MURDER TUNED IN (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 4) (6 page)

              She huffed and puffed her way up the steep driveway toward the house where Jimmy Welles rented a room from a very sweet old woman.

              Jimmy Welles was one of a kind. A hacker not just by hobby, but also by virtue of his very soul. There seemed to be nothing that this twenty-year-old wasn't capable of when it came to all things electronic. Especially when it came to exploiting the security flaws of said electronics. Hackers are lock pickers by nature. Give them a lock, they have no choice but to try and open it. Allie often felt guilty about going to Jimmy when she needed to make use of his singular gifts. Here she was, aiding and abetting someone whom the FBI would gladly either throw in jail or recruit for their highest division of electronic security. Jimmy Welles would make a great supervillain, if it weren't for the fact that he lived with a very sweet old woman in a room littered with computer parts.

              And Jimmy was also a good soul. He hacked because he could. He wasn't malicious. And everything Allie asked him to do for her was always in the interest of bringing a killer to justice. And all the young, baby-faced man asked for in return was a home-cooked meal with the woman he harbored an undying love for: Allie Griffin.

              Never again, she'd told herself the last time she was here. Never again will I ask this nice kid if he can break federal laws for me. Never again.

              And here she was, knocking on the door.

              "Allie! So nice to see you," said Mrs. Needleman, Jimmy landlady.

              "Is Jimmy home?" Of course he was. His beaten-up Volkswagen beetle was in the driveway.

              "He's sleeping," Mrs. Needleman said. "He was up very late..." She poked her head out and looked around her property. Then she cupped her hand to her mouth and whispered, "...breaking in to my Medicare."

              "Oh my."

              "The check's late again," she whispered. "I just wanted to see what was wrong. Awful of me, I know."

              "Mrs. Needleman. Please stop talking about this. I can’t hear this."

              "I'm so sorry. And where are my manners? Come in, come in."

              She entered the home, which was cozy and antiquated and smelled like it.

              "I'll wake him up."

              "Tell him I'm really sorry."

              The old woman went upstairs and Allie heard her knocking on Jimmy's door. She heard faint, muffled mumbles in response.

              Mrs. Needleman hobbled back down the stairs. "He’ll be right down. I'm going to make him a fruit cup. Would you like one?"

              "No thank you."

              A minute later, there was Jimmy Welles, all stubbly and puffy-eyed, and wearing a raggy T-shirt with a picture of the Incredible Hulk peeling off it in dime-sized flakes. He wore ripped jeans stained with what looked like tomato sauce. He scratched at his belly, sending a few more Hulk flakes flurrying to the floor.

              "Hey," he said groggily. "What time is it?"

              "It's one o'clock," Allie said, unable to stifle a smile. "Maybe you can get up and join the living now."

              "Where is she?"

              "She's making you a fruit cup."

              "What do you need?"

              "A small favor again."

              Without hesitation, he said, "Follow me."

              Jimmy's room was an electronics geek's Mecca. Every part of every kind of device lay exploded across some part of the floor. Even his unkempt bed was sprinkled liberally with a few of such parts. Allie wondered how he could possibly sleep in that. Then she noticed the small piece of motherboard near his pillow, and the red impression from said piece across part of his cheek.

              "Oh, Jimmy," was all she could say.

              "Cut it out. What do you need?"

              "A guy was sent these weird phone calls. One a day at different times. All that was on the line was a tone. Each day a different tone. A sine wave? Is that what it's called?"

              "Sine wave."

              "Right."

              "Ok."

              "So?"

              "So what?" said Jimmy.

              "So I need to know how someone made those calls. Where they came from."

              Jimmy sighed wearily and walked over to his computer. With a jiggle of the mouse, the screen came to life.

              "I need more info."

              "We think the calls were automatic. Like what political candidates use. You know, pre-recorded."

              "Robo-calls."

              "That's it."

              "There's no mystery there. Anyone can set up a system to do that."

              "Can you figure out who was making these?"

              "Give me the number they were calling and a couple of the dates and times."

