"Shhh," Maude said, holding her finger to her lips.

  Definitely rustling in the stairwell.

  She ran over to the door and peered out. Was it her imagination, or had she seen a flash of movement? She unlocked the door, losing precious seconds, and ran out. Nothing in the stairwell. Did the path look recently scuffed? Were those rustling noises up in the yard the wind, or someone running through the drifts of leaves?

  She ran up the stairs, slipping several times on the wet leaves. At the top, she peered around the small yard. Nothing.

  Except that someone had been running through the yard. She could see places where the dry, surface leaves had been overturned to reveal the slick, wet leaves beneath.

  She stood, listening, for a few minutes before giving up. Whoever or whatever had been in the stairwell was long gone.

  She made her way down the leaf-covered steps, more carefully this time.

  "False alarm?" Turing asked.

  "I'm not sure," she said. "I heard something, but what. . ."

  Upstairs they heard the front door close.

  "Mrs. Stallman's back," Turing said.

  "I'll see if she saw anything," Maude said.

  Mrs. Stallman jumped when Maude appeared out of the basement door.

  "Goodness!" she exclaimed. "I keep forgetting someone is here."

  "Sorry," Maude said. "Did you see anyone leaving as you drove up?"

  "Leaving the house?"

  "The yard," Maude said. "Running away."

  "Running away—you mean a jogger? I saw a man in a running suit. Not someone I recognized, but then that's not unusual. Nowadays I wouldn't recognize half the neighbors if I saw them, or vice versa. It wasn't always like that, of course. I can remember—"

  Maybe an intruder, Maude thought, as Mrs. Stallman chattered on. Or maybe just a new resident out jogging.

  "But why do you ask?" Mrs. Stallman was saying. "Is there something wrong?"

  "Probably nothing," Maude said.

  Mrs. Stallman clutched at the throat of her blouse—an oddly old-fashioned gesture, Maude thought; one that would look more natural if she were wearing a high-necked Victorian blouse instead of an unflattering if practical polyester pants suit. Maude was opening her mouth to say something reassuring when the doorbell rang. They both jumped.

  "Probably Tim," she said. "Or Claudia, his partner. They're coming over for a status meeting."

  "Oh, lovely," Mrs. Stallman said. "I do want to find out what you've learned."

  Delete All Suspects ^1

  Maude mentally kicked herself as she went to answer the door. She should have realized that their client would take her statement for an invitation.

  I've decided that the cat has redeeming

  qualities after all. It has some ability as a watch animal. Though it would have been helpful if it had been more vocal in warning us about the intruder.

  Id worry less if it wasn't so fascinated with my laptop. The minute Maude left the room to talk to Mrs. Stallman, it jumped down from the pipe onto the top of the bar, then from the bar to the floor. I couldn't follow its movements on the floor, but I wasn't surprised when it suddenly appeared on the desk beside my laptop.

  "Go away, " / said, in a firm, commanding tone.

  The cat ignored me and began sniffing the laptop. I repeated my command several times. I didn't want to risk the barking noise again with Mrs. Stallman around. Too hard to explain. I was relieved when the doorbell rang upstairs, and I heard Claudia's voice. Perhaps she would come and rescue me before the cat did anything dire.

  "Let me put these down and then I'll help you," Claudia said, as she bounced down the stairs carrying several pizza boxes. "Hey, Tur, you logged in on that thing? "

  '7 am." I said. l% Can you chase the cat away before it damages the hardware? "

  "Oh! Gatito!" Claudia exclaimed, and held out her hand, palm up, toward the cat. The cat sniffed her palm gently, and then rubbed the side of its head against her hand.

  "Que lindo," Claudia cooed, as she scratched the cat's head. I heard a rumbling noise coming from the cat.

  "Be careful," I said. "It's growling at you."

  "That's purring, " Claudia said, with a laugh. "Good kitty! It means she's happy. Haven't you ewr had a cat?"

  "No," I said. "Wait," I called, as Claudia turned to leave the room. "Don't leave me alone with it!"

  TE Donna Andrews

  "Be right back," she called.

  The cat watched her leave and then turned its gaze back on me.

