The next morning, Daniele took Adeline and Ryan to work with her. Ryan received a visitor badge.
Adeline’s badge was similar, but it was actually an employee key card with the word INTERN printed across the top.
The older woman held the card out to Adeline. “Keep this with you at all times. You never know when you might need it.”
She slipped the card into a plastic sleeve that dangled from a lanyard around Adeline’s neck.
The three of them walked the halls of the Absolom research building, Daniele dictating the tour. There were team rooms that looked to Adeline almost like classrooms as well as clean labs where suited figures were working on mechanical prototypes.
Standing at a wide glass window, Adeline motioned to a figure holding a soldering gun. “What’re they building?”
Daniele smiled. “Pieces for an experiment.”
*
They had lunch at Daniele’s house, and after, Ryan went to visit some friends a few blocks away. Daniele announced to Adeline that she needed to talk to her about something.
They met in Daniele’s home library, where Adeline was expecting them to discuss the plan to find Nora’s killer. Or how to get her father back. Or both.
The meeting was about neither of those things.
Daniele set a stack of books on a long table. “I want to discuss a subject of great importance to me. I would appreciate it if you would pay attention and learn from these books.” She paused. “Can you do that?”
“What’s the subject?”
“Finance.”
“Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“Why? Dad was rich, right? And he got a check every three months from the company. Interest or like a—”
“A dividend.”
“A dividend, right. It’s probably millions of dollars.”
“The most recent quarterly dividend paid on your father’s stake in Absolom Sciences was 1.17 billion dollars.”
It took Adeline a few seconds to process that. She had known her father’s stake in Absolom had made him wealthy, but she had no idea how rich.
“Your father was also a good investor,” Daniele said. “A little on the conservative side, but that’s better than being too aggressive.”
“Look, can we do this after we get him back? I promise: I’ll learn all about finance after that.”
“No. We can’t. This is important, Adeline.”
“Why?”
“Because I made a promise to your father that I would do everything in my power to take care of you.”
Adeline laughed. “There’s a killer on the loose, and you’re protecting me by teaching me about stocks and bonds? I think you’ve lost it.”
“I haven’t.”
“Let’s face it, money is maybe the only thing I’m not worried about.”
“Because you have money.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re making an assumption—the same mistake Nora’s parents made.”
Adeline narrowed her eyes, and Daniele continued.
“You’re assuming your circumstances will never change. They could. They do for a lot of people—in the blink of an eye. One minute your family is rich. The next, you’re carrying every dollar to your name in your pocket, you have no home, and you don’t know where you’re going to sleep that night. Right now, you don’t care about money because you have it. You’ve never had to wonder how you’ll afford your next meal.”
“That happened to you?”
“It did.”
“When?”
Daniele studied Adeline a moment. “When I was about your age. A little older.”
“What happened?”
“We’re not going to talk about that. My point is, knowing how to manage your money is an important life skill. Even if someone else is investing it, you should be able to read the statements and understand what they’re doing. Your father is gone. Preparing you for what’s ahead is now my responsibility. Finance is something I know a lot about. And I’m going to teach you about it—because someone was kind enough to teach me a long time ago, and frankly, that’s the only reason I’m here talking to you now.”
“I thought you went to Stanford.”
“I did. For a while. But I had to drop out.”
“Why?”
“My family needed me. And then… things changed. But this isn’t about me. Will you at least listen?”
“All right.”
“First things first. There are two rules that will greatly simplify investing for you.”
“I like simplicity.”
“The number one thing to know is that investing is, at its core, an exercise in predicting the future.”
Adeline was surprised by that. “I don’t get it.”
“Think about it. When you buy a stock, bond, or other security, you’re making an educated guess about what’s going to happen, not just with the company or interest rates, but about what the future is going to look like. And you’re also making a guess about the market—whether it’s too optimistic about the future or too pessimistic. That is where fortunes are made and lost: in excess. In knowing when there’s exuberance or despair. But that’s only half of the key. The other half is the human factor. Both yourself and others.”
Daniele stood. “Remember this: people matter. The history of capitalism is fundamentally about people. Great companies are built by great people. That’s the key to making market-beating returns—spotting those people.”
She slid one of the books across the table. “But let’s go back to times of exuberance and despair. We’re going to start by studying the global financial crisis that began in 2008.”
*
That night, Adeline lay in her bed, mentally examining the pieces of the puzzle that was the mystery of Nora’s death and her father’s banishment.
In Daniele’s basement, the four scientists had sounded sincere in wanting to get her father back from the past. And clearly, they had some method of doing it. That had to be Absolom Two. But there seemed to be a problem with it.
Was killing Nora and getting rid of her father just a means to an end—to ensure Absolom Two was built? That made sense to Adeline.
That was a motive for the murder and for framing him. But what was the larger purpose of completing Absolom Two?
The answer seemed obvious to Adeline: to bring someone from the past to the present, as they were talking about doing with her father. If that was the case, it reinforced her theory that Constance was the killer—she was clearly obsessed with the past, with tracking people and finding their whereabouts in the past.
Her mind went around and around with those thoughts, debating how she could get to the bottom of what was happening.
Finally, she took out her phone and checked her email and social media feeds. Condolences for her father and messages from friends were still trickling in. They had helped a great deal in the days and weeks after her father’s arrest. Now, Adeline found that they just made her sad. They reminded her of what had happened. She didn’t want to remember. She wanted to work on the problem. She wanted to solve it.
She was about to set the phone down when she remembered the tracking app for Hiro’s phone: BuddyLoc.
She clicked the icon and studied the map that appeared. It showed a residential neighborhood in Las Vegas, easily within an afternoon’s drive from Absolom City. She pulled up the history and found that Hiro had worked at the Absolom Sciences research labs until about 5 p.m., then driven straight home. He had been there since.
Like all the Absolom founders, Hiro had a home in Absolom City.
What was he doing in Vegas? Visiting a friend?
While possible, it didn’t really fit with what she knew about Hiro. He was easily the least social of the Absolom Six.
Adeline got out of bed, opened her laptop, and went to the Clark County tax records website and looked up the address. The property Hiro was visiting was owned by Molosba LLC.
Adeline stared at the word Molosba.
It was simply Absolom spelled backward. Adeline sensed that she was staring at a clue to something, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.
She did know that she had to get inside that house to see what Hiro was doing there.