Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 12/01/12 Page 11

  She was afraid to make mistakes, thought it dangerous. Dammit.

  "How about something to eat?" I asked.

  Casper shrugged. "It's okay. You don't have to feed me."

  "Well, I will have to feed me," I said, "and it seems logical to feed you at that time as well."

  "When you're ready," she said. Then she took a step closer to my computer. "Where did you get that program?"

  I looked at the screen. Information was flying off the scanned paper and onto the spreadsheet—literally. I had devised the thing to look like the bits of information were little flying things (a variety of birds, paper airplanes, flying toasters, and whatever else I could think of) just to amuse myself. But I was so far past amusement on this convention project that I had forgotten that I had done that.

  "I designed it," I said.

  Her eyes lit up. "You did?"

  I had actually impressed her. That felt like as much of a gift as Paladin's trust. "Yeah."

  Casper took a step closer. "Can I borrow it?"

  "The program?"

  She nodded.

  "You don't have a computer," I said.

  Her shoulders went down. Expressive things, those shoulders. "Oh, yeah."

  "But you can borrow one of mine." I grabbed a laptop from the shelf under the desk.

  As I swung around with the laptop in my hands, Casper's eyes followed the laptop like it was food and she hadn't eaten in three days.

  "Wow," she said. "I didn't even think that was in stores yet."

  "It's not," I said. "I get a lot of prototypes. I used to work for Microsoft."

  That explanation was usually enough for people, but Casper didn't let it go. "I know old guys who used to work for Microsoft. They don't get free computers."

  I shrugged. "You want it or not?"

  "Yeah," she said. "And the program too."

  "It's already loaded onto the laptop." Although no other proprietary information was. I hadn't used that laptop yet for anything except prep.

  "OMG," she said, enunciating each letter separately. It meant: Oh. My. God. I knew that some kids had taken texting slang into their verbal vocabulary, but this was the first time I'd ever heard anyone say it. "This is like sooo amazing."

  Then she cradled the laptop in her arms as if it was a baby, and sank to the floor, crossing her legs as she went down. Oh, to be that young and in shape. Then she whipped a flash drive out of her pocket and stuck it into the laptop. I almost complained. I didn't want her to download the program for her own use. But I figured I'd check the flash drive before she left rather than alienate her now.

  She hunched over the laptop as if nothing else existed.

  I turned my chair a little so that I could see her without resorting to screen tricks. Then I monitored my own personal financial hell, while Casper typed and muttered and frowned at the screen in front of her.

  I had no idea what she was doing, and I didn't want to know. Besides, if I wanted to, I could recreate everything she did when I got the laptop back.

  I doubted I would want to. After all, what could a thirteen year old do that was interesting to me?

  Or so I thought at the time.

  About four hours in, I ordered pizza. I was going to order through room service. I even handed the room service menu to Casper. She took it distractedly, finished whatever she was typing, then gave the menu the same level of concentration she had been giving the laptop.

  After a few minutes, she asked, "Did they screw up? Sweetbreads are in the entrees."

  That was when I looked at the menu. Not only was it expensive (which I really didn't care about), it was highbrow, with nothing that really looked good. I didn't want to eat off that menu, and I doubted she did either.

  So I told her what sweetbreads were, and she made a face that I doubted anyone else could have replicated. Then she said, "God, Hannibal Lecter would have loved eating here," which gave her a special place in my heart.

  "You mind if I order pizza?" I asked.

  "I do if it's from that menu," she said. "They'll probably put brains on it or something."

  I grinned. "They probably would. But I know of a good place near here that delivers."

  We did the normal negotiating that everyone did when figuring out what to put on a pizza. We were the only two people in the room, although we did order one extra pizza in case that guy whose name I didn't know returned or in case Doris decided to join us.

  "Let's move the laptop off the floor," I said. "I'll move one of the chairs over to the desk."

  "I like the floor," Casper said.

