Maybe the game was worth playing, although if Althea had to call him by someone else’s name, she could’ve picked someone else, someone she had no ties to, someone he didn’t disdain. Someone he wasn’t happy to have out of the way, even if he had ended up dead, although he wasn’t sorry Oliver Hirata had died.

  While they kissed, Charley started to make plans.

  “Oliver, I’m disappointed in you.” Althea drew back and stared at Charley.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Don’t you want to go swimming?”

  “I thought you were cold.”

  “That was yesterday or the day before. It’s warm out today. I bought this island so I could go swimming whenever I want to.”

  “Althea, we’re at the country house.”

  “Oh, Oliver, I’d never take you there. What if Charley showed up with that Beryl Carson he’s in love with?”

  “I’m in love with her too.” Charley was tired of jollying Althea along.

  “I’d like to meet her. She must be magnificent if the two of you are both in love with her.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “I’ve never done it with a dead person. Wouldn’t there be some kind of legal problem with that?”

  “Althea, Beryl Carson is dead, Oliver Hirata is dead, and we’re at Tuigen. Not on your damned island.”

  Althea broke their embrace and stood up. “I have to go inside. My head is killing me.”

  She ran toward the house and tripped, falling onto her side.

  Charley ran after her and helped her up. She wasn’t as heavy as Beryl Carson had been, even though Beryl was smaller than Althea. But Beryl had been dead and couldn’t help him. Althea was alive and driving him crazy with her antics.

  But they were here together. She limped as they walked back toward the house.

  “Kaj,” she said.

  “It’s Charley.” Did she not know who he was? Or did she want Kaj or Oliver so much that she was pretending Charley was one or maybe both of them? Or . . . ?

  “Charley. Kaj was sick, you know. That’s why he stopped seeing me.”

  “What was wrong?”

  “He couldn’t get in sync with his life. That’s what he said. I’m not sure what it means. Something about the pace of everything and how his inner machinery had been poisoned. Is that what’s happening to me?”

  “Nothing is happening to you, Althea. You’re just stressed. All this death. It’s frightening.”

  “When I get to the other side, I’ll send you a note.” Althea was laughing and her breath was interrupted by what seemed like hiccups.

  “Let’s get you inside.” Charley steered the reeling Althea into her suite, which was on the opposite side of the house from his office. The more they walked, the lighter her body felt, as though her bones had been hollowed out and her skin replaced with feathers.

  “I’ll send for a doctor.”

  But when the doctor finally arrived, Althea refused to see her. She was feeling much better. She’d be fine in the morning.

  Charley should have been relieved but instead several other dilemmas rose into his conscious mind and refused to let go. He’d have to talk with Sangstrom soon. But that wasn’t the worst of what was bothering him.

  Chapter 12

  The ride to the hospital seemed to take forever. Jonathan Lee kept glancing at his scroll but wouldn’t say anything. Sean was sitting next to Ethan and feeling even stranger about their current situation. They’d stopped seeing each other and now he was over at her house, naming her cat, and acting like nothing had ever happened between them. Like they’d been friends only and still were.

  And the way he kept disagreeing with her theory. She was grateful that at least Jonathan Lee found some merit in it. She could be wrong—the idea was far-fetched—but she didn’t feel like she was wrong. None of it was very scientific of her, but science wasn’t her specialty. She was a detective and all the clues pointed at one obvious suspect.

  Sean flashed her official-looking ID at the hospital’s front desk and the attendant let them all in. But upstairs, on the third floor, where Ziva’s room was, they encountered a worker with a stricter personality.

  “Only the joukko and family members are allowed in to see Ziva Walls.”

  “She’s my mother.”

  Sean turned around to see a tall, lanky teenager with a mane of near-black hair.

  “Patterson, what are you doing here?” Jonathan Lee seemed like he was about to lash out at the teenager but was restraining himself.

  “I’m here to see my mother,” Patterson said. “Ziva Walls.” Clever kid.

