The Fortune Teller (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 5) (10 page)

“The Italian connection,” I said.

He was gazing at Rita in a smarmy way, and said, “Gotcha.”

She blinked, then slowly smiled. “You knew?”

“Knew what?” I said. They ignored me.

“What gave me away?” Rita asked nonchalantly.

“What the heck are you two talking about?” I asked.

They smiled at one another again. Then Rita said, “Taylor, I’d like you to meet one of America’s most accomplished computer geniuses. He goes all the way back to the days of phone phreaking, and you could say he grew up with the Internet, staying ahead of the innovations every step of the way. One of the world’s premier hackers.”

“A white-hat hacker,” he said, still amused.

Rita made a graceful little shrug. “Some of the time.”

“I’m a man who believes in justice.”

“Even when justice comes in the form of ‘sticking it to the man.’ He likes to think of them as victimless crimes. Actually, Victor, there is no such thing as a victimless crime. It if was victimless, it wouldn’t be a crime. But you know that, don’t you? What I’d still like to know is what gave me away?”

“Oh, Rita – if that is your name – how can you ask? You let me look at your computer.”

“Not
my
computer. It’s one we seized last year, and we seeded it so carefully. Hidden tracks to stolen credit card vendors, me participating in chat room rants in words that could have been written by you –“

“Actually,” he said in a silky voice, “some of them
were
written by me. Three years ago, when I did that
thing
with the carder’s market, which you should be thanking me for.”

“Damn! And we were being so careful. NightLord was you?”

He shrugged and said nothing.

“Okay, you two, what the heck is going on here?” I said.

Victor was still gazing at Rita, and said, “Why don’t you introduce yourself to us? You’re definitely law enforcement. A Fed? Yeah. For sure a Fed. Come on. What’s your name, darling?”

He said it so affectionately I began to feel disoriented.

“Actually,” she said, “my name
is
Rita Garnett. I
am
Rita Garnett, whose family used to own this house as a summer home, and who wanted to come back to some semblance of a home again after a divorce. I decided to quit my job and see if I could work as a private consultant instead. Why couldn’t the real Rita Garnett have had a job in law enforcement? When my bosses found out that you and I were about to intersect, purely by chance, they asked me to take one last assignment and just check to make sure you were being a good boy.”

“And they gave you a nice new computer.
”

I had lost interest in the Bond-movie dialogue. I wanted to cut to the chase.

“So you’re some kind of undercover agent, and you’ve not going to tell us who you’re working for, and frankly I don’t care –“

“I’m a Federal agent,” Rita said. “Actually, as of this exact moment, now that you’ve outed me . . . an ex-Federal agent.”

“And you’re some sort of shady character who lurks around the Internet and commits crimes –“

Victor held his hands up with his palms toward me. “Retired. Honestly. I swear here and now before an officer of the law that those days are over. But all I’ve got is my computer skills, and I’m trying to make a living using them honestly. I get it about the mythical victimless crimes. I’ve seen the victims. I understand that identity theft messes up peoples’ lives pretty much permanently, or for a long time anyway. Believe me, Rita, Taylor, I’m strictly white hat, from now on.”

I was still skeptical. “A white-hat hacker?”

“Just a white hat.”

“When I asked you to fix my Wi-Fi, you did take the opportunity to poke around to see if I was really the sweet little old lady I seemed to be,” Rita pointed out.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say ‘little old,’” he said smoothly.

I would’ve said, “Oh, puh-
leeze
,” if Rita wasn’t taking it rather smoothly herself. Or at least, seeming to.

“Well,” I said, “I hope you two will be very happy together, but we still have a murdered woman and a missing woman, and they were both friends of yours, so where does this bring us? No matter how we look at it, it comes down to you, Victor. Those girls had a fight on Friday night, and supposedly, it was over you. It’s also possible that hacking is at the bottom of whatever happened last weekend, and if so, you probably know all about it, even if it wasn’t criminal. Even if Eden was only snooping. So give. What
do
you know about it?”

He was mulling it over. I’m a straight-ahead person, and I had the feeling that a chess match was going on around me, and nobody was going to tell me the next move.

“You’re working with the locals?” he said to Rita.

She gazed at him, mulling over her next move. Then, finally, she said, “I told you I wanted to start working as a consultant. When that woman was murdered, I decided there were bigger things to look into in this town than just you. I offered my help.”

“Uh huh,” he said cynically. “Because you figured I was involved.”

