Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions (13 page)

“Listen,” I started, “that’s all in the past. It has nothing to do with why we’re talking today.”

Shipley held up her hand, interrupting me.

“In the past, yes,” she agreed with me. “But there are some disturbing similarities.”

“What do you mean by that?” I demanded.

“Well, let’s start with the B&E and assault at Mr. Connaught’s apartment last Friday. Did you even
think
to mention that to us? You had a chance on the weekend when you dropped by to visit Detective Bartlett at the precinct. You know, Detective Leech told us that you can be a royal pain in the rear end by not sharing information that may be relevant. I’m thinkin’ he may be right. What do you think Bartlett?”

Her partner nodded her head in agreement and said, “To think we had to find out from my brother-in-law, who I can barely share a civil word with. We were at my mother’s last night for dinner. We found it funny that we both had cases involving a Canadian.” Bartlett glared at me. “Did you think you might have told us about getting hit over the head at Mr. Connaught’s apartment? You let the patrol officers think that it could have been someone who broke in to steal the contents because they knew the occupant had died. We,” she paused and waved her hand several times back and forth at her partner and then herself, “we’re thinking it might just be related to Mr. Connaught’s murder.” Her sarcasm was not lost on me, and I felt like a school girl who had just been chastised by the vice principal.

Shipley said, “Ms. Monahan. We are no closer today than we were five days ago to finding out how and why Mr. Connaught was murdered. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and we’d appreciate your cooperation.” I nodded my head because I didn’t want them accusing me of hindering their investigation.

Shipley continued. “We need some information from the company. What the company is working on, what its customers are up to, any recent sales, some information on the employees. General access to all the files. We’d like to talk to the employees, go through the files, get a general sense of the business.”

It made sense to me, but I wasn’t sure about the legalities of the police going through our customer files, and the files in our research and development area.

“I have no objection to that, but I’d want to check with our Legal Department first. Just to make sure we can get you the access you need.”

“Sure, you do that. We’d appreciate talking to the employees sooner than later,” Shipley told me. I detected a wee bit of snideness in her tone.

I stood up from my desk, hoping that they’d take the clue and get out of my office. Shipley stared at me from her chair and didn’t take my hint.

“Ms. Monahan, how tall are you?”

“And just what has
that
got to do with anything?” I shot back.

“Just answer the question. How tall are you?”

“I’m four feet eleven inches.” One inch taller than my grandmother and probably a good foot or more shorter than Shipley.

“We might want to confirm that by having our crime scene technicians measure you.”

“Why? You’d think I’d make up the fact that I’m under five feet? What the hell is this all about anyway?”

It was Bartlett’s turn to speak up. She got a tiny nod from Shipley before she spoke. “Forensics have determined that Mr. Connaught was shot from a low angle. The only thing that makes sense at this point is that the shooter was very short.”

I think I blanched. Or at least that’s what it felt like. In my favourite romance novels the heroine
blanches
when she’s scared or about to faint.

When the detectives finally left I stuffed a stack of mail from the in-basket into my briefcase and left the office. Carrie was at her desk and I told her to call the driver and let him know I would be walking.

She shook her head. “Lou won’t like that,” she admonished me.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I feel like walking. See you tomorrow.”

The elevators were crowded with energetic people, obviously glad to be leaving work for the day. I wondered how many of them were employees of Phoenix.

When I stumbled out of the elevator at the ground floor it took me a moment to get my bearings. I got nudged more than once on the back of my legs with the briefcases of people rushing past me, hurrying to their subways and buses. The few other nights I had left the building, the cavernous lobby was empty. I headed for the revolving doors and was surprised to see Natalie Scott push ahead of me in the crowd.

She was dressed like a lot of New York working women. Smart business suit with running shoes and white ankle socks, and a knapsack on her back. She had her head down and barreled through the crowd. Natalie was a pushy broad and it showed in the way she treated her fellow pedestrians. She gave one person a shoulder and smartly stepped in front of another to take her place in the revolving doors. I shook my head and wondered what Tommy saw in
that
.

When I was finally lucky enough to exit the building I turned right on Lexington and started towards my hotel. It was only about a six block walk but I needed the exercise. Jay would be proud of me, I thought. It wasn’t too long ago that he had to coax me to walk around the block. But in the last couple of months I had started exercising. I hated it but was adult enough to admit that I enjoyed the feeling when I was finished. Like banging your head against a wall - it felt so good when you stopped. I walked fast today to make up for the fact that I’d started smoking again. If I could get through this week in one piece, I’d quit again. That was a promise.

Natalie Scott suddenly appeared in front of me again just as I reached my hotel. She still had her head down and looked like a woman on a mission. Some “devil made me do it” moment happened and I decided to follow her. There were several people between us and I was sure she hadn’t seen me. On Madison she stopped abruptly in front of a shop window and I panicked momentarily and ducked in an open doorway. I peeked around, feeling totally foolish. I was only pretending to follow her and had nothing to hide. But the game was fun. When Natalie started off again I stepped out of my hiding place and kept pace.

The street signs told me we were now on Fifth Avenue and I was pretty sure we were heading north because I could see the trees of Central Park several blocks away. When the Plaza Hotel and Central Park came into view, I knew where I was and decided to call it a day. I could get a cab in front of the Plaza and go home and stop playing games.

I watched Natalie cross at the busy corner of Fifth Avenue and East 59th. She kept going straight up Fifth on the sidewalk across the street from Central Park. I stood and watched her for a moment and then I started after her again. I was curious now and needed to know where she was going.

I couldn’t believe it when she crossed East 63rd Street and turned into a familiar, awning-covered building entrance. I was incredulous when the doorman smiled at her and held the door open. But I was dumbfounded when the doorman told me she lived there. In the same building as Tommy.

chapter seventeen

The doorman told me that Miss Scott’s family had lived in the building for twenty-some years. She was still living there with her widowed mother. Their apartment was on the 20th floor.