  "Good kitty," I said, by way of experiment.

  The cat rubbed the side of its head against the edge of the laptop case. The laptop shifted slightly, but not enough to be dangerous. Perhaps the cat wasn't actually unfriendly.

  I extended my pincer and scratched the cat in the same place Claudia had, and it began making the rumbling noise again. It still sounded like growling to me, but I decided to take Claudia's word that it wasn't dangerous. After all, she knew a lot more about cats than I did.

  "Good kitty," I said again. The cat seemed to like being scratched. It sprawled on the desk with its eyes closed, rumbling more and more loudly.

  Then it lifted its head and sniffed. It stood up, shaking off my pincer, and began sniffing at the edges of the stack of pizza boxes.

  "Mrowr," it said, and looked back at the laptop.

  Probably telling me it was hungry. Perhaps even starving; after all, if this was Eddie's cat, he hadn't been home to feed it for three days.

  Claudia had probably brought too much pizza anyway. She always did, according to Maude. I decided to see if I could use my pincer to open the top box.

  Annoying to have Mrs- Stallman sitting in on their status meeting, Tim thought. It shut down any real discussion. He and Claudia could report what Eddie's friends had said, but they felt inhibited explaining what they'd learned. Like how Eddie's friends weren't all that broken up by what had happened to him. They were sorry, but more curious than devastated, and what they had to say about him was oddly lukewarm. *

  "Eddie's okay," Karl Collins had said, almost as if he was in the habit of contradicting people who felt* otherwise.

  Delete All Suspects 13

  The nicest thing Eddie's ex-girlfriend had to say about him was that he was a good hardware tech and a decent programmer. Most of the ones Claudia talked to hadn't said much beyond the fact that they hadn't seen much of him lately. They'd sounded slightly surprised when they said it, as if they hadn't noticed Eddie's absence much before she brought him up and would forget all about it the minute she left.

  Some friends.

  Maybe they hadn't found Eddie's real friends. Or maybe he didn't have any.

  What should they make of the fact that none of them had access to his systems any longer? While she was interviewing Collins and Zeigler, Claudia had talked both men into trying to log in, only to find their passwords invalid.

  "Wow," Zeigler had said. "That's different."

  They'd both spent a few minutes trying alternate passwords, other routes into the system, before giving up.

  "I guess he must be tightening up," Collins had said. "Not a bad idea, really."

  Unfortunate that he'd tightened up just before his accident. And maybe not a coincidence.

  Tim could tell that Maude was censoring her account of the day. He suspected that with their client absent, she'd have vented a bit about what a pig Eddie was. He felt bad that he couldn't tell her how incredibly much better the basement looked, for the same reason.

  Turing was probably the most frustrated of all, having to let Tim lead the meeting while she pretended to be a colleague teleconferencing in. Not to mention routing all but the briefest questions and comments through the laptop screen to Maude, to avoid having Mrs. Stallman notice anything odd about her synthesized voice.

  "So what next?" Maude asked. "I assume that the effort to gain entry to Eddie's systems will continue overnight."

  TM Donna Andrews

  "Night shift's on it," Turing said. Which meant, Tim assumed, that KingFischer was still trying.

  "I had one question for Mrs. Stallman," Maude said. Since she'd been looking at the screen of the laptop, Tim suspected it was a question from Turing. "Do you have e-mail?"

  "Well . . . yes, but why? You're here; you don't need to e-mail me."

  "Is it on Eddie's system?"

  "I don't know what that means."

  "Never mind," Maude said. "Why don't you log in? It's possible that we could use your e-mail as a sort of doorway into Eddie's system."

  "Oh, I see," she said. "I'll keep looking for my password, then."

  "You've lost your password?" Tim asked.

  "Yes," Mrs. Stallman said. "Eddie keeps changing it, and he never changes it to anything I can remember, so I have to write it down. But Eddie doesn't approve of that, so I have to hide the paper I write it on. Half the time I lose it, and Eddie has to fix it."

  "So he resets your password when you lose it?"

  "He gives me a new password, if that's what you mean. Can you do that once you get into the system?"

