Chapter 1: Not the kiss I wanted

I GOT KISSED. It just wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I guess when I send those last-minute prayers into the great unknown, I should be more specific.

Case Opened

The knock on my door came a little before midnight. I was so sure it would be either Cinnamon or Jordan—or both—I almost didn’t bother to put my wig back on. Jordan is about the only man who has seen me without it—at least the only man who’s still alive. And Cinnamon thought my bald head was pretty sexy when I was masquerading as a man. But I paused long enough to pull it on snug, wrapped my robe around me and threw the door open without even thinking about what else could be on the other side.

Lars Anderson. My advisor for my master’s thesis. I could have died. Not only that, but he was standing just slightly in front of a guy who had to be at least as old as him.

“Lars?”

“Hello, Deb,” he said, practically pushing me out of the way to come into the little apartment. Maizie, of course, was no help at all since she knows Lars and likes him. She was dancing around waiting to be petted. “Sorry to barge in on New Year’s Eve and all, but my friend Grover has to fly back to Savannah tomorrow. Grover, this is Deb Riley, finest detective I’ve ever trained. Deb, meet Grover McFearin.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. McFearin,” I said. “Lars, what’s this all about?” I had a feeling these two old buddies had been out drinking but they couldn’t be expecting anything out of me. They’re both seventy if they’re a day.

“Oh look, it’s midnight,” Lars said. “Happy New Year!” And with that he leaned over and kissed my cheek. Well, so much for that brief fantasy. Kissed and disappointed at the same time. Blech!

“Lars...”

“I know, Deb. This is highly irregular and you want to know what the hell is going on. I’ll lay it out for you in short order.” He sat on the sofa and motioned Grover to a seat beside him, like he had done it a thousand times before. Well, maybe he had done it a thousand times before. I’m now resident in Dag’s apartment. Mrs. Prior said I could move in and she’d charge the same rent Dag paid. I wouldn’t have moved in here, even though Dag left everything he owned to me in his will, but my lease expired while I was off in Croatia and Cinnamon did the best thing she could: packed my stuff up and moved it here. I know it’s a little silly, but I can’t bring myself to sit in Dag’s chair. He died there, for God’s sake. I went into the kitchen and brought out a straight chair and parked myself in front of Lars and Grover to wait for his explanation.

“Deb, Grover came to Seattle because of the death of his daughter.” I looked at the other man and realized he hadn’t raised his eyes once since he came into the room. He was crying.

“Keep talking, Lars,” I said. I stepped back into the kitchen to put a kettle of water on for tea. Something finally told me this was a professional visit. I, for one, needed to be alert. It looked like Grover needed something comforting.

“Georgia McFearin died on Christmas Day,” Lars said. “The police have officially ruled it a suicide.” He reached over and patted Grover’s shoulder. Grover mumbled something to him and I got the impression he just wanted Lars to tell the story. “The police want to close down the investigation but Grover isn’t satisfied.”

“That’s pretty fast,” I said. “It’s only been a week.”

“They say it will be another week or ten days before we can have access to her house,” Lars continued, “but Grover can’t stay in town that long. He needs someone to handle the estate and to investigate further.”

“What? Lars, I do computer forensics. Why would you come to me?” Technically, I’d spent much of the past month running from or after rich people. I’d seen three people die in pursuit, not counting Bradley and Oksamma the month before. And Dag. I was really wanting to stay home and look at nice dependable computers for a while. And finish my thesis.

“The police report says there is a computer in every room of her house. They don’t see the computers as relevant to the suicide, so they aren’t doing more than a cursory check of them. They say they are all password locked and they have no reason to request a warrant to search them. As far as they are concerned, the cause of death was self-strangulation.”

“She hanged herself?”

“More or less.”

I brought tea into the room and set a cup in front of Grover. He looked up at me and the empty pleading in his eyes broke my heart. Damn! I was going to get in over my head again. If he made me his agent as executor of the estate, I could crack the computers as if they were mine and have no legal problems at all. But why? What did he think I’d find there?

Lars took a cup from the tray I was still holding and I sat back in my straight chair to contemplate what was going on. I really wish they’d just come to my office instead of telling me all this in my living room. Of course, I wasn’t going to my office today. It’s a holiday. So...

“What exactly do you want me to do?” I asked.

“We’d like you to go over to her house when the police release it and dispose of Georgia’s things, pack up personal items and ship them to Grover in Savannah, and look inside the computers to see if there is any indication as to why Georgia might have taken her own life. And—lacking that—see if there is any evidence someone else might have been involved.”