THIRTEEN
Kate and Jack jaywalked from ELCIE headquarters back to her parked car, and she chucked her bag into the back seat as she slid behind the wheel. “Well. That didn’t go the way I expected.”
Jack rolled his window down and inhaled a morning breeze that smelled of nothing more narcotic than fresh bread. Mom had told her that even the Lower Haight smelled like weed in the mornings when Dad had dragged her out of bed to walk there when they dated.
Jack said, “Sure didn’t. Julia smelled better than any hippie I remember.”
Kate sent a text, then before she shifted to drive she frowned. It turned out that the prospect of Jack Boyle moving on from the only woman who he’d ever been with, and with someone who had been Kate’s best friend, wasn’t all a breath of fresh air. It came with a puff of creepy and a whiff of betrayal.
Kate’s father said, “Julia seems to think that a lot of Colibri’s fellow billionaires jumped on this life-extension bandwagon so they could live forever. Personally. You think Colibri did, too?”
Kate shook her head. “Well, if he did, things couldn’t have worked out worse for him, could they? And Julia’s not the only one who thinks the billionaires are in it to win it for themselves, personally. A couple years ago Bill Gates rejected life-extension research as legitimate philanthropy, because it was too egocentric.”
Jack crossed his arms. “But if Julia knows what she’s talking about, Colibri’s investment wasn’t helping him live forever. Even before somebody blew him up.”
“Dad, people have been looking for the fountain of youth for centuries. Failing to find it is no surprise.”
“The surprise is that he wasn’t even trying, Katy. Besides, I understand why most billionaires would want more lives to enjoy their money. David Powell races horses and vintage Ferraris and antique motorboats. He collects first editions and impressionists and antique chess sets. But Colibri? He was an ascetic. Why would a guy who didn’t waterski behind one yacht want to survive to ski behind fifty of them?”
Kate smiled. “What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot well use half an hour?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“No, that’s what Emerson said a hundred and forty years ago. But the other thing Colibri was failing at with all this investment was making money on it.” Kate wrinkled her forehead. “Maybe because Colibri had stopped trying to make money on this project his shareholders fired him with a bomb.”
Jack shook his head. “Maybe one of Colibri’s VPs got a lousy review. I’d like to know which one of his minions thought up the penguin-watching trip, because being in Antarctica’s a little too perfect an alibi. But Katy, a conclusion based on incomplete facts is a guess.”
“You’re saying we need to figure out Cardinal’s structure?”
Jack nodded. “Julia’s a bright gal. Like she said, we follow the money. If somebody put that guy up to killing Colibri, it was probably somebody who stood to cash in on his death.”
“Cardinal’s closed for January. But we can access its government filings online.”
Jack frowned. “Waste of time.”
“Dad, the internet isn’t—”
Jack shook his head. “The internet’s not the problem. Take it from an old corporate lawyer, one reason private companies choose to be private is because their public filings don’t have to disclose very much. But I have an idea where I can get the information we need. Meantime, how about we visit with that friend of yours. The one Julia mentioned?”
“Quentin Callisto? Way ahead of you, Dad.” But after this morning, I’ve learned my lesson. “We” aren’t visiting Quentin.
Kate checked her phone. No answer to her text. She dialed a number, snorted at what she heard. “I just texted Quentin. He didn’t answer, and normally he would. And I just called him and his voice mailbox was full.”
Jack grunted. “By the way, what the hell kind of name is Quentin Callisto?”
“Not his real one. He legally changed it from Quentin Pinkleberg.”
“He picked the name of a goddess who got changed into a bear?”
Kate smiled. “Not for Callisto from Greek mythology. Callisto is a moon of Jupiter that orbits out of step with Jupiter’s other moons. Quentin considers himself out of step.”
“Out of step with what?”
“Mundane humans. Who include everybody except him.” Kate eased out into traffic. “I’ll drop you back at the house. You work the corporate structure problem while I go see Quentin. We’ll meet up tonight back there, compare notes, then we’ll sleep. Late.”
“You’re moving back in?”
“I can’t handle driving back and forth from Palo Alto every day. Unless you rented out my room?”
“No. It’s just like you left it.”
Kate swerved into a parking space in front of a small hardware store.
“What are you doing?”
“Buying Windex, Lysol, paper towels, trash bags, rubber gloves—”
“Katy, I know what I always said. But your room was never really that messy.”
“My room’s not really the problem.”
Kate’s father snorted, then read aloud a sign in the store window. “‘We have PETA-approved cockroach traps.’ Now you know that you’ve come home again to San Francisco.” He cocked his head. “But you just said you don’t know where Callisto is.”
“No, I said he wasn’t answering texts and his voice mail was full. That tells me exactly where he is. But that means we can’t wait for him to come home again to San Francisco.”
“Why not?”
“Because he never visits just one planet at a time.”