  "Yes," Maude said, glancing up from the screen again. "Though it might speed up our getting into the system if you could find your password."

  "Oh, dear," Mrs. Stallman said. "I'll keep looking, then."

  "Getting back to our next steps ... I plan to come back tomorrow to finish going through the contents of Eddie's office," Maude said. From the look on her face, Tim knew that only exhaustion was keeping her from working late into the night.

  "My first project for tomorrow will be catching up with the last of the friends that we know about,'»Tim said. "Matt Danforth. I have a feeling Kristyn, the ex, could tell us more if we found the right way to approach her, so* if I think of any new angles—"

  "Ooh, was she that good-looking?" Claudia said.

  "Yeah, but I got the impression she's found someone else already," Tim said, frowning.

  "Too bad," Claudia said. "I'll start out tomorrow by running down the other contacts on Eddie's list. The ones that seem to be clients or vendors rather than friends. Though odds are I won't catch up with some of them until Monday morning."

  "So that's it for tonight?" Maude asked.

  "Not quite," Tim said. "I want to revisit the crime scene. See what it looks like after dark. Maybe walk the route Eddie took. Show his picture to the bartender at Whitlow's; see if they can tell us anything."

  "Want me to come along?" Claudia asked.

  "Sure," he said. "The bartenders might open up more easily to you. Heck, maybe I should take you to meet Mr. Meekins tomorrow. See if you can charm him. Mr. Wilmer Meekins," he added, for Maude's and Mrs. Stallman's benefit. "He's the witness who saw the dark blue sedan. I think he could tell us more than he told the police."

  "You think he lied to the police?" Maude asked.

  "Not necessarily," Tim said. "But maybe they didn't try all that hard to get anything out of him. He's one of those neighborhood busybodies who's always complaining about something. Tljey might not be inclined to take him seriously. I already know one thing he said that didn't seem to make it onto their official report."

  "Anything important?" Maude asked.

  "That he thinks the hit-and-run was deliberate."

  Mrs. Stallman gasped and clutched her chest.

  "Sorry," Tim said, glancing at Maude, who jumped up as if to go to Mrs. Stallman's side. To administer first aid? "I didn't mean to—"

  "It's all right," Mrs. Stallman said, waving Maude away. "It was just hearing it like that . . . but now you see. Its not just me."

  ^L Donna Andrews

  "Did he say why?" Maude asked, sitting down again, but keeping a close eye on their client.

  "The car turned off its lights and accelerated," Tim said. . "You see," Mrs. Stallman said.

  "Of course, witnesses sometimes see what they want to see," Maude said. "Or what they think you want them to see."

  "The police don't seem to have paid any attention to that part of his story," Tim added. "So maybe they know him well enough to know that he exaggerates. Dramatizes."

  "Lies to get more attention?" Maude suggested.

  "Maybe," Tim said.

  "Or maybe he didn't tell them because he didn't think they'd given him enough respect," Claudia suggested.

  "Could be," Tim said, shrugging. "I don't think they asked him enough questions to learn that the car that hit Eddie may have stopped. Mr. Meekins didn't realize it himself until I asked a few questions. He didn't hear the car drive off until after he had called the cops."

  "Time enough for the killer to take something from the body!" Claudia exclaimed.

  "Or maybe just time enough for the driver to realize how bad it was and drive off in a panic," Tim said. "We don't know. But I bet it's more than the police got. I have a feeling he might give us more if we approached him the right way. So I'll try that tomorrow."

  "Let us check him out first," Claudia said, reading from Turing's screen. "It wouldn't hurt to have as much information about him as possible before you tackle him."

  "Good idea," Tim said. He flipped through his notebook and read off Mr. Meekins's address and telephone number.

  "Got him in the DMV," Claudia said. "I'll let you know what else I find out."

  "So," Tim said, glancing at Maude and at Turing's cameras. He was about to ask if there was anything else or if he

  and Claudia could take off and remembered, just in time, that in front of Mrs. Stallman he had to pretend to be the leader.

  "So we all have our plans for the morning," he said. "Anything else?"

  Everyone shook their heads. He saw Maude glance at the laptop screen, then look up at him and shake her head.

