Page 9

B y the time we arrived back at Frank’s, we’d passed several others with their compdroids in the corridors. Saturdays were a big day out for a lot of the Athos crew. No doubt some were headed to the botanical gardens with their android companions to enjoy a bit of nature.

Frank and I tried to get there once a month now. We’d taken Gracie and Harry the last time we’d gone, and they’d had a great time. Gracie had flown loops overhead, and Harry had not only chased a butterfly but climbed a tree, which had resulted in a stern look from one of the gardeners.

I’d given them a stern look right back. As my compdroid, Harry had as much right to enjoy the gardens as anyone else did. Wasn’t like he was going to harm any of the insects. I’d already told him that was a no-no.

At his quarters, Frank pressed his hand to the printlock and opened the door.

Harry and I went in ahead of him. It closed behind him. He caught my hand and tugged me in for a kiss. “Morning, by the way.”

“Morning.” I smiled against his mouth. “Did you get enough sleep?”

“I did. How about you?”

“I never get enough sleep.” I winked at him to let him know I was mostly joking.

“Quite a move for your daughter to give us those Special Envoy designations.”

“It shows how serious this is. And how much she wants it solved.” I’d already updated him about the guards remaining unaccounted for. “We should probably get to work.”

“I agree. Let’s dig in. How about I pull up the dossiers, we divide them up and start reading?”

“Yes. I want to get through them all today, if we can.” Maybe that was overly ambitious, but seeing Hazel and getting a better understanding of the situation had lit a new fire under me.

“That’s a lot of work but should be doable, depending on how detailed they are. I’m going to need some more coffee.”

“Me, too.”

He went to the Instachef and ordered two cups. “You want the office? I can work out here.”

“No way. That’s your space. I’m perfectly fine working on the couch, but I should have brought my tablet. I’ll run back and get it.”

“You can use mine. I have the computer in the office, so I don’t need it.” The coffee was done. He set my cup on the table in front of the couch.

“Thanks.” Harry had already settled in on the cushion beside me. Gracie was on her perch, looking bright-eyed.

“Let’s work until lunch, then compare notes and get something to eat.”

“All right.” That would give us about three hours. Surely we could get through at least half of the dossiers by then. I took a seat. “Yell if you find anything interesting.”

He smirked, wiggling his brows. “Same to you, Special Envoy McFadden.”

I laughed. The way he said it made me feel like a secret agent.

He brought me his tablet and sat next to me to sign into it. Once logged on, he went to his webmail, found the login info Hazel had sent and went straight in, opening up the file labeled Dossiers. “Here we go. Wow.”

I’d been actively not looking because I hadn’t wanted to see his password information. I glanced over. The list of files was long . “Okay, it’s a lot, but some of those are probably only a paragraph or two, right?”

“Let’s see.” He clicked on the first one. It was five pages. He snorted. “We have our work cut out for us.”

Maybe we wouldn’t get through all of them today. But they couldn’t all be that long, could they? “How do you want to divide them?”

“Let’s do it in batches of ten. You take the first ten, I’ll take the ten after that and so on.”

I took a breath. “Works for me.”

“All right, let’s do this.” Frank handed me the tablet and got up to head into his office.

In three hours, I made it through eight. The dossiers were highly detailed. And I mean highly . They covered everything from place of birth to schooling, significant friends, minor traffic infractions, medical records, social life, work history, known business associates … it was exhausting. I felt compelled to read all of it, though, just in case there was one thing that might lead us to our thief.

I finished the last dossier and set the tablet down. I felt like I knew more about Locado Alverez than I did myself. He was a research scientist who worked in the animal husbandry department. Married with a son and daughter. As a kid, he’d had a three-legged dog and an allergy to tree nuts, which had since been resolved with immunotherapy. In his spare time, he enjoyed nature documentaries and had once donated to an elephant sanctuary.

I got up to stretch, a little stiff from sitting still so long. My brain was starting to feel slightly overloaded, but I’d have to get past that.

Frank came out of the office, coffee cup in hand. “You know something?”

“What’s that?”

“Most of these people are boring. Relatively speaking.”

I laughed. “Yes, they are. I take that to mean you didn’t find any shady characters either.”

“Nothing shady, but Dr. Saetang, who otherwise seems squeaky-clean, has some gambling debts. He has an older son who’s married, but Saetang also has a younger child, a daughter enrolled in a place called Sessutian Academy. I’m guessing a private school with a considerable tuition.”

I arched my back, enjoying the stretch. “I’ve found nothing. I shouldn’t feel so disappointed, but I do.”

He smiled and put his cup in the sanitizer. “You ready for lunch or you want to work some more?”

