Fat Cat Takes The Cake

She should make sure Quincy was still in the office, since she had neglected to mention him to the pair when they headed that way. But she had another idea, too.

TEN

Chase watched Tanner glide through some computer screens she had never seen before. They were not only unfamiliar, they were weird-looking. “What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s your code. It’s what’s behind your webpages. I think I need to tweak a couple of things.”

She wasn’t sure how to state her question. “How are you at . . . getting into things?”

Tanner gave her a questioning glance. “What do you mean? What things?”

Chase sat on the edge of the desk and looked down at Tanner, who was occupying her desk chair. “Have you been following the murder of Ron North?”

He nodded with excitement. “The guy you found with your cat? That is totally . . . different.”

She thought he’d been about to say it was awesome. It totally was not awesome. Not to her and not to Julie.

“I mean, I heard on the web that he was strangled with a scarf. And it belongs to your friend Julie, right? That’s not good.”

Chase agreed. “I need to convince the police that she didn’t do it.”

“How do you know she didn’t?”

Good question. Julie had disappeared right after Ron North left the reunion. She could have followed Ron to the parking lot, briefly. She could have gotten her scarf back. But Chase hadn’t seen it again—until she encountered it wrapped around Ron’s neck. She knew her best friend wasn’t a killer. “Ron North had lots of enemies. He was an annoying person and might have been blackmailing people.”

“Whoa. That could get him dead.”

“Yes, it could.”

“So, who all was he blackmailing?”

When Chase didn’t answer, he caught on. “You want to find out, right? You want me to hack into his, like, online stuff?”

“Would you know where to find things like that?”

“That’s what you meant about getting into things. Private messages and stuff. I might. Give me a few minutes.”

Chase left him to it. The thought crossed her mind that he would probably be able to access everything on her computer. But there wasn’t much there that she wanted to keep secret. She hoped he wouldn’t hack into her bank account and steal all of her cash. Somehow, she couldn’t picture Tanner doing that.

Anna raised her eyebrows, questioning Chase as she passed through the kitchen.

“Later,” Chase mouthed.

“Is he still here?” Mallory asked when Chase returned to the front of the shop.

“He’s doing some extra work for me.”

She was able to lose herself in dessert bar sales for two hours without thinking about Tanner and what he might be into. When he poked his head into the salesroom and beckoned her, she followed him to the office. He’d been there much longer than he’d thought he would.

“What did you find?” Not her own passwords, she hoped.

“All kinds of stuff.” He was zinging with excitement. “I haven’t had this much fun since the release of Call of the Aura Assassins.” His fingers shook as they hovered over the keyboard for a moment, then steadied as they danced across it. A screen of exchanges came up. “Look at these e-mails.”

Chase bent to get a better angle on the screen. One set of messages was from “rnorth83,” the other from “bigbyrd.” She scanned them. The most interesting e-mails were near the bottom.

bigbyrd: mona sez u followed her again 2day. this is your last warning.

rnorth83: or what?

bigbyrd:

i go to the cops

rnorth83: and i release my pictures. i no where you were last nite and it wasnt at home. was it.

“Bigbyrd must be Richard Byrd. It’s kind of hard to read that stuff, isn’t it? These almost look like text messages rather than e-mails.” Chase said.

Tanner blinked. “Why?”

“You don’t have to stop and think about what that means?”

“I think it means that North was stalking Byrd’s wife or girlfriend. Byrd wants him to stop, but North has some kind of pictures that Byrd doesn’t want anyone to see.”

So no, the e-mail shorthand was not a puzzle to Tanner, Chase thought. “And North knows something about Byrd being somewhere that he shouldn’t have been. I mean North knew that.”

“Right. He’s not threatening anyone now, is he? Byrd, I mean.”

“They were threatening each other,” Chase said. “I wonder if this was a stalemate. I don’t remember hearing about any incriminating photos of Dickie. What’s the date of this exchange?”

Tanner scrolled up. “Two weeks ago.”

“Oh, recently. So this is fresh stuff. The police need to know about this.”

Tanner blanched and his fingers stilled. “No, you can’t do that. You can’t tell them I hacked in here.”

Chase nodded slowly. “Yes, I see that.” But she had the knowledge. She should be able to find another way to get the information to the police. After all, she had seen Byrd kissing that woman. Maybe North had pictures of those two. And maybe Byrd spent some time with that woman when he was supposed to be somewhere else. Like at home. How would she go about ferreting out this stuff?

“Thanks, Tanner. This is a big help.”