The Fortune Teller (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 5) (13 page)

When he realized we weren’t buying it, he stopped and got serious. “Look, I only copied her hard drive because I saw that she had some files that had been set up by somebody else that she was trying to hide in that Recipes folder. I suspected she’d grabbed them from somebody else’s computer, and I wanted to try to figure out whose stuff she’d been into. That’s how I was able to look at what was in her computer after the cops had taken it. I had copied the hard drive. And of course, I could get past the encryption. I wrote it.”

“So Eden had been hacking,” I said. “We figured she was snooping around town so she’d be able to look like she was psychic when she was telling fortunes. You know, an ego trip. And she stumbled onto something dangerous. What was it?”

He regarded me coolly, then looked at Bernie. “I’ll tell you, but there’s no way in the world I’m going to let your boyfriend come and take my hardware back to the police station and let his gorillas try to burn down my firewalls. You’re just going to have to figure out a way to tip him off without involving me, or I take my little white van and disappear like the ghost that I am. It’d be a shame,” he added wistfully. “I like this little town.”

He could disappear, too, I realized. His “I.T.I.Q.” corporate logo was just a flexible magnet. He could peel it off, drive down the road, switch license plates (he probably had a stack of them) and be gone. I didn’t even know where he was living. We didn’t really have any evidence. Kyle would have nothing to hold him on. Yet.

“As for stumbling onto something dangerous while boning up for this fortune teller gig, maybe she did find out a few secrets, but she stumbled onto the
really
dangerous thing a long time ago. She found out was that Kendra was a carder.”

“You mean, Kendra was committing credit card fraud,” I said.

“Right. But she wasn’t attacking her own bank. She’d worked in a lot of restaurants, putting herself through college,” he said. “The number one site of credit card theft is the point-of-sale systems in restaurants. The waitress takes your card and walks away with it, then brings back a receipt for you to sign, and in the meantime you have no idea what she’s doing with it. Usually they have a hand-held device called a skimmer that records your data, but Kendra didn’t even need to use a skimmer. She just planted back-doors for herself in the systems everywhere she worked, and then she sat back and collected the dumps until she was detected, which could take months. Some little joints with no I.T. management, she could be hiding in their systems for years. She could be stealing from them long after she’d quit working for them.”

“And Eden found out,” I said.

“Oh, honey, that was just the beginning. Can I have one of those?” he said as Bernie lit up a second cigarillo. She didn’t smoke much, and one was usually enough for her, but the way things were going she looked like she needed a good stiff drink as well as the smokes. She handed the pack across the desk to Victor, he took one and lit up, and then he settled back and crossed his legs, looking smug.

Edson coughed. Victor took a long drag. I braced myself, hoping I’d understand at least half of what he was about to say.

And I wondered if any of the town gossips had told Victor that Michael was a lawyer.

After Victor had left, we sat in Bernie’s office, staring at one another.

“So let me get this straight,” I said. “Kendra had a credit-card operation going, and Eden detected it and forced herself in. Being useful – doing some of the work, but still, it was sort of a hostile take-over. And then Victor came to town to check it all out, see who this Kendra was, and do a little snooping of his own. Because he’s such a good guy,” I added drily.

“I don’t know,” Ed said. “He’s obviously presenting himself in the best possible light, and he could be lying about the details. A hacker wouldn’t need to be here in Tropical Breeze to run an operation like the one he described. He might have been the one who started the whole thing in the first place and then recruited Eden’s friends from back home. I still say he’s our Fagin. You know,” he said, looking at Bernie, “the master criminal who was running a gang of street kids in
Oliver Twist
.”

“I know who Fagin is,” she snapped. “And if that boy is hoping to trade information to avoid getting into trouble, he’s in for a surprise. The police already know what Kendra was doing. They have her computer, remember, and they were able to break her encryption in a couple of hours. Eden’s they weren’t so lucky with. Victor didn’t give himself enough credit. His encryption, the ‘simple’ one he wrote when he was a teenager, stumped the guys in the computer lab. But as far as they could tell, the only cybercrime going on in Tropical Breeze was the credit card operation that Kendra had going. There is no mastermind.”

Somehow I was disappointed. Illogical, I know, but I had been so proud of my theory. The others kept throwing ideas back and forth while I pondered the new angle, and finally I broke in and said, “So why was Kendra killed? I understand why she would have sat in for Eden on Saturday night – she’d killed her and needed time to hide the body before anybody started searching for her. But if Kendra killed Eden, who killed Kendra?”

