Having lost track of time, Ali looked around and was surprised to find that the restaurant had filled up while she was perusing Bryan’s files. Dave Holman, coffee cup in hand, was standing next to her booth.
“Of course,” she said, closing the computer and setting the Mac down on the banquette next to her. “Have a seat.”
Dave slid into the booth opposite her. “I stopped by your place earlier, looking for you,” he said. “Mr. Brooks told me I could probably find you here.”
“You stopped by before seven A.M.?” Ali demanded.
“Before eight,” Dave corrected. “But I need to talk to you, Ali.” His serious expression worried her.
“What about?” Ali asked.
“I know that when it comes to the Forester situation, the two of us are on opposite sides of the fence,” he said. “I hope you’ll consider this more of a courtesy call than anything else.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look,” he said with a sigh. “Morgan Forester is dead, and it’s my job to find out what happened to her, even if I end up having to step on your toes.”
“My toes?” Ali asked. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s been brought to my attention that Bryan Forester maintains a storage facility of some kind at your place up on Manzanita Hills Road.”
Ali nodded. “He has one of those Mini-Mobile things. He keeps supplies and equipment in it. Why? What does that have to do with me?”
“Now that we know about it, we’ll have to search it,” Dave said. “And probably the rest of the construction site, too.”
“Wait a minute. You’re planning on searching my house? Why? What are you looking for?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Dave said. “To anyone. This is an active investigation.”
Before Ali had a chance to say anything more, Edie Larson bustled up to their booth with her order pad in hand. “Ali appears to be drinking coffee and using her computer. Are you here to order, or are you just talking?” Edie asked.
“A little of both,” Dave told her. “We’ll have breakfast, and when it’s time for a bill, give it to me. I’m buying.”
CHAPTER 12
After Edie Larson had finished taking their order and left, Dave picked up the conversation. “I wanted to see you before I left town,” he said. “I’m on my way to Phoenix in a couple of minutes. With your help, we’ve located a possible witness down there.”
“My help?” Ali asked.
Dave nodded. “The driver of that vehicle whose license you had Bryan call in to me the other day.”
“The car Lacy saw?” Ali asked.
“That’s the one,” Dave said. “A rental from Hertz. The guy who rented it was from Phoenix. I have an appointment to interview him later on this morning. It could turn out he saw nothing at all, but he played so coy with me on the phone, and that got my attention.”
“If he was evasive on the phone, are you thinking he might be involved?” Ali asked.
Dave shook his head. “Forget it,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t have mentioned him. Right now he’s nothing but a potential witness. But after my meeting with him, I’ll be stopping by Prescott on the way home. That’s when I’ll pick up a warrant to search your place on Manzanita Hills Road. We’ll be executing it later this afternoon.”
“Why are you telling me about this in advance?” Ali asked. “Isn’t that a little unusual?”
“It’s a lot worse than unusual,” Dave admitted. “The sheriff would have my badge if he ever found out about it, but the two of us go back a long way, Ali. I’m letting you know in advance so you can be on-site when we do it. There’ll be a lot less chance of damage if someone-you or Mr. Brooks, perhaps-is there to unlock doors with actual keys.”
“As in unlock the doors to my house,” Ali said.
“It may be your house, but it’s also a construction site,” Dave explained. “A construction site where our homicide suspect may have concealed evidence of his crime.”
“But it’s still my house,” Ali insisted.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Dave’s regret sounded genuine, but Ali didn’t much notice. “Aren’t you afraid I might go there before you do and try to get rid of anything incriminating?”
Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him. Dave looked at Ali sadly and shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’m not. To begin with, you wouldn’t know what to look for. Besides, that’s not who you are. You’d never conceal evidence.”
Stealing a look at the computer beside her, Ali wasn’t so sure about that. She was about to tell him about the two thumb drives when Edie arrived at the booth with their breakfasts-ham and eggs for Dave and French toast for Ali for the second day in a row.
“So will we be seeing you and your girls at Ali’s for Thanksgiving?” Edie asked.
Dave looked at Ali. “As far as I know, we haven’t been invited. Besides, the girls will be in Vegas with their mom for Thanksgiving. I get all three kids for Christmas.”
Knowing she had stepped in it, Edie beat a hasty retreat, leaving Ali to sort out her mother’s unintentional gaffe. “Sorry, Dave,” she said. “We’ve both been so busy, and I was waiting to figure out where the dinner would be. But now that we know the new house won’t be ready, it’ll be at the old one. And you’re definitely invited. Are you coming?”
Dave looked at her and grinned. “Depends on who’s doing the cooking,” he said.
Ali’s lack of cooking credentials was well known, but having people continually pointing it out was also a bit tiresome. “That’s not fair,” she said. “Accurate but not fair. And Leland will most likely be overseeing the food, so no one should die of food poisoning. Will you come, then?”
“I doubt I’ll get a better offer,” he said. “Count me in.”
Lighthearted banter had fixed the momentary awkwardness left behind by the warrant discussion. They started into their food. Dave had managed only a bite of his ham and eggs, and Ali was about to tell him about the thumb drives, when his phone rang.
He put down his fork and answered. “Holman here.” Then he listened for a long time while someone else spoke. “What do you mean both hard drives are ruined?” he demanded at last. “How is that possible? You’re telling me somebody deliberately crashed the computers before we could execute our warrant?” There was another short pause before Dave went on. “But crashed or not, surely we can find someone smart enough to retrieve the data.”
As Dave listened again, Ali tried to make sense of what she had overheard. She was sure that the damaged computers in question, picked up as a result of a search warrant, were the ones that belonged to Bryan and Morgan Forester.
“You’re right,” Dave was saying. “I can see how writing over the files is worse than just erasing them. Cute. Well, we’ll see how funny Mr. Forester thinks this is once I finish up with him. Do you remember that computer-science professor up at Northern Arizona University, the guy we asked for help on that other case a couple of months ago? Yes, that’s it. Professor Rayburn. Check with him and see if he has any ideas on how we can go about recapturing the data. With any luck, Bryan Forester isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is. There’s always a chance he missed something.”
Shaking his head in disgust, Dave slammed his phone closed and jammed it into his pocket. “What do you know about that!” he muttered. “It seems someone has written over all the files on the Foresters’ computers. And whoever did it thought he was being incredibly cute-he wrote the same letters over and over: H-A, as in ha, ha, ha. That’s funny, all right. Funny as hell. You probably think your friend Bryan is downright hilarious.”
“Bryan wouldn’t do that,” Ali said quietly. She realized as soon as she’d said it that it was absolutely true. Why would Bryan go to so much trouble when he knew there were perfectly usable and readable backup copies available, copies that were, even now, within arm’s reach of Dave Holman? Someone else might have done that, but not Bryan.