Cold Snap (4 page)

"I have other obligations, Monsieur," she
said courteously. "And quite honestly, you have had only a small
taste. Do you really enjoy this?"

"You're preparing coq au vin?"

"A special request from Monsieur Mackenzie's
employer."

"A man of taste," said Ari, who promptly cast
off the pretense of measured reserve. "But here…isn't this garlic
soup?"

"I was advised by Madame to prepare a variety
of dishes." She hesitated. "This is the French equivalent of 'meat
and potatoes'. It’s very rare that I take on true gourmet
cooking."

Ignoring this confession, Ari pressed ahead.
"Could you come to my house at least two days a week? I would make
it worth your while."

"There are French restaurants in Richmond,"
the woman observed, but a skeptical moue betrayed her opinion of
them.

"I have heard rumors of such," Ari admitted.
"I have also heard..."

"But they're popular," was Madame Mumford's
half-hearted defense of local Gallic cuisine, as though she was
obligated to stand up for her adopted city.

"Are you also adept at baking bread—"

"No, Monsieur," she said, again brushing past
him with the gruffness of necessity. "I wouldn't dare try to
compete with a good Parisian patissier. I've resigned myself to a
bakery in Carytown. It's decent enough."

"Compared to Wonder Bread," Ari smiled.
Madame Mumford laughed.

"Please, Monsieur..."

"Of course," Ari sighed. He burned his finger
getting another taste of the sauce, then reluctantly withdrew.

He had barely entered the living room before
a hand was jutted in his direction.

"Mr. Ciminon?" The speaker had bright
childlike eyes, a creamy childish complexion, a face unlined by age
or mundane experience. He seemed young enough, almost, to join the
children in the basement. In some respects, he resembled the
ageless Matt Mackenzie.

"I am Ari Ciminon," Ari acknowledged,
accepting the smooth, cool hand.

"I'm Bristol Turnbridge. I work with
Matt."

"Ah," said Ari with warm courtesy. "This has
something to do with computers?"

"A lot to do with computers," said Tracy as
she glided past them. She must have felt a chill and had donned a
chiffon scarf, which she used to tag each man in turn. "Be nice to
him, Ari. This is Matt's boss." And then she floated away, like a
purple cloud caught in the slipstream.

Bristol batted away this kittenish behavior
with a practiced gesture, like a man familiar with false
seductions. "Matt's a rad guy, knows his COBOL and JCL like
nobody's business. We were subbed to help transfer a pipe and
wellhead warehouse and he had to sort out 300,000 material codes.
Can you imagine?"

Ari received this with a deferential nod
intended to convey his incomprehension.

"I get the impression you don't know what I'm
talking about," Bristol smiled.

"I am limited to passwords and primitive
databases," Ari confessed.

"Too bad necessity can be so boring," Bristol
shrugged, his mimosa quivering in his champagne glass. "Lucky for
me, I love the boring stuff. I guess it's really boring next to
your job. Tracy tells me you work for the Cirque du Soleil. They're
based in Montreal, aren't they?"

Ari shrugged, not wanting to elaborate on a
lie that was getting out of hand. Interpreting this as unwarranted
modesty, Bristol continued: "You go up to Canada a lot?"

"Occasionally."

"You're not very well placed, are you? The
Cirque has shows all over the world, right? Richmond isn't very...
well, central."

"It has an international airport.''

"It's to laugh."

Ari found his laugh a little too calculated,
as though a rough edge had been consciously filed smooth.

"Try to find a direct flight to anywhere but
LaGuardia."

Both men sensed piercing eyes and turned to
see Rebecca Wareness glaring at them from across the room. She
looked haggard and depleted. She turned away.

"Rebecca seems to be a little bit challenged
in the tact department," said Bristol with a pronounced blush.

"Yes," Ari said uneasily, giving the woman a
sad glance.

"Huh?" said Bristol, surprised. "What did you
do to piss her off?"

He couldn't very well tell Bristol that
Rebecca suspected him of being a potential child molester. He was
equally disinclined to admit the central character in his dispute
with Diane's mother was a cat. "It's a stress between neighbors,"
he finally conceded.

