The five kids welcomed me right away. The middle one was Julie Fantod. She was sixteen and a half years old with all the mystery and allure of an older woman. She was just a little taller than I was with very dark brown hair and eyes as deep and blue as polished sapphires. Her dark hair framed her pale face in stark contrast and when she smiled, the smile grew slowly across her face as her presence filled the room. It felt a lot like the sun coming from behind a cloud.
"Hi, Tad. I'm sorry to hear about your parents."
What happened to my parents, I thought for just a moment before the crushing reality of the situation descended on me once again.
"Yeah, it must be tough," added Bobby Fantod, "but you can count on us to help you through."
The rest of the kids nodded and murmured in affirmation.
"Why don't you kids show Tad around the house?" offered Uncle Jesse.
I was hoping that Julie would be my tour guide, but I got stuck with Bobby instead, and his two younger brothers that everyone just referred to as 'The Twins'. After a few minutes of exploring this neat old house, I had completely forgotten about Julie Fantod. Well, maybe not completely.
One evening I was playing hide and seek with Bobby and the twins. In the attic there were several gabled windows with window ledges big enough to lie down in. The curtains hung flush with the wall so you could crawl in behind the curtains and hide. Even though everyone knew about these hiding places nobody liked to check them. The attic was dark and creepy and there were six windows in which you could hide. The person looking for you had to check all six which made the suspense build with each empty sill. Usually you would jump out at the person who found you making some unholy noise and scaring the crap out of them. So nobody liked checking, making it my favorite hiding place. I heard the twins come in and was trying to decide between making a ghost noise or an ax murderer noise when they called out "Taddy, Uncle Earl is here to see you." Then they turned and went downstairs. I waited a few minutes to see if it was just a ruse, but I didn't hear anything so I left my hiding place and went downstairs, too.
Uncle Earl was sitting at the dining room table and offered me a seat.
"Taddy, I've gone through your parents accounts and have done the best I can to straighten them out. Your father was involved in some shady businesses that I can't seem to get to the bottom of. He set up corporations in false names, presumably so they couldn't be traced back to him if the nature of the activities were discovered. I assume that he had signature authority in these corporations, but now that he's dead I have no way to prove ownership. He used names that were all versions of family names. For example, one of his pseudonyms is J. Thaddeus. Another is Katherine Worth, which means your mother had to have been involved, at least to the extent of signing papers. The problem is that I have no paper trail to show that these corporations are part of your parent's estate."
"I'm not sure what this means, Uncle Earl."
"It means that although your parents were quite well off, they left you very little money. I will keep trying to track down and liquidate these phony corporations, but, for now, it isn't very promising."
"But, I'm still not sure what that means."
"It means this, Taddy. If you had directly inherited your parent's estate, you would be set for life. You would never have to work unless you chose to. As it is right now, if I liquidate everything that I can legally include in their estate, you will have enough money to get you through the next five years. You could finish high school and cover a couple years of moderate college expenses. But then you would have to go to work to support yourself. You might even have to work part time while you're in college to make ends meet."
His face was very sad. It pained him to tell me this. I knew he felt responsible for the bad news even though there was little he could do about it. What he didn't know was that his being there for me was far more important to me than the money.
Back in my office, Patience was working intensely on some web database project. I was leaning back in my chair thinking about nothing in particular when a thought occurred to me that made me lurch upright.
"Patience. Didn't you tell me that the backup system won't take tapes out of sequence."
"That's right. You have to enter the sequence number and the volume serial number of the tape. The system advances the sequence number with each backup and checks each time to make sure that it is getting the right tape."
"What if someone were to inadvertently mess up the tape sequence?"
"Either you would have to straighten out the sequence, or reprogram the sequencer."
"Does Haggerty use the same backup software that we use?"
"Everybody used the same backup software. We got it free from an alumni."
I saw Angel in the hallway. She was wearing blue jeans and a Jimmy Hendrix t-shirt with the words "S'cuse me while I kiss the sky" written up the side and across her chest. Jimmy was playing his guitar behind his back and looking a lot less black than I remembered. I explained the situation with the backup software to her.
"Well, I never checked the tapes myself. Professor Haggerty said that they were messed up and that it was my fault. I believed him that they were messed up. I just didn't think it was my fault."
"Either the tapes are not really messed up or Haggerty reprogrammed the sequencer." I offered. "Maybe you can check the tapes and see which is the case." I felt like a traitor. Frank was such a wonderful guy that I hated to go behind his back, but I needed to get to the bottom of this.
"I'll check it out," Angel said. She suddenly came into focus as though a camera lens had brought two fuzzy images together into one clear one and looked, suddenly, like a woman on a mission. She turned lightly on her toes and walked out. "In fact, I'll look into it right away."
I turned to Patience, "Well, maybe we'll get to the bottom of this." But she completely ignored me and concentrated on her computer screen.