  “And I’m her husband.” Jonathan Lee put his arm around Patterson’s shoulders.

  “You are not,” Patterson said, shaking him off.

  “This way.” A nurse let Patterson through the barrier and they went down an endless corridor, disappearing at the turn. The guard at the front put up her hand and told Jonathan Lee, Ethan, and Sean they weren’t allowed any further. They could wait here.

  “If Patterson gets this thing . . .” Jonathan Lee was looking at the floor as he said this. The three went into the waiting area and tried to figure out what to do with themselves.

  “What’s Patterson up to?” Ethan was sitting on the plastic couch next to Sean. She made a point of looking past him.

  “Probably saw Ziva was in the hospital and decided to do some investigating. Beryl’s death has been hard to take.”

  “For you or for Patterson?” Sean liked the direct way the two friends talked to each other. Ethan was talking to her like that now as well, with the exception of an unaddressed topic.

  “For Patterson. But, yes, for me. I don’t know how to be a father. It’s never come up before. We just pal around for a couple of weeks here and there and Beryl took care of the rest. I’m out of my element.”

  “But you’re a teacher, a lecturer. Don’t you deal with kids all the time?” Sean had no experience being a parent, but she couldn’t see what was so hard. “You just love them, right? And the rest falls into place.”

  Ethan, sitting beside her, moved away just enough to show her he and she were not the sort of people who’d have kids together. Not that she wanted kids—or didn’t want them. And not with Ethan. Maybe it was the word love that had caused him to edge away from her.

  “I’m not sure it’s that simple. What the hell is Patterson doing in there?”

  “Talking with Zee, probably—or listening. She’s a talker.”

  “What do you think happened with her husband. Morris?”

  Ethan was reading his scroll and frowning and demonstrating how he didn’t care what Sean and Jonathan Lee were talking about since the conversation had turned to Sean’s client.

  “Yeah, Morris. I think he left her and doesn’t want to be found. I’m a pretty good tracer and I can’t locate him anywhere.”

  “You don’t have the resources of the joukko behind you now. Ethan, can’t you get someone over there to help with this? Or give Sean the access she doesn’t have anymore?”

  Jonathan Lee didn’t understand what he was asking. Ethan couldn’t do anything to help her, not if he wanted to keep his job. He’d be found out immediately.

  “No,” Ethan said, not looking up from his scroll, while Sean said, “It can’t be done. I quit the joukko without notice. Walked out one morning and never returned. It’s not like I left on good terms.”

  “What happened, anyway? If you don’t mind talking about it.”

  “I might mind, but—”

  “Patterson. What the hell? Pretending you’re Ziva Walls’s kid.”

  Patterson had just come through the barrier, striding about like a member of the staff, like coming to the hospital was an everyday occurrence. If Sean ever had a kid, she wanted this theoretical kid to be like Patterson: self-assured, forthright, resourceful, unafraid.

  Sean noticed the beads of sweat on Jonathan Lee’s forehead. If this was a disease, a virus—whether computer or biological—and Ziva Walls had it and Patterson spent that much time with her, and . . . What if Patterson had it? Sean didn’t want to think that but she was thinking that. Jonathan Lee must have been as well.

  “Someone had to go see her, so it had to be me. The rest of you are inept.” Patterson kept impressing Sean, who thought Patterson would make a much better partner than Boyd McCormick had been, although the comparison was an insult to Patterson, who didn’t deserve insults.

  “Hey, don’t say that about Sean. She’s doing the . . .” Ethan trailed off and pretended not to have said what he just said.

  “We’re all just too old to be Ziva Walls’s kid.” Jonathan Lee was trying to smile and doing a lousy job of it.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Sean was almost afraid to ask, but she had to know. They all did.

  “Broke her ankle. Some belligerent inmate in the jail chased her down in the exercise area and she fell.”

  “How the hell did you explain yourself to her? She must know you’re not her child.”

