“So, just in case there are any lingering doubts, Sophia got the job fair and square, and I’m happy to say as much if anyone raises any questions.” Marcus was talking in that diction peculiar to lawyers. He was, in other words, doing his job. Zula had come to depend on him. She had first met him on the day after Dodge had been stricken. He was the junior associate who had shown up in Alice’s hotel suite, acting as Stan Peterson’s wingman. After his stint at Argenbright Vail, he had begun putting his legal powers to use in the service of nonprofit organizations, and ended up here.

“Noted,” Zula said.

“Well played,” Marcus said, nodding at Sophia.

“If you have a minute to spare,” Zula said, “this young intern and I were just about to have a discussion of how she intends to use her time here at the foundation.”

“Of course. If I wouldn’t be intruding on family matters, that is,” Marcus said, edging toward an available chair.

“Marcus, it’s the Forthrast Family Foundation,” Zula reminded him.

Marcus laughed. They all sat down.

“Interns have a lot of leeway here,” Zula said. “Marcus pointed out to me a long time ago that anyone who makes it through our application process is, by definition, overqualified and underpaid. No one’s under any illusions as to why Ivy League students do internships. It’s all about résumé building. We could have our interns fetch coffee for us, but that wouldn’t serve their needs and would amount to taking jobs away from people in the community who could use that sort of work.”

“Point being,” Marcus added, “that we choose the best people we can find first, and get them in the door. Choosing a summer project tends to take care of itself.”

Sophia had been smiling and nodding through this, looking every inch the bright young intern.

“So,” Zula said, “this is the part where you’re supposed to tell us what you want to spend the summer working on.”

“Since you planned everything else out so carefully, I’m guessing you have a proposal,” Marcus said.

Sophia nodded. “I would like to work with You Know What.” After a pause for that to sink in, she added, “Or, depending on how you think about these things, You Know Who.”

“You want the password to DB,” Zula said.

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

DB was Dodge’s Brain. Corvallis Kawasaki had coined the term; in nerd-speak it was also a pun on a common abbreviation of “database.”

It was not a single unitary thing. It was a sprawling web of directories in which was contained every scrap of information that had emerged from the epic project to satisfy the requirements in the disposition of remains that Richard Forthrast had signed long before his death.