Syndrome Part 24

"Look, Miss Whoever-you-are, I want you to leave. I don't appreciate strange women walking around unescorted in my house."

"I'm going right now. Perhaps you should speak to Mr. Bartlett and decide together what you want to do about this s.p.a.ce."

"I'll tell you right now what I want to do. Nothing. For all I know, he's fixing this up so he can move in some tart. We've lived here for twenty-eight years and he's never done anything down here. So why is that tightfisted SOB suddenly deciding to renovate?"

"That would be an excellent question to ask him."

"You're s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g him, aren't you?" she demanded, wrinkled brow furrowed and dim eyes seething. "Like that other little wh.o.r.e of his. That's why he hired you. Well, let me tell you something. I'll outlive you both."

Without another word she turned and got into the elevator.

Chapter 9

_Monday, April 6

12:18 P.M.

_"Hey, how did it go?" Jennifer asked the minute Ally came in the door.

She wasn't sure she knew the answer to that. Initially the job looked like a lot of fun, but now she felt the interpersonal dynamics of working in Bartlett's home were already a problem even before she started.

Also, maybe it was just paranoia, but as she took the cab downtown from the mansion on Gramercy Park, she got the impression that somebody was following her in a black SUV. And the stress of that brought on a tightness in her chest. But as she neared their office in SoHo, the vehicle abruptly veered east. She had a nitro tab at the ready, but she didn't have to pop it.

"There's good news and bad news. The good news is he's practically handing us a sweetheart of a job, and dangling another--designing a whole museum--in our face. The bad news is, I don't know why he suddenly thinks we're so terrific. I mean, you and I know that but how did he figure it out?"

Jennifer looked puzzled. "You mean he--"

"Oh, did I mention that his crazy wife showed up after he left and essentially accused me of being a hooker? I suppose that comes under the heading of bad news."

"Great. Does that mean she's going to start second-guessing whatever we do?"

"The communication channels between Mr. Bartlett and Mrs. Bartlett don't appear to be all that great. They live on different floors in his place--which really is a huge old mansion on Gramercy Park, by the way-- and the job would be in his part, the lower level." She explained the Bartletts' living arrangements. "He wants to redo the garden-level floor. It was originally the servants' quarters. Like Upstairs, Downstairs."

"So he's upstairs and she's way upstairs."

"And let's hope she stays there."

Ally fetched herself a cup of coffee, checked in with everybody to see how they were doing, and then settled herself at her computer. She had the latest program in computer-aided design (CAD) and she wanted to program in the dimensions and layout of the s.p.a.ce. And since she had a copy of the blueprints, the first thing she would do would be to run them through her flatbed scanner and incorporate them into the program.

She didn't get a chance to take any digital photos with Citis.p.a.ce's snazzy (and expensive) new Nikon. But if the job went forward there'd be plenty of time later.

Everybody's computers were connected to the Net via a broadband DSL hookup and they were never turned off. Because of that, the computers were vulnerable to being hacked so Jen had installed a firewall program to keep out snoops.

She sat down and stared at the screen saver, which was an ever-changing series of tropical beaches at sunset. She sipped at her coffee--this was the one cup she allowed herself each day, always saved for the moment when she felt she needed to be most alert--and reached to turn on the scanner. The tightness in her chest that she had momentarily experienced in the cab had completely disappeared and she felt perfectly normal.

What was she going to do about her mother and the clinic in New Jersey?

Nina certainly appeared to want to go. And with the inevitability of what lay in store for someone with early-onset Alzheimer's, taking her out there was surely worth doing. But as for her own heart, she wasn't so sure she thought the reward was worth the risk. But she'd decided to hold off on a decision till she could have a firsthand look at the inst.i.tute.

She took another sip of coffee and then tapped the keyboard. When she did that, the screen would normally bring up the "desktop."

But not this time. A file was open, and she was certain she hadn't left it open. What's this?

"Jen, could you come here a minute? There's something funny."

The first page of the file that had been pulled up and opened was an ID photo of herself.

"This is what was running. Has somebody been fooling around with this computer?"

Jennifer looked puzzled when she saw it "Not that I know of."

"Then how did this get ... ?" She just sat staring. "I didn't open this file. Does this thing have a mind of its own?"

About eight years ago, Kate Gillis at Manhattan Properties--with whom Ally had an occasional after-work drink-- told her she'd scanned all her vital personal doc.u.ments into her computer at home. She'd said it was an easy way to make a safety backup.

Seemed like a good idea, so Ally had stored a copy of her birth certificate, her driver's license, all her credit cards, her pa.s.sport, a set of medical records, even the mortgage on her apartment. She'd even scanned in an ID photo, just for the heck of it. She also suggested to Grant that he do the same.

Brilliant right? Well, maybe not.

The reason was, she'd routinely made an updated copy on a ZIP disk and then copied it onto this computer here in the office. Like a second backup.

"I had everything ready for you for your meeting with Bartlett, so n.o.body here has touched your computer this morning." Jennifer furrowed her brow. "Could somebody have picked the locks and come in last night and done this, like a prank or something?"

"Come on. That's totally far-fetched." She was trying to imagine how somebody could have gotten in and out and left no trace. Impossible.

"This must just be something stupid I did when I came down yesterday after seeing Mom. I don't remember it, but I guess I was pretty tired."

"I've never seen you that tired."

Jen's right, she thought. I was on the city's Web site checking the Department of Buildings' Housing Code, but I certainly didn't pull up my personal data. Computers do strange things, but to open a data file for no reason? That would require a higher intelligence.

Right?

"Jen, you're our resident computer expert. We leave these things hooked up all the time. I know we have a firewall, but what are the chances that somebody could defeat it somehow and hack into our computers?"

Jennifer was a software whiz and she had all the designs for all the clients on their CAD system, which they used to create a virtual- reality s.p.a.ce and allow clients to "walk" through.

"Well, that's entirely possible. Our firewall software is over a year old. Let me take a look. Maybe I can reverse-engineer what happened. If somebody went through pulling up files, I might be able to figure it out."

Ally relinquished her chair and stood staring as Jennifer started checking the firewall.

It was scary to think that some stranger could know everything about you. But on the other hand what difference could it make? She had nothing to hide. Still, it was creepy. Her Social Security and credit card information was in that file. Could that be--