  "Yeah, but someone might walk on the laptop," I said.

  She picked it up, closed the lid and cradled it as if it was the most precious thing she had ever held. Then she frowned at me.

  "Mind if I ask you a question?"

  "Go ahead," I said.

  Her frown deepened, and she said, "Do you get mad if numbers don't add up?"

  "Numbers always add up for me," I said distractedly. Her question made me look at my screen. "I have had a gift for math for as long as I remember."

  "No," she said. "I mean, do you get mad if someone else's numbers don't add up?"

  That was when I realized the question was important. I swiveled my chair away from my screen and gave her my full attention.

  "Sometimes," I said. "When I'm supposed to figure out why the numbers aren't working right, and someone hasn't given me the right information."

  "Do you get mad at the person who told you the numbers don't add up?" She was holding the laptop so tightly that I half expected it to squeal.

  "Usually no one has to tell me," I said. "Usually I'm telling someone else."

  "Do they get mad at you then?" she asked.

  "Yeah, sometimes," I said, resisting the urge to ask why she wanted to know this. If Casper was like Paladin, she wasn't going to give up information easily.

  "Do they hit you?"

  My mouth dropped open, and I almost asked her who had hit her, but I knew better. Suddenly an old conversation with Paladin flashed through my mind. We'd been sitting in a restaurant the first time I met her, and she told me: I need your logical brain. You understand subtleties. I do not. I'm more of a bulldozer. I barge in, get the job done, and stomp out. That's not your reputation at all. You see things that no one else sees.

  Every interaction we'd had since then had reinforced Paladin's assessment of herself. She was a bulldozer. And the question I almost asked Casper was a bulldozer question.

  Suddenly I wondered if my function here was more than that of a babysitter.

  "No," I said. "People don't hit me. But I'm fairly big."

  "Yeah," Casper said. "But you don't look muscle-y. You're squishy."

  Squishy. I wasn't as offended as I should have been. Squishy was a better word than flabby.

  "I'm still pretty big," I said gently. "People usually don't mess with me."

  "Even when you tell them they're stupid," she said.

  "Even then," I said, repressing a smile. "Although the mistakes I find are usually not made because someone is stupid. Usually they think they're being clever."

  "But they're not being clever," Casper said. "I mean, if you were using math to cover up something, then the math should work, right?"

  "I would think so," I said, "but most people don't know how to cover their tracks very well. Even the ones who do make mistakes. I can usually find those too. It just takes some digging."

  She squeezed the laptop even harder. "Why would you do that?"

  "Dig?" I asked. "People think something's fishy, so they ask me to look. I finally got certified so that I can testify in court if I have to."

  "When people hit other people?" she asked.

  "When they embezzle," I said. "Other people testify about the hitting, usually. Finding embezzlers—thieves—is more of a specialized skill."

  She grunted, as if the information was important to her. Her gaze met mine, her frown intense, and then she moved forward s
wiftly, setting the laptop on my desk. She opened the laptop and tapped the keyboard to bring it out of sleep mode.

  "Does this look like stealing to you?" she asked.

  I peered at my own program, saw a lot of red where the numbers didn't compute, and then I scrolled through everything. The source for the numbers had come off Casper's thumb drive, but the label on the files wasn't hers.

  It was for the shelter.

  "Did you tell Reverend Harvey about this?" I asked without looking at her, wondering if that was a bulldozer question.

  "Once," she said, sounding sad and furious at the same time. "Just once."

  It took a special kind of arrogance to embezzle from a nonprofit. It took an even higher degree of arrogance to embezzle from a nonprofit that helped homeless people. It took the highest degree of arrogance to embezzle from a nonprofit that helped homeless people in the name of the Lord.

  I decided then and there to wear MY VOTE CTHULHU FOR GOD T-shirt in the morning.

  But that was the only coherent thought I had. That, and remembering to pay the pizza delivery guy. The rest of the evening, Casper and I went through the shelter's finances, and both of us got pissed off.

