Cold Case

4

The moons of Jupiter continued their stately orbital dance around the swollen bulk of their mother planet. Megan O’Malley took a long minute to study the view from her seat in the stone amphitheater cut into the crust of Ganymede. This was her personal virtual space, big enough to hold the largest crowd — like all her friends from the Net Force Explorers.

She finally brought her eyes down to stare at the guest of honor in disbelief. “You actually dissed a Callivant — and lived?”

“There were a couple of tight moments,” Leif Anderson admitted. “But I managed to get out of there before the lynch mob was able to find a rope.”

Andy Moore laughed. “Even so, word will get out. I mean, what you did is like taking a whiz on the Washington Monument. Aren’t you afraid your folks will get deported or something?”

Leif rolled his eyes. “Please.”

Megan figured the subject of parents was probably a painful one for Leif right now. The Andersons had returned late last night to find Leif not at home, long after he was expected back from the party. They’d tried to contact him on his wallet-phone — and had gotten no answer. So they’d called around to Leif’s Washington friends, waking up a lot of people, not finding their wandering son…and, in the end, leading to this virtual meeting of the crew, who had finally tracked Leif down, at home, just before dawn. Everybody wanted to find out what really happened.

So far, Megan had to admit, the story had been pretty entertaining.

“So how come your folks couldn’t get through to you?” Maj Greene demanded.

Leif smiled, but his eyes moved just a little too much. “My phone crapped out.”

The needle on Megan’s mental BS meter flicked. Leif was not being honest. “How could that be? I thought you had the top-of-the-line, latest-model, most expensive wallet-phone known to humankind.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Leif really didn’t want to answer this. “You’d think it would be waterproof.”

“Water-resistant. It is. How’d you let it get wet enough to kill it?” Megan hooted in derision.

“Can I help it if I ended up in a fountain, thanks to some of Nikki’s Neanderthal male friends? Do you know how long it took for me to dry out?

“How could you let that happen?” David Gray asked in disbelief. “Didn’t you have any warning?”

Leif wouldn’t meet their eyes. “Oh, I saw them coming. I just figured I could talk my way out of it.”

“Yeah,” Megan repeated, “like you did with Nikki Callivant, you silver-tongued devil.” She shook her head. “I’m beginning to believe that study on HoloNews — the one that says ninety percent of problems result from human error.”

“Forget about your folks being deported,” Andy said with a malicious grin. “How long would you last in the Net Force Explorers if word of this got out?”

His tone was somewhere along the line of “Hey, rich boy, how much is our silence worth to you?”

Megan gave Andy a sharp look. “This from the genius who dragged a virus into the system for last month’s meeting.”

“How did you—” Andy began. He quickly shut up under the glares of everyone in the virtual hangout. “It was supposed to be a joke.”

“Very funny, Moore,” Maj Greene growled. “I wasted hours making sure nothing had infiltrated my system.”

Matt Hunter, who’d been very quiet up to now, suddenly leaned forward. “What was this Nicola Callivant like?”

“Pretty snotty, it sounds like,” Maj said flatly.

“Not a good first impression — on either of our parts, that’s for sure,” Leif agreed. Then he was looking up at the planetarium show overhead. “But she was surprising, too. Pictures don’t do Nikki Callivant justice. They make her look like some kind of starved waif doll. But when you see her in person, there’s something else…something more.”

“Right,” Andy Moore joked. “There’s that rotten personality.”

Megan didn’t pay attention. She was giving silent commands to her computer. An instant later, Nicola Callivant’s image floated in front of Megan, for her eyes only.

Leif had been surprisingly careful, not calling the girl pretty. But seeing her in a formal gown, that was exactly the word that came to Megan’s mind. Nikki Callivant did look like a doll — a high-fashion model doll.

Megan struggled to keep her face still as she vented a sigh of frustration. Looks like Leif’s off on another wild chick chase, she thought. Boys and their hormones. What can you do with them? Even a thorough dunking didn’t cool him off.

Sooner or later, she was sure, Leif would come back to earth again — probably with a thud. She had seen the pattern often enough. The only problem was that the Callivant clan was tightly knit, not terribly kind to outsiders, and all too powerful.

If Leif decides to make a fool of himself over her, I hope he doesn’t get any of the other guys involved.

She looked at him, still singing the praises of the girl who’d insulted him. He can play with fire if he wants to, but I don’t want anyone else burned.

For Matt Hunter, Leif’s story of the doings at the Delmarva Club gave a fascinating — and not too pleasant — peek into the world of the rich and powerful. Leif might joke about lynch mobs, but he had undoubtedly passed quite a few uncomfortable minutes after his run-in with Nicola Callivant.

