Getting Down To Business

All told, it was a better day. Better than what, you ask? Well, better than sitting in my room crying. It appears that I still have a job, or a whole business, and I'd better take care of it.

10:00 a.m.

I sat in the room that I will always think of as Dag's office. If what Lars told me was true, it was now my office. Lars would take care of the books and hold the agency license until I'd completed my three years and tested, but he promised that the business was mine and he would hand over the accounts as soon as he verified them and reported the inheritance to the State. So it would never be fair to Dag if I didn't get some work done.

I opened the vault and located Simon's thumb drive. I knew right where it was. I'd filed it when I transferred all Simon's backup disks to the network. I might have returned the disks to Brenda's house for Silas to find, but I kept the data. Something told me that even if I succeeded in cracking the encryption code on the thumb drive, there was data on Simon's computer that I would need eventually. I shoved the thumb drive in a slot on the workhorse computer, closed the vault and sat down to work from the laptop. I now had three 8-digit numbers. It should be easy to put them in the right order to crack the encryption. F8ed2d1e, 36Db00bs, and 1sB41d1e. It took a couple of tries before I realized that I was dealing with hexadecimal numbers, and not a case sensitive password. f-8-e-d-2-d-1-e-3-6-d-b-0-0-b-5-1-5-b-4-1-d-1-e. The "s" was "5" and the "0" was "zero" and the "i" was a "1".

It was a kids game to make up words out of letters and numbers. Being hexadecimal, he only had the numbers 0-9 and the letters a-f to work with. Every eight characters would yield a 128 bit encryption key. But there was a problem. Twenty-four characters would yield a 384 bit key. I've never heard of a 384 bit key. Typcially you double, double, and double again. In light-weight areas, you get 64 bit encryption that can be done with four characters. Then you'd get 128 bit with eight characters, 256 bit with sixteen characers, 512 bit with thirty-two characters, and if you were really paranoid, 1024 bit encryption with sixty-four characters. In every instance you double the number of characters and double the strength of the encryption.

Somehow, I didn't think Simon was nerdy enough from what Dag described to be able to generate a 384 bit encryption key.

So what did I have to work with? I decided to try all combinations. I figured that the key would not be a scramble of the 24 characters, but could be any combination of the sets of letters. There are three combinations of just one set. Six combinations of two sets (order counts). And finally, there would be six more combinations that included all the possible arrangements of all three sets. I had no expectation that it would be any of the latter.

I started plugging them in when the disk launched and it asked for the encryption key. Fifteen straight failures. I looked at the three original numbers. The first two, Dag had written on a notepad in the hospital in his neat, precise lettering. The last one I photographed off Bradley's dead body with my cell phone. I examined all three to see if there was any other letters that I could substitute for the numbers or the sounds in the words. I came up blank. I didn't know what Simon's and Angel's tattoos looked like, but if they were like Bradley's there must have been some elaborate artwork that the words were encased in. Was there anything in the artwork that might lead to a clue? I couldn't find anything.

It was way past lunch-time and I was famished.

4:00 p.m.

About mid-afternoon there was a gentle knock at the office door. I called, "Come in," and Maizie came bounding across the office and leaped into my lap at the desk. She began vigorously washing my face with her tongue. I was laughing as I looked up to see Mrs. Prior.

"She insisted that she wanted to come to the office," Mrs. Prior said. "She's been going on about it since Sunday. I told her, give Miss Riley a chance to get her bearings, now. Don't rush things. But Maizie has a mind of her own. I finally had to give in and bring her down here."

"Oh, Maizie," I said. "You are wonderful. How could I not have thought of you without Dag. It must be terrible." Maizie lay down on my lap and put one huge paw over her nose and whined.

"She says she misses Dag," Mrs. Prior interpretted. "She was worried about you. She thought maybe you were gone, too."

"No, Maizie," I answered. "I'm here. And it looks like I'm going to be here for a while. You can come and visit anytime you want to."

"Mmmm hmmm," Mrs. Prior stuttered. "You see, about that." Oh, no. She was going to tell me that Maizie couldn't come to visit. I'd miss her terribly. How could she do such a thing. "Maizie was Dag's dog," she continued. "According to Mr. Andersen, Dag left everything he owned to you. That means Maizie is your dog now."

"My??? Oh my." I was floored. I know my stupid eyes were watering again. Maizie lifted her muzzled and licked my cheek. How can I ever hope to be all that Dag expected of me?

"Maizie is sending me pictures of jumping up and down in pink ribbons when she thinks of you," Mrs. Prior said. "I think she is very happy that you are hers."

"But I can't keep a dog in my apartment," I said forlornly. "It's a no-pets building."

