My neighbor and I went through a room the size of an auditorium that held a golf practice range, a full-sized pool table, and a small basketball court. On the other side was the garage, which was as immaculate as the rest of the house. The cars ranged from the Maybach sedan to two convertibles, a Miata and a Lotus, which I figured as Breen’s testosterone car. A Land Rover and a 1939 Hudson completed the collection.
When Alison rejoined us, her face was still troubled. “Mother doesn’t know anything about this man, although Dad isn’t very good at letting her in on company business. Now that I’ve been away from home for a few years, I’m beginning to see how hard it is on her.”
She pointed to the Land Rover. “Mother told me to take this. The Miata’s mine, and I adore it, but one of you would have to curl up in the trunk. Probably you, V.I.; you’re more flexible.”
She was trying to lighten her mood; Mr. Contreras and I both laughed obligingly. We climbed into the Land Rover, me in the backseat. Alison hit a button on the SUV’s steering wheel and the garage door opened onto a steep drive at the back of the house. I looked around for the car that had shown up on the monitor, but didn’t see it.
Another tap on the steering wheel opened the gates at the end of the drive, letting us back onto the narrow road that skirted the ravine. The lighting was bad, but Alison drove so fast that Mr. Contreras demanded she slow down.
“There’s a cop car at the light up ahead, case you hadn’t noticed,” he added.
At the red light on Sheridan Road, I looked at the squad car, but the officer inside was focused on his tablet, not on reckless drivers. As Alison turned south onto Green Bay Road, the squad car turned right, toward the Breen house. I could see the markings, dark brown on tan, but couldn’t read the jurisdiction. Had Breen felt threatened enough by his visitor that he’d called the local cops?
35
PHISHING
IT WASN’T UNTIL we were back on the Edens Expressway heading south that I brought up the logo we’d seen on the Innsbruck reactor report.
“You realize, don’t you, that it’s that little design that must have upset Martin when he was here for your picnic,” I said.
“I know,” Alison agreed, her voice small. “But that doesn’t mean he stole Granddad’s sketch.”
“He might have borrowed it,” I suggested. “Here’s the thing: his mother stole a set of papers from his grandmother about seven years ago. Martin saw them at the time, but he was only thirteen or so; they didn’t mean anything to him. Those little triangles on the BREENIAC sketch made him remember the same design on those old documents. He could have taken the sketch down to where his mother was living, to compare it with the papers she’d stolen. After seeing his mother, he knew he had to go into hiding. Whether it’s because he’s afraid of Derrick Schlafly’s killers or some other reason, we won’t know until we find him.”
Alison swerved around a line of cars, accelerating to eighty.
“Slow down, gal,” Mr. Contreras said. “Vic don’t mean you no harm, and driving like that could get us all killed. It don’t matter so much at my age, but you got your life in front of you.”
“Mine, too,” I murmured.
“I thought Vic was my friend,” Alison protested.
“I am your friend,” I said sharply. “But we can’t get anywhere if I have to play ‘Let’s pretend.’ You know Martin, I don’t. I believe you when you say he wouldn’t be interested in selling it or the Fitora code. He’s not a guy who cares about money, he cares about his work: I get that. I’m just saying he might have taken the sketch, fully planning to return it. Is that so awful?”
“I guess not,” she agreed in a subdued voice. “But where could he be, after all this time?”
Her father’s odd reaction when I’d said he, too, was clueless about Martin’s whereabouts, unless he’d shoveled him into a hole in the ground, came back to me. It wasn’t so much that he’d shown alarm as that he’d been taken off-guard. Surely Cordell Breen hadn’t murdered Martin. But what about Durdon, the muscle who could make it clear to late-night callers that they needed to stay strictly away? Would he murder on Breen’s orders?
“Tell me about Durdon,” I said. “Is that a full-time job, driving for your dad?”
Alison seemed happy to change the subject. “Driving wouldn’t keep him busy full-time, not when all three of us like to get around on our own. He’s a good mechanic, so he looks after all the cars and keeps on top of the plumbing and stuff in the house.”
“It looks as though one of your machines fought back,” I said. “That was quite a bruise on his cheek.”
“That was the first thing I saw when I came home this afternoon,” Alison said. “Durdon told me he’d been clumsy with one of the lifts in the garage.”
“Must’ve been lying there funny to take it on the side of his face like that,” Mr. Contreras said. “He could have got his whole face crushed.”
“Don’t!” Alison said. “It sounds terrible when you put it like that.”