Cold Case

Ed Saunders.

Matt allowed himself to arrive a few minutes late for this meeting, to find the other participants, all proxied up as their fictional sleuth counterparts, sitting in a circle around Saunders’s desk.

Surprise, surprise. Lucullus Marten’s mammoth chair had been included. The big man leaned on his cane, trying to get Maura Slimm out of its vastness — while also trying to avoid bursting a blood vessel.

“Young lady—” he began. The tone was unmistakable. It said, “I am no longer amused. In fact, I never was amused with you.”

“Oh, Lukie,” Maura’s chirpy voice replied, “don’t be a spoilsport.”

“Let him have his seat, darling,” Mick Slimm said.

“Yeah, give him a break,” Spike Spanner put in. “Before he starts breakin’ the furniture.”

Marten settled his bulk in the big leather chair. Matt took a much smaller seat beside him.

“Mr. Saunders,” Marten said, grabbing the role of spokesman, “I’m sure all of us here regret your additional troubles.”

“All, apparently, but one,” Milo Krantz interjected, the light from Saunders’s desk lamp glinting off his spectacles. “I confess myself at a loss, however, as to the manner of finding that person.”

“A fine bunch of sleuths we are,” Mick Slimm joked.

“Yeah,” Saunders said. “That’s the problem.” He looked less like a stork today and more like a hunted rabbit. “So here’s what I’m going to do about it. I’m giving you people twenty-four hours. If the hacker hasn’t contacted me by then, and agreed to stop this nonsense, I’m sending a virtmail to the lawyers, explaining that I’ve stopped the sim — and giving them a list of your actual identities.”

“You can’t do that!” A lot of the perkiness had dropped from Maura Slimm’s voice. “Our privacy—”

“Was waived in the sim agreement you all signed,” Saunders grimly replied. “You should have read the small print. It’s just a form that I copied from the programming handbook, but now I’m glad I did. Maybe, if I cooperate with these people, they’ll stop putting the screws to me and go looking where the trouble is really coming from.”

It was almost funny to see this geekoid trying to look defiant.

Funny, Matt thought, except for the trouble it would cause.

“I’m sorry to do it,” Saunders said. “But you leave me no choice.”

5

That does it, Matt thought glumly. What are they going to do now?

The silence of the other make-believe sleuths only seemed to underscore his gloom.

Surprisingly, Lucullus Marten provided an answer. His heavy, square face moved to take in the half-circle of unhappy sim participants. Then he turned to Ed Saunders.

“Would you mind very much giving us a moment or two of privacy?” the big man asked.

Saunders looked just like a startled bird. “Um — no,” he said. “Take as much time as you need.”

An instant later the sim’s creator had vanished from his seat.

Marten leaned back in his big thronelike seat. “My dear colleagues,” he said. “We face a most onerous accusation — but, it seems, an inescapable one. I was hoping that, in the absence of the teacher, as it were, someone might be willing to admit to a little wrongdoing.”

“Just among us?” Maura Slimm said sweetly.

Marten nodded.

But everyone in the room stayed silent.

Marten blew a great, gusty sigh. “I feared it would not be as easy as that,” he admitted.

“Of course not!” Milo Krantz snapped. “The…hacker”—he made a face as the slang term escaped his lips —“this person would have to be witless to make an admission before witnesses. This is not a case of returning the teacher’s apple to the desk, no questions asked. Legal sanctions have been invoked. There may even be criminal penalties.”

“Well, that little speech should really encourage whoever it is to speak up,” Mick Slimm said tartly.

His wife aimed a suspicious stare at Krantz. “Or maybe you planned it that way to cover yourself. You’ve obviously been doing a lot of thinking about the situation.”

“Again, one would have to be witless not to think of the consequences,” Krantz snapped in reply.

“Let’s just can it,” Spike Spanner growled. “We can talk in circles and point fingers until our time is up.” He tapped a beefy finger to his chest. “I’m telling you I didn’t do it.”

“Nor did I,” Marten spoke almost immediately.

“Well, I certainly wasn’t poking around where I shouldn’t.” Maura Slimm turned to the man lounging against the arm of her chair. “Were you, Mickey?”

“It strikes me as a sucker’s game.” Mick Slimm ran a finger along a carefully clipped mustache. “Saunders was only using this case to provide a framework for whatever would happen in our sim. Who’d know which actual facts he might include — and which he would toss out?”

“I suspect our director would have been wiser to let the charade go on,” Marten rumbled, “while looking to see whether anyone used any of the discarded elements you mentioned.”

“Too late for that,” Krantz sniffed. “How unfortunate you didn’t mention that plan earlier.”

Maura Slimm continued to give the tall man a beady stare. “What I don’t see you mentioning is your innocence, Mr. Krantz.”

The icy blue eyes behind the spectacles rolled in disgust. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Would you prefer it on a Bible?” He put a hand over his heart. “I swear I am not breaking into secret records on this case.” Then Krantz glared round the room. “I trust you’re satisfied?”

“I trust nobody,” Spike Spanner growled, spearing Matt with a look. “Especially someone who won’t take the pledge.”

Matt raised a hand. “I swear I didn’t hack into anything about the actual case behind the sim. I don’t know anything about the Haddings and the Callivants — except what my friend Leif told me.”

“Who?” Mick Slimm said.

“The Haddings?” Marten’s voice rose. “The Callivants?”

Maura Slimm nearly fell off her chair, thrusting an accusing finger at Matt. “You just gave yourself away!” she cried.

Matt hadn’t. He’d purposely thrown in the names of the true parties in this mystery, hoping to surprise a response from one of the sleuths. But the ones who weren’t exclaiming in surprise had better poker faces than Matt had hoped. He’d thrown away his advantage, with nothing to show for it.

“We know the Peytons in the mystery are a big-shot political family,” Spanner said. “That would certainly fit the Callivants, I suppose.”

“Hadding — that’s the real name of the girl who died?” Krantz sat straighter.

Matt nodded. “None of this came off the Net. I’ve got a friend who’s into society scandal. I picked his brains. The actual case didn’t happen in the nineteen thirties, the way Saunders set it up. According to my friend, the case resembles the murder of a girl named Priscilla Hadding, who died back in 1982.”

“Eighty-two?” Spanner echoed. “I was still in diapers then. Who’d remember?”

“Somebody starstruck by the social scene,” Matt suggested. He shot a silent challenge toward Krantz and the Slimms, all famed as society sleuths. Reluctantly he added Lucullus Marten as well. Most of the big man’s cases involved the rich and famous.

“Well, Newman, you shot your bolt,” Marten rumbled. “If you hoped to shock anyone into confessing, you’ve failed. All you’ve done is make yourself the main suspect.”

The whole group settled into mistrustful silence.

At last, Maura Slimm said, “If it was such a big scandal, why isn’t it better-known?”