Hot Shot (52 page)

"Sorry to bother you, honey, but I had a broken water pipe in the garage sometime last night—one of the pipes that goes to a shampoo sink. Anyway, a neighbor got the water turned off, but everything's a mess."

Susannah was puzzled. It wasn't like Angela to worry her with household emergencies.

She listened as Angela detailed her problems getting a plumber.

"Is there something I can do to help?" she asked.

"I tried to get hold of Sam, but he didn't answer."

If Sam wasn't home this early on a Saturday morning, he obviously hadn't spent the night in his own bed. This time the ache was less noticeable.

Angela went on. "I just thought someone should know about it because of all those computers that are stored on the other side of the wall. I'm afraid the water might have gotten to some of them."

"What computers?"

"The ones Sam sent over a few weeks ago. Part of a new project or something. He was worried about security."

Susannah had no idea what Angela was talking about. Why would Sam be storing SysVal equipment in a garage? She reassured Angela that she would take care of it. They chatted for a few more minutes. Susannah hung up, then began punching in the number of SysVal's switchboard.

Her finger stalled before she completed the call. Something wasn't right.

"Paige, I have to run out for a while. It can't be any fun for you staying alone at Falcon Hill, and there's a perfectly good extra bedroom here. Why don't you pack a suitcase and move in with me for a few weeks?"

"You just want a free housekeeper," Paige grumbled. But Susannah could see that she was pleased with the invitation. By the time she left for Angela's, Paige had started making out a grocery list.

Angela let Susannah into the garage and left to meet a friend in the city. The garage smelled damp from the broken water pipe, but still familiar. A rush of nostalgia came over her as she remembered the hope and excitement of those early days. This part of the garage was now used only for storage. Boxes of beauty supplies took up the shelves that had once held those first SysVal computer boards. The abandoned burn-in box housed crimped rolls of old hairstyle posters. Her eyes swept from the burn-in box to the dusty workbench and then to the wall that divided the beauty shop from the rest of the garage.

Two rows of cartons marked with the Blaze logo had been stacked there. She carefully counted them. There were thirteen.

Flipping on all the lights so that she could see better, she stepped through a shallow puddle of water and made her way over to the boxes. The flaps weren't sealed. Pulling them back, she saw a silver-gray computer inside. It wasn't packed in molded Styrofoam like a new machine, but had been stored unprotected. With some effort she wrested it from the carton and set it on the floor. Although she could see that it had been used, she didn't have a list of serial numbers, and she had no way of knowing for certain if it was one of the thirteen test models or not.

Pushing up the sleeves of her sweater, she opened the next carton and continued to unpack the machines. Perspiration formed between her breasts and tendrils of hair stuck to her damp cheeks. She was breathing heavily by the time she maneuvered the eleventh computer from its box.

Her eyes swept over the case and then stopped as she found what she had been looking for—a brightly colored sticker mounted crookedly on the side of the metal housing. In hot pink letters it announced boss lady. One of her assistants had put the sticker on the machine as a joke. This was her missing computer.

She called Yank from the telephone in the beauty salon. He was awake but vague. She repeated her instructions twice, hoping he would follow them. Then she sat down in the quiet garage along with the ghosts of her past and waited.

He arrived more quickly than she had expected. Without asking any questions, he set four of the computers on the workbench, including Susannah's old machine, and turned them on. Two of the machines were completely dead, and their screens remained dark. Two of them, including her computer, responded normally.

He tilted one of the nonfunctioning machines onto its side and unscrewed the case.

"Somebody's been here first," he said. "The board is missing."

Susannah peered inside and saw that the printed circuit board that held many of the computer's components had been removed.

Yank moved the two machines that were still working over to the old burn-in box and left them running. Then he turned his attention to the computers on the floor. "Let's see what we've got here. One by one."

By the time they were finished, they discovered six dead machines and seven that still worked. Two of the dead machines still contained their circuit boards. Yank removed them and began testing them.