That Charlie Dysart must be a real piece of work, Matt thought as the others began cheerfully ragging on Leif and Andy Moore. Matt couldn’t imagine leaving a friend dangling in the wind — especially if he’d been responsible for putting the friend out there in the first place.

But that’s what Dysart had done. Leif’s ride home had suddenly vanished into the crowd, probably before Nikki Callivant’s eyes could incinerate him or the well-soaked Leif could desecrate the upholstery of his collector car. He hadn’t helped Leif. In fact, he seemed to have gone out of his way to pretend that he didn’t even know him.

The club was a bad place to be — especially if you weren’t exactly welcome, you were soaking wet, your ride had vanished, and your wallet-phone had picked that moment to die. Leif had finally dried off and called for a cab. The hit to his pride probably matched, if not exceeded, the damage to his Universal Credit Card account. A ride from Wilmington to Washington made for a hefty fare — especially since he’d have to pay for the cab’s empty trip back as well.

Matt could just imagine Leif’s comment as he got in the car: “Driver, I’m about to make you a wealthy man.”

The rest of the night probably hadn’t all been that humorous, Matt was ready to bet. Leif hadn’t much gone into that. But he had mentioned that in the end he’d waited for the cab standing outside on the pillared porch, still slightly damp.

Apparently, the chill of a February night had been preferable to the deep-freeze atmosphere inside the ballroom. Megan, being her usual vengeful self, asked Leif what he was going to do about Dysart.

“We go to the same fencing club,” Leif explained with a barbed smile. “Charlie is not going to enjoy his next practice bout with me.”

Leif had been genuinely embarrassed as he begged his friends’ pardon for the disturbance this latest escapade had caused them.

“I guess it’s nice to know your parents care,” Maj said.

“More than you know.” Leif sighed. “That will be the last time I go out for a bit. I’m grounded for the foreseeable future. I’m not sure which they thought was worse — that I scared ’em by going missing, or what I was up to while I was missing. Dad’s more interested in finance than keeping the family name out of the papers, but my mom—”

“Couldn’t be happy about gaining a Callivant for an enemy,” David finished. “It could even blow back on your father. The Callivants have lots of pull—”

Leif gave an unbelieving laugh. “You’re as bad as Andy with that stupid deportation joke. I traded words with a teenage girl. What are they going to do about it?”

He was a little more serious as the group began breaking up. “Can I have a private word?” he whispered to Matt.

“Your place or mine?” Matt replied.

Moments later they switched from Megan’s amphitheater to Matt’s flying desktop. Grinning, Matt adopted the cross-legged lotus yoga position as he floated in the starry night sky. “What’s up?”

“Just something I was reminded of during my evening in hell,” Leif said. “I wasn’t actually in Wilmington, but in a town outside the city boundaries — a place called Haddington.”

Matt looked at his friend in puzzlement. “And what—”

Leif interrupted, breaking the town name in two. “HADDING-ton. As in a town founded by somebody named Hadding.”

Matt realized his mouth was hanging open, so he shut it. “Those Haddings?”

“A bit of the story I’d forgotten,” Leif admitted. “There was also a really strict chaperon keeping an eye on things. Charlie said she was the widow Hadding, who’d apparently lost a child to some sort of disaster.”

“Pretty weird,” Matt said. “Imagine stumbling over that place — and that lady — right after talking about it.”

Leif nodded. “It reminded me that there are two families involved in the case — two rich families, both of whom can use high-priced lawyers.”

“Why would the Haddings want to hush up all references to their daughter’s death?”

“Some society families might consider murder somewhat…vulgar.” Leif shrugged. “Go figure.”

Matt took a moment to absorb what his friend was saying. “I guess that makes some sort of bizarre sense.”

“I keep telling you, buddy, the rich are different,” Leif said.

“What you’re telling me now is that Ed Saunders may have the reclusive Haddings on his back instead of, or in addition to, the snotty Callivants.” Matt threw out his arms. “More enemies — great! Well, it’s unlikely that I’ll have much chance to discuss the case with Ed. It’s a dead matter now. He’s pulled the plug on the sim.”

As he spoke, one of the icon objects on his floating desktop began to glow — the ear.

“Looks like someone is trying to get in touch with you,” Leif observed.

Matt picked up the icon and gave a command. A list of virtmail messages appeared in the air before him, urgent flames licking around an all-too-familiar name. “Speak of the devil, as the old saying goes.”

Leif craned his neck. The glowing letters were backward from his point of view. “Something from Saunders?”

Matt gave another command, and the floating message shifted to a position where they both could read it.

“Another meeting,” Leif said.

“Because the hacking — excuse me, the ‘attempts at unauthorized data extraction’—have continued.” Matt gave his friend a look. “What is it with lawyers that they need five words to do the work of one?”

Leif shrugged. “What is it with your sim partners that one has to keep sticking his nose—”

“Or hers,” Matt pointed out.

