My mom gave me a warning glare not to encourage this. She made the sign of the cross, and she took a hit of her version of iced tea.
“Melvin has software and gadgets that are amazing,” Grandma said. “His backpack is filled with all kinds of things. And his computer is the bomb. I never heard of that brand before but it’s supercool.”
“It’s important to have good hardware and software,” Melvin said.
“Are you staying for dinner?” Grandma asked me. “I’ll set extra plates.”
“Dinner would be great,” I said.
“Agreed,” Diesel said. “Dinner would be great.”
“How about Morelli?” Grandma asked. “What happened to him? Did you leave him at the party?”
“He’s working,” I said. “He got called out on a homicide. He said he would get in touch when he was done.”
“A homicide!” Grandma said. “Anybody I know? Did you go to the crime scene?”
“I was there briefly. I don’t know the man’s name,” I said. “He looked to be in his sixties. A little overweight. Lived alone. He had part of his tongue cut off.”
Melvin’s eyes opened wide, and he sucked in some air. “No way.”
My mom put a hand on the counter to steady herself and chugged more tea from the big-gulp glass.
“Another tongue murder!” Grandma said. “This is big. This is going to make national news. We need to go to the funeral home early tomorrow or we won’t get in. It’s going to be packed.”
I motioned for Melvin to meet me in the dining room. So far as I knew, the connection between the tongue murders and Oswald wasn’t common knowledge. Nothing remained a secret for very long in the Burg, but I didn’t want to be responsible for this going public.
I handed Melvin the laptop. “I found this in the victim’s bedroom. It might eventually get turned over to the police as evidence, but I wanted you to look at it first. It’s a ThinkPad X1.”
“There were two more Baked Potatoes who I thought might be local,” Melvin said. “One was an older dude who went by the handle of Mushy2. I know he worked on a ThinkPad like me.”
“When the Baked Potatoes hacked into Oswald’s network, did you see or download anything?” Diesel asked.
Melvin shook his head. “No reason to download anything. It was just about getting in. I was so surprised and excited when it happened, I don’t remember seeing much of anything. Maybe some basic info about hardware and software, and some directories.”
He returned to the kitchen table with the new computer and tried a series of passwords, with no success. He plugged something that looked like a large flash drive into the computer and after several seconds a home page appeared.
“I’m in,” Melvin said.
“Go to his mail account,” I said.
Only one item came up. RETRIBUTION. The word was repeated in an endless scroll. Melvin clicked a few keys and the scrolling stopped.
“This is bad,” Melvin said. “I really hate this.”
“It’s boring,” Grandma said. “Especially in comparison to a homicide.” Grandma’s attention turned to me. “Did you get to see the tongue?”
“No,” I said. “The neighbor’s dog ate it.”
“For real?” Diesel asked.
My mom had the chickens out of the oven, and she was making gravy. “Someone needs to mash the potatoes,” she said.
Grandma went to the stove, drained the potatoes, and added butter and milk to the pot. “I like a lot of butter,” she said. “It’s the trick to making good mashed potatoes.”
My father walked into the kitchen. “Hey,” he said to Diesel. “How’s it going?”
As if Diesel hadn’t been gone for two years.
“It’s going okay,” Diesel said. “And you?”
“I’m hungry. I smell chicken.” He looked at me. “When did you get here?”
“A couple minutes ago,” I said. “You were asleep in your chair.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” he said. “I was resting my eyes.” He looked at Melvin. “Who are you?”
“He’s Melvin,” Grandma said. “He’s living here.”
“How long’s he been living here?” my father asked. “Why don’t I know about this?”
“Stephanie dropped him off this morning,” Grandma said. “He’s a hacker.”