She pulled up one of the old metal stools and watched him, taking care not to disturb his concentration, even though she itched to question him. Eventually her back began to ache. Slipping off the stool, she went into the Pretty Please Salon, where she made a pot of coffee.

She was walking back into the garage with two steaming mugs in her hand when a banging noise erupted from one of the working computers that had been plugged into the burn-in box. Startled, she moved closer, only to realize that the awful noise was coming from her old machine. It sounded as if the disk drive head was slamming back and forth.

Coffee splashed over the side of the mug and spilled on the back of her hand as the noise grew worse. Instead of behaving like a sweetly engineered piece of high-tech equipment, her beautiful little Blaze was banging away like an old Model T.

Abruptly, the machine grew quiet and the screen went dark. A tiny wisp of smoke curled from the case.

"Interesting," Yank murmured, with typical understatement.

"Interesting? My God, Yank, what happened?"

"It died," he said.

She wanted to scream at him to be more specific, but she knew it wouldn't do any good.

He pulled her old machine from the burn-in box and carried it to the workbench. As he tilted it onto its side, he said, "Why don't you go on? This is going to take a while."

She hesitated, then decided she would go crazy just standing around watching Yank and waiting for him to say something. When Yank knew what was wrong, he would tell her.

Until then, not even the threat of torture could pull an opinion from him.

She picked up her purse. "Work on this by yourself, Yank. When you find out what's happening, report to me directly. Don't talk to Sam. And don't talk to Mitch, either." She felt guilty for cutting Mitch out, but she wanted a little time to absorb the facts first before she told him what was happening.

He studied her closely, but didn't comment.

She had an appointment with her attorney that afternoon to discuss the divorce. Paige went with her, and afterward they did some shopping together. Although Susannah enjoyed her time with her sister, her mind was back in the Gamble garage trying to sift through what she had seen.

Only one moment of tension marred their afternoon together. As they were driving back to the town house, Susannah, in an attempt to encourage her sister to look for organizations where she could be useful, mentioned some of the local charities SysVal had involved itself with over the past few years. Perhaps it was because she was so worried about what she had discovered in the garage that she didn't guard her tongue carefully enough.

"I don't know whether or not you're aware of it, Paige, but ever since Father died, FBT

has been doing a lousy job of getting money into the community. It's gotten even worse lately. Cal's great on high-profile grants—museums, symphonies—but he won't involve the company with drug programs, alcoholism, the homeless—anything that's down and dirty."

Paige's expression grew distant. "I won't talk about anything that has to do with Cal. He's the one subject that's off limits between us. There aren't very many people on this planet I owe any loyalty to, but Cal stood by me when I didn't have anyone else, and he's one of them."

Susannah didn't say anything more.

When they got back to the town house, Susannah found a message from Yank asking her to come to the garage at seven that evening. Paige had already made plans for dinner with a friend. Susannah did some chores around the town house and then drove to Angela's.

The lights were on in the garage when she got there. As she let herself in, she saw that Yank was still hunched over the workbench, his shirt pulled tight across his back. For a fraction of a moment the years flew away and she was a runaway bride again, watching a skinny egghead genius at work. But then Yank turned toward her and the illusion slipped away. The face of the man before her was strong and arresting, full of character and an almost unearthly sweetness. This man was self-confident in the deepest, most private way.

"The others will be here soon," he said quietly.

She stopped in her tracks. "Others?"

"We're partners, Susannah. We have to solve this together."

She experienced a disturbing combination of anger and guilt. "I gave you a direct order, and you chose to disregard it."

"Yes."

"I told you not to talk to anyone until you'd talked to me."

"It was an improper order, Susannah. Mitch should be here soon. I didn't call Sam, however, until just a few minutes ago. It will take him a while to get here, so the three of us will have a little time to talk first."

