Jill Churchill - The Merchant of Menace

“You're lucky. That guest bath is an addition to the original plan and has its own shut-off valve. I'll get back in the morning and fix it."

“I have water everywhere else? What a relief! Oh, Bruce, I'm so thankful.”

He brushed off her thanks. "I finished up Mrs. Newton's kitchen today and nobody usually wants anything done over the holidays except emergencies like this. Glad to do it. See you tomorrow.”

Weak with relief, Jane went to the comfort of her favorite squashy chair in the living room and collapsed. It was horrible to contemplate how much worse it might have been. A houseful of kids, last-minute holiday activities, and no water! Yikes!

It was Sunday night and she deserved to veg out. She wondered what was on Masterpiece Theatre. It was a measure of how hectic life had been the last couple days that she couldn't remember. She hoped it was something very soothing. A Jane Austen movie, maybe. She glanced at her watch and was surprised that it was only six-thirty. She looked around for the television controller, loathe to get up again even — to turn the set on. Not on the coffee table. Not at the side of the chair. She leaned forward and fished around underneath the front of the chair, then remembered that the last time she'd lost it, it was down in the plump cushions. Ah, there it was.

No, it wasn't. The hard plastic object she pulled out was a computer disk.

The missing disk? It wasn't one of hers. She only bought the brightly colored ones. This one was black. And unlabeled.

She hoisted herself out of the chair with effort and dialed Mel's number to leave a message. She was surprised that he answered. "Didn't you go out to dinner with your mother?" she asked, momentarily distracted from her purpose.

“I begged off and I'm in deep trouble. But I was cold clear through and would have died soon if I hadn't soaked in a hot bath. What's up?”

Jane reported what she'd found.

“Is it the one we're looking for?" he asked. "I imagine so. It's not one of mine. And it's not a game disk. There's no label."

“I'll be right over," he said with a martyred sigh.

Jane hung up, stood for a moment in thought, and went down to boot up her computer.

Twenty-one

Before Mel could pull himself together and get over to pick up the disk, Jane's doorbell rang. It was Ginger, all bundled up and looking perky.

“I'm here for our interview," she said.

Jane didn't invite her in. "Ginger, I'm not doing an interview. Period. I told you that.”

“But I thought—"

“No, I made it very clear the first time you asked. You couldn't have misunderstood. And I'm really sorry, but I can't invite you in. I'm busy.”

Ginger looked surprised, but not offended. "Well, you win some, you lose some. Did the police find the disk?"

“No, they didn't," Jane said truthfully. She was glad Ginger hadn't phrased the question "Has the disk been found?"

“Okay," Ginger agreed a little too readily. "I'll work on another angle.”

Jane shut the door on her and watched through the little window in it as Ginger headedfor her car. Mel turned into the driveway just then and Ginger changed course. Apparently she was questioning him and he was making "no comment" gestures. She accepted this rejection as well in apparent good spirits.

Jane was standing at the door with the disk in hand when he reached her.

“You're sure this is the right one?" he asked. "No, I'm just sure it's not mine. And it was in the chair he flung himself into the night he was here.”

Mel looked miserably cold and tired as he trudged back to his car with the disk in his pocket.

Jane raced for the phone. "Shelley! I found the disk. It was in my favorite chair in the living room. Down in the cushions."

“Have you called Mel?"

“He just picked it up."

“Oh," Shelley said with disappointment. "I was hoping we could take a quick look at it before you turned it over."

“We can. I made a copy of it."

“Jane! You're brilliant!”

Shelley arrived seconds later, looking uncharacteristically disheveled. "Pop it in your computer. Let's see what's on it.”

They headed for the basement.

“What's the water over by the laundry room door?" Shelley asked.

“Broken pipe," Jane said. Half an hour ago this was a crisis; now she was hardly interested enough to answer the question.

Jane punched a few keys and produced a list of the files on the disk. "Oh, good, he's saved these in the same word processing program that I have. That'll make it easier." She punched a few more keys and sat back smugly while the computer clicked and hummed. Then a screen she'd never seen before came up.

PASSWORD:

“Password?" they said in one voice.

“Hell!" Shelley added for good measure. Jane typed in: LANCE.

The screen said: ACCESS DENIED — INVALID PASSWORD.

“Try 'King,' " Shelley said.

That didn't work either. Neither did `Lanceking' or the call letters of the television station.

“This is hopeless," Shelley said. "There are about a million words and a lot more that aren't even real words that he could have used."

“No, people usually use something that's easy to remember so they don't lock themselves out of their own stuff. I wonder if he's listed in the phone book.”

Shelley grabbed one from the shelf. "How surprising. Yes, he is. Or somebody with the same name." Shelley gave her the street address, which didn't work, and the telephone number, which didn't work either.

“Bring a pad of paper and a pencil upstairs while I make coffee," Jane said. "Let's write a list of things to try.”

They ended up with a long string of words: reporter, television, Wilhite, research, dossiers, jerk ("No, we think of him that way, he probably didn't," Shelley said), and a couple dozen others. Coffee'd up, they went back down and tried them all out. None worked."Okay," Jane said, closing her eyes as if to summon up a vision. "We have to pretend that we are Lance King—"

“Yuck."

“He'd use a word he likes," Jane said. She opened her eyes and tapped in the word "scandal.”

It didn't work. Shelley said, "No, we have to really think like he did. He didn't see his work as scandalmongering. He saw himself as the guardian of the public.”

Jane typed in "guardian.”

The computer said: PASSWORD ACCEPTED. PROCEED.

They shrieked.

Jane studied the list of files. They were numbered. She picked 001. It opened up and they groaned.

The text was in code. Not a computer code, just an ordinary code.

File 001 said: Kamoieppi Pixvup — xet e tvoqqis op dummihi. Qsutvovoap vuu? Djidl vuxp sidusft gus vjuti ziest.

“ What now, Sherlock?" Shelley asked.

“I dunno. Do you suppose it's a simple letter substitution?"

“Maybe. If we dump them all together, alphabetize, and count each letter, we should be able to figure out which one represents E. It's the most common."

“Big help. We'd know one letter," Jane said. "Maybe it's a foreign language. It does look like a language, doesn't it. I could ask Mel if Lance was fluent in something or other."

“And you don't think he'd wonder just a bit why you're asking? I presume you didn't mention having copied this disk."

“You've got a point. My dad! My dad knows languages!"

“Can you E-mail him?"

“Yes, I'll do that. Let me print this one out. They're in the Netherlands. Heaven knows what time of day or night it is there now."

“Probably about two in the morning," Shelley said.

“I'll do that right after we print all the files out. You know, I do those letter substitution things in the puzzle magazines sometimes. If that's what this is, it shouldn't be that hard to do.”

Shelley was doubtful. "But Jane, those give you clues. Like all the words in the list have to do with carnivals or something. And when they're sentences, they're real sentences with lots of 'the's and 'for's and such. This is just the man's personal notes. They're probably just phrases."