I hadn’t gotten through nearly as many files as I’d hoped. Frowning, I said, “I just finished number eight. How many did you do?”

“Seven.”

I was hungry but not starving. “Can we each do one more before we break? Unless you’re desperate to eat.”

“I can wait.”

Back to work it was. I added my cup to the sanitizer, then sat and took up the tablet. I tapped on the next file.

It belonged to Davika Prathum. That had to be Dr. Saetang’s assistant. How many Davikas could there be?

I dug in, reading with great curiosity. She was a Loessaian native, twenty-four, had a degree in research from one of the planet’s top universities, and her hobbies included music and making jewelry. She was the oldest child from a family of seven. Her father was a carpenter and her mother a seamstress.

Nothing about her ever being in trouble with the law, but there was a note that she’d been involved with a young man, Paval Tao, who’d been kicked out of the university for stealing chemicals from the chemistry department. She’d testified against him, which had resulted in him doing six months in jail with another year of probation.

I stared at the words on the screen.

Was this something? Part of me thought it was. Davika came from a big family where money would undoubtedly come in handy. The Star would bring in more money than they could spend in a lifetime.

She liked to make her own jewelry, which could mean she had a way of cutting the stone down into smaller stones. That would make it easier to sell, even if it did diminish the value. Maybe that wouldn’t matter. There would still be a lot of money to be made.

And if she were still in contact with that old boyfriend, he might very well have agreed to help her fence those stones. Especially if she was bringing him in as a way of making up for her part in his conviction.

Or was I making connections where there weren’t any, eager to find a lead of any kind?

I took the tablet into Frank’s office. “I might have something, or I might be grasping at straws.”

“Which file?”

“Number Nine.”

“Come sit.” He pulled the file up on his big screen and read while I settled in beside him. I hugged the tablet to my chest while he digested the information. After a few minutes, he nodded. “You might have something.”

I exhaled. “Then let’s put her on the suspects list. Motive would be money?”

“I’d agree with that.”

“You know, generally, there are three main motivating factors when it comes to murder, which I realize this isn’t, but it’s a high-dollar theft, which takes a similar sort of motivation. Those three factors are love, money, revenge. Right now, we mostly have money.”

He glanced at me. “You think someone stole the Star out of revenge? Or because of love?”

“No idea. Money seems to be the most obvious. I just don’t want us to get so focused on one thing that we miss something important because of it. I guess that’s all I’m saying.”

He pulled up the whiteboard we were using to organize all of our thoughts. Under the suspects list he added Davika with the motive of money. Next to that, he put Paval and then the word love with a question mark. “Maybe stealing the Star was her big gesture. An attempt to right past wrongs and make up with the boyfriend. Maybe he was the love of her life and she was pressured into testifying against him. The school could have threatened to kick her out, too.”

“Very plausible,” I said.

He tapped his fingers on the desk. “Stealing the Star could be a two birds, one stone kind of situation. She gets money for her family and returns to Paval’s good graces. This is definitely something.”

I smiled. Frank was as willing to speculate as I was. I couldn’t help but appreciate that. “We need to find out more about that incident. And Paval.”

He nodded. “We also need to talk to Davika and Dr. Saetang, but let’s start with Davika.”

He pulled up the list that had invitees and their guests on it. We found Davika listed as Dr. Saetang’s plus-one. Their room numbers were next to their names.

“You up to paying her a visit?” Frank asked. “After that, provided we don’t find the Star in her quarters, we can get some lunch. I was thinking Space Wok. My treat. All that daikon and bok choy talk has got me craving Chinese.”

I nodded. “I’m in.” Space Wok required credits if you weren’t a cruiser, but Frank liked taking me to those restaurants, and I liked going. “You know, Davika probably won’t be in her room. It’s more likely she’ll be working with Dr. Saetang.”

“That would be even better. We can talk to both of them that way. Do we know where he’ll be?”

“I believe he’s requisitioned some lab space for the duration of his time on board. That should be where he and Davika are.” I lifted my wristband. “Call Hazel Perry.”

She answered on the first ring. “Vice-Admiral Perry.”

“Hazel, it’s Mom. I need to know where Dr. Mechai Saetang’s lab space is.”

“Sure. Hang on.”

I could hear her typing.

“It’s on Deck 8 … Lab 808. Does this mean you’re making progress?”

“Maybe. It’s too early to say.”

“Right. Understood. Keep me posted.”

“Will do.” We said goodbye, and I hung up. “You heard her. Saetang’s lab is on Deck 8, number 808. If Davika’s not there, Saetang should be able to tell us where to find her.”

Frank nodded. “After he answers a few questions.”