“We’re back to Victor,” Michael said, “Maybe he came to Tropical Breeze to take over the enterprise. It’s another reason why Eden may have followed him from Atlanta. He admits he was in the habit of browsing around her hard drive. If Eden knew about Kendra’s operation, he would have found out about it too. Maybe Eden followed him here so she wouldn’t be cut out of her own scam. Either way, it still makes Victor the most likely suspect.”

We tried to work through it for a while, then Edson said, “I’ve got a headache. I’m going home. I suggest we all sleep on it tonight. Sometimes a good nights’ sleep clarifies the thinking. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Make that a conference call,” Bernie said, getting up. “You dragged me into this. You’re not getting rid of me now.”

When Bernie grabbed a light jacket and started to follow us, it took me a minute to remember: Mayor Sanders had called a meeting of the City Council, and Bernie was sitting in. I needed to switch gears. Only a confrontation with a creature as alien as a computer geek could have made me forget about Halloween.

The Mayor had liked our idea of bringing reinforcements onto the streets of Tropical Breeze so the kids could go Trick-or-Treating, and she wanted me to come to the meeting because I was bringing in about half of the volunteers: the Orphans of the Storm people who would have been at my party otherwise. We’d make Halloween an all-over-the-town block party. Everybody liked the idea, and we just needed to work out the logistics. Bernie would be at the meeting so she could get busy and update
The Beach Buzz
, which was otherwise ready to go. That week’s edition was due the next day.

As we walked outside, Ed said, “Give me a séance any day. That was exhausting.” Then he got into his little green car and drove away.

We got Bernie into the passenger seat of my SUV, and Michael drove us over to Locust Street, where the Mayor’s office was.

I never saw Victor Pacetti, alias Victor Smith, alive again.

Mayor Sanders had adjourned the meeting to Don’s Diner, which was right next door to her real estate office.

“I gotta grab a quick lunch,” she said as we went into Don’s little party room at the back of the restaurant. “I have three showings this afternoon, and my buyer likes to take his cell phone camera all over the house and photograph every square inch, whether he likes the house or not. It takes forever.”

Rocky Sanders was a high-energy, friendly and popular figure in Tropical Breeze, and when our last Mayor had been indicted for taking bribes, she’d been the peoples’ choice. Every time I saw her she was in mid-flight, in a hurry to get somewhere else, but somehow she found time to do a decent job as Mayor. We have what they call a “weak mayor” system – decisions are mainly made by the City Council, with the Mayor having limited duties. Her biggest responsibility was in breaking ties among the four City Council members, and that rarely happened. The last Mayor had been pushing the boundaries of his power, but everybody trusted Rocky to stay within the law, do a good job, and do it with style.

She’s a spitfire redhead with dark blue eyes and a figure that looks good in anything. Today she was in a sort of clarified turquoise – the color of shallow ocean water – and she’d just had a manicure-pedicure to match.

“Get on in here, kids,” she said to the City Council, plus me and Bernie.
“Don!”
she yelled suddenly toward the kitchen.
“Ice tea all around, and eight cheeseburgers with fries.”

“Coming up,” the invisible Don called from somewhere back of the pass. Somehow, the order was amended to the lunches we all usually ordered, and I didn’t have to tell DeAnn to bring me a grilled cheese sandwich instead of a cheeseburger. This wasn’t the first City Council meeting held in the back of the diner, and it was far from the first time Bernie and I had eaten there.

The Mayor’s secretary, Ellen, a retired teacher who ran the town’s historical museum, was there to take notes, but she did that by setting a recorder on the table and letting it roll. She’d type it out later for the record, but otherwise, she didn’t participate in the meeting.

“Now,” Rocky said, looking around the table at all of us. “Taylor, let’s have your plan again.”

I spelled it out for them, not bothering to pause while DeAnn delivered our food. The City Council consisted of Michael and two of his golfing buddies, plus Barnabas Elgin; I knew them all well, so I was relaxed and informal.

“We have almost twenty people available from Orphans, and a few more who’ve volunteered from here in town. I think we can cover all the main intersections.”

We discussed giving them official tee shirts vs. letting them wear costumes. In the end, we decided to use both. Those in tee shirts would be a strong presence on the streets and could watch for traffic and be there in case of questions, while those in costumes could blend in and observe. Like a kid, I was pleased in a silly way that I could wear my lioness costume, instead of a boring tee shirt. Some of us never outgrow Halloween.