''That's an interesting way of putting it.
What is it, if you don't mind my asking? You don't live next door
to her, do you? I thought it was that flagpole guy, the one always
nagging Tracy about her parties."

So he knew about Howie Nottoway's attempt to
plant the Colors in his front yard. The neighborhood association
had not only scotched such overt patriotism, but compelled him to
remove the haplessly vacant pole. It was the pole, in fact, that
had offended association sensibilities. It did not surprise him
that Tracy had told Bristol the story. But now he was beginning to
wonder if she was the one who had filed the original complaint
against Howie. Tit for tat

"I live one door down from her, on the
river."

"Oh, where the Riggins family..."

"Yes." Ari was fairly certain he had solved
the crime, but the only one who knew the truth was Sphinx. And,
being a cat, he was not inclined to provide any details.

"That doesn't give you..." Bristol gave a
flip to his light brown hair, as though adjusting his nerves. "You
know, the willies?"

"'Willies'? That's a form of
nervousness?"

"You could say that."

"I hear no footsteps other than my own, if
you're speaking of ghosts."

"Ha!" Again, the manicured laugh. "Here I am,
IT to the wazoo, pure logic, and I still get the shivers. 'The
ghost in the machine', I guess. We engineer all these programs,
then half the time can't figure out what the computers are doing.
So...if you're one house away, what could be so awful between you
and Rebecca?"

"Do you live in this neighborhood?" Ari
inquired.

"Uh...no. But I live on the river."

There was a hint of denigration in his tone,
as if this neighborhood was too lowly for the likes of a
millionaire. Or multimillionaire. Or the like.

"Yes?"

"I fired her husband. Which is even worse
than it sounds, because he's gone and disappeared. I hope she
doesn't think I had anything to do with that."

Firing somebody was a shade better than
shooting someone from half a mile away. Ari saw no reason why
Bristol should give a retrospective flinch.

"Can you tell me why you did this?" Ari asked
tentatively.

"Not really. Confidentiality and all."
Bristol took a sip at his mimosa. Ari sensed the man thought he
might be suspected of uncalled-for brutality. In so many other
places in the world, being dismissed might be considered a mild
form of punishment. A lucky miss. But in America being fired was
catastrophic. "He deserved it, believe me. Ethan was a bit facile
when it came to IT security. You know 'facile'?"

"I believe so."

Bristol must have found Ari's face (or
general demeanor) unsettling, which forced him into a defensive
stutter. "He was doing stuff…really doing stuff. He had to go."

"And since then, he has gone missing?"

"I only know what Tracy has told me," said
Bristol, apparently feeling the weight of culpability shifting off
his shoulders. "Rebecca told her Ethan ran off with another woman.
She got hold of his business phone bill and dialed a number he'd
called a couple of times. Some girl with an Oriental voice
answered. Probably some Asian gold-digger. Ethan made good money,
at least while he was working."

Ari tsked emphatically, as though asserting
the untrustworthiness of foreigners. This relieved Bristol, who
gave Ari an appreciative flick of his brow.

"You were unaware of all of this?" Ari asked.
"There was no indication while he was employed by you of trouble at
home?"

"I didn't have a clue, and I used to be
friends with him, before the blowup at STS."

"STS?"

"Our business: Sayed Technical Solutions. He
seemed pretty happy family-wise. But I didn't know he was
phishing—" Bristol caught himself.

"Ah, Ethan was taking illicit holidays at the
lake?"

"Not 'fishing'." Bristol waggled an imaginary
fishing pole. "'Phishing'." He tried to come up with a physical
analogy and ended up with a shrug. "But I've said too much already.
Anyway, he found another job right away. I got a call from an
insurance company asking for a reference for him. I gave a thumbs
down, but it looks like that didn't matter. I guess if there's
friction between you and Rebecca, you have to take all that into
account. She must be on edge."

"Actually, it has to do with a cat..."

"A cat!" Bristol laughed. "Has that stupid
yellow tabby of hers been dumping in your garden? I know just the
man to take care of it." He scanned the room.

'Stupid'? Sphinx had many foibles (a lack of
courage and indecorous indoor hygiene being prominent among them),
but to Ari's thinking he was far from stupid. He tucked away the
fact that Bristol knew about Sphinx, and had probably visited the
Wareness home.