              She did as he asked, and he went to work, typing and punching furiously at the keyboard like a virtuoso pianist.

              "Ok," he said, dropping his hands into his lap. "Here's where they went." He pointed to the screen. "And here's where they came from."

              "What is that?"

              "That's the robo-call server IP. You want to know the exact location where it came from?" He typed for a couple of minutes more. "Burlington. Specifically...wait a minute. No way."

              "What? What is it?" She peered over his shoulder at the screen but couldn’t make heads or tails out of any of the gibberish she saw there.

              "I know this guy."

              "You do? Who is he?"

              "A fellow hacker. You think I'm bad? This guy's got no scruples whatsoever. And he isn’t that smart. He leaves trails everywhere he goes. He’ll get caught one day, no doubt."

              "Ok," said Allie, "so what does he have to do with my guy?"

              "Nothing. He's a hired gun. He does small jobs for people like this. He did some work for politicians in the last election. Fake robo-calls to the constituency of the opposition. He worked both sides of the ticket. I told you, no scruples."

              Allie patted the boy on the back. "Your kind."

              "Yeah, maybe. So are we done?"

              "Done? No. We need to find out who hired him."

              Without a word, Jimmy Welles typed quickly. A small window appeared onscreen. He typed a few more strokes.

              "Jimmy, what are you doing?"

              "Finding out who hired him."

              "Yeah, but...are you doing what I think...?"

              "You know a better way?"

              Jimmy typed:
Who hired you to do the robo calls to...

             
What better way to find out than to just ask the guy? This is why Jimmy Welles was a genius. A real genius knows he doesn’t always have to use genius methods.

              The answer came back quickly:
guy didnt say name. wanted proxy server.

             
"Look at that," Jimmy said. "Doesn’t even use punctuation. What did I tell you? No scruples. Anyway, there's your answer."

              "What's a proxy server?"

              "I don’t feel like explaining it to you all day, so I'll just say that you can use it as a sort of disguise to make it look like your communications are coming from somewhere else. It's like using someone's mailbox."

              "Jimmy?"

              "Yes?"

              "You're a sexist, condescending piglet."

              "Thank you. Now about my dinner."

              "Hold on. Where did this person, your hacker friend's client, where did he want the calls to appear they were being made from?"

              "I'll ask."

              Jimmy typed. And a moment later the answer came:
some chick in verdenier heres the ip...

              "One more thing," Allie said. "I have reason to believe there were supposed to have been eight calls in total. There were only six. Can you find out why they stopped?"

              Jimmy typed the question. The answer came:
guy only want six calls.

             
Jimmy typed,
Thanks. By the way, maybe you should learn the proper rules of grammar.
             

              Jimmy's hacker friend returned with a suggestion to engage in an act that no normal human being is capable of performing.

              Jimmy laughed while he resumed typing furiously.

              "Here's the address. It belongs to Sally Kane. Who's that?"

              "You don’t need to know. So you’re telling me that Sally Kane had nothing to do with these calls whatsoever?"

              "I don’t know about whatsoever. But if you put two and two together, you can pretty much surmise that whoever got my friend to do this was doing it without this girl's knowledge. This guy wanted it to look like the calls were coming from her. But they weren't. They came from my friend, who was paid to do it by someone who refused to give his name."

              Allie's brain kicked into overdrive. Who could it have been? Was Tad Mills faking this threat? She'd seen this sort of thing before, on the Honey Reilly case.

              "Are we done?" asked Jimmy.

              "I guess so."

              "I want scotch eggs."

              "What are scotch eggs?"

              Jimmy's eyes grew wide. "You never heard of scotch eggs? Oh man. You take a hard-boiled egg, right? Then you cover it with ground sausage. You really gotta pack it on there. Then you dip it in an egg wash and breadcrumbs. Then you deep-fry the sucker."

              "Then I go lie down in the hospital waiting room while you eat it."

              "You only live once."

              "With a heart condition, for sure."

              "Just a nice green salad on the side. With a fig and espresso balsamic vinaigrette."

              Allie rolled her eyes. "Anything else?"

              He thought for a moment. "You dating anyone?"

