The Mirror Maze Page 4

  “It figures.”

  “What’s new at Platek?”

  “It sounds as if there’s a case of collusion all right, maybe corruption. We’ll see what Robert has to say when he’s had a chance to look at the material I brought back. ” Shears watched as Chris began transferring the papers he had selected into a briefcase. “Also, they’ve achieved the ancient alchemist’s dream—how to make gold.”

  “You mean by transmuting base metals?”

  “Hell, no. Better than that. I mean actually creating it—out of nothing.”

  Chris glanced up with an oh-yeah? look on his face. “And how about bridges for sale and good rice-growing real estate near Okeechobee?”

  “No, really.”

  “Okay, Mel, I’ll buy it. How?”

  “They took on a new chemist a few weeks ago, under the new quota law. He’s black.”

  “Uh-huh.” That in itself meant nothing. Bill Evron, Robert Winthram’s partner at the firm, was also black.

  Shears went on. “Platek has to keep a strict account of the gold it uses—how much comes into the place, how much is in storage, what goes into the plating, what goes down the drain, and so on. Well, from the tests this guy was running, it appeared that they had more gold in solution in the tanks than came into the building.”

  “That’s a neat trick,” Chris agreed. “How did they manage it?”

  “Alan Dray couldn’t figure it either. So he asked to see the raw data that this new chemist had been working from. Then it was obvious: he was using grams and ounces interchangeably.”

  Chris looked up incredulously. “You’re kidding!”

  “No… Then Alan had a talk with him. It turned out that he didn’t know about systems of units and had no concept of conversion between them. Also, he’d never heard of pH number or what valency is.”

  “But I thought he was supposed to be a chemist.”

  “So did Alan—the quota spec listed him as holding an MIT degree. But when Alan called MIT and finally got ahold of somebody there who knew about it, you know what the story was?”

  “What?”

  “If you read the small print on the certificate carefully, it says awarded at MIT, not awarded by MIT. It’s a federal program run by the Employment Protection Agency to train minorities. They use part of a building at MIT, and that’s what’s printed on their degrees. The professor that Alan talked to said he wished they wouldn’t do that. A lot of other firms have been getting mad about it, too. He said he finds it embarrassing. Isn’t that nice? He finds it embarrassing.”

  Chris shook his head as he snapped his briefcase shut and stood up. “Anyhow, I have to be moving.”

  “Will you be back later?”

  “Probably not. I’ll catch you tomorrow, then, okay?”

  “Sure. Good luck on the case.”

  “Thanks.”

  Shears pulled across the file of a deposition that he was preparing. As he opened it and shuffled through the contents, he wondered at the thought of the greatest production economy the world had ever seen, dismantling itself and astounding its rivals and enemies overseas, even as they looked on and applauded. Hopefully the new political scene would change things.

  He had been working for about twenty minutes when Ursula put a personal call through to him.

  “Yes, hello? This is Melvin Shears.”

  A woman’s voice answered, speaking in little more than a whisper. “Mel, this is Stephanie.”

  “I’m sorry, who? Ste—” He caught himself as his mind returned fully to the immediate present. “Not Stephanie Carne?”

  “Yes.”

  He grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Hey, it’s been such a long time! It’s great to hear from you. You won’t believe it, but I was thinking only the other day that—”

  “Mel, I don’t have a lot of time.”

  That was when the strain in her voice registered. His manner changed at once. “Steph, are you okay?”

  “I can’t go into it now. Look, I need to talk to you. I’ll be arriving at Logan airport at seven-forty tonight. Can—”

  “You’re coming here, tonight?…”

  “There isn’t anywhere else I can go. Can you pick me up? I’m sorry to dump it on you like this, but it’s important.”

  “Well, of course I’ll be there, Steph… But can’t you tell me what it’s about? Is it something to do with you and Brett, something that maybe—” There was the sound of a quick intake of breath that could have been the beginning of a sob, and the line went dead. He looked at the phone in his hand bemusedly and replaced it on the hook.

