“So what’ve you got for me?” Halie asked.
Halie Green is a computer genius. Officially, she works as a Certified Ethical Hacker. This means companies, financial institutions, and government agencies hire her to hack into their computer systems looking for possible vulnerabilities. Unofficially, she is a computer hacker. This means she hacks into companies, financial institutions, and government agencies for fun.
I first met Halie when I was investigating a man suspected of stealing from his employer. I had only been a private investigator for a few months and was still a little green. Halie had been working for a company that had been hired to follow the computer trail. I was assigned the physical trail. Halie found the online proof so my assignment was quickly over, but we had bonded over our mutual loathing of social niceties. Her manners are even worse than mine.
About the time I opened Lost and Found Pets, Halie also branched out on her own. I don’t need her services often, but we keep in touch. Sometimes I get a weird feeling about one of my clients. When that happens, I do a background search and learn what I can. If that doesn’t satisfy me, I bring in Halie. She can find out anything.
Like me, Halie works out of her home. Unlike me, she is paranoid about security. Although she is all over the Internet, her own online presence is minuscule. She is, of course, online. It’s just no one knows about it. She has more aliases than a professional spy. Do a background search on Halie, and you won’t find much. She doesn’t keep anything in her own name.
Because she works odd hours, I usually find her at home and in some odd state of dress. She was wearing a pair of red plaid boxers as shorts, a neon green t-shirt that read Hackers do it online, and a pair of pink flip-flops. Her hair was pulled back into a sloppy ponytail, and there was an ink stain at the edge of her mouth. She likes to chew on pens. My own dress code is casual, but Halie takes it to a whole other level.
“Two things,” I said, answering her question. I handed her the petri dish. “First, a computer chip.”
She took the dish, glanced down at it, and then looked back up at me. “Is that a tooth?”
“Yes. A canine. Great Dane to be specific.” I tapped on the lid of the dish. “That chip fits into that tooth.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea.”
Halie looked at me and grinned. “Interesting.”
“Can you find out what’s on the chip?” She gave me a hateful look. I raised my hands and took a step back. “Let me rephrase that. Will you find out what’s on the chip for me?”
“You bet,” she replied. She opened the dish, picked up the chip with a small pair of pliers, and held it in front of her face. “Looks like a microchip implant.”
“Craig and I tried using a pet microchip scanner, but we couldn’t read anything. Mine just flashed, and Craig’s readout was all zeros. He said he thought it was bigger than the average animal microchip.”
“Hmm,” Halie mumbled. Other than her clothes, Halie doesn’t look anything like a computer geek. She is tall, almost as tall as me, with an hourglass figure. She has black hair and startling blue eyes. In other words, she’s gorgeous.
Halie placed the chip in another container and replaced the lid on the petri dish, which she returned to me. “You can keep the tooth.”
“So what do you think?” I asked her. “About the chip?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know. Might be a human microchip. Might not be anything at all.”
“Doubtful,” I replied. “Someone was trying to hide something. Why else would they put a chip in a dog’s tooth?”
“People are nuts, Alex. You know that.”
“True, but I’m worried about Simba.”
“Simba?” Halie asked.
“The dog who had the tooth implant.”
“Isn’t Simba a cat’s name?”
I ignored her. “I think the wrong people are looking for him.”
“Not the owner?”
“No. He claims to be the owner of a Great Dane, but he’s not. I’m sure of it. Which brings me to the second thing I need from you.”
I had done a background check on Warren Caldwell and hadn’t found anything suspicious. In fact, I hadn’t found much at all. He was squeaky clean. No lawsuits, no unpaid bills, no parking tickets, nothing. He ran a multimillion dollar business but didn’t even have a house or business loan. It was unnatural.
“Will you check out Warren Caldwell?”
“The President and CEO of Holden Pharmaceuticals?”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“Sure. Holden Pharmaceuticals used to be one of my clients, but Caldwell took over a few weeks ago and they ended my contract.”
“Is that normal?”
“It’s not unusual,” Halie replied with a shrug. “New management comes in and cleans house. It just happened really fast. Caldwell took over the day after his wife died, and I got notice my services were no longer needed two days later.”
“He mentioned his wife had recently died. He took over a day later?”
“Yeah. Tara Holden had been running the company for about five years. Ever since her father retired. She was one of the youngest CEOs around. She and Caldwell married about two years ago. He had been with a rival company, and talk is she lured him away. Anyway, when she was killed in a botched carjacking, Caldwell called an emergency board meeting and was named CEO.”
“Why does that seem shady to me?”
