Both raised martini glasses.
“Mick and Maura Slimm have arrived,” the man announced.
Matt nodded grimly. He’d read about the Slimms — and Krantz — in the sim’s
Last to appear was a burly guy in a shabby trench coat. His tight pink face boasted a broken nose, and the big, hamlike hands sticking out from the coat’s sleeves had scars all over the knuckles. Matt had already encountered him in the sim — Spike Spanner, hard-boiled private eye. He’d been making the same rounds as Monty Newman, gathering information.
Spanner took in the scene around him with angry bloodshot eyes. “How come them bozos got a drink and the rest of us got nothing?” he demanded in a hoarse voice.
“We brought our own, darling,” Maura Slimm replied in a chirpy voice.
Spanner half-leaned against Ed Saunders’s desk, opening drawers. “There oughta be a bottle stashed someplace. Since you invited us here, you should offer us a drink.” He glanced at Matt. “None for the kid, though. Unless he can handle it.”
“You’ve met the young man,” Saunders said. “Although you know him as Monty Newman.”
The other participants in the sim stared at Matt until he felt as though he were standing in his underwear.
Lucullus Marten’s look was more like a glare. He was apparently angry with his erstwhile assistant for showing up as his real self rather than in the sim’s proxy appearance. Shrugging, Matt vocalized a command and turned into Monty Newman.
A little belatedly, he thought he realized why the others had all attended this meeting in their sim personas. They didn’t want to give anything away to their competitors. Now it appeared that Lucullus Marten thought his chances of being first to solve the case had been hurt. The other players knew his legman was just a teenage kid instead of a thirty-something sophisticate.
Maybe it was just as well he hadn’t known. The fat man was unbearable enough under normal conditions. If he now thought he had a reason to rag on Matt…well, the sim might just be a bit more complicated going forward.
Ed Saunders interrupted his thoughts. “Give up on the bottle, Spanner. I called this meeting because of a real-life problem. In the last two weeks I’ve received nasty letters from several lawyers — not ambulance chasers, but partners in big law firms. What you might call power brokers.”
“You mentioned somebody wanting you to cease and desist—” Matt began.
“Quiet, boy,” Lucullus Marten cut in. His colorless eyes bored into Ed Saunders’s face. “Why should anyone have a problem with this…harmless entertainment?”
“There are people who apparently don’t think it’s harmless,” Saunders said angrily. He hunched his shoulders, resting his hands on the desk. Much of his anger, it seemed, was aimed at himself. “I based this mystery scenario heavily on an actual case. I thought it was long enough ago that nobody would care.”
“You mean this was for real?” Spike Spanner growled. “Some rich dame actually got herself ground into chopped meat?”
Maura Slimm waved an empty martini glass at Saunders. “Naughty, naughty. We don’t know that yet — unless you were cheating?”
“Judging from the lawyers’ communications, you certainly miscalculated the amount of disinterest on the part of the affected parties,” Milo Krantz said in a dry voice. “That raises an interesting point. How was your work discovered? While it is of paramount interest to those of us here”—he gestured around the circle of make-believe sleuths—“your divertissement would not, I imagine, be well known in the wider world.”
“It made me wonder, too,” Saunders said grimly. “When the first letters came, I just kept my head down. Figured it might blow over. This latest letter explained a little more. The timing was just great. It came just after my bank called in my college loan.”
His gaze was accusing as he looked at the simulated sleuths. “It seems that somebody — most likely one of you — remembered or came across a reference to the case I was using. Then that somebody began hacking into sealed court records about the case. That set off some alarms in high places, and got the—”
Saunders bit off his words before he gave away the actual name. “It got a very important family — and their lawyers — on my back.”
“Hacking?” Spanner hooked his thumbs in his belt. “That kinda egghead stuff ain’t up my line.”
“I’m offended that you would include me in such insinuations,” Milo Krantz said.
“Maura and I just came along for the fun of it all.” Mick Slimm gave everyone a lazy smile.
“While I don’t appreciate your suspicions, I can understand them.” Lucullus Marten’s scowl grew thunderous. “I can assure you that I have taken no such actions.” He glanced at Matt. “Though I cannot necessarily claim to control the youthful enthusiasm of my associate.”
“Hey!” Matt angrily responded to the veiled accusation. “The only digging I’ve been doing has been inside the sim. You know that.”
“Unless,” Marten rumbled, “you dream of stealing the credit for this case from your own employer?”
“Shocking,” Krantz sniffed.
“I guess that’s what happens when you have to rely on everything coming to you second-hand.” Maura Slimm raised a perfect eyebrow as she looked at Marten.
“Maybe if you got off that fat duff of yours—” Spanner began.
Still hunched at his desk, Ed Saunders rubbed an obviously aching head. “I’d hoped that whoever was responsible would own up — and promise to stop.” He looked around at the circle of odd characters. “Obviously, that’s not going to happen with everybody here, and accusations and arguments will get us nowhere. So I’ll put it this way. Until the hacker contacts me — privately — and gives his word that all further hacking will stop, the sim stays down.”
He sighed. “With nothing to win, there shouldn’t be any reason for anybody to poke around in the real case.”
Leif Anderson shook his head as Matt told him about Ed Saunders’s meeting. “Sounds like your friend Saunders is hopelessly naive.” Leif stretched out on the Danish Modern Revival couch in his simulated living room. Most people created a one-room virtual space. Leif had gone for something bigger — a simulated Icelandic stave house, with ever-changing scenes in the windows. This visit Matt could see a volcano erupting in the distance. Knowing Leif, it was undoubtedly a full-scale, authentic recreation of some actual Icelandic volcano in action — and Leif had probably paid somebody well to provide the touch.
“What would you have done?” Matt was a little annoyed. But then, Matt had the reputation of being the crew’s straight arrow, and probably deserved it.
“I’d have avoided using a real case in the first place. Some lawyers spend their lives looking for trouble they can profit on. Failing that, I’d probably have let the sim go on — and kept an eye out for anyone trying to use information I hadn’t given them,” Leif said.
“Not so easy to wait for somebody to trip up with a bunch of lawyers and a bank breathing down your neck.” Matt scowled. “Not that you’d know how that feels.”
“Hah! Maybe I don’t have to worry about money, but I’ve had lawyers after me before for various things,” Leif replied, stung. “And you know it. I’m a fat lawsuit target. Being rich isn’t always a bowl of cherries all the time.”
“No, especially not if it means getting killed.” Matt frowned, obviously thinking about the case behind the mystery sim he’d been playing in. “It’s weird to think a girl actually died the way I heard about it in the sim.”
Leif looked at him knowingly. “And you’d like to find out more.”
“Maybe,” Matt admitted.
Leif’s smile grew broader. “So what brings you to Uncle Leif instead of an information-meister like David Gray?”
“Apparently asking questions about the case on the Net starts somebody’s spiderwebs jangling,” Matt said. “I figure the last thing my folks want to see is a ‘cease and desist’ letter from some lawyer.”
“And instead, you figure on checking out my knowledge of society gossip and scandal — even though the
