Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon

coworkers at Mutant Wizards – they adored their hardware and software with a passion I couldn't even begin to understand, much less share. But at the same time, they trusted their cybernetic idols even less than I would have. I'd seen only one programmer whose work space wasn't littered with printouts and backups, and I'd heard Frankie and Jack arguing about whether the best metaphor for that guy was “bungee jumping without a cord“ or “playing Russian roulette with an Uzi.“

And it hadn't been Ted. His cube at work had been as bad a rat's nest of paper and disks as anyone's, until the police hit it. Evidently the police had stripped his home office, too, and the only things I'd find were objects the police had left behind – probably for good reason.

I stood, looking around, and feeling sorry for myself gave way to feeling sorry for Ted. I wondered if he'd actually rented the house, or if he'd only worked out some kind of deal to live in the basement as caretaker until it was sold. No matter how tight housing was, I wasn't sure I'd want to live here, surrounded by the warren of metal shelves Mrs. Sprocket had used to store such treasures as her back issues of the Saturday Evening Post, her empty mason jars, and several dozen rusty metal cemetery flower baskets.

I was working on a good case of melancholia when the doorbell rang again. As I was racing up the stairs to answer it, I tripped over something and fell sprawling on the landing where the L-shaped stairs turned, halfway up. I didn't stop to see what had tripped me – I wanted to take care of the new visitor first.

This time it was Rico. A dressed-up Rico; he'd thrown a plaid sport coat over his design school T-shirt. He was leaning casually against one of the porch pillars. I was tempted to tell him that he didn't have the height to pull off a really classy lean, but I settled for some more practical advice.

“I wouldn't put any weight on that if I were you,“ I said. “One good push could bring the whole porch roof down.“

“Oh, hi, Meg,“ he said. “What are you doing here?“

“Locking up, at the moment,“ I said. “The police have taken all of Ted's computer stuff, so it's no good looking here for the missing Lawyers files.“

“I figured as much,“ he said.

“Then why are you here?“

“To tell you the truth, I was hoping to run into Ted's landlord. He hasn't returned my calls.“

“And why are you looking for Ted's former landlord?“

“Same reason you are, I guess,“ Rico said. “Sooner or later he'll want to rent the place out again. I was hoping to be first in line.“

“The landlord's not here,“ I said. “I guess you'll have to keep trying. See you, Rico.“

“Okay. Any chance you could let me in to –?“

“Good-bye, Rico.“

I stood, pondering for a moment. Ratty as Ted's living quarters were, he had a place to live. And I couldn't remember anyone describing his basement den – all I'd heard were envious comments on how lucky he was to have actually snagged a place outside town. I suspected he'd never had anyone over. And Frankie and Rico both lived back at the Whispering Pines Cabins, four or more to a room. Could Caerphilly's tight housing market actually be a motive for murder? It had certainly caused not a few heated discussions between Michael and me during our yearlong search for living space. And we were sane, rational human beings, for the most part. My coworkers at Mutant Wizards? Yeah, maybe one of them would kill for a place to live. I'd keep it in mind.

Meanwhile, I headed back for the basement stair landing. I hadn't stopped long enough to see what had tripped me, but what I'd seen out of the corner of my eye intrigued me.

“Talk about literally stumbling over evidence,“ I said as I stared down at my discovery.

It was a trapdoor. It had fallen back in place, but fit so tightly that it hadn't quite closed, and I was able to pry it open with a kitchen knife.

“Eureka!“ I exclaimed as the trapdoor popped open to reveal a space about two feet square and filled to the brim with stuff.

I sat down beside the trapdoor and began removing the top items from Ted's secret stash.

On the top were a trio of romance novels, which surprised me a lot more than Ted's small collection of mildly dirty magazines. I'd never have pegged Ted for a romance reader.

But someone had read these books. They were not only heavily thumbed, but marked throughout with a yellow highlighter, as well. All three were by the same author – someone named Anna Floyd who, according to her author biography, lived in the country with her adoring husband and her three darling cats. Two were set in the present day and one in Regency England. I flipped through one of the modern ones and read highlighted quotes. Enlightenment was not forthcoming. If there was a clue here, I'd probably have to read the damned books to figure it out. Later. Much later. Maybe never, if I could first figure out who really killed Ted.

Next was a blue file folder with THE HACKER scribbled on the tab. In it, I found printouts from the Boston Globe Web site – articles about the “Robin Hood Hacker“ case, which I vaguely remembered hearing about a year ago. I browsed a couple of the articles, but they didn't say anything I didn't remember reading before. Young programmer caught hacking into the system of a major New York bank and erasing about five thousand dollars in charges from his girlfriend's account. Major embarrassment for the bank when it turned out that the girlfriend had been trying to dispute the charges for two years – they'd come from Panama, a country she could prove she'd never visited – and she had finally attempted suicide, due to stress resulting from her ruined credit history and the bank's repeated collection calls.

“Maybe I should sic the assertiveness therapist on her,“ I muttered. And hacking the bank was the best Robin Hood could come up with to solve Maid Marian's problem? Didn't these people know why God invented lawyers?

Never mind. All's well that ends well. Robin Hood got off with a warning, and the girlfriend got her good credit rating restored.

So what was so interesting about the case that Ted created a file about it and had to hide the file in his secret compartment?

Maybe Ted was the Robin Hood Hacker? No, the photo of the police escorting the hacker out of his apartment building was pretty blurred, but it couldn't possibly be Ted, who was taller than I and had blondish hair. The hacker had dark hair, and the arresting officers towered over him. Perhaps Ted kept it as a reminder to himself to keep to the straight and narrow? Or was it part of the research for a scheme to hack some other bank? I'd have to work on that.

And I was equally puzzled by the next object – a set of rules from Lawyers from Hell. Not the computer version, but the original role-playing game. I couldn't figure out why Ted would need to hide that. But it looked like an actual original – I could see some annotations in Rob's handwriting. Which meant the thing might have considerable value if Ted planned to sell it on the black market to rabid fans. So maybe he was hiding it because it was valuable. And he didn't trust banks. Or maybe he'd swiped it from someone.

Under the rules, I found a three-year-old copy of PC Gaming magazine. Surprise, surprise. He had a few more of them scattered around the basement, and we had dozens down at the office. What was so special about this copy that he had to hide it? I spotted a paper clip marking a page and turned to that article. Representatives from half a dozen gaming companies talked about the future of the industry. I chuckled. Since Rob was still inventing the paper version of Lawyers from Hell three years ago, anything they'd said about the future was probably a little off base by now.

Ted's secret stash wasn't turning out to be as exciting as I expected, I thought, suppressing a yawn.

Next I found a sheet of paper containing a number of strings of numbers with dots in die middle. A month ago, I'd have been puzzled; now, thanks to my time at Mutant Wizards, I knew that a Web site address, like www.mutantwizards.com was the pretty name humans used, while our computers looked for long strings of numbers. When I got back to the Cave, I could log on to the Internet and type in the numbers to see where they led. Not that I expected one of them to turn out to be www.whokilledtedandwhy.com or anything really useful like that.

Beneath the IP addresses, I found several long, abstruse legal documents. I got through a few paragraphs before deciding I'd better keep them for bedtime reading.

And at the bottom of the compartment, I found what looked like a small flashlight. I checked it out – aha! It was actually a small portable black light. Which did solve my problem of how to get my hands on one so I could check the mail cart path. But I couldn't think of any good reason for Ted to have hidden it here. Everyone knew he