steel, glass, concrete, and security.  It had no fewer cameras, sensors, and
uniforms than a topnotch casino in a bottom-notch neighborhood.

Time and time again Daisy and Muffy flashed their badges,
and time and time again the people behind the reception desks flashed their
smiles.  Daisy asked questions.  The people behind the desks refused to answer
them.  Daisy objected.  They told her to come back with a court order and asked
them leave.

Daisy and Muffy left.  Breaking heads at this stage would
have only made things worse.

Muffy hacked into the Willamette net.  She found this and
that, but the leads turned out to be false fronts, a string of Potemkin
villages, set up to bamboozle the nosey.

Muffy tried the space-marshal access codes, codes that were
supposed to unlock any site in the solar system.

No luck.

"They must be completely off the grid," Daisy
said.

"Maybe they have their own grid," Muffy suggested.

"Hard-wired: no signals to tap, no connections with the
outside, nothing to unlock.  It might be worth the effort, depending."

"It appears to be time for another approach."

"Agreed," Daisy said.  "How about we check in
with the Telluride PD."

#

Daisy and Muffy paid a visit to the local doughnut shop.

Bingo.

A few months back, the New Telluride PD had found a guy—a
very dead guy—with a blaster scar on his face.

"Where did you find him?" Daisy asked.

"In his room at the Glacier View Resort," the NTPD
sergeant said.  "He was in a bathtub of cold water.  And his own blood.  Also
cold."

Over the years, Daisy had decided that cops came in one of two
ways: tall and thin or short and thick.  But this guy was tall
and
thick.  On the other hand, the lights were on and somebody was home.

"Tell me more," Daisy said.

Sure thing.  The water had been cold when they'd found him,
but forensics had determined that it had been hot when he'd gone in.  He'd
slashed his wrists—the long way, not across—with a steak knife and had bled
out.  They'd found the knife, right there on the floor next to the tub.

"No last-minute calls for help?" Daisy asked.

"Not that showed up in the comm records," the
sergeant said.

"Any ID?"

"Lots of it.  He was Charles Emerson Pierce, MD, but he
wasn't.  Couldn't have been."

"How so?"

"Charles Emerson Pierce, MD, is ninety-seven and lives
with his wife in Miami, Earth."

Where they undoubtedly enjoyed sunrises over the Atlantic,
fishing, bingo, sailing, and long walks on the beautiful, sandy beaches.

Daisy felt her face flush with anticipation.  They were closing
in on pay dirt.  "What about toxicology?"

"He'd been drinking, but not enough to pass out."

"What happened to the body?"

"Cremated.  What else?  This is the Moon."

"Yeah."

The sergeant pulled a paper file from a drawer.  He gave it
an expert toss and it made a slow, low-gravity arc toward Daisy.

She grabbed it and flipped it open.

Double bingo.

The autopsy images showed none other than Meizhen's friend
and coworker Raedan William Gilmore.

Maybe they'd gotten into a fight, or maybe he'd outlived his
usefulness.  One thing was for certain: he hadn't been nearly as handsome dead
as he'd been alive.  Not a trace of his bad-boy charm has survived the
transition.

"Got a desk we can borrow for a few days?" Daisy
asked.

"Sure thing," the sergeant said.

#

The sergeant assigned Daisy and Muffy to a cubicle, and for the
next few hours, they searched the security grid for traces of Meizhen
Fitzgerald.

They teased out multiple hits.  The hits spanned a period of
about three months.

The heaviest concentration was at the Glacier View Resort,
where she and Ray had apparently spent most of their time.

The next biggest group of hits was at the Willamette
Genetics Foundry.