She pulled a bright yellow plastic flash drive from her own purse. “I keep all my picture albums on this one. I could hide it anywhere.”
“Tell me about it,” Richards said wearily. She had a purple one in her shoulder bag that she could use on any computer to jot quick notes to herself for writing up fuller reports. “I wonder if her daughter knows?”
She pulled out her cell phone, located the number Dee Bradshaw had given her, and put the question to her directly.
“A flash drive?” asked Dee. “Sure. I gave her one last fall.”
She didn’t know where her mother kept it, “But if you find it and she hasn’t changed it, the password’s
“Hot water? All one word?”
“Right.”
“The thing is,” said Ginsburg when Richards relayed that information, “it’s been my experience that white-collar criminals usually keep their data handy so they can get at it easily.”
She had already powered down the laptop and stashed it in the black carrying case, a case that had first been thoroughly searched, and she had pulled several paper files as well.
Together, she and Richards examined every inch of the cherry desk, taking out the drawers and looking for evidence of tape on the backs or undersides. They ran their fingers into the crevices of Bradshaw’s padded swivel executive’s chair in case she’d slipped a thin DVD case or flash drive there. The only other places within easy reach were her wastebasket and file cabinet.
Again, nothing.
“The drapes?” asked Ginsburg.
The desk did sit in front of the heavy rose-colored damask drapes, so that the chair faced the door in the opposite wall. Easy to swivel around to a pocket on the backside of the drapes.
“The chair’s on casters,” Mayleen pointed out, and there was enough space between the desk and wall to roll out while still seated, so they widened the range. Unfortunately, the only other items in the room were the dollhouse, a half-empty chest of drawers, a white velvet love seat that made into a single bed for overnight guests, and a small closet that held four winter coats and jackets.
Ginsburg swung the dollhouse around on its casters. She hadn’t paid it much attention before and she was charmed by the detailed nursery on the third floor. Not so charmed, however, that she didn’t look under the embroidered white crib blanket or the white satin coverlet on the bed in an adjoining room.
The chest received the same thorough examination as the desk. Ditto the love seat when they opened it. Ditto the closet. In the end, they even lifted the area rug that sat atop the white Berber carpet. No papers.
“Maybe Tina’s having more luck at the office,” Ginsburg said when they finally called it quits.
“Hey, look what my metal detector turned up in her bedroom floor,” Denning said from the doorway. He held out a clear plastic evidence bag and they saw a bullet slug. “The pile’s so thick on that carpet, I missed it completely the first time around.”
At Bradshaw Management, the interviews with Candace Bradshaw’s office staff had elicited the information that their boss did occasionally use a flash drive when she worked on the computer.
“Oh, yes,” one of the billing clerks nodded when specifically asked. “You see how her desk faces the door? She said it was feng shui, but I think it was because she didn’t want anybody to ever see what was on her screen. And if you went around her desk to show her a paper or something without being asked, she’d jump down your throat. Sometimes she’d make me wait till she closed whatever was on her screen and she’d unplug her memory stick and put it in her purse or her pocket. She never left it plugged in.
“You know something?” said Gracie Farmer when Dwight Bryant and Agent Terry Wilson questioned her again amid the lush tropical decor of her office. “Mindy’s right. I’d forgotten about it.”
The opening and closing of her door when they entered had set the wooden parrots behind her gently swaying on their perches until Terry almost expected to hear them squawk. As he sat down in a chair near one of the large flowering plants, a leaf brushed his neck and he could not repress an instinctive swat of his hand, as if it had been a tarantula or some sort of equatorial pest.
“You know how you get so used to seeing somebody do the same thing over and over till you just don’t notice? Candace and I had a lunch meeting with a new client last winter, a twenty-unit rental apartment on North Street. We set it up for one o’clock, but he called us at twelve-twenty, wanting to know where the heck we were because he thought we’d agreed on twelve. We went rushing out and were halfway to the restaurant when she remembered she’d forgotten to pull the flash drive. I couldn’t talk her into waiting. She dropped me at the restaurant and went right back for it. So yeah, whatever she used it for, she sure didn’t want anybody else getting their hands on it.”
As she spoke, Farmer automatically tidied her desk, squaring the corners of the file folders in front of her, placing paper clips and stray pens in the brightly decorated miniature oxcart that served as the desk’s catchall.
“She even bought one of those digital shredders on a CD and ran it on her computer a couple of times a week. I just assumed she was being extra careful with confidential board business because there’s no need for anything like that with the business.”
As she talked, both men were sizing her up. There was nothing she could do about her Jay Leno–size jaw, but she seemed to take pains with her hair and makeup. Although she was a few pounds overweight, today’s colorful outfit consisted of a rainbow-banded peasant skirt, an orange tunic, and a necklace of small wooden multihued flowers. She could have stepped out of one of the Costa Rica travel posters on her wall. Her hands showed her age, though, and her closely trimmed nails gave mute testimony that she could still push a mop or scrub a toilet bowl if need be.
“What time does the office here close?” Dwight asked.
The office manager smiled and shook her head. “Technically, it doesn’t. We lock the front door at five and put