  “I told her I was consulting on her case as a project for school. I know more about her troubles than I do about yours, Dad. But I don’t think she killed Mom. I nudged her a little in that direction but she told me how shocked she was to find Mom’s body at her doorstep and how it was so sad and she was afraid to go back into her apartment or even into the building. As soon as she gets out of jail she’s going to move.”

  Sean saw her one current client fading into the nonpaying distance, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  “Did she say anything about Hirata or Banerjee?”

  “The other two who died in the Normandie?”

  “What are you, assistant investigator on this case?” Jonathan Lee was standing next to Patterson. More like looming over Patterson.

  “Dad. Don’t you want to know what happened? And, Ethan, why are you so quiet? There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

  Ethan shook his head and kept his focus on his scroll.

  “There is. I can tell. I may be fifteen, but this was my mother. She shouldn’t be dead. Not for years. I want to know everything.”

  “It’s just—”

  “It’s complex.” Ethan cut Sean off.

  “I can do complex. I’m better at quantum maths than Dad is. And he knows nothing about volcanoes.”

  “I don’t know anything about volcanoes either.” Ethan stood up, ready to defend his friend. He’d been ready to defend Sean too, before he realized what he’d been about to do.

  “We think she might’ve died of the same thing the other people at the Normandie died of.” Sean couldn’t see any reason to keep the facts from Patterson, who’d find out eventually anyway.

  Jonathan Lee glared at Sean but she could tell he was relieved she’d said it so he didn’t have to.

  “And what is that thing?”

  “Let’s talk outside,” Jonathan Lee said. After waiting for too long for the elevator, the four walked down the dim staircase. No one said anything.

  Outside, in the fierce glare, Sean suggested they pick up some food and go sit in the park, far away from anyone who might be listening.

  Ethan accompanied her into the store while Patterson and Jonathan Lee waited outside. They got sandwiches and orange-flavored drinks for everyone, slipping into a routine they’d had when they’d been a couple. There was something so normal, so everyday, about it that Sean could almost forget they’d hardly spoken recently.

  “Ethan.” She wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what that something was. He was paying, no doubt aware of her precarious finances.

  “Don’t say anything, Sean. Let’s just leave it where it is.”

  “I don’t know how to not say anything, Ethan. I’d thought . . . well, you know what I thought.”

  “No one can know what anyone else is thinking.”

  They emerged from the store and Jonathan Lee, who’d overheard, laid into Ethan. “Maybe not know, but you can have a damn good idea what someone else is thinking. Like right now. You’re thinking you wish I’d shut up and leave your ex-relationship alone.”

  “I didn’t know Ethan was dating anyone,” Patterson said, grabbing one of the sandwiches out of the bag and starting in on it as the group walked toward the park.

  “I’m not dating anyone.”

  “He was dating me,” Sean said. “But it didn’t work out.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Now you’re thinking you’d like to slug me, if you were the kind of person who’d slug anyone.” Jonathan Lee was laughing—the first time Sean had seen him laugh. He looked like a different person, a happier, more relaxed-in-the-world person.

  “I’m thinking you’d better shut up before you’re sorry you started down this futile path.”

  “Let’s sit here.” Patterson had found a huge shade tree and no one else in the park was nearby.

  Everyone sat and took a sandwich and an orange drink.

  “Mom never let me have food like this,” Patterson, enjoying the sandwich, said. “She was very picky. I miss her.” Sean saw the tears forming in Patterson’s eyes.

  No one said anything for a while and Sean purposely looked at Jonathan Lee and Patterson and didn’t make eye contact with Ethan.

  “Do I have to ask again?” Patterson was looking through the bag and found another sandwich. “Okay if I take this?”

  “There’s enough for everyone,” Ethan said. “You don’t have to ask again. We’re not sure what Beryl died of, but it seems very similar to what felled both Oliver Hirata and Kaj Banerjee.”

  “I don’t think Mom knew either of them. Did she?” Patterson looked at Jonathan Lee.

  “That’s outside my realm of knowledge. But she never mentioned either of them to me.”