  Then he realized that she had hung up without giving him the airline or the flight number. He bit his lip for a moment, then glanced at his watch and reached for his phone book. She had moved from California to Denver almost a year ago, now. It would be noon there—just time to catch her before lunch, if he had a note of her number at work. He opened the book at C and scanned back through the entries… The number wasn’t there, but he did have a note of the name of the company she had gone there to work for. He picked up the handset again.

  “Urse, find the number of General Plasma Dynamics in Denver, would you? I want to speak to somebody there called Stephanie Carne. She’s a physicist. I don’t have the department. Quick as you can, please.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  “Thanks.”

  He stared down at the flight arrival time he had noted on his pad, then across at Chris’s empty chair on the far side of the desk facing his. It wasn’t at all like Stephanie. She had always been so clearheaded and meticulous. He drummed his fingers on the desk and fidgeted in his chair, imagining faceless people who were tying up GPD’s lines and hating them for it. Why did this always happen? In post offices, in supermarkets, at airport check-ins, at toll booths… every time he was in a hurry. “Come on, come on,” he muttered. He could picture Stephanie closing a suitcase somewhere, with a cab waiting outside. Maybe he could have her paged at Denver airport… Damn! He didn’t even know if she’d called from Denver…

  Finally the phone rang.

  “Melvin Shears.”

  “There seems to be some kind of problem, Mel,” Ursula’s voice said. “They want to talk to you personally. Shall I put you through?”

  “Yes please.”

  Click, pause, click click. “This is Julie Sechel in Personnel,” a woman’s voice said. “Can I help you?”

  Since he’d been put through to Personnel, he assumed that Stephanie had left the company. “My name is Shears. I’m trying to get in touch with somebody called Stephanie Carne, who used to work there.”

  “Can I ask what it’s about, Mr. Shears?”

  Shears adopted a tack that usually worked. “I’m with the law offices of Evron and Winthram in Boston. It is a private matter, I’m afraid, but very urgent. Do you have a number where she can be reached, please? I talked to her a little while ago and I need to get back to her.”

  “Er, Stephanie Carne?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I think I’d better transfer you to the manager. One moment.”

  “Mr. Shears? My name is Thornton. You’re with a law firm in Boston, I understand. Can I help you?”

  “Yes, the firm is Evron and Winthram. I’m trying to get in touch with Stephanie Carne who used to be with your company. Do you have a record of where she went, or how she can be contacted? I need to talk to her right away.”

  There was a pause, as if Thornton was perplexed about how best to put something. Finally he asked, “Are you calling on behalf of a relative of hers, Mr. Shears?”

  The question took Shears by surprise. He answered automatically. “No, it’s a personal matter… I’m an old friend of hers. Look, she called me from somewhere, but forgot to leave her number. I need to call her back.” There was a long silence, until Shears began to wonder if Thornton was still there. “Hello?”

  “You say that she talked to you? When was that?”

  “Just a fe
w minutes ago. She called me right here. What is this?”

  When Thornton answered, his voice was very quiet, with a note of skepticism that he made little effort to disguise. “Stephanie Carne is dead, Mr. Shears. She committed suicide two days ago.”

  CHAPTER 6

  It had all started six years ago, while he was at university in Florida—when he’d shared the apartment with Brett…

  • • •

  “Sure, wait a sec. I’ll see what he says.” Brett Vorland appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, barefoot and wearing tan shorts with a gaudy beach shirt. He was holding a can of 7-Up in one hand and trailing yards partly uncoiled phone cord from the other. “It’s Marty,” he called across the lounge. “The gang’s organizing a boat party over on one of the islands tonight. He’s looking for a partner for Celia. You wanna come along, Mel?”