“But basically,” I wound up, “I expect most of the parents to stick to their kids like glue.”

“I’m going to suggest forming up groups of kids with designated parents,” Bernie said. “Lots of people always do that anyway, but my article will spell it out. And we’re doing this between 5:00 and 7:30? Sunset will be around 6:30. It’ll be dark by the time we end Trick-or-Treating. Are we calling a curfew?”

Rocky looked around the table unhappily. “Oh, do you think we have to?”

There was a desultory discussion, and the Council finally decided on suggesting a curfew for kids under the age of 12 at 7:30.

“You’re not going to keep the older ones off the streets if they have a party to go to anyway,” Rocky said. “Will some of the volunteers agree to stay and maintain a presence a little later? Say until eight o’clock?”

I thought they would. With that, the Halloween matters seemed to be settled.

Knowing that Bernie is close to the Sheriff, Rocky looked at her and asked, “Are they any closer to finding out who the killer is? If we even knew why those girls were killed, we’d know whether or not to be really concerned about the kids. I mean, was this a personal thing between Eden, Kendra and somebody else?”

We all looked at Bernie expectantly, and she sat there, obviously trying to decide how much to tell us.

“It looks like something personal,” she finally said. “They had some kind of Internet scam going.”

Rocky seemed relieved. “Good. Then we don’t have to worry so much about the kids.”

Bernie seemed about to protest, then just sat back looking unhappy. “I really don’t know whether we should be worried or not, Rocky. But let’s err on the side of caution.”

“Of course, of course,” Rocky said, checking her watch and getting up from the table. Michael and the other men rose too, out of courtesy. “I gotta fly. Thanks everybody, for showing up on short notice.”

Ellen picked up the recorder and threw it into her enormous purse, took another sip of tea and said good-bye to everybody.

We broke up after that and walked out of the Diner into the glare of the late afternoon sun.

We held a meeting the next morning with the volunteers, so we could get everybody up to speed. People were coming from all over Tropical Breeze, so we decided to hold the meeting in town at Perks, for everybody’s convenience. Ed said he’d help out but he was busy that morning and couldn’t make the meeting, so I agreed to brief him separately. Michael and I arrived early, at 8:30, and Ronnie offered to let us use her little party room.

“How many people are you expecting?” she asked.

“About twenty,” I said.

“Well, that’s going to be too much for that little room. I guess we’re going to have to do it out here on the floor, but that’s okay. Most of my Friday morning business is hit and run anyway – they’re all on their way to work, and they want their coffee to go.”

By the time Michael and I had left Cadbury House, Ed hadn’t called with any new thoughts on our meeting with Victor, so I forgot all about it.

To my surprise, in addition to the usual people, we had some new volunteers: Chrissie, Asia, Kady and Rusty were all going to help out, and at the last minute, Rita Garnett came in and said, “Am I too late? I’d like to help out, too.”

I welcomed them all in and explained the plan to them.

I had a big map of Tropical Breeze, and we designated areas for the volunteers to cover, and Rita offered her house as a staging and refreshment area. Everybody had my cell phone number, and I made sure they all had the police emergency number saved in their Contacts. I was designated as central control – the one to call if something happened that wasn’t really a police matter. I’d stay at Rita’s house with her, sitting at a table on the front lawn handing out bottled water and generally keeping an eye on things. Knowing Rita was a Federal agent was very reassuring; it’d be good to have her with me. I didn’t mention her job – apparently now her former job – to the others, though. I didn’t know how much she’d told people.

Everybody would report to Rita’s house at 4:30, check in, and spread out from there, ready to be on watch when Trick-or-Treating started at five.

Once all the details were tied up, the group began to disperse, some of them lining up at the counter, but most of them leaving; they’d gotten their coffee when they’d arrived.

After the general exodus, I found myself sitting amid a loose group that ranged over two tables. Michael hadn’t met the ones I’d come to think of as “the hackers,” Rusty, Kady and Asia. He knew Chrissie and Rita, but Chrissie went back on duty behind the counter and was only listening with one ear as the rest of us talked.

Suddenly the place was quiet, and I had to revert to my “inside” voice.

“I met Victor yesterday,” Michael said nonchalantly. “He seems nice.”

Good move, I thought. Everybody present had some kind of a relationship with him, and I still hadn’t figured him out. Simply mentioning Victor wouldn’t have had the same impact as adding that he was nice. The kids erupted in various ways.

“That phony,” Rusty groused.