“Because you have good instincts,” Halie said dryly. “There have been rumors for a while now that Caldwell was quietly undermining his wife. The board of directors is made up of a bunch of old men from old money. Having a thirty-two-year-old female CEO didn’t sit well with them.”
I leaned back in my chair and thought about it for a minute. Caldwell wanted the CEO position. His wife was in the way. His wife conveniently died. The man had put on a good front of a grieving husband, but I wasn’t buying it.
“Anything suspicious about the wife’s death?” I asked Halie. She loved to pursue all the gossip and conspiracy theory websites.
She shrugged again, but her eyes gleamed. “Appeared to be a carjacking gone wrong. The police have it down as one of several carjackings that have been happening around the Memorial Park area.”
“But…”
“She was shot several times,” Halie stated. “None of the other carjacking victims were harmed at all. Not even the one who refused to get out of his car. That time, the carjackers just ran away.”
“You think the carjacking was staged so that the wife could be killed?”
“Look, Alex,” Halie said slowly. “I don’t know what happened exactly. I knew Tara and liked her so I paid close attention to all the coverage. I even hacked into the police files to see what they had to say. The main detective thought it was suspicious, but he has no proof and nothing to go on. So I’ll check out Caldwell for you. If there’s something there, I’ll find it.”
“Halie, if he arranged for his wife’s murder, it could be dangerous.”
“He’ll never know,” she replied confidently.
“Just be careful.”
We said goodbye, and Hero and I headed out. It had been a long day. It was late, and I was tired. Too tired to cook anything. About a mile from my house, a major highway intersects with a smaller county road. There you can find just about any type of fast food you could possibly want. Soon I had my two-piece chicken meal and an order of nuggets for Hero.
Just as we were leaving the drive-thru, I saw a dark sedan idling in the parking lot. Normally, I wouldn’t have even noticed it, but there was something about the car that captured my attention. Slowly I turned onto the country road that would take me to a side street that led into my neighborhood.
During my time as a private investigator, I had learned how to tail a suspect as well as how to spot a tail. It didn’t take me long to realize the sedan was following me. They were actually pretty good. They stayed just far enough back that I wouldn’t have seen them if I hadn’t been looking.
Thinking back, I realized I had seen the sedan not long after I had left Halie’s. I couldn’t remember if they had been at her house, but once I had gotten on the highway, they had been nearby. A shot of fear raced through me. Halie had the microchip. Thinking furiously, I tried to decide what to do next. Were they after the chip? Or had I somehow pissed off someone else? It wouldn’t be the first time.
No one knew I had found Simba and the chip. At least no one who would have the need to tail me. Automatically I turned onto the side street. If they knew my car, they probably knew where I lived. I could lose them, but that would only clue them into the fact I was onto them.
Nothing happened on the rest of the drive home. I called Halie and warned her someone might be after the chip. She promised me she would keep an eye out for anyone suspicious. I wasn’t too worried about her. Halie had a state-of-the-art security system and computer monitoring. Her house was better protected than some top-secret agencies. If someone tried to break in, they would get a nasty surprise.
The sedan continued to follow me but stayed far enough back to make it seem like it might be a coincidence. When I pulled into the driveway, I took my time getting Hero out of the Jeep. We were just walking through the back gate when the sedan drove by. I shut the gate behind us and peered through one of the slats. The car pulled to a stop in front of one of the houses a few doors down. They quickly doused their lights, but I didn’t see anyone get out.
I hurried Hero into the house. Moving as fast as I could, I grabbed a leash from the stash I keep in a junk drawer and went into the laundry room. Simba greeted me with a soft bark.
“Hey, sweetie,” I said softly. “We need to get you out of here. I’m not sure what the folks in the sedan want, but I don’t want them to know I have found you.”
Quickly, I attached the leash to his collar. We walked out the back door and across the lawn. I peered through the fence on the other side of the house and located the car. It was dark outside, but I saw a shadow move inside the sedan.
One of the things my aunt and Harvey had done was put a gate in the fence between their two yards. It was an unusual situation, but Nora had worried Harvey might need help one day and wanted a way to get to him quickly. Harvey had felt the same way about Nora and me. They had both wanted easy access to the other’s home. Harvey and I use the gate when we visit one another. We seldom enter each other’s house through the front door. Unless someone was standing in one of our backyards, no one would ever see Simba and me.
I led Simba to the back door as quietly as possible. I didn’t think anyone had gotten out of the car, but I wasn’t taking any chances. The back door opens directly into Harvey’s kitchen. There were no lights on, but the old man was something of a night owl. It was only nine so I knew he was still awake. I opened the door and led Simba in without turning on the lights. Just as I was about to close the door, someone grabbed me from behind and covered my mouth to muffle my scream.