She shrugged. “I had to consider the possibility. But I’m not convinced you’d get violent if you found yourself driven into a corner. You’re not that kind of a guy. You’re much more likely to pull up stakes and disappear. In the past, whenever you’ve had a vendetta with somebody, you’ve attacked them in cyberspace, not in the real world.”

“Counter-attacked,” he said. “I never attacked anybody who didn’t attack me first.”

“Who cares about cyberspace?” I said impatiently.

“Eden did,” Victor said, “and it got her killed.”

Finally!
I thought. “Why don’t you explain how? In itty-bitty words that you don’t have to be a computer specialist to understand.”

“You don’t have to understand exactly how she did it,” he began.

“Or who taught her to do it,” Rita added.

He slid a glance at her, but didn’t react otherwise. “You just have to start with the premise that it is possible to breach a lot of systems run by people who should know how to protect themselves better, and systems nice people like you are running all over the world, completely unsuspecting, maybe not bothering with the latest security patch because they don’t understand it, or it doesn’t seem important, and after all, who would want to hack into your stuff anyway, right? You’re nobody, right?”

I wasn’t admitting anything. But damn it, he was right.

“It’s only a website,” I said. “Who’d want to hack Orphans of the Storm?”

“Does Orphans of the Storm have a bank account? Do you have a password that you use to check on that bank account? Maybe pay some bills electronically? Do you use the same computer system for your personal e-mail? Your personal banking? At the very least, it could be used as a drone in a botnet.”

“A what?”

“A network of computers a hacker can control to send out spam or take down a website with a Denial of Service attack. You know, all those computers in his botnet trying to get into that website at the same time and overwhelming their server so it crashes.”

“Stop!
Okay, I get it already. Actually, the Orphans website is run by a volunteer, and I have very little idea what she does with it. I just tell her to post up something about an event coming up, and she does it. Bingo. It’s done.”

“Very trusting, aren’t you? You have no idea how much of yourself has leaked into the Internet.”

“Who would care about me?” I asked hotly. “I’m not interesting.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Pulling up stakes and moving here from Chicago, after the deaths of your parents, investing your inheritance in a shelter, because you love animals. Even the details of your divorce – the fact that you’re a vegetarian – that your family comes from Verona – everything is on-line. Your whole life. Actually, I’m a vegetarian myself. And obviously, I’m Italian.”

I nearly got up and smacked him. My divorce! I was suddenly positive he’d read the old divorce decree, from 1981. I almost never thought about that any more, and to have it brought up by a complete stranger made me feel violated.

“Please,” he said, reaching across the counter to actually lay a hand gently on my forearm. I stared down at it like it was the head of a snake. “I’m sorry, Taylor. When I knew that Eden was spending a lot of time with your organization, I wanted to know if it was legit, and just what it was that she was doing for you. Or to you. I was suspicious of her, not you. Besides, I found out that we have a lot in common. We’re both orphans, for one thing. That’s how you named your organization, isn’t it? Orphans of the Storm? These animals, they’re orphans, just like you were – suddenly alone after your parents died.”

For a moment I was too shaken to speak. I hadn’t thought about that in years. Decades. Nobody had ever caught on to it before, but he was right. But if he meant to create a bridge between us, he’d failed. I was more creeped out by him than ever.

When I didn’t answer, he took his hand away, but he didn’t stop talking. “You had no brothers, no sisters. Just like me. That’s a bond that a lot of people could never understand. We’re really a lot alike, Taylor. That’s why I’m telling you all this. I know it’s scary, having somebody you don’t know suddenly telling you all about yourself, but I’m doing it for a reason: you need to take Internet security more seriously. Like I said, you’re too trusting.”

“Until I run up against people like you, yes, I’m very trusting.” I glared at him, and he muttered,
“Touché.”

I backed down a bit. It was unsettling to know that this man knew so much about me, and I knew pretty much nothing about him. I took a deep breath. “Look,” I said in a quieter voice, “you say you’re going straight, and I hope you mean it. Bully for you. But what did you mean when you said Eden got herself killed? Do you know who killed her?”

“No. But I know why. And I’m pretty sure you do too.”

Rita turned to me and raised her eyebrows. I looked back at her and nodded. Then, briefly, I went over my theory that Eden had been snooping electronically to prepare herself to look psychic when she played fortune teller at our Halloween event.

When I was finished, Victor added, “And somehow, she hacked into the wrong computer.”

“We have her computer,” Rita said. “I’m not saying we’re going to be willing to give you access to it, but if we did, could you follow her trail?”