  Casper had amazing math skills. She had even better computer skills. She suggested a tweak on my program that improved both its entertainment value and its speed.

  We didn't even notice when Paladin arrived. She stood behind us long enough to eat half a piece of cold pizza before clearing her throat.

  "I see you two hit it off," she said in a self-satisfied tone.

  She had scrubbed off the glitter makeup, and she was wearing black jeans and a KIRK/SPOCK FOR PRESIDENT T-shirt that dated from 1992. She had removed the wig but had forgotten to comb her short hair, so it stood up in spikes. Or maybe she had done that on purpose, just to rebel against the girl clothes she had worn earlier.

  "How'd the gala go?" I asked.

  She shrugged. "I got everyone there. We raised funds. We ate weird stuff—or they did. I didn't touch most of it. Then I drove them back and came here."

  Casper hadn't even said hello to her. In fact, Casper was hunched forward in her attempting-to-be-invisible posture.

  "Can I talk to you?" I said to Paladin.

  Casper gave me a sideways glance filled with worry. I nodded to her, and gave her a small okay sign with my thumb and forefinger. I hid the gesture behind my squishy stomach.

  Casper nodded once and returned to her invisible pose.

  "Okay," Paladin said, and led me to the far side of the room.

  "You didn't care about babysitting," I said. "You wanted me to see Casper's files."

  Paladin raised her eyebrows. "There are files?"

  "Stop it," I said. "You're not very good at games. You know there are files."

  "Well?" she asked.

  "Well, Casper stumbled on something major," I said, and told Paladin everything, including the fact that Casper had gone to Reverend Harvey and Harvey had hit her.

  "I knew it!" Paladin said fiercely. "I found her crying in the ladies' room, but she wouldn't tell me what was going on. That's when I thought of you."

  "That was just today?" I asked.

  Paladin nodded.

  "She'd been in the ladies' room all day?"

  "I didn't know where else to hide her," Paladin said. "Harvey was mad, but he wouldn't say why, and I knew that Casper had been trying to set up the books as a favor to him for letting her stay at the shelter . . ."

  Paladin's voice drifted off. She was telling me something she shouldn't.

  "You may as well tell me the rest," I said.

  She shrugged—just like Casper did. "You know the story. It's common since 2009. Parents lost their house, started into drugs, and Casper was too smart for that. So she dodged the system by staying in school and sleeping in different shelters. Reverend Harvey figured it out, and he told her she could stay there, if she helped out. I think he was sincere. He has a good side. It's confusing."

  "Because he has sticky fingers," I said.

  She nodded.

  "I did some digging," I said. "He's got a history of doing this. He makes people love him so they trust him, and give a lot of money. Then he gets a new job offer somewhere else, and when the embezzlement gets discovered a year or so down the road, everyone is unwilling to believe he's a bad guy, so they don't report him."

  "Bastard," Paladin said. "It doesn't explain why he hit her."

  "Yes, it does," I said. "She discovered the con too early. Guys like him are dangerous when they get caught."

  Paladin narrowed her eyes and studied me. Then she paled as she understood what I wasn't saying. "You mean he could've killed her."

  I didn't nod. I didn't know if Casper could hear us. But Paladin saw the look in my eyes. She knew.

  "The thing I don't get," I said, "is why you didn't just tell me. I'd've gone over the books."

  "Would you have talked to her?" Then she answered for me. "Of course not. You 'don't do' children."

  "What's so important about talking to her?" I asked. "I would have helped."

  "There's a boarding school here for really really bright kids. They're looking for math specialists in general, girls in particular. It's expensive."

  "I'd've paid without these machinations," I said.

  "I know that," Paladin said. "But I can get money anywhere. What she needs is a sponsor."

  And I wouldn't have sponsored her without knowing her. Paladin had me figured out better than I thought.

  "That's a pretty subtle maneuver for a bulldozer," I said.

