Janine Marie - Rigging a Murder 01 - The Single Shoe Mystery (6 page)

Chapter Eight

Homeward Bound

L
eaving Princess Louisa behind us, we turned to see the Malibu Rapids fade away in the distance.

“Finally, we are homeward bound,” I said.

“What a way to end the summer,” Thomas said, turning to look forward at the horizon and blue sky.

“Not what you had in mind?” I asked.

“No, I planned on sun and relaxation, and now that we have to go home. Just look at the weather…it’s spooky that just as we’re finally leaving Princess Louisa, it’s all sun and blue sky.”

“Well, we were pushing the season. This is Canada and fall starts early here,” I teased.

“Yeah, Dad, the further north you go the colder it gets.”

“Humph. Okay, I suppose we can’t complain about the weather—but a murder?”

“At least it was exciting,” Katie contributed.

“True, but I don’t go boating for excitement,” grumped Thomas in reply.

Katie turned her head and looked at him inquiringly, while I tried to stifle a giggle.

“To relax and enjoy nature.” Thomas threw the boat cloth at her that he had been using to wipe the dew off of the seats and life lines. “Stop teasing me and wipe down the windows so I can see better.”

“After I do the windows, can I go down below and watch a movie?” Katie asked.

“You are just trying to get out of sight so we don’t give you any more boat jobs,” I replied, smiling. “Don’t look so surprised that I’m on to you. I was young once, too, you know. Here is the deal: after you’ve finished wiping down the windows you need to read for an hour; then you can watch your movie. It’s going to be a long trip home.”

Glaring at me, Katie countered, “What are you going to do?”

“You had better drop the attitude, young lady, or I won’t turn on the inverter that powers your DVD player and TV.”

Giving me a big bright smile, Katie went instantly from sulky to cheerful in the way that only a pre-teen can.

“I’m going to finish wiping down the table and seats, then I’m going to make some bread. If that meets with your approval?” I said.

“Can you make cookies or brownies instead?” Katie asked with optimism.

“No, but you can,” I replied.

“Okay,” came her enthusiastic answer.

“But you have to make them by yourself and do all the cleanup.”

“Humph… Dad, why don’t you make a 3D printer that can make chocolate chip cookies or brownies?”

“Ha ha, like the food replicator on Star Trek,” Thomas laughed. His company makes commercial 3D printers.

“Why not?” inquired Katie.

“Maybe someday. But our 3D printers work with an additive process, where an object is created by laying down successive layers of material.

“What is 3D printing exactly?” Katie asked, clearly confused. “3D printing is a process of making three-dimensional solid objects from a digital model. An example for you might be making a clay pinch pot. I know you like to make things with clay, correct?”

“Yes, I made Mom a pinch pot last year and she keeps her favorite earrings in it.”

“Right. First, let’s say you drew out a detailed picture of the exact pot you wanted. Our products are made from digital drawings or complex computer code, …. Then you would make your pinch pot by taking a ball of clay, working with it until you could stick your thumbs in the middle and pull up the sides to make a bowl.” Here Thomas looked at Katie for her nod of both agreement and that she was still listening and following.

“That is called a subtractive process in traditional manufacturing techniques, which mostly rely on the removal of material by drilling, cutting, or in the case of a pinch pot using your thumbs and a wheel to pull at the clay and make your shape.

“Our 3D printing machines make products by building them up instead—more like making a coil pot. For a coil pot you roll the clay between your hands until you make long coils, then you stack the coils one on top of the other until you have made the shape of a bowl. That’s exactly what our 3D printing machines do, but we make plastic and metal components. We’re a long way from being able to crack eggs, mix in liquids and flour and other dry ingredients, then cook them. That said, we just incorporated phase-change memory chips into our machines, and who knows where that might lead in the future?”

“What is phase-change memory?” I asked, intrigued. I had never heard of it before.

“Phase-change memory is a type of non-volatile random-access memory that—”

“I’m leaving now,” interrupted Katie as she disappeared down into the boat, her window wiping completed.

Laughing, I said, “Either she has gone to make a pinch pot, watch a movie, or both. Now tell me about this memory, and why is it important?”

“Well, phase-change memory chips are both faster and more durable than traditional flash memory. What’s really exciting is it can retain information even when the power is switched off.”

“How does it do that?”

“Phase-change memory chips rely on a glass-like material called chalcogenides.” Noting my confused expression, he continued, “Chalcogenides is, as I said, a glass-like material typically made of a mixture of germanium, antimony, and tellurium.”

“Okay, and why is this special glass so great?”

