The Callivant compound apparently was home to a fleet of cars at any given time. Tracking back through the old records, he came across a 1965 Corvette registered to Walter G. Callivant in 1981. Nothing in 1980. Nothing in 1982. No, wait — there was the transfer of registration — to Clyde Finch. A month later the car was junked.
That might explain the picture of Finch in the car, Leif thought. But it raises another question. If you were the proud owner of such a hot set of wheels, happily photographed showing them off, why would you get rid of them?
Friday afternoon came, and Matt felt pretty pleased with himself. He was still alive, and none of the other sim participants had had any trouble. He’d aced a history quiz this morning, and during lunch he’d made the necessary plans with Megan and David for their visit tomorrow with Mrs. Knox.
The widow had sounded pretty harassed when he called. She’d answered on her wallet-phone, but what Matt had mostly gotten was an earful of wailing baby. On hearing that he was calling for Father Flannery, however, the woman had nearly broken down herself.
“It would be such a help,” Mrs. Knox said. “The bank won’t do anything over the phone, and with two kids, it’s hard to get down there. I don’t like computers, but we really need the stuff that was trapped in there.”
She eagerly agreed to having Matt and his friends over on Saturday afternoon. “You know where it is, right? I’ll take the kids out so there’ll be no distractions.”
Most people would be more worried about having near-strangers alone in the house than about the noise level distracting those near-strangers, Matt thought. I guess Mrs. K. figures we’re already digging through all the family secrets in the computer, so she can trust us with the good china.
If there was any in the house.
Matt pushed that downer of a thought away, determined to hold on to his good mood. Dismissal finally came, and he walked to the corner, ready to cross and wait for the autobus home.
A car pulled up at the intersection and honked at him. It was the bronze Dodge concept car. The driver wore oversized sunglasses. This time, however, Nikki Callivant had a khaki cotton hat crammed down on her head.
The horn sounded again, and Nikki beckoned to him. Sighing, Matt went round to the passenger side and climbed in.
“Where to this time?” he asked. “The park again?”
“I thought I’d give you a lift home,” Nikki Callivant said.
“How nice. Would it ruin the mood if I asked why?”
The girl slipped off her shades and gave him a look with those incredible blue eyes. “If you think it’s because I can’t keep my hands off you — you’d be very wrong.”
“A lot of guys think that around you?” Matt asked.
“Too many,” she said curtly. “Maybe it’s a rich-guy thing.”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “I hear their feelings get hurt very easily. In fact, it happens with rich kids in general. Look at the way Priscilla Hadding stormed off on your grandfather, or vice versa.”
“Have you found out any more about that?” It was lucky they’d stopped at a red light. Nikki was staring at his face instead of the road.
“If I found out anything, you’d be the last person I’d tell,” Matt finally said.
A horn sounded behind them, and Nikki had to turn her attention back to traffic. “Why?” she asked as they started moving again.
“Flattered as I am by your attention, you’re the enemy,” Matt told her. “Your family is threatening me and everyone else connected with a dopey little mystery sim with nasty legal stuff for showing any interest whatsoever in what happened in Haddington forty years ago.”
“More than forty years now,” Nikki corrected. She sighed. “Why can’t people let the past be?”
Matt bit his tongue to hold back the traditional P.I. answer—“There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”
“From what the senator — my great-grandfather — says, the media people were actually a bit more decent back then. They still knew some shame and weren’t quite as intrusive.”
“Oh? News feeding frenzies weren’t quite as frequent in the good old days?”
“It’s easy for you to laugh. You don’t spend half your life with your face in someone’s viewfinder. As long as I can remember, I’ve had people poking at me, training me how to behave in public. Don’t show too much emotion. Don’t get into fights. Before you do anything, think how it would look to eighty million people seeing it on a holo display. I can’t even go out on somebody’s yacht without being shadowed by some cameraman in a boat or copter, his telephoto lens at the ready, just hoping I’ll take off the top of my bathing suit.”
“Must be awful, trying to get a tan.”
“See? You just don’t understand!”
“I understand this much about celebrity,” Matt replied. “For fame, fortune, or public service — which is another way of saying power — people court public attention. They hire people to get them news coverage, they dream up publicity stunts. Then, when whatever they do is sure to be deemed newsworthy, they complain about the invasion of their privacy. If your name was Nikki McGillicuddy and you wanted to break into Hollywood, your manager would probably be telling you to drop the top of your bathing suit wherever you went.”
Dull red glowed on the tops of Nikki’s cheekbones. “I never asked—”
“No, previous generations have set up the publicity apparatus for you,” Matt cut in. “But you’re ready to use it — didn’t I hear you talking about being the first female Callivant in the family power-brokering business?”
“You make it sound — I’m a Callivant!”
“And what’s that?” Matt demanded. “A brand name in American politics? Somehow the republic got along for more than a hundred years before a Callivant appeared in Washington. Do you think civilization will collapse if one of your relatives isn’t running things?”
“You dare—”
“Normally, I wouldn’t dare to talk to a Callivant this way,” Matt cut in. “The fact that you’re letting me get away with it, throwing only a mild huff, makes me suspect you want something from me.”
He stared at her finely chiseled profile while she kept her eyes on the road. “The problem is, I’m not all that sure what it is you want.”
“I wanted to see why your friends went out of their way to help you,” Nikki snapped. “What was there about you that inspired such loyalty?”
“And?”
“Frankly, I don’t see it.”
“Well, you know, we children of the lower classes get prickly when our betters take an interest in us,” Matt said pointedly.
Nikki’s voice got soft. “It’s just that you were in trouble, and your friends — no one would do that for me.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve got a house full of security guards to make sure trouble never comes close.”
“Mercenaries,” Nikki said bitterly. “They get fired if people think they’re getting too close.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.” Matt thought of the stories Leif told about his father’s chauffeur/security guy. Thor Hedvig had been almost as much of a father figure for Leif as Magnus Anderson. “Wait a minute,” he said, “your great-grandfather is in charge of all those mercenaries.”
“Grandpa Clyde.” Nikki’s voice was still soft, but there was a subtle shift…a hardening. “His loyalty is to the family—” her breath caught—“not to me.”
However she’d learned that, it must have been a pretty severe lesson.