“Buenos.” She broke the connection. Busy woman, that cube thing coming up tonight.
There was a maddening lack of information here. Before calling Deedee, he did a quick mental review of what had happened a month before:
He’d come back from that damned meeting, having asked Deedee to use Lopez to snoop on Aurora Bell. He was straightening up before lunch and a bright red flag came up on his screen: a security compromise warning. It said that Ybor Lopez was grinding away at the encryptation of personnel files. So he didn’t have as much jaquismo as Deedee had given him credit for.
Although he would have preferred to let Ybor toil away undisturbed, the cat was out of the bag, whatever that actually meant. So he called in a warrant request and said he’d meet the arresting officer down at the physics building.
Then the screwup with the stunning dart. He’d managed to pocket the ejected data crystal. The sergeant saw but shrugged it off.
There was nothing much on the crystal but universes of data about Deedee and Bell. For some reason, Lopez had been pursuing details about a garage door Bell had bought. If they’d come in a few minutes later, there might have been something interesting there. Lopez hadn’t gone off in that odd direction for no reason.
He tried to visualize the Bells’ garage door. Nothing unusual.
Barrett put his anachronistic glasses down and rubbed his eyes. Had he indirectly murdered this young man by asking Deedee to check up on Bell? He’d only talked to Deedee about it once, right after the arrest. Lopez hadn’t had a chance to tell her anything.
His personal line chimed and he swatted the button. It was Deedee, her eyes red and streaming with tears.