“This glass can switch between two states: crystalline and amorphous. The amorphous state is a disorderly state; think of the amorphous state being binary code ‘0,’ compared to a crystalline or orderly state with a binary number ‘1’. Chalcogenides can do this switch very quickly when an electrical current causes one of the electrodes on either side of the chalcogenides to heat up, thus causing the chalcogenides to melt to an amorphous or disorderly state, and as it cools again if forms a crystalline structure or orderly state.”

“That’s very cool, but why is it better than traditional flash memory?” I asked, trying to visualize this glass-like structure changing from a solid to liquid form quickly, still unclear how that holds memory.

“Writing to individual flash-memory cells involves erasing the entire region of neighboring cells first. This is not necessary with phase-change memory, which makes it much faster. In fact, some prototype phase-change memory devices can store and retrieve data a hundred times faster than flash memory.”

Deciding that the conversation was getting a bit technical, I asked, “So how does this new memory chip help your 3D printing machines?”

“Our machines are currently controlled from a laptop or computer. What we’re working on is a machine with the computer built in. It will have a menu, sort of like a vending machine or Katie’s food replicator from Star Trek, but not for food. Think of a plumber or car mechanic. Instead of having a truck or shop full of inventory and having to wait and order parts, they would have our 3D printers with a menu of all the possible parts and print what they needed on site. A component or part can even be scanned or searched for and loaded up to be printed.”

“That’s a huge benefit to a company! What a savings. Not having to keep a huge inventory, and phase-change memory makes this possible?” I asked.

“That’s right. It’s because the phase-change memory combines both RAM and ROM memory, so when you turn off the machine you don’t lose anything. Plus, as I already mentioned, it’s much smaller, and faster.”

“I can’t wait to see it in action!” I exclaimed. “Can I have a demo when we get home?”

“Of course, I would love to show it to you,” Thomas said smiling.

“Great! Well, until you build Katie and me our 3D printing food replicator, I’d better get to making that bread so it has time to rise,” I said, and headed down to the galley to start making the dough.

Chapter Nine

Yacht Club Fundraiser

T
he Archipelago Yacht Club we belong to is a traditional colonial-style building on the waterfront. Inside it is very elegant with its wood-paneled walls, dark leather furniture, and large fireplaces, plus the club has one of the best views in town. If you are lucky enough to be a member or know a member, you can book your wedding or special event in this beautiful venue. Membership in this private club is very expensive and you have to be sponsored and interviewed first; then you go on a wait list, as the club membership is full, only opening up as older members die. Like most of our friends at the Yacht Club we are second- or third-generation members. My parents were members and signed me up at the young age of seven, the earliest age you can become a junior member, so I had a lot of seniority in the club and that was helpful in securing a good berth (docking space) for our boat. We had signed Katie up at seven, too, continuing the tradition of family membership.

I had met Thomas at the Yacht Club during sailboat racing season. Thomas was an avid yacht racer and his family’s race boat had won the cup for several years. I also enjoy racing sailboats, though I chose the fun boat instead. The club has many members, like our family, who are passionate about boating but aren’t rich. That said, there is still a large percentage of the membership who are very wealthy, people with private jets, super yachts, and “trust fund kids” whose family trusts pays them a monthly amount plus a lump sum at various milestones in their lives (we secretly call them “the lucky sperm club”). The Yacht Club hosts many charity events and fundraising dinners as it’s a great way for those fortunate members to give back, plus many of them really enjoy organizing the events.

Tonight’s fall fundraiser was the first of the season and a benefit for cancer research, a cause that was dear to my heart, as one of our Yacht Club friends had passed away from a brain tumor the previous year. As we entered the formal dining room, I heard my name called.

“Janeva, Thomas—how are you? Come over to our table and say hi to Catherine and Stella,” John Blackwood commanded, as he intercepted us. We obediently went with him to the table. For my part I was surprised to see Stella and Catherine chatting amiably, especially after the revelations on the boat a few weeks before, when we’d all been docked at the Yacht Club outstation in Princess Louisa Inlet, British Columbia.

“Sit, sit!” said John, pulling out a chair for me beside Stella and waving Thomas to one next to his, across the table.

We sat down; to do anything else would not have been polite. After an awkward silence a general conversation started up about what everyone had done after leaving Princess Louisa three weeks earlier. This, too, was awkward because no one mentioned Lorenzo’s murder. Realizing that the presentations were to begin soon and wanting to sit with our regular group of friends, including Greg and Stephanie, we started to make our excuses. That group had saved seats for us at a table at the back of the room, where those of us who don’t have huge fortunes to give big donations are relegated.

“It was good to see you all again; the program is about to start, so we had best get to our seats,” I said, standing to an approving nod from Thomas

“No, no; you mustn’t go. We’re short two people at our table and it would look bad to have a front table not full,” Catherine pronounced emphatically, looking concerned.

