A Geek Girl's Guide to Murder Read online

  I stopped at the concierge desk and poured myself some coffee.

  “Mia?” Lacy Foster sidled up to the desk and leaned her narrow hip against it. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  Lacy was about ten years older than me. She was a trophy wife for fifteen years until her dripping-with-money husband died of old age and left her everything. It was a tough job, being a trophy wife. The old ones didn’t all last as long as Hefner and then you woke up forty and single. Finding a replacement for Mr. Moneybags was a lot harder when the competition was half your age. I felt genuinely bad for Lacy. She was exquisite, kind and had been raised in poverty. She worked hard for the Mrs. Moneybags status and seemed to have truly loved Mr. Foster. Now she was reaping the rewards and repercussions of trophy-wife-ism simultaneously. In other words, she was rich but lonely.

  “I’m going on an important date this weekend.” She slid a business card across the counter to me. “I wish I knew how to find out if he had any skeletons in his closet. Pending lawsuits, recent love children, arrests, fetishes I can’t accommodate.”

  I smiled, unsure if she was getting at what I thought she was, especially after my misread on Jake yesterday. “If only, right?”

  Her oversculpted brows furrowed. “Oh. Wait.” She flattened a second business card over the first. This card was black, front and back. Not a stitch of font or color, save one little picture in the corner. A small almond blossom embossed into the card signified a promise. Mine to the holder and the holder’s to me. I would keep their trust, and they would keep mine. Someone had told Lacy my secret.

  I covered both cards with my palm and slipped them into my bag. “I’ll have a packet prepared for you this afternoon.”

  Her smile widened and wilted into a pleased cat-that-ate-the-canary look. “That’s fast. Thank you. What will I owe you?”

  “Let’s see how I do and you can decide.” I’d learned that people were far more generous than expected, and assigning a price led to underpayment most of the time. Plus, in my business, there was plenty of pressure to keep me happy, so I wouldn’t blab. Which I wouldn’t. I believed in what I did.

  Lacy sauntered away as Jake approached with a handsome but overly cliché-looking detective wielding a pocket-sized notebook and pen. “Miss Connors, do you have a moment?” the detective asked. His badge hung around his neck on a beaded silver chain.

  “Sure.”

  Jake watched Lacy until she disappeared through the front door. Maybe she didn’t have to look too far for a new man. Of course, head of security lacked the prestige of vice president of National Bank, the man’s title on the business card she’d handed me.

  The detective poised his pen and widened his stance. “Where were you when the silent alarm went off last night?”

  “Outside The Beanery on Wales Avenue.”

  “Is there anyone who can verify that?”

  I shot Jake an unfriendly look. Had he told the detective I threatened Baxter? “Or else” could mean anything. Between Baxter and me, it meant I’d give him trouble in one of our online games or spike his coffee with an energy shot, nothing more.

  The men waited for my answer with matching humorless expressions.

  “The alarm notification came to my phone. You can check the call log and verify with my GPS.”

  He worked his shoulders as if they ached or were bunched from tension. Hazard of the job, I supposed. “Tech-savvy people tend to turn their GPS off.”

  “I don’t. If I’m ever abducted, I want to be found. Plus, it comes in handy whenever I’m accused of murder.”

  Jake rubbed a hand over his lips, hiding a smile. I didn’t know his face did that trick.

  Detective Pen Poser didn’t laugh. “Is it true you threatened the victim earlier that day?”

  There it was. I glowered at Jake and his smile fell.

  The detective pressed on. “Warren Smith stated he heard you threaten to break the victim’s face.”

  My head fell back. I counted to ten. Warren was the kind of guy who ran when someone else screamed. Of course he’d rat on me. “I didn’t mean it and I didn’t threaten to break his face yesterday. That was an argument we had last week. I had that kind of relationship with Baxter. Please call him Baxter, not The Victim.”

  “He is the victim.”