How convenient, I thought.

“Does my key to the apartment work on all the outside doors?” I asked.

“Yes ma’am. It works on all the entrances to your apartment, the front door and the two exits. It also opens the doors on the outside of the building, at the back.”

I rode the elevator to the 14th floor and let myself into the apartment. I hadn’t been back since my visit with Jay and realized that the poor fish were probably dead by now. I found the remote control and opened the wall displaying the aquarium and was surprised to see signs of life. With no fish food in at least a week, they had probably been eating each other.

The aquarium was built flush into the wall and I had no idea where to put the fish food I found on the shelf below the tank. I ran my hands over the wood surrounding the tank, feeling for a knob or latch to gain access to the top of the aquarium. The wood paneling had seams but there were no obvious hinges. The space below the aquarium was open shelving so I knelt down in front of it and ran my hands down the sides of the shelves, under the top, all around. Nothing.

I picked up the remote control again and stared at all the buttons. It was larger than the remote I had for my television and I think it was called a universal control. Small buttons on the bottom read “cd”, “radio”, “tv”, “dvd”. Along one side were up and down arrows for volume and the arrows on the other side said “channel”. Numbers from zero to nine filled the middle of the remote control.

I pressed the red power button and the wall closed over the aquarium. I flicked the power button again and the wall opened and the lights came back on in the aquarium. I wondered what else the remote control powered, so I pushed the button “cd” and the Beatles blasted out of hidden speakers. Ringo’s nasal voice was singing one of their ridiculous ditties, the name of which escaped me. I quickly pushed the “tv” button and the music went off but nothing else happened.

I turned slowly around the room looking for a television, pointing the remote in different directions, pushing the tv button. Nothing. The same thing when I pressed the “vcr” button.

The music blared again, at the beginning of the same stupid song when I switched to “cd”. The volume buttons worked and I lowered the sound to a reasonable level. There was no sign of a stereo system and the whole thing was starting to frustrate me.

I plopped down in one of the large, easy chairs and stared at the fish tank. My fingers played with the remote and I pushed the down arrow on the channel changer and heard a very soft, low, whining sound which stopped when I took my finger off the button. I pressed the button again, holding my finger on it and the sound reminded me of an electric can opener that gets stuck. A motor trying to work and getting nowhere.

The up arrow on the channel changer was what I was looking for. When I pressed it I got a happy motor sound. I held my finger on the up arrow, listening, and watched incredulously as the entire wall holding the aquarium swung slowly open.

“Cool,” I said out loud, sounding like a teenager.

With the wall open at a ninety degree angle, my questions about how to feed the fish were answered. The backside of the wall revealed the workings of the aquarium and there was an inset shelf holding a variety of fish equipment, small nets, food, things to add to the tank water and such.

The lower half of the wall revealed the stereo system. Piles of cd’s were jammed into the spaces around the receiver and cd player.

The opening in the wall exposed a small room, perhaps eight feet square. The hideaway held a small table with a computer along one wall, and two small filing cabinets. Halfway up the wall beside the computer were two outlets. Wires from the outlets were hooked to the back of the computer. On top of the filing cabinets was a small laser printer.

Well, well, well, I thought to myself. What have we here? I powered on the computer. Now I would get some answers. To what, I didn’t know. The fact that Tommy’s computer in the den held no information didn’t seem so strange now. I pulled out the small chair tucked under the desk and rubbed my hands together like a concert pianist, warming up.

I stared at the screen, watching all sorts of words fly by as it booted up. A small, colourful box appeared and disappeared just as quickly. Something about doctor somebody, the virus checker. Finally, things I recognized started appearing on the screen and the Windows logo and icons appeared.

I grabbed the mouse, ready to start exploring but a small box, centered on the screen materialized and commanded me to enter my password.

“Shit,” I said out loud.

A lost cause. Tommy was technical enough to realize the worth of a solid password, and if the machine needed a password, there was definitely something to protect. My only experience with passwords for computers was at the law office where we would have to log-on to the local area network. I never changed my password if I could help it, and it was usually something as simple as my name or my mother’s name. There was never much to hide on my computer, just letters, agreements and nonsense.

The computer in the den didn’t require a password but then again, there was nothing on that computer except the software to run it.

I fed the fish and thought about my chances of discovering what the password might be. I had come across nothing so far, in the apartment or at Tommy’s office, of a personal nature where he might have written down secret passwords.

A sudden remembrance flashed before me and I almost slapped myself for being so stupid. Tommy lived by his electronic organizer. He had one of those small, handheld, computer-type organizers that fit in the inside breast pocket of a suit. The last time we had dinner together he had whipped it out and proudly showed me. He demonstrated how it held all of his appointments, kept all of his phone numbers organized, and how he could create little memos to himself and store them on it. It had a minuscule keyboard.

I had laughed at it and told him to learn to type on a real keyboard. He had assured me he could type.

“Keyboarding, it’s called nowadays, Kate,” he’d said. “And remember, I’m a code-head from way back. Programmers can type faster than most secretaries.”

Where was his organizer? My search of the apartment hadn’t revealed it. There was no sign of it at the office. The logical and obvious answer was that he had it on him when he died.

No personal belongings had been returned to me as next of kin so the police must still have everything. I made a mental note to call them in the morning.

The two filing cabinets were locked and no amount of tugging and cajoling would open them. I had no idea where to look for keys.

The surprise and elation I’d felt at finding the room turned to dejection. I powered off the computer and closed the magic wall. I looked around for a good hiding place for the remote control and ended up putting it in my purse. All the good hiding spots were too obvious and the apartment had already been broken into once. I wasn’t taking any chances.