Paige joined him on the concrete pad and surveyed the junk around her. “What was Michaelson doing with this stuff?”
“Who knows?” Craig said, lifting up a plastic cover and smelling the unique odor of old electronics. “They’ve got computers a million times faster than these back at the Lab. Is there a market for antique computers? I doubt it. Maybe he was just collecting them.”
“Other people collect stamps,” Paige observed.
Craig poked around the rest of the barn, but soon decided that Michaelson was probably nothing more than a high-tech pack rat. Wiping a dusty hand on his suit pants, he said, “Let’s check out the house. No telling what he’s got squirreled away in there.”
Craig dug in his pocket for the key to Michaelson’s house Tansy had given him. He rang the doorbell, just for the sake of procedure, knowing no one would answer. After a few seconds, touching his crisp new search warrant for reassurance, he slid the key into the lock.
Pushing the door open, Craig and Paige stepped into a richly decorated hallway. The walls were filled with framed photographs, some of them black and white glossies, some in color. Every one of them showed Michaelson standing and grinning with at least one other person. Craig recognized the president, the former governor of California, several senators, the House majority leader, venerable old scientists, Edward Teller, Clifford Rhoades….
Craig finally stopped. “Michaelson was well connected.”
“A lot of friends — and a lot of people who couldn’t stand him,” Paige said.
They walked past the wall of photographs to a meticulously decorated living room. It reminded Craig of his grandmother’s formal parlor. He wondered who Michaelson entertained in there.
The kitchen gave him an entirely different impression altogether: dirty dishes, aluminum TV trays, and ripped-open empty frozen-dinner boxes cluttered the sink. Green Perrier bottles, stacked three and four levels high, lined the tile counter. The smell of days’ old food made the air thick and sour.
Paige wrinkled her nose. “What a mess.”
“Think of it as a… uh, as a treasure hunt,” Craig said. “Try not to disturb too much, but we’ve got to look for those memos. I’ll look around upstairs if you want to check out the study down here.”
“Just don’t expect me to do the dishes,” she said.
“Ah, that would be destroying evidence.”
Craig walked briskly through the upstairs of the house, giving a cursory examination to the master bedroom, a guest room, and a bathroom. He found nothing. Just off the hall he saw a narrow set of wooden stairs that led up to an old door. He creaked up the stairs, feeling as if he were in an old horror movie.
But when he pushed open the dark-brown door, giving a shove with his hip to squeak it out of the old jamb, he found a perfectly normal attic through a cloud of dust. He sneezed. Craig doubted Michaelson would have found it easy to fit his large frame into the cramped, low-ceilinged attic.
He went back to the guest room and started going through the drawers of a small desk and nightstand.
Paige called upstairs. “Find anything?”
“Not yet. What about you?”
“Nothing. The guy doesn’t even have any cookbooks. For a scientist, he doesn’t own any electric gadgets either. No TV, no radio or computer. Besides the coffee maker — a vital item, I suppose — the only thing he’s got down there is an answering machine.”
Craig looked up. “Any messages on the machine?”
“Eight. Even dead, Dr. Michaelson’s a busy guy.”
Craig nudged shut the dresser drawer and stood up. “I’m coming. Let’s check it out.”
Downstairs, Craig pressed the solid-state device. A filtered voice immediately drifted up from the small speaker, “Hey, Doc Michaelson — we’ve filled your freezer with another month’s supply of Gourmet De’lite dinners. The Perrier water is under the sink. We’ve billed your account. Thanks.”
“Gee, we could stay here for a nice dinner, I suppose,” Paige suggested. Craig ignored her and moved closer to the machine.
After the fourth message came a woman’s voice, tired and disappointed. “Hal — this is Diana. Pick up if you’re there.” A pause. “Where are you? I got into Livermore last night and you’re not home. I thought you were catching the red-eye. Give me a call when you get in. I’m staying at the Pleasanton Sheraton. I must have missed you on the plane.”
Paige raised her eyebrows. “A girlfriend, you think?”
“Could be,” Craig said.
The next message, recorded some time later, was the same woman’s voice, more distraught this time. “Dammit, it’s ten o’clock in the morning and you still haven’t gotten in — or you’re not returning my calls. What the hell’s going on?” She continued to talk, and Craig listened with deepening interest.
“You might think this is all a big joke and you’ll be able to breeze past this senate confirmation, but you’re not bulletproof. Get that through your thick, arrogant skull. If they ever find out about us, it’s going to be one hell of a ride for you.”
She paused, and Craig stared at Paige. The woman, Diana, sounded as if she had been drinking. “People have had their careers ruined for far less than fucking administration officials. Talk to me — do I have to threaten you?” Then she hung up.
“A woman scorned, you suppose?” Craig suggested.
Paige’s blue eyes went wide. “Somebody else who doesn’t have Michaelson on their Favorite People in the World list.”
CHAPTER 29
Craig felt uncomfortable standing in his new swimming trunks as he looked out across the blue expanse of the Livermore Lab’s Olympic-sized swimming pool. Black lines rippled under the water, marking lanes of traffic for those wishing to swim.
Children splashed their parents in the shallow end, while show-offs attempted fancy dives in the deep water. This wasn’t the way he had expected to spend his Saturday morning. Not at all.
Paige Mitchell treaded water in front of Craig, smiling up at him as water drops glinted on her face. She stroked backward, swimming out of his way. The curves enclosed within her sleek black one-piece distracted him from thoughts of the water. “Come on, Craig — what are you waiting for?”
She had invited him to come to Livermore on a Saturday, even though she didn’t normally work weekends. Craig, on the other hand, lived inside a case once he took it on, filling his mind with the convolutions and the information, poking and prodding the whole thing until it fit together. Discouraged that the weekend had interrupted his investigation, he had found Paige’s offer too good to be true.
“Bring a suit,” she had told him — and in his mind he’d pictured his usual dark suit and tie. She had laughed when she corrected him, saying, “No, your bathing suit! You don’t think I’m going into the Lab to work do you? It’s my swimming day.”
And so, since it was the only chance for him to talk over the case with someone who knew as many details as he did, he’d taken her up on the offer.
But now, as the water stretched out in front of him, he had to dive in or continue to look silly. Squeezing his eyes shut, he abandoned elegance and leaped into the air, grabbing his knees in the classic cannonball maneuver he remembered from junior high.
He splashed down into what seemed like the Arctic Ocean. He came up gasping and sputtering, flinging chlorinated water from his eyes and blinking in amazement at Paige, who swam back toward him, giggling.