Kady hit him with an elbow and said, “He is not.”

“He may not be a phony,” Asia said in a subdued voice, “but he had something to do with my aunt’s death.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I was afraid she’d refuse to say anything more, but she seemed relieved to be able to vent.

“He was hacking her; I know it. He broke into a chat room she was in and started accusing her of selling . . . stuff.”

“Stuff?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Drugs. She was selling drugs, and maybe doing other things, too.” She looked at Kady. “You know, don’t you? You know a lot more than you’ve been saying.”

“Yeah. You’re right,” Kady said. “May as well go ahead and say it. She’s dead. What difference does it make?” She turned to me with her flat black eyes. “She was selling some kind of amateur porn on-line. Victor found out. He told us.”

There was a loud crash across the room, and we all looked. Chrissie had dropped some dishes behind the counter. Ronnie immediately went to help her, and they had a muttered conversation about the accident below the counter, where we couldn’t see or hear them. Michael and I flickered a look at one another. I had thought Chrissie was too far away to hear us.

Asia wasn’t the glaring type, but she was looking out the front window now, head turned at an uncomfortable angle, deliberately avoiding Kady and turning very pink.

Rita looked at Michael as if nothing had happened and said, “I hope you got more out of Victor than I’ve managed to so far. How did you meet him?”

We explained our clever ruse – and how it had flopped – and got a few laughs, but we didn’t get into the information he’d given us from Eden’s hard drive. The air was still full of tension, even though it had come down a notch or two.

“No,” Rusty said when we finished. “You’re not going to get anything out of Victor that he hasn’t already decided you should know.”

“How long have you known him?” Rita asked.

He looked away evasively. “Since he come to town.”

“We knew who he was before that, though,” Kady said. Rusty stared at her murderously. She gave him a mincing smile and sipped her iced coffee. “You know, you can’t blame those two for making fools of themselves over him: Kendra and Eden, I mean. They couldn’t help being fascinated by Victor. We all are.”

Rusty abruptly stood up and stalked out of the café.

“Excuse me,” Asia murmured. She got up, went across the shop to give her mother a kiss, then left.

Which left the grown-ups looking at Kady, who sat there looking like she’d done something clever.

“So you think Victor had something going on with Eden and Kendra? Maybe something to do with drugs and porn?” Rita asked.

She shrugged. “Nobody was getting hurt. Besides, I had nothing to do with it, so don’t be looking at me like that. I’m going to college, and after I graduate, I’m going to get an honest job. I don’t care what other people are doing.”

There was a startled pause.

“You made it sound like something was still going on,” I said.

“No I didn’t,” Kady said defiantly. “I never said that.” She suddenly gulped down the last of her coffee and stood up.

“Just what are other people doing?” Rita asked, looking up at her.

“I gotta go.”

She went.

We stared at one another for a moment, and then I said, “Oh, man, I’ve got a bad feeling about that. I hope that girl doesn’t know something that could put her in danger.”

Ed finally called me on my cell phone sometime late in the morning, while Michael and I were shopping at the hardware store.

“We’re in big trouble with the cops,” he said.

“Over that thing with Victor?”

“What else?”

“Oops.” It was all I could say. Michael motioned to me to the back of the aisle where we were alone, and we listened to the phone with our heads together.

“Is Bernie on the line?” I asked.

“I’m here.”

“Is this about that stunt we pulled yesterday, getting Victor in to fix your computer when it didn’t need fixing?”

“Just whose bright idea was that, anyway?” Bernie asked.

“Mine,” Ed and I said at the same time. “Well, we did agree that it was a bright idea,” I said. “What went wrong?”

“Victor has disappeared,” Bernie said, “just when the cops were ready to pull him in for questioning. When Kyle found out about our little meeting with him yesterday, he hit the roof. It may be a long time before he buys me another lunch at the diner.”

“The Sheriff came to my house while I was still asleep this morning and demanded my tape recorder,” Ed said. “My nerves are shot. He pounded on the door like a madman, shouting something I couldn’t understand.”

“Well, naturally you couldn’t understand,” I said sympathetically. “Your bedroom is at the back of the house.”

“Actually, I had fallen asleep on my desk. My other work had to be set aside to go to that meeting yesterday afternoon, and I like to record my impressions while they are fresh. The séance, you know. I think we can safely say we got real results at the Whitby House with Purity.”

“I think we can safely say you’re in denial,” I said. “You’d rather speculate about the unknown than have an angry cop on your doorstep. Did you give him the recorder?”