Bristol caught the attention of a man
scarfing down spiced mini-sausages.

"That's Bruce Turner, my sysadmin. He can
take care of your pest."

Bruce licked grease off his fingers as he
sauntered over.

"Bruce, this is Matt's neighbor, Ari."

Ari had shaken many dirty hands in his time,
and was not averse to clasping Bruce's gleaming palm.

"You're the circus guy.'' He made it sound as
if Ari was the star clown.

"Ari has a feline infestation, Bruce. How
would you handle something like that?"

"I breed pit bulls," Bruce boasted, as though
endowed with an extra set of testicles.

"Breeding bulls must take away time from
STS," Ari said in amiable innocence.

Bristol's laugh lost its refined tone and
came out crudely unedited. Bruce was slightly aghast.

"Where are you from, again?"

"Sicily."

"Well, they sure as hell must know what I'm
talking about in Sicily. Pit bulls are dogs. Dogs with a
purpose."

"Ah," said Ari, looking abashed but not
feeling it. Just another colloquial misstep. "You breed dogs in
pits?"

Bruce clutched Bristol's arm and gave it a
squeeze, as though drawing his attention to a platypus.

"Think about it, Bruce," Bristol admonished.
He was a head taller than Turner, which seemed to mystically
transfer a corporate dominance to the physical. He had referred to
the shorter man as 'my sysadmin'—whatever that was. "They must be
called pit bulls for a reason."

"Because they fight in the pits!" Bruce
exclaimed.

"Which is illegal and a little bit
disgusting, right?"

"Oh, right." Bruce let go of his coworker and
shuffled into a robe of moral rectitude. "Hey, everything is
locality. Go to Spain, they kick dogs in the street. Cross the
border into France and you see dogs being served in restaurants,
which I guess says something about the food—"

"Bruce…" Bristol cautioned.

"I breed pit bulls for the market. They're
great for home defense."

Ari was not put off by dog-fighting. The
sport (if it could be called a sport) was a favorite pastime in
many Arab countries. Matches were fruitful targets for suicide
bombers, who were sure to kill hundreds at a time in the densely
packed crowds. Oddly enough, dog-fighting was forbidden by those
soft-hearted souls, the Taliban.

"You're saying one should be cautious when
knocking on someone's door," he said.

Bruce laughed appreciatively, catching no
hint of criticism. "Yeah, make sure you know the folks inside. If
they have a strong sense of property rights, as well they should,
be sure to call, first. And make sure they don't own a
Rottweiler."

"Bruce is a graduate of UVA—"

"Voted best drinking school in the
country."

"—but he's a little rough around the edges,"
Bristol finished with a shrug.

"Table manners weren't in the curriculum,"
Bruce admitted. "Don't belong there, anyway."

"I hope you show some manners while eating
your coq au vin. Which smells fantastic, by the way."

"Snob." Bruce made a face of disgust. "I'm
only eating it because I'm rooting for a promotion. With the
sysadmin at Stanley & Starr blown to pieces, there's a lot less
talent available."

"Locally," Bristol said airily.

"Yeah..."

"Blown to bits?" Ari inquired.

"You didn't hear?" Bruce said with a ghoulish
expression. "A bomb went off in one of our competitor's offices.
Poor slob sysadmin had only been back from Iraq for a few months,
and that happens."

"He was killed?"

"Pretty much."

"Was it a mail bomb?"

"I guess. The police aren't saying."

"And he had been in Iraq?"

"I only know what they said on the news. He
was subbed out to the Army, working with their computers in the
Green Zone. There a full year. His name was Abdul
Something-or-other. One of those artificially naturalized
immigrants."

"Stop stuffing yourself with those wieners,"
Bristol admonished his employee. "You'll ruin your appetite."

Ari became lightheaded. "If you don't wish to
partake in fine cuisine, I would—"

"Hey, Bruce," Bristol cut him off, seeing
where Ari was headed. "Tell Ari how you train your mutts. With the
cats, I mean."

Ari took alarm. He stared at Bruce, who
failed to notice his suddenly-piercing eyes.

"Yeah, we got a ton of stray cats in my neck
of the woods. Whenever I see one, I sic one of my dogs on it. Tears
it to shreds. You should hear the howling!"