Virtually Dead

Chapter Twenty-Five

Stan Laurel looked up, surprised, as Janey laid a plastic cup of sweet, hot coffee on the desk in front of him. Michael settled himself in Hardy’s seat on the other side of it and took a sip from his own. He peered at Laurel over the top of the detective’s computer screen. Laurel’s surprise turned to suspicion. “What are you two after?”

“Nothing,” Janey said. “Just dropping off some files. We were getting some coffee from the machine and saw you sitting over here all on your lonesome, looking like a man who could do with some caffeine.”

“Damned right I could. Been a helluva morning. That Brockman case? The guy who broke into the museum? Went to court this morning, and they kicked us into touch.”

“Shit, why?” Janey perched on the edge of his desk.

“Someone forgot to read him his rights.”

“No! Who?”

Laurel fixed his eyes on the screensaver in front of him and took a sip of his coffee, the cup trembling in bony fingers.

“Stanley, you didn’t!”

He slapped his palm flat on the desk. “I was fucking sure I had. I always do. It’s like breathing. You don’t think about it.”

Michael said, “So he walked?”

“He walked. And I am in deep shit.”

“It’s a shot of something stronger you want in that coffee, then.”

“Huh! That’s all I’d need. Caught drinking on the job. I’d be out the front door with a broken pension in my back pocket before you could say do detectives think.”

Janey craned her neck casually to look at the file in front of him. “Still on the Mathews case?”

“That and twenty others.”

Janey turned to Michael. “You remember that one, Mike? That’s the one that gave me the idea for your welcome back party. Young woman shot in the chest. We were at the crime scene that afternoon. An apartment overlooking the marina.”

“I remember.” Michael brought back to mind the fleeting image of the girl spreadeagled on the bed, but he was having great difficulty containing his impatience or trying to sound natural. Time was slipping away, and they needed more information.

Janey turned back to Laurel. “So... any breaks on it?”

“Nothing. Not a dickie bird. Interesting background, though. Her daddy’s Jack Mathews, the property developer. Owns that big island out in the bay. Rumour has it he’s terminally ill, and she’d have got all his cash. There’s a brother, too, but he and the old man don’t get on. Cut out of the will completely, from all accounts.”

“Good motive for murder, then,” Janey said.

Laurel grunted. “Except that he was in New York at the time.”

Michael said casually, “What about the Arnold Smitts case? Anything happening there?”

“Nah. Same story. Ollie’s been looking after that one. Having trouble finding a motive. And you guys didn’t come up with anything.” He took another sip of his coffee. “Damn, that’s good. Interesting coincidence, though.”

“What’s that?” Michael leaned back in the chair, affecting disinterest.

“Well, you know how he was into that Second Life shit — first Internet port of call for lost souls and losers?”

Janey shifted uncomfortably. “Yeh.”

“And how his account had been erased from the computer database?”

Michael said, “Ollie did mention something about that.”

Laurel slapped the back of his hand across the file in front of him. “Same shit.”

“What, the Mathews girl was in SL, too?” Janey frowned.

“Sure was. And just like Smitts, no record of her account in the database.”

“That’s a helluva coincidence,” Michael said.

“Well, yes and no. I mean, who knows how meticulous these Linden Lab people are at keeping records. The database could be a shambles for all we know. And Ollie did some research. Apparently there’s nearly fourteen million people signed up for Second Life. That’s almost half the population of the state of California. So it’s not that big a coincidence if two random murder victims turn out to be Second Lifers.”

Janey stood up, and as she turned, her hand caught Laurel’s cup, and knocked the coffee into his lap. He leapt to his feet, cursing in shock and pain as it scalded him. “Jesus Christ!”

“Oh, hey, I’m so sorry, Stanley. Here let me take you to the washroom and wipe you down.”

Laurel glared at her, wiping at himself with a paper tissue. “Well, there’s an offer I can refuse. Jesus Christ, Janey! You’re a clumsy fucking bitch, you know that. Goddamn!” And he went hurrying off toward the washroom.

Janey smirked across the desk at Michael. “Always spilling things, me.” Then her smile faded. “That’s fourteen million people worldwide, Mike. Not just in California. So I’d say it was more than a coincidence.” She bent over Laurel’s desk, ostensibly to mop up the pool of coffee that was dripping over the edge, and flipped open the Mathews file to squint at it. “What do we need to know?”

Michael stood up, hope returning with the prospect of something new to follow up. “Her AV name. Groups she was in. And the old man’s address would be good.”

Janey looked up at him and smiled conspiratorially, lowering her voice. “We gonna play real life detectives, too?”

“Whatever it takes, Janey.”