              "That's all then," said Allie. "Thank you, Jimmy dear."

              "Come again."

              No.

              Tad wasn't a murderer.

              Allie prided herself on her ability to read people. There were those who struck her as folks whom one should keep at arm's length. Tad Mills wasn't one of those at all. In fact, whenever she'd been in his company, she'd not been able to resist him. If she didn’t know any better, she would have said he had a bright soul or a colorful aura, but she believed in neither of those things, or at least she didn’t believe that anyone could see them if they existed. But she had to resort to poetry when trying to define the undefinable. Tad Mills fell into that category. She thought it in the forefront of her mind for the first time. She was falling in love with him. He was gay and she was in love with him.

              She slumped deeper into her chair. Dinah the cat jumped up onto her lap, battering her legs with 22 pounds of feline flab and paws like ice picks.

              She now found herself faced with the one true dilemma of her new life as a would-be detective: How does one press through bias to arrive at the truth?

              Let's say Tad
was
guilty. "Let's put that hat on for a moment and see if it feels comfortable, shall we,
ma chatte
?"

              The cat responded with a flexed claw in her knee. Allie was used to fulfilling the detested role of kitty cat pincushion, and so did not even flinch.

              Dinah did, however, pick up her little head, the radar ears honed in on some sound undetectable by human ears, and then jumped down and darted off into the bedroom as fast as her little feline legs could carry her.

              And that's when Detective Harry Tomlin came up the walkway to the house.

              With an exasperated sigh, she opened the door.

              "Hi there," he said cheerily. "Can I come in for a sec?"

              "No."

              "Oh, Ms. Griffin, don’t be like that. I have a few questions about Sally Kane's murder and I just want to chat a bit. Certainly if you have nothing to hide, you wouldn’t mind having a
tête-à-tête
?"

              "
Tête-à-tête
? Well, since you put it that way.
Entre, monsieur
."

              He entered her house and looked around, nodding. "I forgot how cozy and nice it is here. Nothing like my little place."

              "It's home."

              "Mm. How's the cat? Dino?"

              "Dinah. She's fine. She's hiding right now. She hates intruders."

              "Intruders! That's not a very nice way to put it. I'm a visitor, not an intruder."

              "Oh," said Allie. "Hold on a second."

              She went over to the coffee table and picked up her cell phone.

              "Hold on," she said. "Wi-Fi here’s a little sketchy sometimes. Ah, here we go. Intrude. Verb. To put oneself in a place or situation where one is uninvited or unwelcome. Mmm. Yeah, that sounds about right. You, sir, are an intruder."

              "Cute."

              "I've had a bad day, Detective. Can we just get on with it?"

              "Sure, if that's the way you want it. Your friend Tad Mills."

              "What about him?"

              "Witnesses say they saw you and him leaving the theater together the day Sally Kane was killed."

              "That's right. We went to lunch. That was in the interim befo—"

              "Was he in your sight the whole time before the two of you left?"

              Allie sighed. She didn’t like being interrupted. "No, I can’t say that he was."

              "Interesting. At one point would you say was he out of your sight?"

              "I would say it was right before we left. He went backstage for something. I don’t know what."

              "Was he gone for long?"

              "I don't know."

              "You don’t know if he was gone for long or not?"

              "We were all standing around chit-chatting. You know how it is. It's what you yourself do after you give orders to your staff."

              He chuckled. "That's good. Ok, Ms. Griffin. I shall not intrude any longer. But you should know by now that we think Tad Mills could be a suspect in this case. And, well, you know, once you're seen hanging around with a murder suspect, it tends not to look too good."

              "Accessory before the fact, I know."

              "That's right. So you—"

              "So I probably don’t want to leave town for a while. Right. Got it. Anything else?"

              "One more thing: work on your attitude, Ms. Griffin. The courts don’t like a smart aleck."

              With this, he left without saying goodbye.

              Allie looked around the house for something to throw or something to break. Something to break would be better.

              She found nothing.

              She sat down on the couch with a huff and a grunt and chewed her nails till they stung.