Flash
Bernie's flowing handwriting was scrawled across it.
Your cousin Nina called again. She wants you to call her back.
Olivia sighed. Uncle Rollie had been right. One of these days she was going to have to get organized.
It was when she crawled beneath the computer station to pick up the stray schedule that she saw the outline of a dried, muddy footprint on the floor. It was only a partial impression, but she could see enough of it to make out the outline of a man's shoe.
The print was in the precise spot that one would expect to find it if a person had sat down in her chair to use her computer.
"Bolivar."
The door opened a few seconds later. Bolivar put his head inside the office. "Now what?"
"Did you use my computer last night?"
"No, I went home at five, remember? Besides, you know I wouldn't touch that relic unless I was absolutely desperate. Why?"
"I think someone touched it. There's a muddy footprint on the floor."
"How do you know it's from last night?"
Olivia thought of the damp gust of wind that had interrupted the scorching scene on her balcony. "It didn't start raining until sometime after eight last night."
"Oh, yeah. I guess that's right."
Olivia crawled out from under the computer station. "Think the janitors changed their schedule without telling us?"
"Doubt it. Far as I know they're still coming in twice a week. That means they would have skipped last night."
Olivia glanced at her wastebasket. It was overflowing. No one had emptied it last night. "I wonder who used my computer?"
Bolivar shrugged. "I'll check with Bernie and Matty, but I don't think either of them would have used it without checking with you."
"No." Olivia sat down. "Don't worry about it. No big deal. I just don't like the thought that someone might have come into my office and used my computer without my knowing about it."
"Don't blame you," Bolivar said. "But why would anyone do that?"
"I can't imagine."
Olivia automatically flattened a palm on a stack of papers to hold them steady when Bolivar closed the door behind himself.
If she had not been coping with a blackmailer, she thought, she probably would not have thought twice about the muddy print under her desk. But extortion threats, she discovered, had a way of making someone a little paranoid.
The good news was that if a blackmailer had accessed her computer with a view to finding damning information, he had wasted his time. She used the machine only for Light Fantastic business data and correspondence. She could not imagine any of it being of much use to an extortionist.
She glanced at her overstuffed file cabinets. It would be impossible to tell whether or not someone had rummaged around in them last night.
Take it easy. Don't go off the deep end here.
There was only one real secret in her past, Olivia reminded herself. And she had destroyed the evidence of it three years ago on the night of Logan's funeral.
She glanced down at the partial print of a man's foot and tried to marshal some logic. She had a couple of pieces of information to work with, she thought. First, whoever had entered her office had done so after the rain had started to fall.
Second, the person who had left the print must have known that she was not working late as she often did during a busy period.
It occurred to her that there was at least one man of her acquaintance who would have been aware of the fact that she was occupied at home last night.
Jasper Sloan.
She had sent him off in a cab to catch the ferry. He could easily have stopped off at the Light Fantastic studio first.
She had spent a lot of time wondering if she could trust him. She hadn't considered the possibility that he did not trust her.
13
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J asper walked out of the busy, brightly lit test lab through the swinging doors at the far end. He had a copy of the engineers' revised report on Glow's latest electroluminescent technology applications in his hand.
He scanned the highlighted sections as he went down the hall to his office. Rollie had done a fine job when it came to hiring innovative thinkers in the applications area, he concluded. The atmosphere in the engineering labs was open and freewheeling. No one wore suits.
The people who worked at Glow brainstormed readily and easily without fear of being shot down by an old-fashioned management style. Above all, Jasper draught, he wanted to retain that essential element of the Glow corporate culture.
As he went through his office doorway he was
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