  "It wasn't a maneuver," Paladin said. "It was a trick. You'll note I didn't bring you Krispy Kremes tonight."

  It took me a minute to realize that she was both punning and she was serious.

  "No treat, huh?" I asked. "Isn't it supposed to work that if I don't give you a treat, then you play a trick on me?"

  She waved her hand in dismissal. "You get the idea," she said. "So…you'll sponsor her?"

  Near my desk, I saw a too-thin body tense. Casper was listening.

  "Why don't you? You're a relative of hers, right?" I asked.

  "No," Paladin said, blinking at me in confusion. "I don't have relatives."

  "Like you don't have friends?" I asked.

  "No," Paladin said in annoyance. "Like everyone who is related to me is gone. Why would you think that, anyway?"

  I glanced at Casper, who looked as confused about my question as Paladin did. Apparently they had no idea how similar they were.

  It was finally my turn to shrug. "I don't know. She has your ears."

  Paladin's right hand went to her ear. "Lots of people have pointed ears, Spade," she said. "Vulcans do."

  "Vulcans aren't real," I said, but then I glanced at Casper. She was more Vulcan than bulldozer. Smart and logical and impatient with those who weren't, even though she tried not to be. And she didn't understand the anger at something presented with logic.

  She wasn't made for the streets. She was made for a boarding school that specialized in math and science.

  "I'll sponsor her," I said. "But she might have to testify."

  "You're calling the cops?" Paladin asked.

  "When Casper and I are done compiling the evidence," I said. "You'll have to be on protection duty until then."

  Paladin smiled. It made her eyes sparkle. "I can do that," she said.

  She parked herself near the door and finished off the pizza while Casper and I dug into the numbers. Other people came and went. The awards got engraved with the wrong names, Betty Jo registered her disapproval one last time to Doris, and I handed over the organized books to next year's convention chair—a guy who probably wouldn't survive the winter.

  Alternate Pro-Con went on without me. Halloween passed into All Saints' Day and someone dropped extra candy in Ops. Around six a.m., I remembered to shower and put on my Cthulhu T-shirt.

  And then, when the convention was finally over, I dressed like a real person. I went with Paladin
and Casper to the boarding school, feeling less fish-out-of-watery than usual. We took care of the application, the fees, and all the paperwork. A few extra dollars expedited Casper's acceptance—not because she couldn't have gotten in on her own, but because she needed someplace to sleep, and I made sure the boarding school wouldn't waste precious time tracking down her deadbeat parents.

  Then the three of us went to the police department, with Casper's evidence, my forensic accountant bona fides, and Paladin's ferocity. The police agreed to arrest Reverend Harvey on the QT, so that the shelter could continue.

  And, as I drove us back to the hotel where the con com was disassembling this year's Alternate Pro-Con, I realized that I much preferred my world to Paladin's. In my world, people complained about a rigged award and no one hit anyone and everybody had a home as well as a family, even if that family only got together for an extended weekend in a strange hotel in a strange city.

  Even if that family was annoying and difficult and refused to dress up on Halloween.

  I didn't mention that to Paladin, although I knew she felt the same. Because as we walked back toward Ops, which was now just a hotel conference space with my Tower of Terror and chair inside, she said softly, "I hate it when a convention is over."

  "Yeah," I said. "Me too."

  "You said this isn't a real one," Casper piped up from behind me. "I want to go to a real one."

  I glanced at Paladin. She half smiled.

  "I promise," she said, "we'll take you to the next real one that comes to town."

  "You better," Casper said, sounding more like Paladin than either of them knew. Then Casper put her hand over mouth, realizing that she had spoken out loud.

  "We will," I said. "I promise."

  "And Spade always keeps his promises," Paladin said.

  Her words made me smile. I was surprised that she'd noticed. Or maybe I wasn't. For a bulldozer, she saw me pretty clearly.

  Maybe I wasn't as subtle as I thought.

  Copyright © 2012 Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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