  I curled my fingers at my sides. “Yeah, well, he was a lot of other things too.”

  The detective considered me a moment. “What kind of relationship did you and Baxter have? Precisely.”

  “That feels a little nosy,” I hedged.

  He waited.

  He was better at the stare down than Jake.

  “Fine. We were friends. I met him through my best friend, Nate, Nathan Green. Nate was here with Baxter yesterday morning.” My gaze slid to Jake. Hadn’t he relayed all this? Hadn’t I covered this eleven times already?

  “Friends? Warren got the impression you and the—Baxter—were more than friends.”

  I pulled in a long breath. Humiliation scorched my cheeks. Jake saw it too, from the expression on his face. Impish smile, raised brows. Jerk. “Baxter and I had a night. One night. A long time ago.”

  “And you weren’t dating him now?”

  “No. He pursued me afterward, but it didn’t go anywhere. We settled into a routine of him trying too hard and me shutting him down. It was our thing.” A lump wedged in my throat. I had been too hard on Baxter. What if he’d been serious in his efforts? What if my rejections had hurt him? My heart sank. I was a colossal, clueless meanie.

  The detective tapped his pen against the little notebook. “Seeing anyone else right now?”

  “No.” My back stiffened. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  He shrugged. “Jealous boyfriends are unpredictable. If Baxter came on to you regularly, it might’ve ruffled feathers.” He smirked. “Plus, I’m nosy.”

  Jake and the detective moved away from me and performed an elaborate handshake, followed by a weird one-armed guy hug. Bizarre versions of one another.

  Instinct tickled my scalp. I followed them. “What did you say your name was?”

  The detective lifted his shield. “Detective Dan Archer.”

  Four matching blue eyes seared my brain. Their identical cocky expressions popped my mouth open. “Brothers?”

  Dan’s smirk split into a wide toothy smile.

  Argh. I spun on my heels and headed back to the concierge desk for my cooling coffee.

  Randall appeared out of nowhere. “There you are. Why isn’t the appointment system fixed yet? I’ve got rampaging octogenarians demanding hair appointments, and the salon doesn’t open for an hour. I’m giving free golf lessons to hordes of men claiming to have tee times with the pros. For the record, ‘free’ means I’m paying for those lessons because there’s no way the pros are doing anything pro bono, and it’s not their asses on the line over this scheduling snafu. That’s all me, and I’m not going down alone. You said you’d fix this yesterday.”

  I hiked my laptop bag higher on one shoulder and topped off my coffee. “I lost a friend last night, Randall. I’m looking into the problem. I’ll get answers to you as soon as I have them.” My voice wavered. “Can you remember the names of some of the people lodging complaints? I’d like to know when they made the appointments, and get a look at the email they received. I locked the system down tight before I went home yesterday, but for the record, those emails weren’t sent from our system.”

  He blanched. “Oh, no. Are you saying we have a hacker? This is serious. You have to fix this.” He turned a business card over and listed several names. He handed the card to me with softer eyes. “I’m truly sorry about your friend, but this is bad.”

  “It’s not a hacker. I checked after the meeting yesterday. No one was in my system,
but I’ll find out what happened and keep you posted. Thanks for the list.”

  I turned the corner and stopped short at my office. A thin line of crime-scene tape crossed the door. I turned in a small circle, uncertain. Wasn’t I allowed inside? My heart sank with memories of the night before. Of course not.

  I texted Warren. He’d headed this way while I poured coffee.

  A few seconds later, a quiet whistle broke the silence. I whipped around. Warren leaned across the threshold of an office down the hall. “We moved.”

  Huh. I gave the crime-scene tape one last look and went to meet Warren. “What’s going on? How long are we kicked out of our office? Why didn’t anyone tell me? I just talked to Randall, Jake and a detective.”

  Warren stepped aside to let me pass. “I don’t know. Detective Archer let me get some things from our office and bring them here. He said if we need anything else in there, we should ask Jake.”