She grinned. “Good. I always wanted to be a cop.”

She swivelled the file toward her to take some quick notes, and the corner of it caught Laurel’s computer mouse. The movement swiftly banished his screensaver to reveal a familiar scene. A busy shopping mall, with AV’s moving back and forth viewing skins all along a back wall. In the foreground a tall, thin, good-looking avatar stood, head bowed, an Away sign attached to a tag revealing him to be Phat Botha. For a moment, Janey stared at it, confused. Then, “Jesus!” she whispered. “Look at this?”

Michael rounded the desk. He looked at the screen incomprehendingly. “It’s Second Life,” he said.

Janey’s face split into a grin. She put her hand over the mouse, and Phat Botha sprang to life. “First Internet port of call for lost souls and losers, huh? The damn hypocrite’s a Second-Lifer himself.”

The Mathews did not encourage visitors to their island. It was situated almost in the middle of the bay about halfway between Balboa and Lido islands. There was no bridge, no road, and they did not lay on water transport for casual visitors. Michael and Janey had to hire a boat from a rental outfit off Bayshore Drive and chug out across the channel, weaving between yachts at anchor and huge motor-driven cruisers that powered in and out of the harbour. Seagulls wheeled and cawed overhead, and Janey looked back at the two dark-suited figures who stood on the landing watching them go. She frowned.

“Who are these guys? Do you know them?”

Michael switched the tiller from one hand to the other and glanced back. He sighed. “I figure these are bastards who ate my pizza. They’re keeping an eye on their three million.”

Janey paled a little. “Oh, shit. Really?” Then she chuckled. “Well, I guess they must reckon they’ve lost you now, unless they can walk on water.”

“They’ll probably just wait for me at the four-by-four. They know I’m not going anywhere fast without it.”

The Mathews mansion occupied around 80 percent of the island. A huge two-storey classical Italian stone-faced villa with colonnaded terraces. The back wall went straight down into the water. The sides and front were ringed by beautifully manicured lawns screened from the curiosity of passing boat-owners by columns of palm trees and tall flowering shrubs. Beyond the grass a white-painted wooden landing stage extended along the front of the property, big enough to berth two fifty-footers at the same time. A short floating pier ran out at right angles, with half a dozen small craft bobbing on the swell. The Stars and Stripes hung limp from a tall flagpost in the midday heat. The breeze from the ocean had dropped, and the air fibrillated in the heat, vibrating to the hum of myriad insects.

Michael steered their rental boat into a berth at the pier and Janey leapt out to tie it up to a metal ring set in the planking. A water-borne ambulance was tethered to the main landing stage, and several smaller boats clunked and creaked alongside it, straining gently at their moorings. As they walked along the pier to the landing stage, Michael and Janey saw a small crowd of people gathered on the front lawn. On the landing stage they passed a couple of medics wheeling a stretcher across the boards to the ambulance. A bulky figure lay prone on the gurney, covered over with a white sheet. The group on the lawn began to disperse. Michael caught sight of a short, elderly Latina woman in a black dress with white trim. The maid. He hurried after her.

“Excuse me.”

She turned. Her face seemed strained. Her eyes bloodshot.

“I’m looking for Jack Mathews.”

She nodded toward the stretcher being wheeled up the ramp to the water ambulance. “You just missed him.”

Michael glanced back in dismay as Janey caught him up. “Wassup?”

“Looks like the late Mr. Mathews has just departed.”

“Oh.”

A young man had detached himself from the group heading for the house and was making his way back toward them. He was around Michael’s age, wearing beautifully tailored grey slacks and an open-necked white shirt with short sleeves. His skin was smooth and evenly tanned, his light brown hair bleached in places by exposure to salt water. He had startlingly white teeth and eyes completely hidden behind a pair of large wrap-around sunglasses.

“Can I help you?” Even although he stood a good four feet away, Michael could smell the alcohol on his breath.

Michael said, “We’re from the Orange County Forensic Science Service. We had been hoping to speak to Jack Mathews about the murder of his daughter.”

“Well... ” The young man pursed his lips thoughtfully. “You’re timing could have been better.”

“So I understand.”

“Does that mean you have news of Jennifer’s killer?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“So what did you want to speak to him about?”

“I’m sorry, you are... ?”

“Richard Mathews.” He looked around and tossed a hand vaguely in the direction of the house. “Jack’s son. Which I guess makes me the proprietor. If only by default.”

Michael heard the bitterness in both his tone and his words.

Janey said, “We wouldn’t have disturbed you at a time like this if we’d known.”

But Richard Mathews didn’t seem to be in mourning. “Do you want to tell me why you’re here?”

