Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions (17 page)

I was convinced that the electronic organizer would hold some clues and maybe some passwords. Tommy never went anywhere without it. Well, maybe he did, if it was in this strong box and not on him when he was murdered.

I handed it to Jay, hoping he would be able to unlock untold secrets. Needless to say, he was happy to work his magic on it while I started going through the files in the cabinets.

I had no sooner pulled out file A-1 when Jay told me that the electronic organizer was locked and we needed a password to access it.

“I give up,” I said dejectedly. “Could Tommy have made this any harder? What in God’s name could be so important that he had everything password protected?”

“Obviously, he and his company had secrets which needed protecting. I’d guess they were pretty big and possibly damaging, and it’s probably why he was murdered. The police haven’t said that it was a typical mugging, have they? I think he was shot because of something in his personal or business life,” Jay said.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “I’m just frustrated. And wanting answers. And I want them the easy way. Let’s take some guesses on his password,” I suggested.

“Okay shoot. I’m not sure how many tries you can have before the organizer will lock you out, but usually it’s at least ten. Let’s start with his birthday.”

“May 6, 1959.”

Jay entered 561959. And then he tried may61959. And a couple variations on my birthday, September 10, 1968.

“Any other ideas?”

“Try Phoenix.”

“No, another strike-out. I’m going to try your name.” He entered Kate. Then Kathleen. Neither worked. “You know, I think we might be on the right track. He left everything to you in his will. The key to the cabinets was behind a picture of you. No one in New York seemed to know about you so it’s a good guess that the password is one that someone wouldn’t cotton-on to, probably something to do with you.” Jay was getting excited now. “So, did Tommy have any nicknames for you?”

I blushed thinking about some of the pet names Tommy had for me.

“Okay,” Jay said. “Let’s start with one that may not be
that
personal.”

I thought about it for a moment and something niggled in the back of my mind. It had been many years since Tommy and I were together and it was difficult to recall everything but I definitely remember he used to tease me a lot about something. Then the light went on!

“My middle name,” I said.

“Great. What is it?” Jay asked ready to key it in. He paused. “That’s weird. I should know the middle name of the woman I’m sleeping with but I don’t know if you’ve ever told me.”

“That’s because I don’t make a habit of telling people my middle name.”

“Oh, a little testy about it, are we?” Jay teased.

I hated being teased.

“It’s my grandmother’s name. Florence,” I told him reluctantly.

“That’s not so bad,” Jay said, as he started entering Florence.

“Hold on,” I said quickly. “Don’t waste a try on Florence. That may be my middle name, and I’ll deny it if you ever tell anyone, but that’s not what Tommy used to call me. His nickname for me when he wanted to tease me was Flossie.”

Jay snorted. “Yeah, that’s bad.” He was trying to hold back a smile, but he failed miserably and broke into a laugh. “Okay, I won’t use it against you. Often,” he snickered and then he entered Flossie into the electronic organizer and the thing started to chime. Then we both broke into wide smiles.

chapter twenty-four

I turned around and booted up Tommy’s computer.

“If Flossie worked on that thing, what do you think the odds are that it’ll be the password to his computer?”

I could feel the excitement building and was anxious to find out as much as we could. When the password log in screen came up on the computer I typed in Flossie and the computer politely told me that it was an incorrect password and I should try again.

“Shit,” I mumbled and tried Flossie in all capital letters, all lower case letters and several other variations.

“Cut it out Kate,” Jay told me. “You’re going to lock yourself out of the computer. Hang on a minute, I’m looking for a password file on his organizer.”

I sat on my hands to keep myself away from the computer and tried to be patient. At just about the point where I was going to scream in frustration, I heard the doorbell sound through the building intercom. The noise startled me because everything about this apartment was so new. Anxious to do anything but sit on my hands, I jumped up and went through the living room to the lobby and picked up the phone on the wall.

“Yes,” I said into the phone.

“Albert at the Front Desk ma’am,” I heard through the handset. I would hope so, I thought. No one else should be able to call up.

