Luis took the application and scanned it. His eyebrows rose.
"We lied," said Quill, guessing that he was looking at their phony income statement. "But it'll help a lot, Luis, if you can get to Taylor's financial records and his court cases."
"And his income tax returns and his divorce papers," said Meg merrily. "Whatever. Can you do it?"
"I need a lot of passwords, Miss Quilliam. Do you have them?"
"Passwords? No. No, we don't."
"Do you know who runs the system for the big guy?"
"You mean Verger's system? Um..."
"Let me make a few phone calls." He shook his head, brow furrowed over the pages. "La. La. La. La. We shall see."
"Then we'll come and see you after we take care of our visitors. Okay, Luis? You can't let these people intimidate you."
He grinned. "As I said, we shall see."
"You'll just bet we'll see," Meg muttered, stamping after Quill to the door of 110. "Isn't it just like the Cressida Houghtons of this world to think they can control the freedom of the press." A stray photographer, either left over from the morning press barrage or the advance guard of the press due for Tiffany's conference at one o' clock, jumped from behind the oleander shading the front atrium to the Combers and shoved his camera in Meg's face. "Get out of the way, you little weasel!" she snapped. She balled one small fist and brandished it in his face. The photographer, wearing a baseball cap backwards and baggy jeans, shrugged cheerfully. Meg thrust her key into the lock of 1l0's door and growled again, "Beat it!"
"And to hell with the First Amendment," Quill added. Following Meg inside, she almost collided with her.
"What did you say?"
"Honestly, Meg. You can't have it both ways. The press is either free or it..."
Tiffany, having apparently heard the door open, came trotting down the hall and came to a full stop, "Oh," she said flatly, "It's just you."
"Just us," said Quill cheerfully, "How's the therapy session going?"
Tiffany was wearing white leggings and a soft white Angora sweater that covered her muscular arms, It had a cowl collar that surrounded her blonde hair with a fuzzy aureole, Her only jewelry was a pair of white pearl earrings. She looked innocent, angelic, and vulnerable.
"I thought you were that little shit shrink," she said.
"Dr. Bob?"
Tiffany whirled and stamped back toward the living room. Quill pulled a face at Meg and followed her. The living room was filled with beautiful women. Elegantly dressed women, Their hair formed a rainbow of Clairol colors: bronze, sherry, raven, chestnut, and more shades of blonde than had ever occurred in nature. Their skirts were short, showing perfect knees; their suit jackets, blouses, silk sweaters, and knitted tops were tightly fitted, in an astonishing array of reds, greens, yellows, and black. Quill's wholly unscientific estimate of their average weight was ninety pounds.
The air was heavy with perfumes Quill had never smelled before, mixed with the acrid scent of cigarettes. "Virtual Vogue," Meg said into the silence, "Wow."
"This is Sarah Quilliam and her sister, Margaret," Tiffany said. She perched on the arm of the leather sofa and lit a cigarette from a pack lying on the table. "Quill? These are the phobics." She waved the cigarette in a semicircle, beginning with a tall brunette slouched gracefully against the kitchen counter. "This is Barb. She's here because she actually took out a Wal-Mart credit card. Then Nicole, the one I told you about, who's got that job in publishing, then next to her is Merry, who thinks she should go to school, for God's sake..." She trailed off disconsolately. "Oh, what's the use? There's nobody out there, girls. Just some reporter from the local Pennysaver."
"Where is Dr. Bob?" asked Quill gently.
Tiffany stubbed out her cigarette and lit another one. "It looks like he's not corning, doesn't it? I swear I' m going to report him to the AMA. How dare he leave us hanging like this? How dare he!" She narrowed her eyes through the smoke. "You know what happened, don't you? You know who got to him, right? That caviar-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth Miss Idol-of-America Houghton. He's ditched us. Abandoned us completely."
-15-
"Okay, Luis," Meg said, "power up." She pulled a chair next to his desk and sat down. Quill prowled nervously around the office. She tapped at the keys to the units hanging neatly on the wall, flicked aside the window blind to look out at the darkening sky, and switched the radio on. The announcer was forecasting the arrival of Hurricane Helen the next day. She flicked the radio off.
Luis reluctantly took a seat in front of his PC. "You're sure this is legal?
Meg shook her head. "No, it's not legal. But you want another chapter in the book, don't you?"
"Well..."
"Of course you do. You're helping us catch a body snatcher. Maybe. Come on, Luis, cheer up. Log on."