  I guffawed. The cops had collected my key the night before. “Don’t I get to take a look? Is it locked? What if I want something from my desk?”

  He shrugged. “Jake took the key after Randall locked up.”

  Of course he did.

  I scanned the makeshift IT hub. Most of our essentials were lined up on a small conference table against the back wall. Two desks in the center of the room were pushed together like the ones in television police stations. I took the empty seat. My Loki bobblehead nodded his welcome. I poked him. “Thanks for salvaging this.”

  He slid into his seat and tapped the mouse. “I couldn’t take much and they logged everything I touched. Even Loki. We’ll have to connect with our laptops today, but I have newer towers at home I can bring tomorrow if you want.”

  I shook my head. “That’s really generous of you, but I’ll take care of it. I’m sure they’ll release our desk computers soon.” I slunk into my new chair and huffed. Facing Warren eight hours a day couldn’t last. “Can we move our desks apart later? This is weird.”

  “Definitely. I’ll take care of that at lunch.”

  “Deal.” I fidgeted in my new digs. Change wasn’t my favorite and too many things had changed too quickly these past twenty-four hours. I smoothed my skirt and examined the drab beige walls.

  Warren sat idly at his desk, tapping on the mouse, probably playing solitaire. He looked up suddenly. “I told them about you. When you threatened the guy.”

  “I know.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It was the truth.”

  He nodded. “Cops make me nervous.” He heaved a sigh and went back to his work.

  Restless energy flooded through me. Our new office was a tiny conference room. It didn’t fit. It looked wrong and smelled wrong. I wiggled in my new seat, trying to get comfortable. I missed my old chair. But I couldn’t use that chair again. Baxter’s ghost was probably sitting there, still trying to tell me whatever secret he’d come to share.

  I tapped Randall’s business card with my fingernail. A quick search of the resident database brought up numbers for the names on the back of the card. I dialed.

  “Hello, Mrs. Fisker? This is Mia Connors calling from the clubhouse. You were here this morning for an appointment?”

  She huffed into the receiver. “And turned away in my hairpins and bonnet. Yes.”

  “I’m truly sorry about that, Mrs. Fisker. I’m working on the system now and wonder if you can tell me when you received the email to set the appointment.”

  “Two weeks ago. When I came home from my last appointment, there was an email. I assumed my visit triggered the contact. It’s a brilliant concept, setting appointments without having to call or stop in. Too bad it doesn’t work. When will it be fixed?”

  Never, since my system didn’t auto-email residents.

  “We’re working on it. Until then, please disregard any correspondence you receive from the clubhouse with regards to scheduling and don’t click any links in email from us. I’ll make an official announcement when the system is fixed.”

  “All right.”

  “Would you mind forwarding the appointment email to me? I’d like to have a look. It could help me get things straightened out.”

  “I deleted it.”

  I smiled into the receiver. “Nothing’s ever really gone...”

  “I took your class a few years ago. Do you remember? Your grandmother gathered us at Derby and we had tea. You showed us how to stay safe online. I learned to delete and empty my trash.”

  My forehead hit the desk. Grandma begged me to give that little class to her friends and neighbors after someone’s husband was bamboozled by a con artist.

  “Do you remember?”

  “Yep.” I lifted my face. “I remember.”

  She continued proudly. “I delete my browser history, too, and I don’t post photos, check in anywhere or stay online more than necessary. I know all about those online criminals and I don’t want to be targeted, tracked or otherwise spied on.”

  I pictured Mrs. Fisker with an aluminum foil hat and reached for my cell phone, ready to tell Nate or Baxter about her. A weight settled on my chest as reality rushed back. “If you happen to receive another email like the last, will you please let me know?”

  “Certainly.”

  I disconnected and crossed her name off Randall’s list. The other conversations went the same way. Nothing recent and no one kept the email for me to examine. Apparently the rules of online safety had spread in this community and morphed into near paranoia. Everyone loved the concept of online scheduling, however.

