Scattered Graves

smiling at him.

‘‘So,’’ said Neva. ‘‘How are we going to proceed?

Do we know that Bryce didn’t kill Spence Jefferies?

He killed Edgar Peeks.’’

‘‘No, we don’t know,’’ said Diane. ‘‘But I think

there is someone who does. He as much as told me.’’ ‘‘Who?’’ said Neva.

‘‘The cyberghost,’’ said Diane.

Chapter 48

‘‘The cyberghost told us?’’ said Neva, squeezing a slice of lemon over her salmon. ‘‘I must have missed that.’’

Diane was glad they had a name to call him. She was about to settle on Fred.

‘‘Yes,’’ said Diane, ‘‘he told us.’’

Diane took a bite of her salmon and they all settled into eating their meals of steaks, lasagna, and salmon. Diane supplied drinks from her refrigerator. It didn’t take long for the restaurant staff to bring Izzy’s ham burger, and he ate with the rest of them.

‘‘Remember I asked it, ‘Do you know who killed Jefferies and Peeks?’ ’’ said Diane after a moment. ‘‘It said, ‘No. But you should have asked a better question. Remember I am a computer.’ I told it I didn’t know what it meant and it said, ‘Good.’ I asked it if it was lying and it said, ‘I am exactly not lying.’ ’’

‘‘You remember all that?’’ said Neva.

‘‘It was an odd conversation,’’ said Diane.

‘‘I know, but still . . .’’ Neva let the sentence trail off.

‘‘So,’’ said David, ‘‘if you had said, ‘Do you know who killed Jefferies or Peeks,’ you would have gotten a different answer.’’

‘‘Yes,’’ said Diane, ‘‘exactly.’’

‘‘You got me on that one,’’ said Izzy.

‘‘The words and and or are very important when you are talking to a computer,’’ said David, ‘‘or a guy, or gal, pretending to be a computer.’’

He left his steak and went to Jonas’ computer and started plugging it in. Diane took one more bite of her salmon and joined him. Gradually the others came over too, all looking over his shoulder. He plugged in a flash drive before he booted up.

The computer came to life with a low whirring sound and the glow of the screen. Other than that, nothing happened. No offers to play chess, no simu lated voice, no ghost.

‘‘Well, damn,’’ said Jin. ‘‘You think it’s me?’’

‘‘Yeah, Jin, it’s you. He doesn’t like you. If you left, he’d come back,’’ said Neva, rolling her eyes.

David started typing, and several windows came up on the screen; one of them showed what looked to Diane like machine language. Presumably David was searching for an errant program. After a few minutes she went back to her food, as did everyone else except Frank. He and David sat, heads together, over the computer, muttering to each other. Diane couldn’t un derstand anything they were saying. She was taking the last bite of her baked sweet potato when she heard the voice.

‘‘Hello, Jonas. How about a nice game of chess?’’

‘‘How very WarGames!’’ cried Jin. He was the first to the computer. ‘‘Yes; say yes.’’

‘‘Jin, will you please contain yourself in some way?’’ said David.

David and Frank watched the split windows as the voice spoke.

‘‘You want to talk to it?’’ said David to Diane.

Diane sat down at the keyboard. This is not Jonas. It is Diane, she typed.

‘‘Hello, Diane. This is a surprise. You are on Jonas’ computer.’’

Yes. You startled Jonas, Diane typed.

‘‘I am sorry. I did not mean to. I just wanted to play chess.’’

Why? Diane typed.

‘‘I know how to play chess and so does he. It is something we have in common,’’ it said.

How do you know Jonas knows how to play chess? Diane typed.

‘‘He has Chessmaster on his computer. I found it,’’ it said. ‘‘Jonas beat Chessmaster twelve times. Do you play chess, Diane?’’

Yes. Jonas and I play often, Diane typed.

‘‘Chess is good,’’ it said.

‘‘This is just so cool,’’ said Jin.

‘‘This is a computer program,’’ said David, looking at Diane. ‘‘It’s not a guy on instant messages.’’