“No,” she said, looking sheepish. It was appealing because of its rarity value. Karren did not make unforced errors. “Forgot to take a note of it off the log. Duh.”
Indeed. One of the first rules of the job is to get a potential client’s phone number. I smiled and said something about it being no great loss.
As she settled down to bash out e-mails, I picked up one of the office handsets and scrolled laboriously back through the log of incoming calls. I went more slowly once I got back to Tuesday morning, knowing that what I was attempting would likely be hard—as we get a lot of calls, almost all with local codes.
I was about to give up when I saw a number I thought I recognized, however. I cross-checked with my phone and confirmed it. When I’d been sitting with Hazel outside Jonny Bo’s, a call had come into the office from the number I had stored for Melania’s cell phone.
“Karren—he called the office himself, right? Warner? Not his assistant.”
“It was him.”
“And not a pass-through? A ‘Got my asshole boss on the line, will you take a call from Planet 1970s’?”
Karren actually laughed, unaffectedly, a sound I hadn’t heard before. “Nope.”
I didn’t know what to make of that.
Kevin the Geek was a cheap lunch date, professing himself a big fan of some grilled sandwich on offer at Starbucks. I met him at the one on St. Armands Circle and left him at a table with my laptop while I ran a few errands. I performed these with about a third of my mind. The bulk was taken up with trying to work out whether to try calling Steph, and with wanting a cigarette, pretty badly. I didn’t call her, though I sent another SMS. I didn’t buy any Marlboro Lights, either.
“What’s the deal with the word ‘Modified’?” Kevin asked, when I returned.
I stiffened as I sat down, horrified that I’d somehow screwed up throwing away the pictures, and the folder was still there on my desktop. “Why do you ask?”
“You got about ten, twenty folders called that. Plus, it’s what you named your hard drive, right?”
“No,” I said, concerned that I hadn’t even noticed this the night before. “It was called, well, whatever the default is. Hard Drive, HD . . . I can’t remember.”
“Well, I’ll add that to the Pile of Strangeness, but I’ll warn you it’s a very small pile. You got nothing on here that raises a red flag. No keystroke recorders. Nothing unusual when it comes to wifi. Built-in firewall operating as it should, no suspicious ports open. Your machine is clean, basically, and your desktop as tidy as any I’ve ever seen. I have given it a gold star.”
“So what does that imply?”
“One of two things,” he said, looking a little uncomfortable. “Either someone is cruising your gated ’hood—a person who can grab passwords and whatnot out of the air and also tunnel back through a firewall to change folder and drive assignations.”
“How hard would that be?”
“Reasonably hard.”
“So what’s the
“Physical access to your laptop. It’s by far the simplest explanation. Sending e-mail is a formality. Your browser will have saved a cookie, which means ordering off Amazon is easy, too, unless you log out every time, which no one does. And renaming folders and disks is
“There’s only one person who’d have access to my laptop,” I said. “My wife.”
Kevin didn’t say anything. He just looked a little more uncomfortable.
As we walked out of the coffeehouse, someone called out Kevin’s name. We turned together to see Cassandra the ice cream girl coming along the sidewalk.
“Oh my lord,” she said. “What cataclysmic online dating accident brought
“Hey, Cass,” Kevin mumbled. In the presence of a Real Live Girl his geekiness trebled in intensity. “What’s up?”
“Well, you know, you know,” she said, pausing to light a cigarette, her hands cupping around it in the process, as if to protect against a strong wind. “Still bathing in the glory of having kicked your ass.”
I presumably had the air of a human question mark. The girl blew out a mouthful of smoke and smiled. I watched the smoke dissipate into the hot air.
“Me and Kevs—or Lord Kevinley of Benjamin’s Estate—lately hang in the same gaming crowd,” she explained. “We were both at a meatspace meet-up last night for some convivial Dark Ages fragging fun. Lady Cassandra of the Eternal Lurid Flame—that would be me—proved
“ ‘Meatspace’?”
She held up her hands to indicate the universe in general. “This hot, smelly place that some do call ‘The Real World’ and in which we are constrained to hang out. At least some of the time.”
Kevin chuckled appreciatively, and I realized he didn’t mind losing at whatever this dumb game was, at least not to this girl—and that her presence in the much-maligned Real World probably had a lot to do with him playing the game in the first place.
“Gotta head,” Cassandra said. “Kevs, see you in the chatterverse, stat. Mr. Moore, I’ll be dishing the frozen cow squirt later, should you wish to drop by.”
Kevin and I watched her go, like a cool breeze departed, and then got into my baking car.
I dropped him back at the main Shore premises up at Ocean View, then drove thoughtfully back down to The Breakers. As I parked I saw that Karren was sitting at a table outside the deli. She glanced at me when I got out of the car, and then back down at her hands.
I walked over. “You okay?”
“Kind of. The police are on their way.”
“Why?”
“They think David Warner might be dead.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They arrived twenty minutes later. I was still sitting with Karren, whose take on the situation boiled down to: it wasn’t like we’d really known the guy, but, you know, wow, freaky shit. My own take was more complicated. So complicated, in fact, that I was glad to have Karren’s to listen to instead. The police car finally came around the loop and parked in front of our office. Deputy Hallam got out the driver’s side, Sheriff Barclay the other. I’d often thought, somewhat dismissively, that if you wanted to cast a typical good old boy sheriff, Barclay would be perfect. Over six feet tall, big hands, broad shouldered, that gut. As he walked over toward our table, however, he didn’t look like someone you should dismiss in any way at all.
“Morning, Mr. Moore. And you’re Karren White?”
We agreed that was who we were.
“You want to take this into your office?”
I shook my head. “Here’s good.” I didn’t want to be taken inside. It would have felt as if I had something to hide from general view.
Barclay gestured at Hallam, who pulled over a couple of chairs. “You know why we’re here?”
“Karren told me. So . . . what’s happened, exactly?”
“We knew that, we wouldn’t be here. Or we’d be here differently.”
Karren spoke sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” the sheriff said. “I don’t think either of you has anything at all to do with David Warner’s disappearance. I mean, from what Ms. White told me, you were hoping to sell his house.”
“That’s correct,” I said.
“Right now we’re not sure what happened, or when. Two hours ago we entered the Warner property. We discovered evidence that he may have been abducted, and could also have been either injured or even killed.”
“ ‘Evidence’?”
“The digital record from his security system has been removed. CSI found traces of blood in the kitchen, and
