Lead-Pipe Cinch (20 page)

I opened doors and pulled out drawers in a hasty search. There were boxes of discs, each neatly labeled in a code that wasn’t immediately apparent.

My frustration grew. Mom had all her files backed up on disc, but there was no way I could go through them in the time I had.

The credenza was another matter. I found a file with loan papers for the house, showing a second mortgage taken out three years ago, right after she got her real estate license. Along with the loan documents was a list of payments made from the escrow, including a payment to Whitlock Estates referenced to “Clackamas Commons.”

Had she loaned Gregory money? Was she repaying a loan from his company? Did he hold an interest in her house somehow, or she an interest in his?

I looked at the closed door at the end of the hallway—my mother’s bedroom. I shook my head. I wasn’t that desperate.

Yet.

I heard a car in the driveway, and the groan of the garage door opening.

I shoved the file folder back in place, slammed the drawer shut, and raced into the hall and up the staircase to the attic.

I dug frantically through the piles of sealed cartons, each labeled in my mother’s precise handwriting with the contents and the date.

It struck me that mom’s organizational skills and rigid control were wasted as a housewife. She could have planned the D-day invasion and pulled it off without a hitch.

I spotted the box I needed. It said “Georgiana—Kitchen Equipment” with a date just a week after I had moved into the rental in Pine Ridge. Apparently the box had gone in the attic, labeled and dated, just days after I’d told her I wasn’t ready for it yet.

My shirt sleeve caught a cobweb as I hefted the box into my arms. I left it there as evidence of my search in the attic.

Cradling the box in my arms, I took a few steps down the staircase and waited. The door from the garage to the kitchen opened, and I called out, “Mom, is that you?”

“No, Georgiana, it’s me,” a male voice called back.

Gregory. I nearly lost my grip on the box. The contents rattled as the box shifted, a tinny clattering sound.

Gregory appeared in the hallway. His expression was bland, but there was a hint of self-satisfaction in his eyes, as though “catching” me in the house was an accomplishment.

“Here,” he said, “let me take that for you.”

I handed over the box, feeling exposed without it in my arms. How had Gregory managed to show up at the house, just at the time I was there? On a day he should be working? Was he spying on me somehow?

Gregory carried the box into the kitchen and set it down on the empty counter. My mother’s kitchen was always so spotless, you could eat off the floor—though I never understood why anyone would want to.

I made a show of opening the box and rummaging through the contents, while Gregory watched. “Mom said there were some things in here I needed,” I chattered, trying to disguise the nervousness that made my knees feel shaky.

If I was right, Gregory had something to do with the death of Blake Weston. I was alone with a man I suspected of involvement with a murder. No wonder I felt nervous.

I pulled out a soup ladle. “This is what I was looking for,” I said. I held it for a moment, wondering if I could use it as a weapon to defend myself.

Not really. I dropped it back in the box with the other kitchen gear, and folded the top down. I could always throw the entire box at him and run. Sue said that running was a good solution, and this instant I couldn’t think of a better one.

Unfortunately, Gregory was between me and the doorway.

He moved forward a step. “Really too bad about your friend,” he said. “I hear the sheriff’s calling it a murder, not an accident.”

He took another step. “Did you ever find out what he was here for?”

I stood my ground. Mostly because there wasn’t anywhere to go. I breathed deep and balanced myself on the balls of my feet, ready to move.

“A job, as far as I know, Gregory. Like I told you and Mom the other day, he was designing a security system for the McComb project. We only exchanged a few words.”

“A pretty heated few words, from what I was told. I hear you called him some names and he made some nasty remarks.”

He shrugged and took another step. “That sounds like a lot more than just someone you used to work with.

“It sounds like you two had a much more personal relationship.”

He was almost close enough to reach out and touch me. The box was on the counter next to me. I could run and leave it there, though I wasn’t sure how I’d explain that to my mother.

That was the least of my worries.

“It was a small company. We worked under extreme pressure and for long hours. Everything felt personal after a while.” Not a great excuse, but I had other things on my mind.

Like my mother’s murderous boyfriend.

Gregory shrugged elaborately this time, lifting his hands and raising his shoulders. “I suppose.” He smiled, an expression that sent another chill through me. “I know we get that same feeling at Whitlock Estates. Although”—his tone shifted to embarrassed amusement—“some of the relationships actually become personal.”

His glance toward the doorway leading to the dining room and the bedrooms beyond underscored exactly how personal one of those relationships had become. The parallel with my relationship with Blake wasn’t lost on me.

Did Gregory know anything about me and Blake? Or was he fishing for information?

Was he worried that Blake might have given me information that would implicate him as his killer?

“Ancient history,” I said with a lightness I didn’t feel. “I don’t know exactly what you heard, but we had a few words and that was it. I went back to work, and he went away. Last I saw of him.”

I didn’t count the image I couldn’t get out of my head: flashlights illuminating a pair of hand-stitched Italian loafers in the mud at the bottom of the moat.

Gregory reached toward me. I put my arms up in a defensive pose, ready to repel his attack.

He gave me a quizzical look as he hefted the box of kitchen gear into his arms. “Let me carry this out to your car for you.”

I pretended I was reaching for the box, then dropped my arms and said “Thanks,” hoping I had covered my initial reaction. Gregory shrugged and turned away.

I followed him through the dining room and into the living room. I glanced at the hall where the attic staircase still extended down from the ceiling.