“You’re showing a bit of lawyer there yourself,” Leif joked. “That someone has to stick a gender-nonspecific unpleasant word where it has no business being stuck?”

Matt was rereading the virtmail message. “From the looks of the last paragraph, I’d say the mysterious client must be the Callivants.” He pointed. “The Haddings might be able to threaten Ed the Stork with expulsion from the Social Register. But I think it would take Callivant clout to start an audit on the poor guy’s back taxes.”

Leif nodded. “You going to go to this meeting?” he asked.

“Kind of a waste, talking about a sim that’s not going to happen anymore.” He dismissed the message but didn’t erase it. “After this tax thing, I’m sure Saunders won’t want to work with us.”

“Who are you kidding?” Leif said. “You’ve got a whole new mystery now. The Case of the Hidden Hacker.”

Matt hated when people saw through him so easily. “All right, I’ll probably check it out.”

“Just be careful,” Leif advised. “You guys are already being hit with taxes. Can death be far behind?”

I dressed with special care for tonight’s meeting. It reminded me of the grand finales Lucullus Marten sometimes staged for the end of a case. More likely, though, this would turn out to be the sort of loud argument that usually happened when suspects were drawn, one way or another, into the great man’s office.

Too bad Marten wouldn’t have his special heavy-weight chair to sit in.

I chose a bold — and expensive — silk tie that a wealthy lady friend had given me as a gift. It went well with the blue flannel suit I was wearing. While it was the best in my wardrobe, I figured Mick Slimm would probably appear in something more expensive. He was the kind of guy who’d think nothing of spending five hundred simoleons for a tasteful sport coat. Milo Krantz probably spent even more on his shoes. Spike Spanner could just as easily come in a saber-toothed tiger pelt — something to match his caveman personality.

It took two tries to get the knot the way I like it. I turned to the mirror and did the necessary with the military brushes, then slipped into my jacket. Enough with the preliminaries. I was ready for the main bout.

Matt pulled back from the Monty Newman persona, maintaining his appearance as a proxy image. At a silent command Newman’s virtual bedroom vanished, to be replaced with Matt’s floating workspace.

He knew why he’d let himself sink into the virtual character’s confident, slightly smart-aleck style. Matt was nervous. It was ridiculous. He’d done nothing wrong. Why should he worry over what these people — rivals in a mystery sim — might be thinking about him? More than one of them seemed, as Monty Newman might say, “decidedly loony.”

Why else would a hacker keep digging into the Hadding case after the fictional Van Alst murder had come to a crashing halt? It wasn’t just useless, it was obviously painful for the Callivants — and definitely troublesome for Ed Saunders.

Matt allowed himself to arrive a few minutes late for this meeting, to find the other participants, all proxied up as their fictional sleuth counterparts, sitting in a circle around Saunders’s desk.

Surprise, surprise. Lucullus Marten’s mammoth chair had been included. The big man leaned on his cane, trying to get Maura Slimm out of its vastness — while also trying to avoid bursting a blood vessel.

“Young lady—” he began. The tone was unmistakable. It said, “I am no longer amused. In fact, I never was amused with you.”

“Oh, Lukie,” Maura’s chirpy voice replied, “don’t be a spoilsport.”

“Let him have his seat, darling,” Mick Slimm said.

“Yeah, give him a break,” Spike Spanner put in. “Before he starts breakin’ the furniture.”

Marten settled his bulk in the big leather chair. Matt took a much smaller seat beside him.

“Mr. Saunders,” Marten said, grabbing the role of spokesman, “I’m sure all of us here regret your additional troubles.”

“All, apparently, but one,” Milo Krantz interjected, the light from Saunders’s desk lamp glinting off his spectacles. “I confess myself at a loss, however, as to the manner of finding that person.”

“A fine bunch of sleuths we are,” Mick Slimm joked.

“Yeah,” Saunders said. “That’s the problem.” He looked less like a stork today and more like a hunted rabbit. “So here’s what I’m going to do about it. I’m giving you people twenty-four hours. If the hacker hasn’t contacted me by then, and agreed to stop this nonsense, I’m sending a virtmail to the lawyers, explaining that I’ve stopped the sim — and giving them a list of your actual identities.”

“You can’t do that!” A lot of the perkiness had dropped from Maura Slimm’s voice. “Our privacy—”

“Was waived in the sim agreement you all signed,” Saunders grimly replied. “You should have read the small print. It’s just a form that I copied from the programming handbook, but now I’m glad I did. Maybe, if I cooperate with these people, they’ll stop putting the screws to me and go looking where the trouble is really coming from.”

It was almost funny to see this geekoid trying to look defiant.

Funny, Matt thought, except for the trouble it would cause.

“I’m sorry to do it,” Saunders said. “But you leave me no choice.”