“I guess we know which path he took,” I said. Now you couldn’t browse the Web, turn on the TV or pick up a magazine without encountering an Igobe ad. They were even plastered on buses and taxis. It seemed wrong that a product whose key selling point was its ability to protect one’s privacy was advertised in such an invasive way.
“Iggie did exactly what he wanted once Leo wasn’t around to argue with him.”
“Then what happened? With you and Iggie?” Luisa asked, her tone gentle. She had plenty of gentleness to spare for people she didn’t hold responsible for her nicotine-deprived state, and she also had her own reasons to be interested in Abigail’s personal history.
Abigail looked down at her glass of wine. “I didn’t have a lot of experience romantically, and Iggie really swept me off my feet when we were in school. It never felt right to me, but I didn’t know how it was supposed to feel. The marriage started going south pretty much right after the wedding, but Leo’s death was the catalyst. It sounds like a cliché, but it drove home that I only had one life to live. I left Iggie a few weeks after Leo died, and I made a lot of other changes.” She lifted her eyes to meet Luisa’s. “And here I am.”
This was as good an opportunity for a tender moment as I’d ever seen, and if I’d been less impatient or if Luisa had been nicer to me that day I would have let it take its course. “And there’s Iggie, about to become a billionaire,” I said instead. “That’s awfully convenient.”
Abigail managed to tear her gaze from Luisa, and I could tell I’d struck a chord. “It was convenient, wasn’t it? This is going to sound crazy, but part of me always wondered whether Iggie had anything to do with the fire. The timing of everything couldn’t have been better for him. Once Leo was dead, Iggie could take the business in the direction he wanted, without any obstacles. He’s already made a bundle since then, and once Igobe goes public, he’s going to be seriously rich.”
“Was there any suspicion of arson?” asked Ben.
“No. At least, not officially. The investigators said it looked as if a spark had landed on the rug in front of the hearth. The fire spread quickly from there, and Leo didn’t manage to get out. But they didn’t find any evidence of foul play. Iggie kept telling people he thought it was suicide, that Leo was still depressed about his father’s death and set the fire himself. He said Leo wanted to die in a fire because his father had been cremated. But Iggie saying all that just made me wonder if he was trying to deflect suspicion from himself.”
“Did Leo have any other close friends or relatives?” I asked. Perhaps somebody else had suspected Iggie of foul play, too, somebody who knew enough about Igobe’s software to hack it and who cared enough about Leo to avenge his death. Maybe a commie computer-whiz girlfriend who called herself Petite Fleur?
But Abigail shook her head. “Leo was a loner, especially after his father died. All he cared about was his work, and music and Scat. He was a big fan of the masses, but only from a distance.”
“Did Iggie know you suspected him?” asked Peter.
“Maybe. Probably. But it didn’t worry him. There wasn’t much I could do about it. It wasn’t like I had any proof. He was home the night of the fire, working in his home office, but he might have sneaked out for an hour or two without my noticing, especially since we were barely speaking at that point. He could have gone up to the cabin, incapacitated Leo in some way and then started the fire to cover his tracks. I never would have thought he had it in him, but he’s always been so ambitious, and everything fell into place for him once Leo was out of the way. He didn’t even pretend to be upset when Leo died. Two days later he’d renamed the company and cashed a big check from a venture-capital firm. Two weeks after that, ads for Igobe were everywhere. And now Igobe’s about to sell shares to the public for more money than I think even Iggie ever dreamed of.”
A silence fell over the table; each of us was thinking through the implications of what Abigail had told us, and I don’t think I was the only one feeling a newly heightened sense of alarm, and it wasn’t just because my hopes for the career-redeeming prospects of the Igobe IPO were fading fast. While we’d been concerned that Iggie wouldn’t be pleased if Hilary wrote an article claiming Igobe’s technology could be hacked, we’d dismissed the idea that he presented a real threat.
But that was before we knew what had happened to the last person to get in Iggie’s way. We had a lot more to be concerned about if Iggie was capable of murder.
15
Peter seemed as shocked as any of us about Abigail’s secret history, but I guessed she hadn’t included details about her personal life on her résumé. “Can you get in touch with Iggie?” He asked her now. “Or do you know where he lives?”
“We used to rent a house in Los Altos, but he’s moved since then, and I don’t have the new address or even a phone number. He’s paranoid about people knowing his personal information. And we handled all of the correspondence for the divorce through our lawyers. Iggie wasn’t very happy about the split, to put it mildly, and it was easier not to deal with him directly.” She hesitated. “I’d mentioned to Luisa that there’s someone I can call who always knows how to reach him. It won’t be easy-it’s a last-resort type of option-but I can do it if you’re desperate.”
“We’re pretty desperate,” I said.
“We might even be very desperate,” said Luisa. “Given what you’ve told us about Iggie, it sounds as if Hilary could be in serious trouble.”
Abigail seemed to be taking our measure, weighing just how desperate we really were against making a call she was reluctant to make. Apparently we came across as sufficiently pathetic, or maybe she was just trying to please Luisa or even Peter, who was not only her friend but her boss, as well, although this sort of thing certainly wasn’t covered in her job description. “Okay. If it’s that important to you, I’ll give it a shot.”
She’d had only a few sips of her wine while we’d been talking, but now she lifted the glass to her lips and took a big gulp, as if to fortify her for what she was about to do next. Then she took her cell phone from her bag. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
But a full twenty minutes elapsed before Abigail returned, and when she did she looked as if she could use another glass of wine, or perhaps several Valium with a bottle of tequila as a chaser.
“Victory?” asked Luisa hopefully.
Abigail waved a slip of paper with a phone number scrawled across it. “I wouldn’t call it that, but I did get a phone number. It’s a six-five-zero area code, so it’s somewhere near Palo Alto, but I couldn’t get an address.”
“Who did you call?” I asked. “Or whom?”
“Even The Igster has a mother,” she said with a wry smile. “And let’s just say that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. A tree who thought naming her first-born Igor was a fabulous idea.”
Abigail felt it would be best for her to make the call to Iggie, but the rest of us wanted to listen in, and after some persuasion, she agreed. “In fact, it would probably be good to have other people witness how impossible a conversation with him can be-otherwise you’d think I was making it up. But we should hurry,” she said with a glance at her watch. “Iggie goes to bed exactly at midnight when he has work the next day, and he never answers the phone once he’s started his prebed routine.”
I didn’t particularly want to know what Iggie’s bedtime routine might entail, and I was glad when nobody else asked. We decided to go up to Luisa’s room, where there was a speakerphone. Now that we knew we were being watched, we were all on our best behavior in the elevator, although it seemed unfriendly not to wave at the cameras hidden behind the mirrors. Once in the suite, Luisa took the phone from the desk and set it on the glass coffee table in the living room so we would all be able to hear.