“We were wondering about your sister’s involvement in Second Life.”

He stared at them implacably from behind his shades. “Second Life, huh? So I guess you know the whole sordid little story, then.”

Yes,” Michael said, having no idea what the story was or how sordid it might be.

Richard removed his glasses and squinted at them in the sunlight. “Well, I guess the money’s beyond my reach now, anyway. At least for the moment. You’d better come in.”

Michael and Janey exchanged glances as Richard Mathews led them up a short flight of steps to a portico leading to the main entrance. She shrugged and pulled a face, evidently no wiser than Michael. They followed the young heir to the Mathews fortune into a large salon furnished with eighteenth-century French antiques arranged around priceless Oriental rugs. He went straight to a glass drinks cabinet, and filled a crystal tumbler with pale Scottish malt.

“I won’t offer you one. I know you people don’t drink on duty.” He turned toward them and took a slug of whisky. “He’d have been really pissed, you know, to think of me inheriting.”

“Is there no other family?” Janey asked.

“My mother’s been dead for years. My father doted on Jennifer and thought I was a drunk and a waster.” He smiled. A small, bitter smile. “I didn’t mean to be. It’s not the way I started out. But it’s funny how, in the end, you seem to live up to other people’s expectations of you.” He sucked in some more whisky. “I’ll have to sell the place, of course. Just to pay the death duties. And I suppose the rest of the money will be sequestered until such time as legitimate inheritance can be proved.”

Michael tried to maintain a neutral expression, so as not to betray his ignorance. “What money is that, Mr. Mathews?”

“The cash in Jennifer’s Second Life account, of course. His goddamned tax-free lump sum that he didn’t want anyone to know about. Least of all me.” He moved toward the window, sipping his whisky, turning his back to them, perhaps to hide his anger and disappointment. But he couldn’t keep it out of his voice. “She told me about it, you see. Rubbing my nose in it. There always was a spiteful side to her. Like father, like daughter. And no amount of expensive therapy could ever remove that nasty little character trait. She knew how pissed off I’d be. Daddy salting away money in a secret account for her so she wouldn’t have to pay taxes on it. Very smart. And in a way, I can’t blame him. You pay taxes on your money all your life. Several times over. And then they tax it again when you’re dead.” He turned back toward them, and they saw the fire of hurt and jealousy in his eyes. “But it should have been equal shares. We came from the same loins.”

He drained his glass.

“So anyway, tell me. Because she didn’t. Exactly how much did he manage to stash way in Linden dollars before she was murdered?”

Michael stared at him, the seeds of understanding beginning to sow themselves for the first time in his mind. “I have no idea.”

“Well, you must know how much money there is in her account, surely?”

“There is no money, Mr. Mathews,” Janey said. “In fact, there is no account. And not even a record of it.”

They headed in silence back across the channel to the boat rental yard, sunlight dancing on the swell of the dozens of boats, large and small, that plied in and out of the harbour. The breeze had got up again, and Michael felt the hot wind tugging at this shirt. He closed his eyes for a moment, turning his face up toward the sky to feel the sun on it.

“Hey, I’d be happier if you kept your eyes on the road, Mr. Driver.”

Michael opened his eyes and looked at Janey. “Someone’s bumping people off for their money, Janey. Secret money that’s hidden away in Second Life accounts. Money that no one’s ever going to report missing, because it shouldn’t be there.”

“Two swallows do not a summer make, Mr. Kapinsky.”

“Eh?”

“Two murders, Mike. That’s all.”

“That we know about. There could be others.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go back inworld and try to track down Jennifer Mathews’ avatar.”

“You think there might be another dead AV, like there was with Maximillian Thrust?”

“It’s possible.”

“And where would that lead us?”

“I’ve no idea. But what else am I going to do? Whoever killed them is still in there, as well as out here. Someone, somewhere, must know something. Do you have those notes we took on her account?”

She slipped a folded sheet of paper from her back pocket and handed it to him. He held the tiller steady with his thigh while he opened it up. Quick Thinker was the AV name she had used. And she had joined at least a dozen different Groups.

“I gotta go back to work,” Janey said. “If it’s a quiet afternoon I’ll see what I can find out about Mathews’ and Smitts’ RLs. See if I can find anything to connect them, apart from SL.”

Michael nodded. “Thanks, Janey.” But he wasn’t very sanguine. He glanced at the time. Eighteen hours of his twenty-four had already gone. Seconds, minutes, hours ticking away, slipping like sand through his fingers. If he didn’t find this Second Life killer in the next six hours, he was as good as dead himself. He looked up and saw his two minders waiting for him on the landing stage. Dark suits and sunglasses, and murderous intent.