Kris walked to cut her off from the officers. ''I know you did, ma'am. I just wanted to talk to Mr. Winford.'' The woman eyed Kris for a moment without recognition. ''I'm Kris Longknife, a Nuu Enterprises stockholder.''
''Right, I saw you this morning. Newsies said someone shot at you last night.''
''They missed.''
''And you want to know what happened to our vaccine supply?''
''Yes, Ms. …''
''Mrs. Zacharias.''
''Mrs. Zacharias, why is everyone waiting outside?''
''Mr. Winford is very particular about security, Miss Longknife. Or do you want me to call you Princess or something?''
''Kris will be fine. So you won't open the office?''
''No, ma'am. Mr. Winford uses an old-fashioned key lock that can't be jiggered or hacked. He figures that's the best way to handle things nowadays.''
''Where is Mr. Winford?''
''I don't know, ma'am. He's never late.'' There were assents and nods from the workmen to support that point.
Kris turned around in exasperation at this check to her schedule, only to find her driver approaching, a reader in hand. ''Ms. Longknife, you're waiting for a Mr. Winford?''
''Yes.''
''I'm afraid you may have a long wait ahead of you.'' He offered her the reader. It showed the face of a man she recognized from last night. Mr. Winford looked slightly better rested, but very dead.
''What happened?''
''His body was found near a wooded jogging path this morning. It appears he had been dead less than an hour.''
''Cause of death?'' Jack asked.
''I'm afraid I can't tell you.''
Officious people could be a real pain sometimes. ''Is it being handled as natural causes?'' Kris asked.
The driver glanced at another agent coming up beside him, whom Kris suspected was the head of this detail. ''No, ma'am, we are not treating it as natural causes,'' the new man said. ''I'm Inspector Marta, and we are handling it as a homicide.''
Jack turned to Kris. ''Please, get back in the car.''
''Jack, I came to see what happened here. I'm not leaving before I'm finished.''
''Fine, but humor me and sit in the car until I'm sure this area is safe.''
So Kris humored Jack. She tried not to fume in the car while Jack and the cops covered the grounds like a nest of very disturbed bees. Her focus of attention changed when Penny brought a tearful Mrs. Zacharias to join her in the car. There were tissues in the seat back; Kris offered the woman the box.
''Thank you,'' she said, blowing her nose. ''I don't know what you think of Mr. Winford, but he was a good man to work for. An honest man, and there aren't a lot of them left in business.''
Kris agreed. The woman made use of a few more tissues, then opened her purse and began rummaging in it. ''He told me to use it if there was ever an emergency. I don't imagine there can be much more of an emergency than this.'' Kris agreed further, wondering how much longer before Jack declared the place safe.
Mrs. Zacharias pulled a key from her purse. ''You think your police will mind if I let the crew in so they can get to work? I don't imagine Nuu Enterprises wants us to take the day off.''
''That's the office key!''
''Of course. If Mr. Winford came down sick or something, you don't expect he'd leave the company in the lurch, do you?''
''No, he wouldn't,'' Kris said, opening the door and waving the key at Jack. Five minutes later, the crew were at work, and Kris was sitting next to Mrs. Zacharias as she checked for messages, released orders, and got the day's work started. ''Sales have been falling the last few years,'' Kris said as she watched Mrs. Zacharias's old-fashioned screen.
''Competition is tough. ‘Cutthroat,' Mr. Winford called it. And it being company policy not to pay bribes or anything that smelled of it, it was hard enough for him to keep his old customers. Impossible to get new ones.''
''Bribes?'' Kris echoed.
''Well, not exactly,'' the woman said, still going through her orders. ''More like consulting fees. Or quality testing. One company insisted we send ten percent of our order off to some lab to ‘destructive' test it. It wasn't for testing. It was a kickback right off the top. Mr. Winford checked with corporate, and they told him no way.'' The woman shook her head, resting her eyes out the window. ''That's not the way it was when I started work. Turantic was as square as you could ask. But the last five years have been bad, and getting worse.''
Mrs. Zacharias turned to look at Kris. ''You know, Mr. Winford told me to move my retirement account off Turantic five years ago. Said things were going to get crazy. I didn't believe him. Glad it only took me two years to realize he was right. All of us,'' she waved a hand to include the entire shop, ''moved our accounts to Wardhaven. We're in better shape than lots. Better shape than your cops. Ask them what happened to the Fire and Protective Services Retirement System.''
''I will,'' Kris said. Klaggath had dodged her general question about Turantic last night. Maybe tonight she'd have a more specific question. Done at her computer, Mrs. Zacharias took Kris to see where the vaccine should have been.
''Aisle eight, row A, about as far back and out of the way as you can get and still be cool,'' she told Kris. The space was out of the way, cool, dark… and empty.
Kris stepped across the ''crime scene'' tape to stand in the vacant spot. Slowly turning, she looked for anything yesterday's investigation might have missed.
Inspector Marta came up as Kris was finishing empty-handed. ''Report says there was nothing unusual yesterday,'' he said.
''And there's nothing today. Any fingerprints?''
''Cardboard boxes don't take prints.''
''Any hole in security?''
''Three weeks ago there was a major failure in the security system. Our inspection thinks there was a hole dug under the back fence. Doesn't explain how the door was opened, though. Or why no one noticed the missing boxes. Strange.''
''And now you don't have Mr. Winford to question further.''
''Nope,'' Marta agreed.
Kris turned to Mrs. Zacharias. ''When I was on Olympia, we got all kinds of flu, new one every month. Doc would cook up a new vaccine in about a week from feedstock. Do we have the feedstock to bake up a vaccine for the anaerobic Ebola?''
''Mr. Winford had me look into that yesterday,'' his assistant said. ''I called our best three pharmaceutical labs. There is a vaccine, but it's even more expensive than the ready-made. That's why we store the stuff. And no, we don't have the feedstock for it on planet. No one does.'' The woman shrugged. ''We had that problem covered. No profit in covering it twice.''
''At least the plague isn't spreading,'' Marta said in a half prayer.
''But until we can inoculate people, they can't go off planet.'' Kris headed back to her car. She hadn't had the social encounter she'd wanted with Grampa's local rep. Still, she'd learned more about this planet that held her like a fly in amber. Her talk with Mrs. Zacharias had been very informative. Very.
The embassy was nowhere near as interesting. Kris waited over an hour while she and her party were fingerprinted, retina-scanned, and validated that they were indeed who they said they were. Neither Kris's ID card nor Jack's credentials could save her from that hassle. Once approved, passports were quickly generated, Kris's in a regal bright red and Jack's and Tom's in an official blue. ''Now, who does a Navy Lieutenant check in with to see that she's in no more hot water than she has to be?''
That got Kris ushered deep into the gray-walled rat maze of cubbyholes that seemed to be where the real work happened. An overweight man in a Major's uniform was finishing a bagel as Penny led Kris in. ''Princess,'' the man said, trying to stand, brush crumbs from his coat, and button it all at the same time. Kris let him fuss over her as she settled into his one visitor's chair, then explained her problem of taking one week's leave for what was proving to be a much longer stay on Turantic.