Cold Case

“You pestered a friend of mine,” Nicola Callivant spoke remorselessly on. “Forced your company on her. Embarrassed her. Do you speak French, Mr. Anderson? Maybe you’ll understand a few of the words she had to say about you. Parvenu. Arriviste.”

As she spoke, Leif couldn’t help noticing the fine-boned sculpting of Nikki Callivant’s nose — even though she was looking down it at him.

“Declasse,” she finally concluded her insulting list.

Leif’s French was impeccable, better than hers was if the accent was anything to go by. He understood each painful word. Social climber. Upstart. Lower class.

“So who had all these nice things to say about me?” he asked in a carefully level tone of voice.

Nikki Callivant’s right eyebrow rose in a perfect arch. “Is it a hobby of yours? Are there so many women who might say such things that you can’t guess? Do you push yourself on every woman you meet?”

“It’s an exercise in masochism.”

The girl’s lips twisted in disgust. “A friend of mine from New York. Courtney Hardaway.”

Leif spread his hands. “Well, there you go. Courtney did have to put up with me. Just as I had to put up with her. We were forced together by my parents — and by hers. Hardaway Industries was getting a big cash transfusion from my dad’s company.” He made a modest, waving-away gesture. “Yes, I know. Crude. New money. Not like yours. But then, my father had certain handicaps. His family was busy being oppressed while your family was busily war profiteering during World War Two.”

Beside him, Leif heard Charlie Dysart make a noise somewhere between a gasp and a gulp.

Nicola Callivant showed her breeding, however. First, her perfect face went pale as marble. Then her cheeks burned bright red. “How dare you!” she grated. “I am a Callivant!”

“And I’m an Anderson,” Leif replied. “Thanks for teaching me an important lesson. I wouldn’t have believed it. But there are worse snobs on this earth than Courtney Hardaway.”

Spinning on his heel, he stalked away.

4

The moons of Jupiter continued their stately orbital dance around the swollen bulk of their mother planet. Megan O’Malley took a long minute to study the view from her seat in the stone amphitheater cut into the crust of Ganymede. This was her personal virtual space, big enough to hold the largest crowd — like all her friends from the Net Force Explorers.

She finally brought her eyes down to stare at the guest of honor in disbelief. “You actually dissed a Callivant — and lived?”

“There were a couple of tight moments,” Leif Anderson admitted. “But I managed to get out of there before the lynch mob was able to find a rope.”

Andy Moore laughed. “Even so, word will get out. I mean, what you did is like taking a whiz on the Washington Monument. Aren’t you afraid your folks will get deported or something?”

Leif rolled his eyes. “Please.”

Megan figured the subject of parents was probably a painful one for Leif right now. The Andersons had returned late last night to find Leif not at home, long after he was expected back from the party. They’d tried to contact him on his wallet-phone — and had gotten no answer. So they’d called around to Leif’s Washington friends, waking up a lot of people, not finding their wandering son…and, in the end, leading to this virtual meeting of the crew, who had finally tracked Leif down, at home, just before dawn. Everybody wanted to find out what really happened.

So far, Megan had to admit, the story had been pretty entertaining.

“So how come your folks couldn’t get through to you?” Maj Greene demanded.

Leif smiled, but his eyes moved just a little too much. “My phone crapped out.”

The needle on Megan’s mental BS meter flicked. Leif was not being honest. “How could that be? I thought you had the top-of-the-line, latest-model, most expensive wallet-phone known to humankind.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Leif really didn’t want to answer this. “You’d think it would be waterproof.”

“Water-resistant. It is. How’d you let it get wet enough to kill it?” Megan hooted in derision.

“Can I help it if I ended up in a fountain, thanks to some of Nikki’s Neanderthal male friends? Do you know how long it took for me to dry out?

“How could you let that happen?” David Gray asked in disbelief. “Didn’t you have any warning?”

Leif wouldn’t meet their eyes. “Oh, I saw them coming. I just figured I could talk my way out of it.”

“Yeah,” Megan repeated, “like you did with Nikki Callivant, you silver-tongued devil.” She shook her head. “I’m beginning to believe that study on HoloNews — the one that says ninety percent of problems result from human error.”

“Forget about your folks being deported,” Andy said with a malicious grin. “How long would you last in the Net Force Explorers if word of this got out?”

His tone was somewhere along the line of “Hey, rich boy, how much is our silence worth to you?”

Megan gave Andy a sharp look. “This from the genius who dragged a virus into the system for last month’s meeting.”

“How did you—” Andy began. He quickly shut up under the glares of everyone in the virtual hangout. “It was supposed to be a joke.”

“Very funny, Moore,” Maj Greene growled. “I wasted hours making sure nothing had infiltrated my system.”

Matt Hunter, who’d been very quiet up to now, suddenly leaned forward. “What was this Nicola Callivant like?”

“Pretty snotty, it sounds like,” Maj said flatly.

“Not a good first impression — on either of our parts, that’s for sure,” Leif agreed. Then he was looking up at the planetarium show overhead. “But she was surprising, too. Pictures don’t do Nikki Callivant justice. They make her look like some kind of starved waif doll. But when you see her in person, there’s something else…something more.”

“Right,” Andy Moore joked. “There’s that rotten personality.”

Megan didn’t pay attention. She was giving silent commands to her computer. An instant later, Nicola Callivant’s image floated in front of Megan, for her eyes only.

Leif had been surprisingly careful, not calling the girl pretty. But seeing her in a formal gown, that was exactly the word that came to Megan’s mind. Nikki Callivant did look like a doll — a high-fashion model doll.

Megan struggled to keep her face still as she vented a sigh of frustration. Looks like Leif’s off on another wild chick chase, she thought. Boys and their hormones. What can you do with them? Even a thorough dunking didn’t cool him off.

Sooner or later, she was sure, Leif would come back to earth again — probably with a thud. She had seen the pattern often enough. The only problem was that the Callivant clan was tightly knit, not terribly kind to outsiders, and all too powerful.

If Leif decides to make a fool of himself over her, I hope he doesn’t get any of the other guys involved.

She looked at him, still singing the praises of the girl who’d insulted him. He can play with fire if he wants to, but I don’t want anyone else burned.

For Matt Hunter, Leif’s story of the doings at the Delmarva Club gave a fascinating — and not too pleasant — peek into the world of the rich and powerful. Leif might joke about lynch mobs, but he had undoubtedly passed quite a few uncomfortable minutes after his run-in with Nicola Callivant.

That Charlie Dysart must be a real piece of work, Matt thought as the others began cheerfully ragging on Leif and Andy Moore. Matt couldn’t imagine leaving a friend dangling in the wind — especially if he’d been responsible for putting the friend out there in the first place.

But that’s what Dysart had done. Leif’s ride home had suddenly vanished into the crowd, probably before