“Yes, Albert, what can I do for you tonight?”

“You have a visitor, ma’am. Shall I send them up?”

“Well, would you like to tell me who the visitor is, before I agree to that?” I asked him politely, but through clenched teeth. I was starting to suspect that security wasn’t one of the building’s stronger suits.

“A Miss Scott. Natalie Scott. Your neighbour miss, from the twentieth floor,” he drawled.

Oh really, I thought. I wondered if she was bringing me a Bundt cake to welcome me to the building.

“Send her up Albert,” I told him.

I quickly ran around to the living room and told Jay that we had a visitor. He could either lock himself in the secret room or come out, and close the wall opening. He chose the latter. The wall just finished closing as the front door chimes sounded. I braced myself and opened the door with a tentative smile on my face.

Natalie Scott would be a beautiful woman if she didn’t have such a pinched look about her. She had beautiful hair, long and in corkscrew curls, but it framed her face in such a way to make her look thinner than she really was. She stood about five foot seven, a giant in my books, and she held herself ramrod straight with her arms across her chest. Such body language. God, I thought once again, what did Tommy see in her?

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello,” she said back. I held the door open and invited her in. I introduced her to Jay who was sitting in the living room and she barely acknowledged him. Personally, I think he’s great to look at and wondered why she didn’t show any more interest.

“So,” I began. “What brings you by?”

“I’m here for my things. The doorman told me you had moved in today.”

Again, was nothing sacred and secure in this building? Geez! And what things, I wondered. I had just carried out a search of this apartment that would have made the FBI proud. I didn’t recall finding any of
her
things.

She must have assumed, or been told, that I knew about her relationship with Tommy because she wasn’t shy about the implication of the meaning of “my things”.

“Uh, sure,” I said. “What things and where would they be?”

Nat quickly glanced at the aquarium as if she knew there was something behind that wall. I played dumb. Years of practice, you know.

“Oh some CD’s, and a few files from the office,” she said, a little too casually.

Yeah
right
, I thought. She wanted into those filing cabinets, or the computer behind that wall, and the only way she was getting in that room was over my dead body. I shuddered as the thought passed through my brain. Cut it out, I told myself. Stop jinxing the pitcher!

I pointed at a stack of CD’s sitting on a side table. “Help yourself,” I offered. “As for office files, I wouldn’t know where they would be. I went through Tommy’s desk and there weren’t any business files.” I nodded at the desk at the far end of the room.

She picked up the pile of CDs and started shuffling through them. She wasn’t looking at the titles, she was only going through the motions of looking. “Nope, not here,” she stated as she put the stack back on the table. I caught her glancing again at the aquarium.

“Well, the files must be at the office then,” she said. “I’ll check with Carrie on Monday.”

She headed back to the front door, and said goodbye over her shoulder. She was making a fast exit and I was glad. The woman gave me the creeps. I stared through the peephole in the door until she got on the elevator and the doors closed.

“Okay,” I said to Jay as I walked back in the living room. “Something’s up and she knows about that hidden room. We’ve got to do something about all that stuff in there.”

“Well, it’s probably a little late to do something tonight, but we could move it all out of here tomorrow to a secure place.” He stood in the middle of the room, with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking smug.

“What?” I said.

“I found his password file on the organizer. And these are serious passwords. Letters and numbers combined, upper case and lower case. Probably randomly generated by a computer program so they’re harder to break. I think I have the password to the computer. Good thing you told me our visitor was arriving because I was just about to yell out that we had hit pay dirt!” He grabbed the remote and opened the wall again.

The computer opened up on Jay’s first try with the password. There were thousands of files on the computer, all seemingly related to Phoenix Technologies. I recognized some of the hundreds of sub-directories that were labeled by project names but that was the extent of my knowledge.

“Oh, my, gawd,” I said slowly. The enormity of what lay before me was sinking in. How was I ever going to sift through all of this information when I didn’t even know what I was looking for? I felt defeated, discouraged and dead tired.

