Legend of the Gilded Saber by Sigmund Brouwer

Author:Sigmund Brouwer [Brouwer, Sigmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sigmund brouwer, myrockandrollbooks
Publisher: Sigmund Brouwer
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Lisa and I leaned over Ralphy's shoulder. We stared at the computer screen of his laptop. Mike was pacing the room behind us.

Ralphy's fingers clicked rapidly. Seconds later numbers and names filled the screen.

"This is weird," Ralphy said. "Very weird."

Mike marched over and surveyed the screen.

"Now I'm impressed," Mike said. "It took you less than a second to read all that and come up with your conclusion."

"I've already seen this."

"What?" I spoke as I squinted to read the screen better.

"About an hour ago. Just before breakfast. It came to me by e-mail."

"Let me get this straight," Mike said. "Same file?"

"Same file."

"I think these are accounts," I told them. "Look. Numbers. Then names of people. Then ..."

I figured out what I was reading. "Names of stocks. If this disk came from the Stang and Emmett Stockbrokers' office, that would make sense."

Mike snapped his fingers. "So Devon gave them a disk, knowing he had a backup anyway."

"Must be it," I said.

"Hang on, guys." Ralphy clicked his fingers across the keyboard again. "Let me pull up that e-mail."

He pointed at the screen. "There's the address it came from."

It was obvious on the screen: [email protected].

"Tom Stang at Stang and Emmett Stockbrokers.com," I said. "For some reason, Stang is appearing in all of this again."

"Why would Stang e-mail Ralphy the same information that Devon put on a . . ." Mike stopped himself. Smacked himself on the forehead. "Ralphy, let me guess. First chance you had, you showed off your computer to Devon, right?"

"It is a smoking laptop," he said. "We're talking gigabytes and gigahertz."

"I'll hertz you if you don't lay off the computer talk. Did you show it to Devon?"

"He was interested," Ralphy said defensively.

"Or he was just being polite," I said. "And did you trade e-mail addresses with him?"

"I told him I'd send some JPEGs of our trip."

"In other words," Mike said, "Devon knew about Ralphy's laptop, and Devon has his e-mail address. Right, Ralphy?"

Ralphy nodded.

Lisa spoke. "So not only did Devon back up this information on a second disk in case he lost the first, he made an extra backup by sending a copy to Ralphy."

"Which still doesn't explain why Devon broke into Stang's office." I tapped my teeth as I thought about it. "Obviously the information is important. But why?"

"If we know why the information is so valuable," Mike said, "we'll probably know why he broke in to get it."

"Thanks," I said. "That helps."

Mike smiled. Perhaps I needed to explain to him the concept of sarcasm.

"Client list?" Ralphy asked, pointing at the names. "I mean, it did come from a stockbroker's office. Maybe each account number belongs to a client, and those are the stocks they own."

"Phone book," Mike said. "Let's look up some of these names in the local phone book. If we find them there, chances are they will be clients."

"Wow," I said. "And you didn't even call your mom about that."

Mike grinned. Then his grin froze in place.

"You hear that?" he said.

Ralphy and Lisa nodded.

I nodded.

Downstairs, a noise came from the kitchen.

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