Cold Snap by J. Clayton Rogers Page B

until she
barfs."
    "'Those who cannot control themselves must be
controlled by others'," said Ari, quoting 2,000 years' worth of
conservative commentators.
    "Her father controlled her better than I ever
could." Rebecca took a deep breath. "I wanted to ask you about your
acquaintances on the police force. Could you ask them to
discretely..."
    Ari, who had no intention of discrediting
himself by involving Officers Mangioni and Jackson in a search for
a runaway husband, nodded sagely. "I will have to give them some
details, you see. First of all, do you have a picture of him with
you?"
    "I brought the most recent one." Removing a
small photograph from her purse, she looked briefly towards the
rear of the parlor and saw Diane had her back to them. She handed
the 4x6 to Ari.
    "Does he always leer like this?"
    "Hmmmm?" She leaned forward for a closer
inspection. "Oh. I never thought of it as leering. But now that you
mention it...it doesn't make him look very trustworthy, does
it?"
    "Perhaps he was only pleased to have you with
him," Ari said, politely putting a good face on a face that
reminded him of...of...he looked at the far wall. Why,
Diane....
    "Bristol took that picture last year, not
long before he fired Ethan. Maybe he saw the same thing you do."
She frowned, as though in pursuit of a judgment she was reluctant
to catch. "It was the annual Sayed picnic. We were three sheets in
the wind."
    Ari wondered how the wind could have affected
the portrait. Besides, the wind must have died down the moment the
shutter button was pressed. Rebecca's long brown hair was lying
undisturbed on her shoulders, while Ethan was perfectly unmussed.
Ari's mental eye narrowed in suspicion. If Rebecca was going to lie
to him, why would it be over something so frivolous?
    "Uh...I see you're a little confused. Diane
told me your English was a little rough. 'Three sheets in the wind'
means being drunk."
    "I was just remarking that," said Ari with a
little cough and scrutinizing the picture again. And indeed, the
couple seemed a little bleary-eyed. He wanted to know where the
phrase came from. It was probably untranslatable. But there was no
time for etymology.
    "What do you know about your husband's work
at Sayed?"
    "What would that have to do with him running
off with another woman?" Her unplanned bluntness caused Rebecca to
blush. "Yes, it's that brutally simple. If you're fishing for a
character sketch, I think he proved what he was made of by running
off with a Chinese girl."
    "I'm coming into this frigid," said Ari. "I
would like to take things in order."
    "I think you mean you're coming into this
'cold'," Rebecca grinned. There was nothing of a leer in it. In
fact, it was rather forgiving. "All right, but I can't tell you
much. Diane already knows more about computers than I ever
will."
    "Do you know anything about why he was fired?
Bristol was very vague."
    "I know Ethan's version," Rebecca shrugged.
"I believed it at the time and 'poor-babied' him. He said that
Bruce—Ethan's direct supervisor—wanted to cancel his access to all
the corporate accounts they were working on. In other words, he
didn't trust him. He said he thought Ethan was using privileged
contact information to send bogus emails. Sayed was considered a
trusted source by all those customers, so if they opened an email
with an attachment...and the attachment had a virus..."
    "Is this the 'phishing' Bristol was talking
about?"
    "I guess."
    "What do you think of Bristol Turnbridge and
Bruce Turner?"
    "Other than that they share the same
initials?"
    "That is a curiosity," Ari nodded.
    "Bristol started a business from scratch,
which means he's probably an asshole. And Bruce does what Bristol
tells him, which makes him a mini-asshole."
    "That seems harsh," Ari observed. "I have
been informed that America is based on the entrepreneurial
spirit."
    "You've been watching Nightly Business
Report."
    "I don't own a TV, if you're speaking of a
television broadcast."
    "Diane told me your