Ghost Writer(51)

“Okay. Then sit down and have some breakfast.”

Cookie left the table and returned a little later with a stack of waffles and a jug of juice. Gravell, and the few others who had not yet eaten, made short work of the stack. Another appeared in time for Franchot's conclusion which was that as soon as the second storm front passed, he'd be sending the robots down to check out the station.

“And now I want to eat,” he said, pulling the plate of waffles towards him. Then he looked around at the members of his crew that had stopped to listen.

“I am almost positive some of you are supposed to be working right now.”

The wardroom emptied, leaving Franchot, Gravell, and me. Even Tracy and Jamal left, perhaps remembering they had jobs to do too.

I flexed my hands and stretched my arms.

“I suppose, I had better get to work too. I need to translate my notes before I forget what they mean.”

“Where will you be working, Madame Kirby?” Gravell asked.

“That depends. Can I occupy a corner of ops again, Skipper?”

“Don't see why not. It might get a bit busy in there later, but you'll want to be in the thick of that too, won't you?”

“That's my job.”

“Perhaps I can help, Madame Kirby. You could dictate from your notes, and I could type.”

I gave him an odd look.

“Not that I want to disparage your offer of help, Chief Gravell, but I'm getting the impression that your offer is just an excuse to watch me.”

“I wondered that too,” Franchot remarked, pouring a second glass of juice.

Gravell leaned back in his chair with such an expression of genuine and obvious amusement on his face that I found myself smiling back automatically.

“I don't need an excuse to watch you, Madame Kirby. It's my job. Speaking of which, Skipper, you better let Mercuros know he’s back to being First Mate.”

“He never stopped.”

Gravell nodded and turned back to me.

“Since I'm going to be watching you, Madame Kirby. I might as well make myself useful.”

“I need to go get my briefcase,” I said, figuring I could use the privacy of my cabin to get some answers out of Gravell, answers I didn’t think he’d give in public.

“I'll meet you in ops.”

Damn him. He knew.

“Fine, bring coffee.”

“Don't forget the phone, Madame Kirby.”





Chapter Twenty-Seven ~ Answers and Questions



The research team had a cramped, but well-equipped lab. On the way to ops, I stopped by to see if Mary Lou had processed the samples from the station's galley. In this setting, it was clear that Mary Lou wasn't just a good ol' country girl, she was every inch the professional. As I noted aboard the station, in this mode, she took the lead and Mike stepped down from his role as alpha male and protective husband. He, Tracy, and Jamal were serving as her assistants.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“Sure thing, hon. Just put on a white coat, hair net and a pair of gloves. We don't want to contaminate anything with stray organics.”

At least I wasn't going to be shedding waffle batter. I cleaned up when I went for my stuff. I left my brief case with my windbreaker by the door and picked out a lab coat that looked like it was about the right size. There were a few spares besides the one with Dora's name sewn on it. The disposable hairnets and gloves were on a shelf above the coat hooks.

“I just dropped by to find out if you had started on swabs you took. Now I'm suited up, maybe I can get a closer look at what you're doing. If that's okay.”

“As a matter of fact, we're working backwards through the evidence collected ‘cause I wanted to start with the swabs. Mind now, we can only do so much here. I can tell you we found blood from at least two people, because we have two blood types. One is almost certainly from Reuben's daddy. He was the only one with type B negative. The other samples could be from Papa, Mike's uncle, Golanger, or some combination of them. They were all type O positive. If I had the chance, I could have sent the samples with Dora so she could get them to a lab for DNA mapping. As it is, it'll take a couple of weeks from whenever we do get the samples out.”

“It looks like murder to me,” Jamal remarked.

“Suspicious deaths,” Tracy corrected.

“We have no proof that anyone died. If they died, we don't know that the deaths weren't accidental. We don't even know if the blood has anything to do with the deaths. There isn't enough of it to make a judgement call. Someone cleaned up. Jamal is currently processing cleanser residue while Tracy processes finger prints with help from Mike.”

I turned to Tracy.

“And?”

“We didn't get anything in the galley. All the surfaces we got to, before the explosion, were clean. I'm working on the material we took out of the living quarters. There's a lot to go through. They must have passed stuff around a lot. Most items have the owner's plus at least a couple of other people's prints on them.”

“Did anyone touch everything?” I asked.

“We haven't processed everything,” Tracy reminded me, “but Lieutenant Minton's prints show up a lot.”

I nodded. If he went through Boreman's personal belongings, he probably went through the others.