  Warren stopped pretending not to listen and stared as I ended the final call. “What did they say?”

  “Everyone said they received their scheduling emails in the last two to three weeks. Same with the coupon emails. I left a message for the only resident on the list who didn’t answer.”

  He nodded. “Nothing last night.”

  “No. The system’s airtight. The scheduling emails aren’t coming from here. They never were.”

  I slid the card into my desk drawer. “I’m going to send another email. We should remind everyone about the problem and caution them about clubhouse email offering coupons or offering to set appointments.”

  I set up my laptop and cracked my knuckles. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I needed the right words, strong enough to persuade them to listen, but vague enough not to induce a panic.

  An hour later, I’d finally settled on the right words and hit Send.

  My phone buzzed with a text and I accidentally knocked it off my desk rushing to get a hold of it. Every new text sent a rocket of hope through me. I swooped it off the floor and swiped the screen to life. Was it Nate? No. Bree had sent a picture of her baby trying on hats at the mall. I relaxed against the back of my chair and forced away images of Baxter’s face from my mind.

  A jolt of possibility jerked me into motion. Maybe Nate had tried to contact me through REIGN, our favorite online role-playing game. Maybe he’d avoided contacting me directly for a reason. He could be on the run. The killer might be after him. Nate could be a witness to Baxter’s murder. My imagination threw together endless scenarios as I pulled up the login screen and accessed my kingdom. REIGN would be a brilliant way to trade messages. He, Baxter and I played every day and often into the night. Our kingdoms were allied. I had three messages in the forum. One commoner requested refuge in my castle in exchange for a leather pouch of pixie dust. The second message came from my seers and warned of spies in the midst. The last message announced the success of my archenemy, Punisher, in poisoning my apple orchard. No message from Nate. No activity on his account.

  “Dammit.” I clenched my teeth.

  Warren looked worried.

  “Sorry. Not you. It’s this game. Never mind.” I exhaled and left a message for Nate, then set a trap for
the dirty punk who poisoned my apples. “Poison my land again and my people will stone you to death with all these foul fruits.” I spoke the words as I typed.

  Warren leaned away from me.

  I needed a plan to annihilate my nemesis before he or she stole all the fun I had playing REIGN. I sent messages to other kingdoms by falcons. Maybe a few strong adversaries could fortify my kingdom. I loathed Punisher the minute I saw his dumb screen name. REIGN is a medieval kingdom game. Punisher is a Marvel Comics character. Get your fandoms straight, man.

  I logged off.

  Next task: Research for Lacy Foster. Who is Wilbur Donahue?

  I opened a set of saved websites and printed everything I found on Wilbur from a copy of his driver’s license to his credit reports, mortgage papers and college transcripts. Half an hour later, I knew more about Wilbur than he did. For example, I wasn’t the only one checking up on him. Someone else had pulled all his recent records and left a cyber-footprint behind. Interestingly, Wilbur had lived in Horseshoe Falls during the same time period I’d once lived here with Grandma. I didn’t remember him, but I guessed Lacy had met him then, too, while her late husband was alive.

  My tummy growled. I’d forgotten breakfast in the rush to catch Nate at The Beanery. I printed and hole-punched the last set of papers on Wilbur Donahue and secured them into a discreet black folder.

  I shook my empty coffee cup. “I’m going to get fresh coffee and a bagel from Derby. Do you need anything?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ll be a few minutes. I need to see one of the residents while I’m out. Can you look into purchasing versus building an auto-email system for follow-up appointments at the clubhouse? Everyone liked that. Too bad it was bogus.” And I hadn’t thought of it. “We should put a cost analysis together once we figure this mess out.”

  He nodded. “Got it.”

  “Thanks.” I shuffled toward the door and dropped my empty cup in the trash. Lacy’s requested information was tucked safely in the folder under my arm. “Be back in a few.”