  “I don’t know who Oliver Hirata was except for what I read on the mesh. But everyone knows Kaj Banerjee. She would’ve said something if she knew him. She was always looking for investors. And, anyway, he was Kaj Banerjee.”

  “Do you know what she was doing at the Normandie?” Sean asked Patterson. If Jonathan Lee knew, he hadn’t said anything about it.

  “All I know is she had a date that night with Charley Pierce.” Sean stopped eating and put the remains of her sandwich back in the wrapper.

  “Pierce Sangstrom? That Charley Pierce?” The Charley Pierce whose wife Zee Walls thought was having an affair with her husband, the missing Morris.

  “Yeah. She put on her best dress, said she was hoping to raise the funds she needs . . . needed . . . for the seagrass project. And I was happy to see her going out.” Patterson gave Jonathan Lee a look and Jonathan Lee shook his head.

  “She could do anything she wanted, having nothing to do with me.”

  “It had everything to do with you, Dad.”

  “I don’t usually wait this long to eat,” Jonathan Lee said.

  “Are you using that as an excuse for everything? For never being around? For not caring? That is weak as hell.”

  “It’s just a statement, Patterson. Don’t read anything else into it. I’m doing my best.”

  Patterson turned away from Jonathan Lee and addressed Ethan. “You still haven’t said what killed Mom.”

  “It’s an unusual disease process,” Ethan said. “Unprecedented.”

  Sean couldn’t bring herself to tell Patterson that Beryl might have been killed by a computer virus that had started infecting people. It sounded unbelievable. It was unbelievable.

  “Do you use the same computer your mother did?” she said.

  “Of course not.”

  “Jonathan Lee?” Sean turned to him.

  Ethan looked at his friend and said, “We’d better dispose of it.”

  “Absolutely not,” Jonathan Lee said. “We’d better examine it.”

  Chapter 13

  Damon Garza was sitting on a fortune. Not that he wasn’t already rich, but this was outright wealth coming his way. If only the coroner would finish with Banerjee’s examination, Damon could get the ball rolling.

  Kaj had never been easy to work with—in fact he’d been hell to work with—but now that he was dead his oversensitive personality would no longer be in play. Now there’d just be an intriguing store of works and a dead artist—an ideal combination. Every artist was always more appealing dead than alive, and Kaj Banerjee was the most successful artist of the century.

  The value of Banerjee’s works was about to skyrocket. Damon Garza, Banerjee’s agent, would reap the rewards of their longtime relationship. He could taste the profits. He wouldn’t even have to spend anything advertising, as the buyers would come to him. They were already flooding him with comms. Someone was offering to buy everything, and the sum they’d mentioned shocked even Garza. But he was still figuring out how he could maximize his profit on this unexpected windfall.

  Here Damon Garza was, sitting in Banerjee’s attorney’s office, where he’d been summoned for the reading of the will. The legalities of Banerjee’s death were still to be determined, as there was some talk he might’ve been murdered, but the fact of his death was unquestioned. He was dead and the will was about to be enacted, if that was the proper term for what happened after death.

  Sitting next to Damon Garza was an exotic-looking woman with lush brown hair and a cast on her lower leg. Garza thought he recognized her, but didn’t know why. Banerjee’s lawyer, Werner Stinnett, had gone out into the hall without introducing anyone, so Damon introduced himself.

  “Damon Garza. I’m Kaj Banerjee’s agent.”

  “Ziva Walls,” said the woman, not identifying herself any further. Haughty, he thought, or as haughty as anyone with a cast on their leg could be.

  Then it hit Garza. Ziva Walls was one of Kaj Banerjee’s models. He’d probably left her a painting of herself. Just the sort of thing Banerjee would do. He was always giving things away, against Garza’s advice.

  Great luck that this model was here today. Garza would offer to sell the painting for her, explain how she’d never get as much if she tried to do it herself. This could be the first of the proceeds in his upcoming jackpot. Sort of kick things off until he had time to inventory everything and create just the right atmosphere around the works.

 

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