"Well, dear, Maizie and I understand that you need some time to adjust. No one expects you to move straight into Dag's apartment tomorrow. I'm happy to sit with Maizie when you can't have her with you, but she hopes you will come to visit her and stay with her sometimes." Mrs. Prior talked so much like I expected Maizie to, that I sometimes forgot Mrs. Prior was in the room. "Do you know that Maizie goes upstairs at night to sleep, even though Dag isn't there?" Mrs. Prior asked. "She is so sad. This is the happiest I've seen her since Wednesday night when Dag got home."

"Do you want me as your pet, Maizie?" I asked the dog. After the past six months of hearing Mrs. Prior talk about her and to her, I no longer doubted that she communicated. "I'm not as good as Dag, but I'll take care of you."

"I see pictures of her dancing around on her back legs in excitement," Mrs. Prior answered. "Why don't you two have a quiet chat this afternoon. You can drop her back at my house when you leave for the day and I'll keep her at night. You really need to come and look after your apartment sometime."

"My apartment?" I suddenly saw new images in my mind. Dag had not left me just the business, he left me his entire life. Mrs. Prior was telling me that I could move into his apartment. The big question was "could I?"

"I'll bring Maizie up around seven if that is all right," I said. "We have food here for her dinner." As if I had just given her permission to be here, Maizie jumped up off my lap and ran once around the office as fast as her little legs could carry her, and then settled on her bed behind the sofa.

"She likes to walk up, you know," Mrs. Prior said. Then waved a cheery goodbye and left.

8:30 p.m.

I walked Maizie back home about 6:30. We went by way of the Post Office so I could mail the letter to Dag's cousin in Sweden. I resisted the temptation to read what he'd written her. Sometimes I'm too nosey. This time, I'd just let it pass. It was between him and his cousin. I wondered if she was nice. I hoped that I would hear from her sometime.

Maizie and I walked up the hill toward Dag's apartment and as we were passing a coffee shop, Maizie pulled on the leash, sat in front of the door and refused to go any further.

"Come on, girl," I coaxed. "That's a coffee shop. They don't allow dogs in there." She refused to move and I saw the barista come out from around the counter and approach the door. I braced for a lecture on pets in eating establishments. The door opened.

"Maizie!" the woman exclaimed. "How are you little girl? Don't you want to come in for a biscuit?" She looked at me curiously, then looked around. "Where's Dag?" she asked. Oh no. Another person who needed to be told. It was always so hard to say the words.

"I'm sorry," I said, "Dag passed away early Thursday morning. I've been trying to contact people he knew, but I didn't know he was known here." The barista's eyes glistened at the news.

"Oh. Are you his...?"

"Business Partner," I supplied.

"Won't you come in," she said. "I owe Maizie a biscuit."

"If it's okay," I answered.

"Oh yes. Until recently Dag stopped here every morning on his way to work," she said, leading us to a table. "You say he died Thursday morning? He was in Wednesday evening. Said he'd been out of town and that is why we hadn't seen him lately. I'm Jackie, by the way. Would you like an espresso?"

"Thanks," I said, "but I really shouldn't do caffeine this late in the day."

"It's okay. I'll make us decaf." She brought a dog biscuit and Maizie sat on her hind legs patiently while Jackie gave her the biscuit. Rather than crunch it up immediately, Maizie carried the biscuit to the other side of my chair, turned around three times and settled with it between her paws. Then she took a bite.

Jackie brought me a straight espresso in a demitasse and sat down opposite me. I learned that Dag and Maizie stopped here at Tovoni's every morning on the way to work and had done so up until a couple of weeks ago. Then she hadn't seen him until Wednesday night. He looked very tired, but she loved to watch him drink his coffee. He seemed transported.

The sneak. He knew he wasn't supposed to have coffee. Not for the past six months. But he'd been coming in here every morning anyway. I had to laugh as she told the story. I told her the time and place for the memorial service tomorrow and then walked Maizie the rest of the way home.

"What else are you going to tell me about Dag?" I asked her. She seemed very proud of herself.

When we got to the apartment, I knocked on Mrs. Prior's door to tell her we were there. She motioned me up the stairs and told me to take my time. Maizie led me up to Dag's apartment.

It was so much like it was after Thanksgiving when I'd spent the night on Dag's sofa and he'd touched my head and comforted me. God! How I wish I could have comforted him. I didn't know until that week how sick he was.

Everything in the apartment was clean and neat. I walked from room to room. I looked at pictures. I touched his clothes. I ran a hand over the top of his bed.

I'd made a lot of suggestions to Dag, half-knowing that he'd never take me up on them. But here I was feeling more intimate with him than in any of our encounters while he was alive.

I sat for a few minutes in his chair and looked at the picture on the wall. It wasn't terrible, like Rhonda thought of it. It was a little primitive, but it did have a way of capturing your thoughts. I'd sat there for almost an hour before I decided it was time to go home and go to bed.

I'm going to have to take this in little doses. If I try to swallow it all at once I'm sure I'll die.