“Remember how you were riding around on the cart, trying to see where Ted could have been ambushed?” I reminded him.
“Yes,” he said, shaking his head. “And I’m afraid the only place it seemed at all likely was right outside poor Jack Ransom’s cube.”
“And I don’t happen to think Jack did it,” I said.
Perhaps I said it a little too vehemently.
“I don’t see why you’re so upset about his arrest,” Dad said, frowning. “I mean, at least the chief doesn’t suspect your brother anymore.”
“Oh, it’s okay to arrest an innocent person as long as he’s not family?”
“Well, what do we really know about Jack?” Dad said. “He’s a nice enough fellow; I can see why you might be worried about him, but - “
“I don’t care if he’s nice or the most obnoxious person left on staff now that Ted’s gone,” I said. “As far as I can figure out, he’s an essential part of the Lawyers from Hell II development team, so if he’s unjustly jailed or having to spend a lot of his time fighting a bogus murder charge, that’s bad for the new release, bad for Mutant Wizards, and bad for people like you and me who have money in the company. So if there’s a chance this very important staff member might actually be innocent, I think we should find out.”
When I put it that way, Dad seemed reassured that I wasn’t taking an inappropriate interest in Jack’s welfare and reluctantly turned his attention to the floor tiles. At least, he was reluctant until we discovered that the best way to test whether they were glued down tight was to dance around on them in a sort of modified soft-shoe step.
Of course, this discovery drove any hope of stealth and secrecy out the window. Dad progressed from humming to singing as we skipped, stepped, shuffled, and moonwalked our way up and down the corridors.
“Singin’ in the rain! I’m singin’ in the rain!” Dad caroled, waving an imaginary umbrella and splashing through imaginary puddles. The next thing I knew, he had frolicked his way into the men’s room, which had much better acoustics. Of course, it didn’t happen to have any carpet tiles, but presumably the lengthy session of tap dancing Dad conducted on its ceramic tiled floors was essential to determine whether Ted had been interfering with the integrity of the grout.
I had less fun than Dad, since I interrupted my own pirouettes frequently to map any loose tiles the two of us dislodged. Gradually, a pattern of Ted’s mail cart experiments emerged. Apparently he had tried to send them through the bathrooms - die women’s room, anyway. I suspected that the ultraviolet dye didn’t stick well enough to the tiles to make diis scheme work; only in die grout could we detect any traces of it.
We’d been dirough the entire office once already, but Dad had switched from Gene Kelly to Fred Astaire and had begun retesting one of the large main hallways.
“You say tomayto, and I say tomahto,” he was warbling. I went into the reception area, spread my map out on the reception desk, and frowned down at it.
At least half a dozen cubes showed signs that Ted had rigged the cart to chug in and ram the occupant, and if he hadn’t actually detoured the cart through die lunchroom, die conference rooms, Rob’s office, the library, and the computer lab, he’d been planning to do so. And as I was staring at die map, something started to take shape in my mind.
“Anyplace else we need to test?” Dad asked, sticking his head into the reception area. “The hallway outside, maybe?”
“No, we’re finished,” I said. “I’ve got all die loose tiles marked on my floor plan now.”
“So what do you think it all means?” Dad asked. “Meg? Did you hear me? I said - “
“Right, right,” I muttered. I heard him, but my mind was elsewhere. So completely elsewhere that I tripped over one of the loose tiles on my way back into the library.
“Meg?” Dad said, following me.
“Hang on a minute,” I said.
I glanced around for the library steps, then pushed them back into place, where they’d been on Monday. Tucked the flashlight under my arm, climbed to the top, and sat where Liz had been sitting. Where she was in the habit of sitting. My shoulders were level with the top shelf of the bookcase, and if I looked to my left, I could see the reception area. I shone my flashlight down and to the right. With the beam, I followed a path outlined by the loose tiles - a path that, if you replaced the blank tiles with marked ones, would lead the mail cart right up to the base of the ladder. The spots that made the cart stop could have been where one of the tiles was loose at the base of the ladder.