Thomas and I exchanged looks. There were two empty seats besides the ones we had filled, and we really didn’t feel comfortable sitting with this group.

As if on cue, Trent Braise-Bottom the Third and his wife appeared, and with smiles all around took the remaining two seats.

This was getting stranger by the minute, and to my great dismay the MC got up to start the event, thus making escape impossible. We were now, by all standards of polite conduct, committed to spend the evening, at least the dinner and presentation part of the evening, at the Blackwoods’ table. This in itself was an interesting thought as they were not actually members of the club. Regardless, we were stuck, and could only wave sadly to our friends, who sat toasting and laughing at us from the back of the room. To add insult to injury, the table we had been trapped at was at the very front of the room and its occupants were actually expected to bid on auction items… we neither wanted nor could afford to bid on items like a weekend via private jet to Disneyland or a weeklong stay at a member’s vacation home on Mystic Island in five-star luxury.

We managed to survive the bidding part of the evening and were relieved when the dancing started. Or so we thought.

“Thomas,” I whispered. “Ask Catherine to dance!”

“Why?” he inquired, looking very perplexed

“She is getting sloshed and just ordered her third bottle of wine!”

“So? Lots of people are getting drunk.”

“Right, but the more she drinks, the more she leans on John, and Stella looks furious.”

“It’s too bad John is such a nice guy… anyone else would have sent her home.”

“Thomas, please?”

“Oh, okay, but you owe me.”

So off they went to dance. Fortunately for Thomas it wasn’t a slow dance, and they ended up dancing in a group.

“What’s going on?” asked Steph, coming to sit beside me at the now empty table. Trent and his wife, Wiffy, had left early, and John and Stella had gone to join the dancing circle.

Looking at the dancing group in dismay, I replied, “I sent Thomas to dance with Catherine as she was downing bottles of champagne like water, then flirting with John. Stella is fuming, so I hoped to diffuse the situation, but as you can see it didn’t work very well.”

We both looked up to see Thomas at the bar, happily talking to our friends, Catherine dirty dancing with John, and Stella desperate to get John’s attention by dirty dancing with another Yacht Club member, who was looking very uncomfortable and confused, thus ruining her whole performance.

“I just can’t see this ending well,” I said to Steph with a shake of my head, “but I don’t know how to derail this train wreck.”

Laughing at my analogy she said, “We need to get Catherine in a taxi and send her home!”

“And how do you propose we do that?” I inquired.

“Hmmm, good point. First we need to get her off the dance floor.” Steph paused, looking around.

“Right,” I said following her gaze. “Thomas failed to keep her dancing—”

“Maybe we can get John to dance her outside to a taxi?” she suggested.

The dance ended and Catherine came back to the table to gulp her champagne down like water.

“Now what?” Steph mouthed.

I gave her a slight shrug of my shoulders, then turned to Catherine, who was sitting beside me, and asked her if she was sleeping on her boat tonight, as we were.

“No,” she slurred, it coming out more like Noooth. “Iths still impounded in Canada by the police.”

“Oh, right, but you’re not driving?” I asked, anticipating the standard drunk response of “I’m fine.”

“John is driving” was her response, much to my relief. But it was short-lived given her next words—“John has been so sweet and supportive since Lorenzo’s death, he has helped with everything…,” here she stopped to refill her glass.

“John and Stella have been staying with you this whole time?” I asked, taken by surprise. “What about your family?”

“I don’t have any,” she replied, looking very sad. Having no good response, I just patted her hand.

“Papa died a few years back,” she continued morosely. “My mom died when I was very young, so I have no siblings, and we were unable to have children” she finished.

“Oh,” was all I could manage.

“But John has been wonderful,” she said, as tears ran down her perfectly made-up cheeks.

I gave her a hug and said I would find John and Stella to take her home.

“She has no one,” I said to Steph later, as the evening wrapped up. “It’s no wonder she is clinging so hard to John. I’m extrapolating here, but it sounds like she was doted on by both her father and Lorenzo and never really grew up.”

“Well, that might explain her helpless and childish behavior.”

“I’m tired; where has Thomas disappeared to?”

We found Thomas and Greg in the games room in the middle of a pool game. We sat and watched for a short time; then, realizing that they were going to be a while, we left them to their game and headed back to our respective boats.

“Where is Katie tonight?” Steph asked as we walked down the dock.

“At a sleepover with her BFF Alix; see you tomorrow.”

“Brunch at 11 o’clock?”

“I’ll definitely be there!” I replied, “I can’t speak for Thomas, it depends on how long he spends playing pool,” I added, laughing.