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too much trouble to take the cat to the animal shelter where someone might
have adopted it."
"Apparently," I said, "there isn't a whole lot of chance of anybody adopting
this cat." I cleared my throat. "It might be a good idea for us to call him by
his name. Maybe he'd come then."
"Okay." Adam pulled up his chinos. "What's his name?"
"Um," I said. "Spike."
"Spike." Adam looked heavenward. "A cat called Spike. This I can't wait to
see. Here, Spike. Here, Spikey, Spikey, Spikey...."
"Hey, you guys." Cee Cee came toward us waving her laptop in the air.
I'd enlisted Cee Cee's help as well as Adam's, only with a project of a
different nature. All of my new friends, I'd discovered, had different talents
and abilities. Adam's lay primarily in the fact that he owned a car, but Cee
Cee's strengths lay in her superlative research skills . . . and what's more,
in the fact that she actuallyliked looking stuff up. I'd asked her to look up
what she could on Thaddeus Beaumont Senior, and she'd obliged. She'd been
sitting in the car cruising the Net with the help of the remote modem she'd
gotten for her birthday  have I mentioned that everyone in Carmel, with the
exception of myself, is way rich?  while Adam and I looked for Timothy's cat.
"Hey," Cee Cee said. "Get a load of this." She skimmed something she'd
downloaded. "I ran the name Thaddeus Beaumont through a search engine, and
came up with dozens of hits. Thaddeus Beaumont is listed as CEO, partner, or
investor in over thirty land development projects  most of which, by the way,
are commercial ventures, like cineplexes, strip malls, or health clubs  on
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the Monterey peninsula alone."
"What does that mean?" Adam asked.
"It means that if you add up the number of acres owned by companies who list
Thaddeus Beaumont as either an investor or a partner, he becomes roughly the
largest land owner in northern California."
"Wow," I said. I was thinking about the prom. I bet a guy who owned that much
land could afford to rent his son a stretch limo for the night. Dorky, I know,
but I'd always wanted to ride in one.
"But he doesn't really own all that land," Adam pointed out. "The companies
do."
"Exactly," Cee Cee said.
"Exactly what do you mean by exactly?"
"Well," Cee Cee said. "Just that it might explain why it is that the guy
hasn't been hauled into court for suspicion of murder."
"Murder?" Suddenly, I forgot all about prom. "What about a murder?"
"Amurder?" Cee Cee spun her laptop around so that we could see the screen.
"We're talking multiple murders. Although technically, the victims have all
been listed only as missing."
"What are youtalking about?"
"Well, after I made a list of all of the companies affiliated with Thaddeus
Beaumont, I entered each company name into that same search engine and came up
with a couple of pretty disturbing things. Look here." Cee Cee had pulled up a
map of the Carmel Valley. She highlighted the areas she was talking about as
she mentioned them. "See this property here? Hotel and spa. See how close it
is to the water? That was a no-building zone. Too much erosion. But RedCo 
that's the name of the corporation that bought the land, RedCo, get it?  used
some pull down at city hall and got a permit anyway. Still, this one
environmentalist warned RedCo that any building they put up there would not
only be dangerously unstable, but would endanger the seal population that
hangs out on the beach below it. Well, check this out."
Cee Cee's fingers flew over her keyboard. A second later, a picture of a
weird-looking guy with a goatee filled the screen, along with what looked like
a newspaper story. "The environmentalist who was making such a fuss over the
seals disappeared four years ago, and no one has seen him since."
I squinted at the computer screen. It was hard to see in the strong sunlight.
"What do you mean, disappeared?" I asked. "Like he died?"
"Maybe. Nobody knows. His body was never found if he was killed," Cee Cee
said. "But check this out." Her fingers did some quick rat-tat-tatting.
"Another project, this strip mall here, was endangering the habitat of this
rare kind of mouse, found only in this area. And this lady here  " Another
photo came up on screen. "She tried to stop it and save the mouse, and poof.
She disappeared too."
"Disappeared," I echoed.
"Just disappeared?" "Just disappeared. Problem solved for Mount Beau  that
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was the name of that project's sponsor. Mount Beau. Beaumont. Get it?"
"We get it," Adam said. "But if all these environmentalists connected with
Red Beaumont's companies are disappearing, how come nobody has looked into
it?"
"Well, for one thing," Cee Cee said, "Beaumont Industries made one of the
biggest campaign donations in the state to our recently elected governor. They
also made considerable contributions to the guy who was voted sheriff."
"A cover-up?" Adam made a face. "Comeon ."
"You're assuming anyone even suspects anything. These people aren't dead,
remember. Just gone. Near as I can tell, the attitude seems to be, well,
environmentalists are kind of flighty, anyway, so who's to say these folks
didn't just take off for some bigger, more menacing disaster? All except this
one." Cee Cee hit another button, and a third photo filled the page. "This
lady didn't belong to any kooky save the seals group. She owned some land
Beaumont Industries had its eye on. They wanted to expand one of their
cineplexes. Only she wouldn't sell."
"Don't tell me," I said. "She disappeared."
"Sure did. And seven years later to the day  seven years being the time
after which you can legally declare a missing person dead  Beaumont
Industries made an offer to her kids, who jumped on it."
"Finks," I said, meaning the lady's kids. I leaned forward so I could get a
better look at her picture.
And had quite a little shock: I was looking at a picture of the ghost who'd
been paying me those charming social calls.
Okay, well, maybe she didn't lookexactly the same. But she was white and
skinny and had the same haircut. There was certainly enough of a resemblance
to make me go, "That's her!" and point.
Which was, of course, the worst thing I could have done. Because both Cee Cee
and Adam turned to look at me. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]