He sneered. “I don’t need her computer for that.”

Rita seemed startled. Then she just seemed embarrassed. “Of course,” she muttered. “And you, just for fun, figured out her passwords long ago, and could have followed her trail any time you were in the mood. Does she have other computers somewhere?”

He shrugged. “You still don’t get it.”

“Probably not. I just happened to be here, so they told me to check you out. I’m not in the cybercrimes department.”

“Cybercrimes,” he muttered derisively. He shook it off and leveled a stare at her. “She only needed to log on, from any computer. Her boyfriend’s. Her sister’s, her niece’s, even public-access ones, like the ones in the public library. You don’t need her computer. You need her usernames and passwords.”

“And you have those?”

“It’s been a while since we worked together,” he said, suddenly evasive.

“But you can get them.”

“Now don’t go thinking I’m some kind of a cyber-god or something.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted people to think?”

The duel between Rita and Victor was getting less warm and fuzzy, and the undercurrent of sexual tension was falling away, at least on Rita’s side.

I decided to cut in. “Victor, Eden had a sister. She had a niece. If you can help us find closure for them, wouldn’t you want to do that? I mean, if you’re serious about this white hat stuff?” Suddenly another thought occurred to me. “Wait. Kendra is a hacker too. Can you help us find her? I mean, she has to have left some kind of electronic trail, too. Her friends have tried, but they didn’t get anywhere. I’m a little hazy about all this stuff, but you seem to be implying that nobody is safe from you on the Internet.”

“Actually, I’ve already tried. I’ve looked. I know Kendra – maybe a little better than I let on to you yester day. I’m worried about her, too. She no longer exists, at least on the Internet. And somebody like Kendra, if she doesn’t exist on the Internet, she doesn’t exist at all.”

I looked at Rita, but she was just staring at Victor.

“What do you mean?” I said. “Is Kendra dead?”

“I don’t know, but I think so,” he said. “There are places she could’ve gone for help, at least in cyberspace, and she hasn’t gone there. Her bank account –“ He stopped, looked like he was sorry he’d said that, then just plunged on. “Her bank account hasn’t been touched, so what is she doing for money? But you cops know that already, right? You’ve been monitoring her bank account and credit cards. I think you guys should stop fooling around with her computer and start looking for her in the real world. Start looking for a body.”

“They haven’t even been looking for her,” Asia lamented, when I saw her at Perks on Wednesday morning. “We’ve lost four whole days.”

After my talk with Victor and Rita, I had given Asia a call and we talked it over. She asked me to meet with her, Rusty and Kady the next morning. If the police decided not to form search parties, we were going to formulate our own plan and get moving. Bernie was supposed to call me and let me know what the Sheriff wanted us to do, if anything.

So we were waiting in Perks for Bernie to call. I’d talked it over with Michael, and he agreed with what Victor had said, so he was sitting there beside me in Perks, along with Stacey and Angie from the shelter, ready to go into the swamps and fields west of Tropical Breeze, looking for a body.

Chrissie had come along with Asia, and were sitting tensely in the coffee shop with Rusty and Kady when we got there.

Ronnie had given everybody free coffee and donuts. “I can’t go searching myself; I have to run the shop. But at least I can do something for you guys who are going out to search,” she said.

“What if the cops aren’t going to organize a search?” Rusty asked.

“Then we go by ourselves,” Asia said.

Brave talk, but none of us had any idea how to even get started, or where to look. There was some talk about making up posters, as if anybody in town didn’t already know that Kendra was missing. Asia had bypassed the old-fashioned methods and started some social media buzz about it with a web page, but she’d gotten nothing but attagirls and best-of-lucks from it so far.

I didn’t know where they’d send us, but I was ready with bug spray, protective clothing, and I had lots of bottled water in my SUV. I was wearing my gardening boots, yellow rubber things with hippie flowers all over them, and I didn’t even feel ridiculous. I just felt ready for anything, and had a strong sense of determination. And I really, really hoped the police were going to organize us and give us a mission, because we didn’t know what we were doing.

“So you think she’s dead,” Asia said in her soft voice, to nobody in particular.

“Don’t say that!” Rusty said.

I didn’t know what else to think, but it wasn’t going to help to say it out loud.

My cell phone started ringing, and we all jumped. It was Bernie.

“Here we go,” I told them, and I answered the phone.

Bernie told me we weren’t going searching for a body after all. I could take off my rubber boots. They’d already found her, and Victor had been right, she was dead.

“Where was she?” I asked.