  Melvin Shears stopped tapping at the keyboard lodged on a corner of the scarred walnut dining table, which also served as the apartment’s office and general workbench, and looked away from the monitor on its shelf above. The place looked a students’ apartment, with unframed prints and travel posters brightening the walls, improvised board-and-breeze-block bookshelves sagging under their loads of college texts and paperbacks, and partly dismantled appliances and other electrical devices lying around in shoe boxes or on shelves, in various stages of disintegration. An Eric Clapton number from the seventies was playing on the reel-to-reel tape player rigged in one of the niches next to the computer monitor. At the far end of the lounge, a picture window looked out over a balcony across Pensacola Bay, where sailboats and seagulls idled languidly, each in its own kind of way, under the Florida sun.

  “Not really,” Mel answered. “I guess I’m not in a party mood today. Tell ’em some other time.” He resumed tapping at the keyboard.

  Brett stepped farther into the room to put the can down on the coffee table by the recliner and clapped his free hand over the telephone mouthpiece. “Aw, come on, Mel. That’s letting the team down. It’ll be great out there. Nice cool breeze after the sun goes down, get a fire started and cook some oysters, a few cold beers… And you could do a lot worse than Celia, too.”

  Mel sighed and sat back from the keyboard. “Look, Brett, you know how it’s going to be.”

  “How do I know how its going to be? So, how’s it going to be?”

  “It’ll end up a circus. First, they’ll all be in hysterics by this evening, before they’ve even left, because the logistics will have gotten screwed up. When they get there, Harry and Jeff will get in a fight over Marge. The only thing that Gary and Lisa will be interested in will be sneaking off to find a place to get laid, and that will get Sylvie upset. Then somebody will start throwing cans and shit all over the beach, and there’ll be a row over that… It’ll be a circus.”

  Brett held up his hand in a resigned gesture and raised the phone back to his ear. Mel could hear his voice retreat as he was reeled back into the kitchen on the cord. “Sorry, Marty, but Mel says some other time… How do I know what? He’s doing something on the computer… Right… You want me to do what?… Hang on while I find a pen…”

  Mel returned his attention to the monitor screen. There had to be some way of getting past the troll guarding the bridge, without losing one of the treasures… He reached up over the table and turned down the volume of the tape player a fraction. One of Brett’s inexhaustible supply of girlfriends had said once that she thought Brett looked like the picture on one of the old Clapton album covers, with his neck-length mane of blond hair, shaggy beard, and the general lean-bodied, laid-back look about him. Maybe that was why Brett had included so many Clapton tracks when he put the tape together.

  Mel and Brett had been pacing each other through the University of West Florida’s computer-science curriculum and sharing lodgings for over a year now. Brett was the hardware tinkerer responsible for the decomposition of their electronic possessions and half the apartment’s appliances. He was like some kind of digestive enzyme, programmed irresistibly to attack and dismantle anything with buttons on the outside and chips on the inside—always with the noblest of intentions, but invariably to be sidetracked by some yet higher priority before he got it together again. And so they listened to museum-piece tapes while parts of the laser disk player languished in at least four different places, and they watched VCR movies until the network terminal’s mass storage array was working again.

  Mel stared at the portion of classical “Adventure” showing on the screen. What if the magic word sent the golden eggs back to the nest at the top of the beanstalk after you’d given them to the troll?…

  Brett padded back in from the kitchen and sat down in the recliner to finish his drink. “You wanna know how to get past the troll?” he asked, eyeing the screen and taking in the situation.

  “I already know how to get past the troll.”

  “I mean without losing a treasure.”

  “There is a way, then, eh?”

  “Of course there’s a way.”

  “No… don’t tell me. I’ll figure it out. What happens if I try giving him the eggs and zapping them back to the nest after I’m back over the bridge?”

  Brett shrugged. “Try it and see.” He crumpled the empty can and tossed it through the kitchen doorway into the trash bucket. “So what are your plans?” he inquired.

  “Oh, this afternoon I’ll probably get some groceries in for the weekend. Then tonight I might go into town, see who’s around. Or I might do some work on my project… It depends.”

  “Hey, if you’re going to the supermarket, does that mean you’ll be driving past Obee’s?”

  “I could. Why?”

