11
A Crime of Curiosity

 

Bronson went back in for one soft, quick kiss. He felt lightheaded and dopey and nice.

Cindy pulled away, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Shoot. Did I bite you or something?” he asked.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him tight. “No,” she said. “It was fine. Don’t worry.” She gave him a little shove then grabbed her laptop from the end table.

“Let’s concentrate on finding your friend,” she said.

“Yeah… Mr. Morgan. I almost forgot.” Bronson couldn’t shake the feeling he’d forgotten something, but he wasn’t sure what it could be.

“Wait out here while I go check on something. I think I have something we can use.”

Bronson sat on the couch for a few minutes, reading the article on the Stonehouse murder. A picture of the reporter— one John Upton-Haywood— was printed next to the article. Bronson recognized him from the night before as the man who’d almost got himself arrested.

Cindy ran back in, putting the laptop on the coffee table then plopping down next to him on the couch.

“Hey, maybe we should talk to this reporter guy. He saw the whole thing. He might help us if we’re smart about it.”

“I’ll do you one better. Let’s see what the police know about it.” She grabbed her laptop, flipped the lid open, then pointed at the screen.

“Cindy! You stole a computer from the cops?” he said.

“The computer is mine, but this desktop isn’t. It’s a website.” She pressed a button and the address bar for the browser slid down, showing a strange, numbered address: 170.115.248.143.

“It lets me access a computer in the mayor’s office,” she said. “I might be able to pull up some police records or something.”

“Sounds pretty illegal if you ask me,” Bronson said.

“Do you really think I’d get you involved in something illegal?” she asked.

“I guess not,” Bronson said.

“Look, this is awesome. It might be a little illegal but it could help Dogboy stay ahead of the cops. They have a whole system set up to track you. Only seems fair to let you use it.”

“You know what? Fine. They aren’t playing fair. That’s for sure.”

Cindy turned back to the laptop then clicked on an icon to launch a program called Beacon. The mouse cursor jumped to life, darting across the screen, but Cindy’s hands weren’t anywhere near the track pad.

“What did you do?” Bronson asked.

“That wasn’t me.” She jiggled the mouse around for a minute. It didn’t budge. “Seriously? It’s busted? First she loses my wig then—”

The Beacon program launched. A pop-up displayed a disclaimer warning the user to only use Beacon for official police activities. It disappeared. A window popped up with dozens of fields for things like incident date, suspect name, and a general keyword search.

The possessed cursor clicked into the keyword search field and typed DEXTER STONEHOUSE, then clicked the search button.

“You sure you aren’t doing this?” Bronson asked.

“Looks like whoever’s hanging out in the mayor’s office is saving me the trouble,” she said.

A moment later the results came up, listing hundreds of records sorted by date and time. Cindy ran her finger across the top of the results until it landed on the incident date column.

“It says here there hasn’t been a police report mentioning the guy in over a month,” she said

“But he got killed last night,” Bronson said.

“Not according to the cops he didn’t,” she said. She pressed a few keys. A small toolbar appeared.

“What are you doing? They’ll see,” Bronson said.

“Don’t worry, only we can see the control panel. Check this out.” She clicked a small microphone icon. A low-pitched hum spilling out of the laptop’s speakers.

“Now we can hear what they’re saying,” she said.

“Nothing, sir,” came a male voice over the speakers.

“That’s Chester, the mayor’s secretary. He’s a real herb,” she said, turning up the volume.

Mayor Lane leaned over Chester’s shoulder, skimming through the search results from Beacon.

“Get the police chief on the phone,” he said, shoving the desk phone in front of Chester. “Bring him down here. I shouldn’t have to pick up a newspaper to find out Dexter Stonehouse is dead.”

“Right away, sir,” Chester said, closing the Beacon window on his computer. “It’s a tragédie des privilégiés, really, not to mention how close you were with Mr. Stonehouse.”

A sharp DING sounded. The elevator doors opened. A tall man with a head so large his hair could barely contain it stepped off.

“How the heck ya’ doing, your majesty?” asked the man.

“Applebottom,” Mayor Lane said, “you seem in great spirits for somebody whose biggest client passed away. Or hadn’t you heard?”

Applebottom put down his briefcase, taking out his pocket square to dab the sweat from his scalp. “Heh. A joke. And they say you don’t have a sense of humor.”

“I assure you I’m not joking,” Mayor Lane said. He gave him a copy of that morning’s Herald from Chester’s desk.

Applebottom’s eyes widened as he read the headline. He smiled. “Son-of-a-gun actually did it,” he said.

“Did what?” asked the mayor.

“See, Stoney sends for me a few weeks ago. He’s whining ‘cause his old lady ain’t giving him the time of day. He’s talking like he’s gonna kill himself or something, and being as he pays my rent I discourage the endeavor. Then he starts talking about maybe disappearing for a while. Let people think he died then see who shows up at the funeral. I tell him it ain’t a good idea, but eventually he sends me away. Look, if I ever thought he’d do it I would’a come right to you. We don’t want Mr. Stonehouse’s eccentricities hurting our business, right?”

“He’s playing a game with us?” Mayor Lane said. “I’m the last person he wants to play games with. Come back to my office. You, Mr. Applebottom, are going to help me fix this.”

“So then Mr. Morgan isn’t a murderer,” Bronson said.

“No, and that means whoever nabbed him might be part of this whole fake-out,” Cindy replied.

“Can you switch this thing over to his office?” he said, tapping her laptop. “Let’s listen in. Maybe they’ll drop some more clues.”

“No, we only put it on one computer,” she said. “Sorry, kid, but that’s my one big idea.”

“Maybe it’s time to try one of mine then,” Bronson said. He snatched the newspaper off the coffee table. “This guy,” he said, pointing to the reporter’s picture. “He was there last night. Maybe we should go see if he caught anything I didn’t.”

Cindy took the paper. “John Upton-Haywood, eh? Looks like a doofus.”