“Let’s call it a day,” I suggested, “and go find something to eat.”

chapter twenty-five

Over dinner, Jay and I talked about my big, pending decisions. Staying in New York. Staying on as Chair and CEO of Phoenix. Jay staying in New York.

Jay was no help at all on the first two issues. He kept telling me I had to do what I thought was best. He was so damn supportive! I was hoping for a little push-back but he wasn’t forthcoming. He was convinced that I could succeed as the head of the company and that I would adapt to New York. Jay had a blind faith in me that on the one hand was encouraging and flattering, but on the other hand, left me a little doubtful that things would be as easy as he made out.

On the question of Jay staying in New York, I was a little wary of how to broach the subject.

“So I stay in New York. What about you?” I asked.

“What about me?” he teased.

“Well, you’ve only got a few months of training left here in New York. Will you be going back to Toronto when you’re done? Would your company let you work out of the New York office? Could you live in this city? Both our families are in Canada and although Toronto and Ottawa aren’t half way around the world, it would be difficult to go for a Sunday drive and drop in on the folks for dinner.”

Jay was close with his mom and his sisters, just as I was with my folks and my brother. I knew if I decided to stay in New York, it was going to be hard.

“Yeah, I’d miss my family,” he agreed. “But you’re my family now too and I’d miss you more.”

I felt the same as he did. Had I told him yet that I loved him? I didn’t think so. I had been too hung-up on our age difference. Too hung-up on the crappy things going on in my life. Too involved in things that didn’t seem to matter at that moment. I was tired and emotionally spent but hell, life was way too short. So I told him.

I dry swallowed and felt a lump in my throat. This was the hard stuff for me. “Jay Harmon. I love you. I want to spend my life with you.” There. I said it.

Jay’s face broke into a wide smile. A wide, loving smile. “I knew you loved me. You think I’m sexy. You really want me,” he chanted and teased.

“Yes,” I said back. “So will you stay in New York if I stay?”

“Well, if my company won’t let me work in the New York office, I think I know someone at a local high tech company who could get me a job!” He reached across the table and took my hand. “Yes, of course, I’ll stay.”

We held hands across the table and I felt refreshed and a lot better. Over dessert I broached the other subject that had been bothering me.

“I need to learn how to defend myself,” I told Jay. “I don’t feel safe. Being in the apartment creeps me out a little, and I don’t want someone sneaking up on me again. After what happened to me in Toronto, and then again when I arrived here in New York, I think it’s time I learned how to defend myself. I hate feeling vulnerable and not in control.”

“Well,” Jay joked, “you could become an instant American and buy a gun. Start believing in your right to bear arms!”

“Yeah right! Guns scare the crap out of me.”

“I know, I know. I was just joking,” he said. He reached across the table and took my hand. “I have a friend in Toronto who does martial arts and some Israeli type of self-defense. Let me look into it and see if there’s someone here in the area who he would recommend as a teacher. We could both learn,” he said eagerly. Jay was a jock and liked all things physical. Me on the other hand, not so much. Walking at a brisk pace for a mile was enough to do me in.

“Great,” I agreed, trying to show lots of enthusiasm for something I knew was going to hurt.

The next morning I woke up early, resolving to get through as many files as I could on Tommy’s computer. With my coffee in a large mug, and a clean ashtray I sat down and logged on to the computer. Jay found me there a couple of hours later when he finally got out of bed.

“Anything yet?” he asked. He stood behind me and massaged my shoulders.

“Ohhh, that feels good. I’ll give you five bucks to never stop. And no, nothing yet. Nothing that’s jumped out at me giving me a hint as to why he was murdered. I’m going through his computer files in a methodical way, through each directory and every document or file in the directory. He’s filed everything meticulously by subject matter. I’m just finishing up going through the sales stuff including bid documents and RFP’s. Pretty heavy reading.”

“How about we forget about Phoenix for today?” Jay suggested.

It sounded tempting. I hadn’t really thought about anything else in the past ten days. “Okay. What do you think we should do instead?”