"Log on? I am logged on. All the while you were with your guests I am hacking. I have the gateway. I have the passwords. I have..." Luis typed, swore in Spanish, deleted, and typed again. "Okay." He input rapidly, the keys clicking. "Okay. Now, you're sure about this? You want me to break into this man's files?"
"Hack away," Meg said firmly. "Now what?"
"We try to log on the system as 'anonymous.' This is stupid as an account name, but very usual." He input. "This does not work. So we try to log on as 'guest.' This is also stupid, but usual." He input a second time. "No. No good. Third time lucky, as they say here in America. What is this man's name?"
"Franklin Carmichael," Quill said.
"And..." Luis sat back. "Hola!"
The screen asked FILE NAME?
"Hooray!" Meg yelled. "Okay, this law firm cross-references by birth date of the principal clients. Try Quill's." She gave him the numbers. Within seconds, the application they'd filed that morning with Carmichael appeared on the screen.
"Whoop!" Meg tapped Luis aside. "Mind if I take it from here?"
"I don't mind. I think that maybe I will take a walk outside, and that maybe you have borrowed my computer without my permission."
"Now, Luis," Meg said. "This is fun." Her fingers flew over the keys, scrolling through the file. "Why, the little creep!"
"What little creep?" Quill came to peer over her shoulder. After they'd left his office, Carmichael had added a few notes about them. The most interesting was 'QUERY: criminal charges re: VT's disappearance? Probably. Inquire Stan at WPBPD.' "
"Who's Stan?" asked Luis.
"Who cares?" said Meg. "Quill, Carmichael thinks we did it."
"Oh, dear. Let's try for the Taylor file."
Verger Taylor's birth date was known to half of America, principally because he'd been born on the fourth of July fifty-five years before and used this as evidence of his commitment to American laissez-faire. Meg keyed in the numerics. A long list of file names scrolled across the screen. "Jeez," said Meg. "Here's the file on his divorce from Cressida."
"No," said Quill. "It's private."
"Quill, all this is private!"
"I don't care. Don't open it."
"And here's the file of the divorce from Tiffany yikes, this reads 'pat. suit: Amber St. Clare.' You don't suppose..."
"Just look for Murex, Meg."
"Okay, okay. I'll have to scroll back, then; they're alphabetized. Yep! Here is it."
She clicked on the file name, and a document scrolled across the screen. "Good lord," Meg said in disgust. "This thing's huge. Help!"
"What are you looking for?" asked Luis, who had not carried out on his threat to leave the room.
"I don't know." Meg sat back and ran her hands through her short, dark hair in frustration. "Carmichael said Ernst profited from the rise in stock, but how?"
"Search for anything in the Murex file related to Kolsacker," Quill suggested.
"Brilliant, Watson."
"Obvious, Watson."
Meg requested a search, typed in Kolsacker, and the hard drive hummed. "Purchase price, stock option, buy-out." Meg read. "Let's try buyout." She moved the mouse, clicked, and the screen filled with type.
Quill read with Meg, over her shoulder, and was the first to say, "Ha!"
"Ha? You have found something?" Luis asked.
"Ha!" said Meg. "We sure have!" She looked around. "Can we print this sucker?"
Luis nodded. "Sure."
Meg selected PRINT and the printer burped, whined, and subsided to a steady hum. Paper began to feed, and Meg leaned back with an exclamation of triumph.
"So what did you find?" Luis asked again.
"Verger and Ernst sold Murex last year to a German company. Part of the deal was a staged payout, with stock options coming due at six-month intervals for eighteen months. Ernst was due for a payout on stock yesterday afternoon. And it was a lot of money, Luis - he stood to gain over ten million dollars."
"Ten million!" Luis said. "Do you know what I could do with ten million?"
"Lots," Meg said briefly. "Anyhow, Verger decided to buy the company back a month ago, at least according to the information in The Wall Street Journal. The German company was going to litigate. As all of us know, litigation is costly, and the news of the suit made the price of the stock go down, down, down - until Verger's disappearance, of course. Now the stock is going up, up, up. It took a nice hike yesterday - and Ernst cashed in."
"But why is Verger's disappearance an advantage," Quill asked, "and not his death?"
"The document says that in the event of Taylor's death, Carmichael will execute any standing orders. Doesn't say a word about what happens if he just beats feet. As Birdie and Bea told us this morning, Ernst is in charge until Verger comes back or is proved dead. So Ernst had enough time to cash in. Which maybe was all he wanted."