  "That's it, then," he said, standing up and glancing at Claudia. "Good work, everyone."

  "Do you want to take some of the pizza?" Maude asked. "There's still plenty. Plenty the cat never went near," she added.

  "No, thanks," Claudia said, rolling her eyes. "The stupid cat ate all the anchovies and licked all the topping off."

  "How can you blame her?" Turing asked. "The poor thing must have been starved. No one's fed her for three days."

  Tim looked over to see how Mrs. Stallman took that, but she seemed to have slipped upstairs already.

  "She's had a lot on her mind," Maude said, following Tim's glance.

  And she doesn't seem to like the cat, Tim thought. Probably mutual, he realized, glancing up at the overhead pipes where the cat had now reappeared. Poor cat.

  "Well, the cat's welcome to my anchovies any time," Tim said. "Talk about a way to ruin a perfectly good pizza, putting fish all over it and—damn!"

  "What's wrong?" Maude asked.

  "I meant to ask Mrs. Stallman something," he said. "Casey mentioned Eddie saying something about fishing, which seemed out of character. He's not much of an out-doorsman. And I don't see any fishing gear."

  "Of course not," Maude said. She and Claudia were laughing.

  "Of course!" Turing exclaimed. "That could be part of what's going on. Someone's involved in fishing!"

  *]& Donna Andrews

  She made it sound like a felony, Tim thought. Since he doubted that Turing had suddenly become fiercely protective of finned and scaly creatures, he assumed that the cyber world had annexed another normal word and given it an unfamiliar meaning, as it had already with bugs, mice, spiders, chips, surfing, and spam. He opened his mouth to ask for an explanation. Then closed it again, because he didn't want to look a complete idiot. Maude and Claudia were both nodding their heads solemnly. Did Claudia really know all this stuff, or was she just better than he was at faking it?

  What the hell. It's not as if anyone expected him to know much about computer stuff.

  "What's fishing?" he asked.

  "How quickly they forget," Maude muttered.

  "Phishing—that's with 2.ph, not an/, if you ever have to spell it—is the most common form of online credit card fraud," Turing said. "Remember two months ago when you got that e-mail asking you to update the information on your eBay account?"

  "Hey, that really looked as if it came from eBay," Tim protested.

  "I'd have thought the typos and grammatical mistakes would have been a dead giveaway," Maude said. "Those are usually your first clue."

  "I didn't notice those," Tim said.

  "But you shouldn't rely on bad spelling and grammar, anyway," Turing said. "You can't rely on spammers always being illiterate."

  "Never failed before," Maude muttered.

  "Yeah, but if they ever get smart enough to hire copyed-itors, we're all in trouble," Claudia said.

  "All you have to do is put your cursor ov&r the link in the e-mail," Turing continued.

  "Without clicking it, of course," Claudia added.

  "Your browser will display the URL the link goes to,"

  Delete All Suspects
  Turing said. "If instead of something at ebay.com, it goes to an unrelated URL or an anonymous IP address—"

  "Which is just a string of numbers, periods, and random letters," Claudia put in.

  44 —then the odds are it's not really an e-mail from eBay."

  "Unfortunately I did click it," Tim said. "And the site I went to certainly looked like eBay."

  "Good heavens," Maude said, shaking her head. "Even you should know how easy it is to fake a website."

  Tim closed his eyes and thought about how much he hated sentences that began with "Even you should know ..."

  "Yeah, especially after all the trouble I took to educate him," Claudia said, with a grin.

  "Oh, was that supposed to educate me?" Tim said. "I thought it was an April Fools Day prank."

  44 An educational one," Claudia said.

  "What prank?" Maude asked.

  "I knew he always checked the weather at least once a day, for some reason," Claudia said. "He's got weather.com bookmarked. I edited his bookmark file so instead of going to the real site, it went to a fake version."

  "Very ingenious," Maude said.

  "I created a page that looked just like weather.com. Except right in the middle of it, just above the part that says, 'Current conditions for Arlington, Virginia,' I put this headline that read, Tim Pincoski! What are you doing here again? Get back to work, lazybones!'"