“In a swampy area, the other side of the Intracoastal Waterway. Whoever dumped her there must’ve hoped she’d never be found.”

“Who found her?”

“Don’t you watch the news? There’s a 3-year old boy who wandered away from home somewhere around there yesterday morning. They were looking for
him
, going through the swamps, beating the bushes, and that’s how they came across Kendra’s body. Anyway, the little boy came home by himself about an hour later. If he’d come home before they found her, she’d probably never have been found at all. Then we’d all have thought she’d killed Eden and gone on the run. And it looks like she may have died the same night as Eden, although the M.E. hasn’t finished with her yet, of course. They’ll take their time with the evidence, so we won’t know anything anytime soon. But now we know that in all probability, the killer is still here in Tropical Breeze.”

The thought chilled me, and I thanked her and hung up mechanically.

I flickered a glance around the table without really catching anybody’s eye, and said, “I’m so sorry, guys. They already found her. She’s dead.”

There was a stunned silence, and Asia began to quietly cry.

Chrissie gently whispered something to her daughter, sent a sympathetic glance around the table, and took Asia home with her. I didn’t think Asia and Chrissie had known Kendra well, but she was inextricably linked with Eden now, and it was another blow to them.

And of course, Rusty and Kady had been good friends of Kendra’s. They were gray-faced and silent, genuinely shocked. I wasn’t thinking too clearly at that point, of course, but I did wonder if they suspected that Kendra had killed Eden, too.

Suddenly, Michael, Stacey, Angie and I felt like we were intruding. After all, we hadn’t known Kendra at all. We murmured a few things and left. Stacey and Angie were parked behind Girlfriend’s, next door, and so was I, so we left by the back door and parted ways quietly.

Michael came into Girlfriend’s with me and we broke the news to Florence, who cried, of course. She’d seen Kendra every week at the bank, and had liked her. I got out of my gardening boots and put my flip flops on, then went into the shop and helped Florence deal with the people who came in just to talk for the next hour or so. Word had spread fast. Then Michael and I went across the street to the diner and fell into a booth.

“Michael,” I said, once we were alone in the booth, “what’s going on in our town? This isn’t that kind of a place. It’s like some outside force is creeping around among us, invisible, and evil. Something that has nothing to do with Tropical Breeze itself.”

“Outsiders,” he said, mulling it over. “Yes, it does seem –“

The floor waitress, DeAnn, came up and solemnly said, “You guys want anything? You’re welcome to just sit and catch your breath. Everybody knows already . . . you know, about Kendra.”

“Did you know her?” I asked.

“She came in on her lunch break sometimes. All I know is that she liked our mac and cheese, and she was a good tipper.” Those little details seemed to break her down. Her eyes got watery and she whispered, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and walked across to the Ladies room.

“Well, anyway, they’ll get him now,” Michael said.

“How do you mean?”

“Forensics. The murderer never meant for her body to be found, much less in just a few days. They’re bound to find some DNA or fiber evidence.”

I wasn’t so sure, but I nodded.

“Trust me, Taylor, anybody who’d kill two women in one night . . . this isn’t the first time.”

“But – you think this was a random thing – just some nut? What about the fortune teller? Why would Kendra have shown up while somebody was killing Eden? It doesn’t make sense. And there’s something else, Michael. Saturday night in the fortune teller’s tent, Kendra was afraid. I’m sure of it. She was downright grim, predicting doom and gloom, and almost forcing her tattoo on everybody. Like she wanted us to see it, and be able to figure out who she was, just in case. Like she knew she was in trouble.”

“How does that make sense?”

I sat back, feeling completely empty inside. “I don’t know.”

DeAnn came back, tightly controlling herself, and we ordered coffee. I was about to order an omelet, though I wasn’t hungry, but Michael surprised me by reminding me that it was time for lunch already. I stared at my own watch, unable to believe it. Then I said, “I’ll just have some soup.”

We picked at our lunches once they came, and after the table was cleared, Michael seemed to come out of the mists.

“Well, I’m going to get over to the Mayor’s office.”

“Why?”

“I’m a Councilman, remember? We’ve got to do something about Halloween.”

“Oh, no.” That aspect of it hadn’t occurred to me, and I was saddened. “Do we have to cancel Trick or Treating?”

“Taylor,” he said, gazing at me directly, “there’s a murderer running around. We don’t know what’s motivating him, or why he killed those women. Maybe it was just a crime of opportunity. We can’t have a lot of children going door to door with a madman on the loose. Can you meet me back at the car in an hour or so? If I can’t make it for any reason, I’ll text you.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll try not to be too long, but we’ll probably have to have a special meeting of the City Council.”