"We've got a motive," Quill said, "but we don't have any evidence. If it's true, how the heck do we catch him?" She sighed. "And still get home in time for spring."
Meg grinned. "See this? The next payout's due in thirty days. What if we E-mail Carmichael - with an electronic order from Verger to press the Murex suit forward. That'll drop the stock price again for sure."
"What's that going to do?" Quill said, exasperated. "Think about it, Quill. You're Ernst Kolsacker. You illegally moved and/or otherwise disposed of your partner's body. Everything's fine until he starts to speak beyond the grave. All of a sudden, you've lost any advantage you might have keeping your partner alive, but absent. It is highly advantageous to your future to have him turn up dead; Quill. That means the police will have to find the body. You see."
"I see that. What I don't see is how that's going to implicate Ernst Kolsacker any more than he's implicated already. And that's nada."
"Hey," Meg said. "It's the physics of murder."
"The physics of murder?"
"For every action, there's an equal reaction. The more Ernst has to act, the higher his chances of exposure. And of course, there's one more thing. Ernst is going to be able to track where this order came from. I mean, he can backtrack from this message into our system just as easily as we broke into Carmichael's. So. Is Ernst going to run to the cops and tell them we're interfering with his ability to make a profit on Murex? Not likely. That's risking too much exposure. As soon as he finds out where this order originated, he has to act. Most likely," Meg said sunnily, "he'll come roaring after us. Tonight."
"You mean me," Luis said in alarm. "This is my computer. I think I'd better go visit my cousin."
"We'll make sure he knows it's us, Luis," said Meg. "We'll use an address like gourm.det.quill.meg. Right, Quill?"
"Pfui," Quill said, in the best Nero Wolfe tradition. "This is nuts, Meg. I absolutely refuse to put either one of us at risk."
"It's not much of a risk. We input this order. We wait. Ernst shows up at our condo tonight. I threaten him, recording his confession with a concealed tape recorder of course. He agrees to pay blackmail. I agree to take the money. We get it all on tape."
"It's too dangerous." "It is not too dangerous! Ernst is a body snatcher. That's a far cry from murder, Quill. He just took advantage of the situation that presented itself. He's no killer.
Gosh, the man's sixty-two years old with a heart condition. And he loves to cook. I refuse," said Meg, with an utter disregard for the rational, "to consider anyone who's a good cook a killer."
"Oh, Meg."
"Let's put it this way. You want to go home, right? Sometime before next Christmas? You know perfectly well what's going to happen if we don't expose Kolsacker. We don't expose Kolsacker, we may never find the body. No body - no conviction for Evan and Corrigan. If we ever do get back to Hemlock Falls, we'll be dragged back here for depositions, testimony, and God knows what all. Month after month. It may even take year after year. You can just bet that Cressida isn't going to miss a trick to save her boys from a murder.I charge, and legal tricks take weeks. Months. Years. You want to tie yourself up that long? I mean, we do have a life."
"What if he doesn't show up tonight?"
"He'll show up," Meg said confidently. "Trust me on this one."
"We should at least tell Jerry what we're doing. He could give us some protection."
"As if!"
"Why don't we turn this information over to Jerry? He can trap Ernst if he wants to."
"Because the police can't entrap citizens, Quill," Meg said virtuously. "It's not legal. If you just presented the cold facts to a judge - where's the wrong-doing? We have no physical proof that Ernst snatched the body..."
"We don't know that he did, either," Quill pointed out.
"And in the absence of proof, all he has to say is that he - sorry about that - took advantage of his dear friend's absence to make a little money. And who on the jury is going to dispute that? Especially down here? Everybody wants to make money down here. No, Quill, we have to have some proof. This little blackmail scheme will provide us proof. I'll tell you what. We'll even let Ernst know that we know where the body is when we talk to him."
"But we don't know where the body is."
"He doesn't know that. Okay?" She sat at the computer, her fingers poised. "All I've got to do is use the E-mail to get word to Carmichael. Carmichael's obligated to pass word of this on to Ernst." She cocked her head. "Don't look so worried. I mean, it's much more realistic if we go ahead and prove that we have this knowledge and can pretend to be Verger Taylor and give orders for a while, by sending this phony buy order from Verger."
"Be quiet a minute, Meg." Quill dithered. She bit her nails. She pulled her hair. Finally she said, "Okay. But. If anything, anything happens to either me or Meg tonight, Luis, you go to the police. Agreed?"
"Can I put all this in the book?" Luis asked. "After you've captured him, of course."