“I’ll take care of the ladder,” he said.

I didn’t argue. All I wanted was to get out of the house and away from Gregory as fast as I could.

 

 

The evening stretched in front of me. I could call Sue, but I hesitated. What if she had plans with the sheriff? It was Saturday night, date night.

The kitchen was full of food, the refrigerator was stocked, and I had a box full of new-to-me kitchen tools. I wasn’t being a recluse; I was reacquainting myself with my kitchen.

I unpacked and scrubbed the tools, and put them away. Underneath the spatulas and ladles and spoons I found baking pans—two round cake pans, a ceramic pie plate with a cover, a pair of loaf pans. I wondered if I even remembered how to bake bread—a skill my mother had insisted was necessary for any good homemaker to master.

Not that I was going to try it tonight. But who knew what the new, more domestic Georgie might do?

Daisy and Buddha were confused by my sudden burst of domesticity. They followed me around the house, whining at the vacuum and whimpering when the bathroom cleaner stung their noses. They approved of the kitchen duties, though. It meant the three of us hung out in the room with food, and they might occasionally get a scrap or two.

Cooking didn’t distract me enough. I wanted to know why Blake Weston, a man who never even ventured into the suburbs, had traveled to a place he would have considered the edge of civilization. Even a job as big as the McComb project wouldn’t have been enough to tempt him.

There had to be more to it. I knew where to look, I just didn’t want to.

I got my laptop, set it on the kitchen table, and booted up. Within minutes I was on the Samurai Security website, looking at their latest achievements.

I had resisted the temptation to even look at their site since I left San Francisco. There was something slightly ghoulish about looking at the site of a company I used to own.

I had put it all behind me, and refused to turn back. But Blake’s death was forcing me to revisit the past.

There were no links from the website to the Samurai computers. It would have been beyond embarrassing for anyone to gain access to the internal system. The site’s servers were run from an independent web-hosting company. No way to reach the Samurai company records directly.

The phone rang and I heard Stan Fischer’s booming voice. “Georgie Girl, it’s Stan. Just got through with the McCombs. Took a little longer than I expected. I’m headed back to my hotel.” He cleared his throat and waited for me to pick up.

I did.

“Hi, Stan.”

“Sorry about dinner, but your friend the sheriff kept me longer than I expected. He had an awful lot of questions about you and Blake. Sounds like the two of you got into some kind of shouting match. I think I settled him down, though. Told him you and Blake were old news, that I was sure what he’d heard was exaggerated. Then I had to go make nice with the McCombs.”

“They’re good people, Stan, that shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Wouldn’t be,” he agreed, “if they weren’t anxious about getting the preliminary work on the security system. Blake was supposed to have something for them by the time he flew home, which would have been Tuesday.

“Now it looks like that will get delayed, but they aren’t willing to wait long.”

“You guys are the best, Stan. Chad knows that, or he wouldn’t have hired you.”

“That may be,” he said. “But I was hoping you would reconsider my offer.”

“I’m not current on the technology, Stan.”

“Just do a walk-through with me,” he wheedled. “The sheriff says we can go out there Monday. I’ll pay you consultant rates for the couple hours it’ll take, and you can write up a preliminary report. That’s all I need, the initial assessment. I know,” he added, before I could protest, “I could get one of the guys up here. But you can do this standing on your head, and it will save me pulling somebody off another project and dumping them into this one cold.”

I replayed the conversation in my head. Stan was better at political maneuvering than I had given him credit for. He had been reasonably subtle, but the message was clear: I vouched for you with the sheriff, you bail me out on this project.

The McComb deal must be important to Samurai for Stan to put the pressure on an employee they had dumped. And I needed to find out why before I went out to the site on Monday.

“Well, if it’s really only a couple hours, Stan. I have another job, you know. Wouldn’t want my boss to think I was slacking off on it.”

“Not a chance with you, Georgie Girl. I know how hard you work, and I’m sure he does, too.”

We made plans to meet with Chad McComb at the job site at 7:00 A.M. Monday morning. Stan said he was hoping to get done and catch an afternoon flight back to San Francisco. He’d already been away longer than he had planned.

I rushed to end the conversation and get back to my research. With the walk-through scheduled for early Monday morning, I had a lot to do in the next twenty-four hours.

An hour later, the Internet had yielded little actual information on Samurai Security. There were occasional press releases about one project or another, and an industry award for solving a denial-of-service attack on a financial firm.

But nothing about the company itself. The business dealings of Samurai Security were as unreachable as the company’s files.

There was another option. I remembered Richard Parks’s phone calls. I hadn’t ratted on him, but I did have some leverage. And I didn’t think I could use it effectively over the phone.

This required a face-to-face meeting.

What had the sheriff said about traveling? Not to plan any long trips? That certainly wasn’t the case. In fact, if I played this right, I would be back before anyone knew I was gone.

I jumped from the news-archive site to a discount-travel site, searching for last-minute airfares. I found a single seat on a crack-of-dawn hop the next morning to San Francisco, returning the same evening.

I looked at my bank balance, and cringed. Enough to pay the utilities and eat the rest of the month, with nothing left over for a sudden trip to San Francisco.

I pulled out my credit card. It was only for emergencies, and I had managed to avoid using it. But if the threat of being arrested for murder wasn’t an emergency, then I couldn’t think of anything that was. Besides, with a little luck the Samurai consulting fee should cover the costs.