On the third hand, she and Fred hadn’t spent fifteen years raising Jessica so some madman could kill her, and if all Tina Wong wanted was a simple confirmation that someone had been here—
Dahlia’s fingers flew over the keyboard for a few seconds, and finally she nodded. “Okay, Caroline Fisher was a patient here, too.”
“Can you tell me if the same people accessed both those girls’ records?” Tina pressed. “I’m not asking for names — just whether anybody worked with both of them.”
Dahlia opened a second window on her computer screen and pulled up Kimberly Elmont’s records, then pulled up pop-ups in both windows that showed the names and dates of everyone who had ever accessed them.
Both lists were short, and none of the names appeared on both lists. Then, just as she was about to close the window on the Elmont record, she noticed something: the last entry on the access record showed a date, but no name. Dahlia’s brows furrowed as her eyes shifted to the Fisher girl’s file.
“What is it?” Tina Wong asked. “What did you find?”
“Now, that’s not right,” Dahlia muttered, barely even aware that she’d spoken out loud.
“What’s not right, Dahlia? What did you find?”
“Kimberly Elmont’s file was accessed two weeks ago, but there’s no log-on information. And the same thing with the Fisher girl. A little over a year ago someone looked at her file, but there’s no log-on information.”
“What does that mean?” Tina pressed.
Dahlia opened her mouth, but before she could say anything she remembered to whom she was talking. If there was a hole in the hospital’s security system, the last thing she needed was for Tina Wong to know about it before she told her boss. “Probably nothing,” she said. “It’s just a violation of policy, that’s all. Now I’ll have to try to run it down and write up the violations.”
Tina smiled knowingly. “Someone hacked into the computer, didn’t they?”
“I didn’t say that,” Dahlia replied. “And if you say I did, our lawyers will be contacting you.” She rose to her feet, fully intending to escort the newswoman out of the Records Office so she could close the door, lock it, and then get on the phone to her boss to report her discovery. But then an image of her daughter rose in her mind, and she hesitated before saying, “You promise you won’t quote me? You won’t use this on the air at all?” She saw the excitement in Tina Wong’s eyes as the reporter swore she’d keep whatever she was told to herself. “It’s not supposed to happen,” Dahlia said. “It’s supposed to be impossible to access our records without logging on. It’s probably just a glitch in the system, and there’s nothing wrong at all.”
“But you don’t think so,” Tina said quietly.
Dahlia looked directly into her eyes. “Please, Miss Wong, if you say anything about this on the air, I’ll lose my job. But I have a daughter about the same age as Kimberly Elmont.”
“I’ll keep it confidential,” Tina assured her. “But even if it gets out, don’t worry about it — you haven’t done anything wrong.”
After Tina Wong was gone, Dahlia sat staring at her monitor, trying to figure out what she should do next. She pulled up a few random files, hoping the same unidentified access would show, but on every record she looked at, each access had proper log-on identifications listed.
So maybe Tina Wong was right.
Maybe these were the only two.
But what if there was another?
And what if no one found it until someone else was murdered?
She printed out the two records and headed to the hospital administrator’s office, deciding that even if she’d told Tina Wong too much, her boss had to know their records were no longer secure.
14
“DINNER IN FIVE MINUTES, MISS ALISON.”
The disembodied voice coming out of the intercom didn’t startle Alison half as much this evening as it had last night, partly because she’d heard it before, but mostly because now she at least knew who it was: Maria, who worked for her stepfather five days a week, coming in sometime in the afternoon and not leaving until after dinner. In fact, she might not have jumped at all if she hadn’t still been staring at the clothes she’d found in her closet five minutes ago.
She’d been intending to take a minute to change her blouse before she went downstairs, but then she opened the closet and saw them. Half a dozen pairs of slacks hanging neatly on wooden hangers, covered with transparent plastic covers, as if they’d just come from the cleaners. Next to them were just as many blouses, wrapped the same way. At first she thought they must be her mother’s and that Maria had just put them in the wrong closet, but she didn’t recognize them as her mother’s. At least, she didn’t recognize the pants — they were mostly in shades practically everyone had. But the blouses were gorgeous, and if her mother had ever worn any of them, she would have remembered. She took one off its hanger.
Not quite new.
And the label was Roberto Cavalli.
It had to be expensive, and even though it was gorgeous, it wasn’t the kind of thing her mother would ever have worn, let alone bought. So where had it come from?
She was still examining the clothes, all of which were from designers just as famous — and no doubt as expensive — as Cavalli when she heard Maria’s voice through the intercom.
“Be right down,” she replied. Grabbing one of her own blouses from the back of the closet, she quickly put it on, closed the closet door, and headed down to the dining room.
Just like last night, her mother and stepfather were looking almost lost at one end of the huge table, the seat across from her mother waiting for her.
Her mother, a goblet of white wine held halfway to her lips, paused to smile at her. “How was the first day at school?” she asked.
Suddenly wishing she’d changed her pants as well as her blouse before coming down, Alison perched uncomfortably on the edge of her chair, feeling lost in the ornate dining room. It didn’t help that her hair was still wet from the pool party. At least she’d combed it back and tied it into a ponytail so it wasn’t making her shoulders damp, and if she didn’t lean back, it wouldn’t get the velvet upholstery on the chair wet, either. “It was okay,” she finally admitted. “I hear the lit teacher is tough, but it’s my favorite subject, so I’m not too worried.”
“See?” Risa said. “All that worrying was for nothing.”
Alison’s eyes avoided her mother’s. “I guess.”
Risa cocked her head, eyeing her daughter appraisingly. Something, obviously, was wrong. Or at least not right. “And you went swimming with some new friends?” she prompted.
Alison kept her eyes on the plate Maria set in front of her. “It seems they were told to invite me.”
“Told to?” her mother echoed. “What do you mean, ‘told to’?”
Alison finally looked at her mother. “Conrad called their parents and told them to be nice to the new kid.”
“Oh, Lord,” Risa said, slowly setting her wineglass down and turning to Conrad.
“I was just trying to help,” he said before either his wife or his stepdaughter could say anything. “I thought —”
Risa laughed. “You thought what any man with no children would think. But all you did was make Alison feel like—”
“An idiot,” Alison finished, supplying the word her mother had hesitated to use. “How could you do that?” she said to her stepfather. “I was so embarrassed I wanted to die! How could you even—”
“But you didn’t die,” Risa intervened, hoping to head off the conversation before anyone lost their temper. “Conrad was just trying to make sure you didn’t spend the day with no one talking to you. It was a nice thing to do.”
Alison bit her lips, but said nothing.
