Cold Case

Nikki Callivant’s eyes could incinerate him or the well-soaked Leif could desecrate the upholstery of his collector car. He hadn’t helped Leif. In fact, he seemed to have gone out of his way to pretend that he didn’t even know him.

The club was a bad place to be — especially if you weren’t exactly welcome, you were soaking wet, your ride had vanished, and your wallet-phone had picked that moment to die. Leif had finally dried off and called for a cab. The hit to his pride probably matched, if not exceeded, the damage to his Universal Credit Card account. A ride from Wilmington to Washington made for a hefty fare — especially since he’d have to pay for the cab’s empty trip back as well.

Matt could just imagine Leif’s comment as he got in the car: “Driver, I’m about to make you a wealthy man.”

The rest of the night probably hadn’t all been that humorous, Matt was ready to bet. Leif hadn’t much gone into that. But he had mentioned that in the end he’d waited for the cab standing outside on the pillared porch, still slightly damp.

Apparently, the chill of a February night had been preferable to the deep-freeze atmosphere inside the ballroom. Megan, being her usual vengeful self, asked Leif what he was going to do about Dysart.

“We go to the same fencing club,” Leif explained with a barbed smile. “Charlie is not going to enjoy his next practice bout with me.”

Leif had been genuinely embarrassed as he begged his friends’ pardon for the disturbance this latest escapade had caused them.

“I guess it’s nice to know your parents care,” Maj said.

“More than you know.” Leif sighed. “That will be the last time I go out for a bit. I’m grounded for the foreseeable future. I’m not sure which they thought was worse — that I scared ’em by going missing, or what I was up to while I was missing. Dad’s more interested in finance than keeping the family name out of the papers, but my mom—”

“Couldn’t be happy about gaining a Callivant for an enemy,” David finished. “It could even blow back on your father. The Callivants have lots of pull—”

Leif gave an unbelieving laugh. “You’re as bad as Andy with that stupid deportation joke. I traded words with a teenage girl. What are they going to do about it?”

He was a little more serious as the group began breaking up. “Can I have a private word?” he whispered to Matt.

“Your place or mine?” Matt replied.

Moments later they switched from Megan’s amphitheater to Matt’s flying desktop. Grinning, Matt adopted the cross-legged lotus yoga position as he floated in the starry night sky. “What’s up?”

“Just something I was reminded of during my evening in hell,” Leif said. “I wasn’t actually in Wilmington, but in a town outside the city boundaries — a place called Haddington.”

Matt looked at his friend in puzzlement. “And what—”

Leif interrupted, breaking the town name in two. “HADDING-ton. As in a town founded by somebody named Hadding.”

Matt realized his mouth was hanging open, so he shut it. “Those Haddings?”

“A bit of the story I’d forgotten,” Leif admitted. “There was also a really strict chaperon keeping an eye on things. Charlie said she was the widow Hadding, who’d apparently lost a child to some sort of disaster.”

“Pretty weird,” Matt said. “Imagine stumbling over that place — and that lady — right after talking about it.”

Leif nodded. “It reminded me that there are two families involved in the case — two rich families, both of whom can use high-priced lawyers.”

“Why would the Haddings want to hush up all references to their daughter’s death?”

“Some society families might consider murder somewhat…vulgar.” Leif shrugged. “Go figure.”

Matt took a moment to absorb what his friend was saying. “I guess that makes some sort of bizarre sense.”

“I keep telling you, buddy, the rich are different,” Leif said.

“What you’re telling me now is that Ed Saunders may have the reclusive Haddings on his back instead of, or in addition to, the snotty Callivants.” Matt threw out his arms. “More enemies — great! Well, it’s unlikely that I’ll have much chance to discuss the case with Ed. It’s a dead matter now. He’s pulled the plug on the sim.”

As he spoke, one of the icon objects on his floating desktop began to glow — the ear.

“Looks like someone is trying to get in touch with you,” Leif observed.

Matt picked up the icon and gave a command. A list of virtmail messages appeared in the air before him, urgent flames licking around an all-too-familiar name. “Speak of the devil, as the old saying goes.”

Leif craned his neck. The glowing letters were backward from his point of view. “Something from Saunders?”

Matt gave another command, and the floating message shifted to a position where they both could read it.

“Another meeting,” Leif said.

“Because the hacking — excuse me, the ‘attempts at unauthorized data extraction’—have continued.” Matt gave his friend a look. “What is it with lawyers that they need five words to do the work of one?”

Leif shrugged. “What is it with your sim partners that one has to keep sticking his nose—”

“Or hers,” Matt pointed out.

“You’re showing a bit of lawyer there yourself,” Leif joked. “That someone has to stick a gender-nonspecific unpleasant word where it has no business being stuck?”

Matt was rereading the virtmail message. “From the looks of the last paragraph, I’d say the mysterious client must be the Callivants.” He pointed. “The Haddings might be able to threaten Ed the Stork with expulsion from the Social Register. But I think it would take Callivant clout to start an audit on the poor guy’s back taxes.”

Leif nodded. “You going to go to this meeting?” he asked.

“Kind of a waste, talking about a sim that’s not going to happen anymore.” He dismissed the message but didn’t erase it. “After this tax thing, I’m sure Saunders won’t want to work with us.”

“Who are you kidding?” Leif said. “You’ve got a whole new mystery now. The Case of the Hidden Hacker.”

Matt hated when people saw through him so easily. “All right, I’ll probably check it out.”

“Just be careful,” Leif advised. “You guys are already being hit with taxes. Can death be far behind?”

I dressed with special care for tonight’s meeting. It reminded me of the grand finales Lucullus Marten sometimes staged for the end of a case. More likely, though, this would turn out to be the sort of loud argument that usually happened when suspects were drawn, one way or another, into the great man’s office.

Too bad Marten wouldn’t have his special heavy-weight chair to sit in.

I chose a bold — and expensive — silk tie that a wealthy lady friend had given me as a gift. It went well with the blue flannel suit I was wearing. While it was the best in my wardrobe, I figured Mick Slimm would probably appear in something more expensive. He was the kind of guy who’d think nothing of spending five hundred simoleons for a tasteful sport coat. Milo Krantz probably spent even more on his shoes. Spike Spanner could just as easily come in a saber-toothed tiger pelt — something to match his caveman personality.

It took two tries to get the knot the way I like it. I turned to the mirror and did the necessary with the military brushes, then slipped into my jacket. Enough with the preliminaries. I was ready for the main bout.

Matt pulled back from the Monty Newman persona, maintaining his appearance as a proxy image. At a silent command Newman’s virtual bedroom vanished, to be replaced with Matt’s floating workspace.

He knew why he’d let himself sink into the virtual character’s confident, slightly smart-aleck style. Matt was nervous. It was ridiculous. He’d done nothing wrong. Why should he worry over what these people — rivals in a mystery sim — might be thinking about him? More than one of them seemed, as Monty Newman might say, “decidedly loony.”

Why else would a hacker keep digging into the Hadding case after the fictional Van Alst murder had come to a crashing halt? It wasn’t just useless, it was obviously painful for the Callivants — and definitely troublesome for