  “They called yesterday and said they’ve got the part I need for my carburetor. Could you stop by and pick it up? Then I could have the car running right by tonight.”

  “Any idea how much it’s likely to cost?”

  “Aw, thirty or forty, maybe. I’ll pay you when you get back.”

  “No problem… Oh, and I’ll include some bug-bite lotion when I get the groceries. You’ll be needing it.”

  • • •

  There weren’t as many clerks at the checkouts in Albertson’s as there used to be. As a protest at the legislation that forced them to cut their payroll, the management had placed signs at the vacant checkout desks reading CLOSED BY ORDER U.S. GOVERNMENT. Therefore the lines at the remaining desks were long. Mel watched despondently while the woman ahead waited until she had reached the till before producing wads of discount coupons from her purse and sorting among them. The clerk looked dubiously at the ones she finally proffered, and produced a binder from under the counter. These had expired; those weren’t on special offer this week. Pages were searched, entries were pointed at. Well, this was like the one on offer. A manager was summoned to arbitrate. Then she couldn’t find her checkbook…

  It was like walking into a wall of heat when Mel finally emerged from the air-conditioned cool into a Floridian midafternoon, trundling a cart holding three grocery bags. He loaded the bags into the trunk of his battered maroon 1987 Chevrolet, disposed of the cart in the retrieval area on the side of the parking lot, and climbed into his car. Brett had received a panic phone call from Donna just before Mel left, asking Brett to get some mushrooms, sweet potatoes, onion dip, and a list of other things that she’d forgotten to put on Harry’s list before he went roaring off. So Mel had added them to his. It seemed that the logistics problems were starting early.

  He pulled out onto the boulevard heading east, flipping on the radio as he moved across into the middle traffic lane. The music that had been playing ended, and without warning a man’s voice began speaking in strident tones: “I was talking the other day to a man who made over a hundred thousand dollars last year from a business that he thought was about to go under. Why did his business suddenly turn right around like that, when all the time we hear about hundreds of others that are going belly-up? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because he had faith in the Lord, that�
��s why. A year ago that man sent me his last thousand dollars. He said we might as well take it as anybody, since he was about all through, anyhow. Said if the Lord thought he could work some kind of a miracle out of it, he was welcome to try. And he got a miracle, folks—one hundred thousand dollars worth of miracle! Now that proves that if you really believe, then the Lord will return one hundred dollars for every dollar that you send in. Yes, that’s what I said—one hundred dollars for every single dollar that you—”

  “There’s a sucker born-again every minute,” Mel murmured, and switched to a soft rock channel.

  Ten minutes later he parked in the forecourt of Obee’s Auto and Truck Repair shop. Sam Obee’s tow truck was in front of the workshop door, and Nick, one of the mechanics, was unhitching a midnight blue Toyota that had evidently just been brought in. Mel stopped for a moment to watch.

  “It’s like they say, no rest for the wicked, eh, Nick?”

  “Hey, Mel, how’s it going?”

  “Not bad.” Mel inclined his head toward the Toyota. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Oh, something dud in the electronics, I’d guess. We’ll check it out.”

  “It looks brand new.”

  “It is—less than two hundred miles.”

  “New improved model?”

  “It happens.”

  “Well, don’t work too hard in the heat.”

  “I’ll watch it. You take care, now.”

  Mel sauntered on into the office. Sam was behind the counter, making out a worksheet, watched by a girl standing on the customer side. Mel guessed her to be the owner of the Toyota. She was around twenty, maybe, tall and lean, with straight, fair hair tied in a band. She was wearing a white tank top and pink jeans. “Hi, Sam,” Mel greeted. She was also at the university. He had seen her around the campus but never had reason to talk to her.

  Sam glanced up as he wrote. He was gnarled and wrinkled, with wiry gray hair and gorilla hands—one of the old-school breed of auto mechanics who inspired confidence, giving the impression that he could take any car ever made apart and put it together again blindfolded. “How’re you doing there, Mel? I’ll be with you in a second. What can I do for you?”