Headlights flashed through the side window as another car pulled in. Moments later Mitch stalked through the door. "What's this about?" he asked abruptly.

"We have a problem, I'm afraid," Yank replied.

Mitch's eyes roamed the garage, taking in the computers, the workbench, and coming to rest on her. She hoped he didn't guess that he was here at Yank's invitation, not her own.

Yank cleared his throat and began to speak. "We produced thirteen test models of the Blaze HI because Sam wanted the computer in use for at least four months before it went on the market."

She could almost see Mitch mentally counting the machines scattered around the garage.

"I remember. They've performed like champions. A few of the employees had them.

Some of our customers. A couple went to elementary schools."

"Susannah had one in her office," Yank continued, "but it disappeared while she was in Greece. When she tried to find it, she discovered that hers wasn't the only one missing."

"Why didn't you tell me about this?" Mitch asked.

"In light of our other problems, I didn't think it was that important."

"Our test models disappear, and you don't think it's important?"

"It wasn't like that." She didn't like the way he was putting her on the defensive, so she recited the sequence of events coldly.

After she told of her phone call from Angela, Yank took over and described what he had found. He mentioned the missing circuit boards on some of the machines and recounted the failure he and Susannah had witnessed in her computer. "It was an amazing piece of luck for me to actually be able to watch Susannah's machine fail. If that hadn't happened, it would have taken me much longer to understand the problem. All of the trouble has its source in one of the ROM chips."

ROM—standing for "read only memory"—was a custom microchip containing instructions that allowed the computer to perform automatically a specific set of tasks.

Susannah listened carefully as Yank detailed how he had pinpointed the source of the trouble.

While Mitch questioned him more closely, Susannah mentally reconstructed the process of making a ROM chip. First the SysVal engineers decided what specific jobs the chip was required to perform. Then they wrote a list of instructions for those tasks in machine language. When the instructions were complete, the listing was sent to a ROM chip manufacturing firm where the chip was produced. For years, SysVal had used an Oakland-based firm named Dayle-Wells. The firm was efficient, reliable, and stood by its work.

"We've had chip failures before," Mitch said, when he was finally satisfied with Yank's explanation. "It's not something we take lightly, but it certainly doesn't justify all this secrecy."

Susannah had been thinking the same thing. Each tiny Sen-Sen-sized microchip was housed in a rectangular casing about an inch long. The casing had always reminded her of a caterpillar because it had a series of pointed legs at the bottom that fit into minuscule slots on the computer board. It was a relatively simple matter to unplug a faulty chip and plug in a good one.

Once again Mitch turned his attention to Susannah. "I assume Sam is behind this. Do you think this is related to his rush to sell the company?"

"I can't imagine what the link is, but it's difficult for me to believe this is coincidental."

Mitch gestured toward the computers. "But why all the subterfuge? Just because one batch of chips fails doesn't mean that they're all bad. It's a problem, but it's not unsolvable."

"Remember that we're dealing with a ROM chip that contains software," Yank said, "and the possibility that I find alarming—"

But whatever Yank was about to say was cut short as Sam slammed into the garage. He looked wild, like a man on the brink of losing control. "Is it coincidence that I'm the last person here, or did my invitation have a different time printed on it from everyone else's?"

Mitch's features hardened. "You're lucky you got an invitation at all."

Sam turned on Susannah. For a moment, she almost thought he would strike her. Mitch must have thought so, too, because he took a step forward.

"This is your fault," Sam shouted. "You pick away and pick away without the slightest goddamn idea of what you're doing—always second-guessing me, thinking you know better."

"That's enough," Mitch interrupted. "Why don't you just cut through all the crap and tell us what's going on here."

Sam looked around at the empty cartons and the machines scattered everywhere. The tendons of his neck were stretched taut, his eyebrows drawn so close together they looked like a single line. "You should have done it my way. Ail of you should have trusted me. I was willing to take the responsibility. You should have let me do it. Why didn't you let me do it?"