“I know. Take all the time you need, of course. I’ll just sit here a while,” I said, not knowing what to do next.

“Why don’t you go over and sit with Bernie?” he said, rising and putting money down on the check. “She could probably use the company right about now.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

In the end, that’s what I did.

Bernie opened the door without her usual wisecrack. Instead, she said, “I’m glad you came,” and brought me inside. We went into her living room, which she almost never used, and sat down. She hadn’t redecorated since 1990, but she didn’t need to. She never watched TV, and that was all there was to do in that room. And her old recliners were still nice and cozy.

“Michael thinks the city might have to cancel Trick or Treating.”

“I don’t see that they have any choice,” Bernie said. “I got a call from the Mayor right before you got here. She told me she’d get back to me about this Friday’s edition of
The Beach Buzz
; she just warned me that she was calling a meeting of the City Council, and she was going to strongly recommend restricting Halloween activities to private parties, with lots of parental supervision.”

“Like you could make any parent take his eyes off his kid with all this going on.”

“Exactly. I may have to announce it on the front page. And I had such a nice layout planned, with a montage of shots I took at your fundraiser last Saturday night.”

“Did they find anything in Kendra’s car?”

“No. They had it towed to the impound yard when they decided she was really missing. They’d gone over it for forensics, but hadn’t found any physical evidence. At first, it just looked like she left it behind and took off. Of course, now we know different.”

“And her cell phone?”

“Also no help. They found it in pieces, next to the body, but they already had her phone records. Texts and such. Nothing.”

“So the killer knew something about forensics.”

She shrugged. “They say every murderer makes at least one mistake. Leaving her body where it would eventually be found might be the one slip-up he made.”

“He? Do they already have a suspect?”

“No. But don’t you think this is a ‘he?’ Who else could manage to kill two women in one night?”

“Michael thinks they’ll get forensic evidence.”

“They didn’t get lucky with Eden. Maybe with Kendra.”

I thought about it, looked at her appraisingly, then told her all about my theory that Eden had been hacking for information to use in the fortune teller’s tent, and might have invaded the wrong computer. Kendra was a hacker, too. It seemed to be the main thing the two girls had in common. “And Victor has turned out to be kind of a shady character. He comes to town, and all of a sudden, bad things start to happen. And their friends told me Kendra and Eden had a physical fight over Victor on Friday night.”

“That’s interesting. Have you told Kyle?”

“He knows.”

Her phone rang, and she slowly got up to answer it, taking her time walking to the kitchen where her landline was.

She listened more than she talked, saying yes, yes, yes, and I will, then hung up.

“Well, I never thought I’d see it happen in little Tropical Breeze,” she said, coming back and sitting down dejectedly. “Halloween is cancelled. They even want to discourage private parties, but the kids already have their costumes, and I, for one, have about twenty dollar’s worth of candy. We’ll have to think of something.”

“Why don’t we make Halloween a kind of whole-town block party? Everybody out of their houses, adults sitting on their front sidewalks instead of making the kids knock on doors, and parents glued to their kids’ sides. I’m sure they’ve already ordered extra police patrols, but I can bring all my volunteers to do a kind of citizens’ patrol, too. They were coming to my party anyway, but we can cancel it and come into town. Do you think the Mayor would go for it?”

She thought it over. “Maybe. I’ll call her back and ask. Watch this space for further developments, and trust
The Beach Buzz
to be your source for news.”

“You betcha,” I said. “I’ll talk to my volunteers. I’m sure they’ll go for it, especially if they can wear their costumes.”

“I don’t know about costumes. The cops will probably give you tee shirts.”

“No way. I love my lioness outfit, and I only get to wear it once a year.”

She laughed. “I’ll bounce it off the Mayor and see what she says.”

Somehow, sitting quietly in Bernie’s living room and talking about things rationally had settled me down. By the time Michael texted me that the City Council meeting was over, I felt better, and we met behind Girlfriend’s and went home from there.

“Is the Mayor serious about cancelling Halloween?” I asked.

He shrugged and sighed. “What choice does she have?”

“The voters of Tropical Breeze are not going to be happy.”

I told him my idea about how the kids could still have fun, and that Bernie was going to run it by the Mayor.

“Well, I for one hope she goes for it. Frankly I’d rather be on a citizens’ patrol than throwing a party at Cadbury House.”