“Of course I did. I will be publishing, by the way. Since you were part of the séance, I’ll need a waiver from you. Naturally, I’ll change your name, if you prefer.”

“Ed, snap out of it. I could care less about the séance. Will you concentrate? Bernie, why did the cops want to talk to Victor?”

“They came up with the same theory we did: you know, that Victor came to Tropical Breeze in the first place because he figured out Eden and Kendra were carders. Being a bunch of cynics, the cops think he just wanted a piece of the action, but I’m beginning to think it’s more insane than that. I’ve been researching him, and Victor turns out to be a more interesting guy than you realize. He’s a man with a mission. A self-appointed cyber cop. No –
the
cyber cop. The sublime and benevolent king of the Internet, doing what’s best for everybody, whether they like it or not. For his more harmless pursuits, he likes the username Paladin. If he’s crazy enough, he may have come here to clean up the criminal activity, and when the girls didn’t go along with him, or counterattacked with something Eden had on him, well . . . .”

“I don’t believe it,” I said stoutly. “Victor is an egotist and some kind of mad genius, but he is not a killer.”

All the other parties to the call were silent long enough for me to realize that I had absolutely no reason to say what I did. But somehow, I firmly believed it.

“I want to know why you’d say a silly thing like that,” Bernie said. “You don’t know Victor from Adam.”

“Oh, well, it’s just a feeling. Forget about it. Anyway, are we in real trouble?”

My call-waiting beeper came through the phone, and I looked at the Caller I.D.

“Oh, boy,” Michael said.

“That’s Kyle calling us now,” I told Ed and Bernie. “I’d better hang up. Don’t worry, Bernie, we’ll tell him we put you up to it.”

“That won’t help. He knows I have a mind of my own.” She hung up.

“Try to settle him down,” Ed said desperately. “I have to go to Beverly Beach to meet with him this afternoon.”

“Bring donuts,” I said, then I flashed over to the other call.

“Taylor Verone,” I said sweetly.

Then I scrunched my eyes shut and held the phone away while Kyle expressed himself operatically.

“Well, half the time I wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about,” I said nervously. “Anyway, you have Ed’s recording.”

“Only the first ten words or so, right up until he said ‘Turn that off,’” Kyle said. “Michael, I’m surprised at you,” he added.

“We were there to protect our elderly friend,” he replied without batting an eye. “She needed Victor’s services, but the man was new in town. We wanted to be sure he was legitimate.”

Apparently that was our position, and we were sticking to it. If Michael had asked me, I would have advised him as a friend of the court not to refer to Bernie as our “elderly friend.” Kyle can call her that, but he doesn’t like anybody else to. Still, I had a new appreciation for the term “mouthpiece,” as used by the Mob. I could only hope Michael would do all the talking.

Marty Frane, the detective with the creepy eyes, was there, along with Bill Weyer, and of course, Kyle. They’d wanted Ed to come at the same time, and he was there too, (with donuts – that man never knows when I’m joking), clearing his throat, shuffling his feet and adjusting his glasses.

“We know about the credit card fraud,” Frane said calmly. “As I’m sure our local investigative reporter has already informed you.”

“She did,” Michael said smoothly. “Do you think that’s why Eden and Kendra were killed?”

He ignored Michael and looked at me. “Miss Verone, why don’t we begin with you? I’d like you to tell us exactly what Victor Smith said yesterday, as best you can remember it.”

I told them about the soft porn, but I didn’t mention Kady’s statement that Eden had been selling it. Hearsay. I know the rules. And I figured the less I said, the better. I told them about the credit card dumps, handling the jargon like a pair of tight shoes. When I mentioned that Victor had been a teenager when he’d written the encryption code that was still keeping Eden’s hard drive locked up tight, I got the evil eye from Kyle. I finished up with the last thing Victor had said to me. The thing that didn’t make sense, at least not right there, right then.

I was frowning, not with the effort to remember, because I remembered it verbatim, but because I was still confused by it. “The last thing he did was turn to me and say, ‘Ever housebreak a puppy?’ I run an animal shelter, Detective Frane. I’ve bottle-fed a lot of puppies, and I can housebreak anything on four legs. I told him so. Then he looked at me in a funny way and said, ‘They learn pretty fast, don’t they? A good puppy never wets its own bed.’”

They waited.

Kyle said, “And?”

“That’s it. ‘A good puppy never wets its own bed.’ That’s what he said. But I don’t think he was talking about puppies.”