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“Would have?”
“Dennis is dead. He passed away nearly nine months ago.”
“Oh my God, I had no idea. Jill never mentioned that.”
“Does Jill have her phone with her in the hospital? Can I call her?”
“No, but I can get it and take it to her.”
“That would be very nice, thank you. And thank you for contacting me.”
“Jill is a really wonderful person. She works really hard.”
“Yes, Hummingbird has been her dream for a while now.”
“It’s been very successful.”
“She could be working anywhere, you know, with her skills and mind. She could be teaching at UPenn or Stanford.”
“But this makes her happy. Bringing people together.”
“Yes, I suppose it does. Well, thank you again for letting me know.”
“Sure, thanks for the call back. And I’ll get Jill’s phone to her.”
“I appreciate that. Goodbye.”
Devine put his phone back in his pocket. Why hadn’t Tapshaw mentioned that her twin was dead? But then again, he hadn’t really talked to his roommates about his family. Still, he wondered how Dennis Tapshaw had died.
He climbed the stairs to Tapshaw’s room and went inside. A search of her things revealed no phone. He wondered if she had left it at work. He’d noticed that she hadn’t had it with her at the bar.
He looked around and saw a set of keys on a brown file folder. He picked them up and saw her car key on there. There was another key on there, too, but he knew it wasn’t to the office. She used an electronic security card to get into her space like they did at Cowl and Comely. He knew that because she had taken him for a tour once and had used her security card to get in.
He had a sudden thought and went down to the garage and unlocked her Mini Cooper. He searched through it and found the RFID card in the console. This should get him into the office okay. He decided he might as well drive her car the short distance to the office rather than firing up his motorcycle. He also searched the car to make sure she hadn’t left the phone in here. But he didn’t find it. He called the phone to see if it had perhaps slipped down between the seat and the console, but he heard no ringing or vibrating.
There were some stains on the front seat that he wiped away with his hand. Tapshaw was not the cleanest or most organized person in the world. When they had ridden over to the bar in her car, he had been in the backseat with Valentine. His feet had been resting on top of mountains of old fast-food containers and used Starbucks coffee cups. And her car’s interior smelled like a Dumpster.
He drove over to the strip of shops where Hummingbird was headquartered. The RFID card did its magic and the door unlocked. He went inside and flicked on the lights. Since Tapshaw had given him a tour through the office he knew the layout.
There was a large, open work area with a dozen computer screens flashing the Hummingbird home page, smartboards on the walls, desks and iPads and stacks of papers and marketing materials and files, copier machines, a water dispenser, a small kitchen and bathroom, and everything else one would normally see in an office.
He knew the cloud that ran the Hummingbird platform was housed elsewhere, because Tapshaw had told him.
Tapshaw’s office was in the back corner. He tried the door, but it was locked. Then he saw the reader port and waved the RFID card in front of it, and the door clicked open.
He turned on the light and looked around at the messy space.
He again had the idea of calling her phone to see if it would ring somewhere in the mounds of all the stuff in here, but it didn’t. She might have it on silent. But he didn’t hear vibrating anywhere, either. The battery might have died for all he knew.
He started to slowly search the space. The woman’s workload was immense, if all the docs he was looking at were an indicator. It was no wonder she looked tired all the time.
He looked through all the file cabinets until he came to one that was locked.
He hesitated and then decided to see if the other key on the ring would open it. He didn’t know why she would lock her phone up in there, but he had seen her rushing around enough times trying to find stuff at the town house. Her car keys had once ended up in the refrigerator for some odd reason.
The key worked and he slid the drawer open. There was a mass of papers in here and some colored files. He moved them out of the way to see if perhaps the phone had slipped down to the bottom when he saw the red file. He slowly pulled it out.
It was from the doctor’s office of Jonathan Wyman, more specifically his clinic for women wanting to undergo artificial insemination.
