“I wouldn’t actually put my money on ecology nuts,” Rod said with a sigh. “I don’t know what it is, but those Indians have it in for me. I think maybe this was their way of saying I’d better watch my step.” He let his smile turn bitter. “Funny thing about people who claim they want equal rights—they don’t, not really. What they want is superior treatment, not equal. And they squawk if they don’t get it. Sometimes they do more than squawk.”

“‘All pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others,’” the detective quoted, in a kind of mutter. He made a few more notes in his book, and flipped the cover closed. “All right, Mr. Calligan, I think that will be all for now. Thank you for being so cooperative.”

“Thank you,” Rod Calligan replied automatically. “Keep me posted on what you find out, will you?”

“Sure thing,” the detective replied. He wouldn’t, Calligan knew that, as he knew they both had to go through the motions.

But as the detective headed for his sedan, and Calligan for the cool interior of his air-conditioned BMW, he was still a most contented man. The seed had been sown. Now to nurture it, and make it grow.

Jennifer tucked the phone between her shoulder and cheek, and waited for Ron Sinor’s secretary to see if he was “in” for her. Meanwhile, with one hand she grabbed the stacked sheets of paper off the printer, and with the other, she reached for a tamperproof Tyvek envelope.

“I’m putting you through to his office now,” the secretary said, and there was a click, and a short ring, picked up almost immediately.

“Miss Talldeer, glad to hear from you—” Ron said, cautiously.

“You should be even gladder when I tell you that the background checks you asked me to run took less time than I estimated,” she replied, evening the edges of the pile of papers and slipping them neatly into the Tyvek envelope. “They’re done; do you want me to send them by regular mail, or would you rather I called a messenger service or dropped them over myself?”

“How ‘eyes only’ are they?” Ron asked cautiously.

“Depends on how you feel about alcoholics,” she said. “Personally, I wouldn’t want one writing my software. Sometimes I suspect that was what was wrong with the last release of my word-processing package.”

Ron chuckled; he could afford to, since his company wrote oil-field analysis software, not word-processing programs. “Overnight mail, and make it registered, too,” he replied decisively. “That way only Judy and I will see it.”

“Done and done.” Jennifer slipped the tamperproof envelope into a bigger Priority Mail bag, and grabbed a ballpoint pen to fill out the adhesive waybill. One advantage of having an office a half block from a local post office. “The bill’s in there, too.”