Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery (24 page)

“Show me who he is, and I’ll stake out Clockworks for a few days.  If I don’t see this guy come and go into the Clockworks area, I can add a camera. Now that we know the place is supposed to be closed down, whoever is working in there is pretty obviously the guilty party.”

I waited for Mark to join me on my side of the SUV.  We both studied the garden center from the parking lot.  There were plenty of exits since most of the place was outdoors, but the area was a maze of plants, trellises, the main building and two greenhouses.

“They know me here,” I said. “I’ll buy a plant and talk to Rohit. I’ll keep him talking long enough so that he’s distracted, and you can memorize what he looks like.”

Mark finally took his eyes off the landscaping in front of us. “Talk to him about what?”

“I’ll make something up about gardening. You can watch the exchange without him ever seeing you.  That way he won’t be suspicious later if he sees you watching the building.”

“He won’t see me.”

When Mark worked undercover, he gave blending in a whole new meaning. He’d been disguised as a creepy thug the first time I’d seen him. “Wouldn’t it be better if he didn’t see you at all? Not that we can use Huntington to play at being a venture capitalist since Clockworks is already defunct, but your brother does look like you.”

Mark nodded perfunctorily. “Okay. I’ll wander around. I assume if you talk to the older guy you told me about I’m to know that is Dave and not Rohit?”

I nodded. “I’ll try to just corner Rohit, but Dave does have some plants on order for me so if he sees me, he’s likely to come over. He’ll be the one in the farmer coverall things.”  I did another scan, but didn’t see either man.  The outside booth was empty.  This early on a work day, there weren’t many customers around either.

“Rohit was in shorts when I saw him last time, but it was much later in the day.”  The breeze was cool, and I was glad to be wearing jeans.  I could have used a jacket for my bare arms, but the goosebumps were more from nerves than cold.

We separated, and I took my time picking out the smallest blueberry bush available in a black quart-sized container. Dave was talking to a customer over in the tree section, waving the man toward the main building.  I hurried to beat them.  If Dave was helping customers, Rohit was likely inside at the checkout counter.  There was often a part-time clerk on weekends, and I’d have to hope that person wasn’t here now instead of Rohit.

I paused to the side of the doorway to let my eyes adjust to the inside light. I smiled.  
Paydirt.
 

Rohit was working the counter.  His brown hair wasn’t smashed down by sunglasses this time, but he still had the goatee.  I noticed a watch on his arm.  The face was big enough to be a smartwatch.  My deep breath hitched a bit, but I sauntered up to the counter anyway.  The blueberry bush was dripping muddy water, and it wasn’t the variety I wanted, but Rohit wouldn’t know that Dave had some others on order for me.

I handed the scrappy twigged plant to him to ring up, wondering how to get him to step outside so that Mark could get a look at him. “Hey, didn’t you work at Clockworks across the street?”  I thought my opening question was casual enough, but Rohit’s eyes went wide. Maybe some criminals have a sixth sense that the game is up or maybe his guilty conscience burst like a dam.

He threw the bush at me, plastic pot and all.  It caught me square in the chest, scratching my arms on the way down and liberally splattering muddy globs.  “Hey!”

Dave froze in the side doorway where he was holding it open for the customer he’d been helping.

I lunged after Rohit, but he leaped for the front door, knocking over a shelf full of fish emulsion fertilizer.  At least two of the plastic gallon containers burst as they hit the floor.

Knowing their contents, I jumped high and wide, hitting a rack of seeds. The seeds scattered, sounding like drops of rain against the concrete floor.  From the seaweed stink of the leaking fish emulsion, the seeds would be well fertilized.

“Stop him!” I yelled to no one in particular.

Dave did nothing of the sort.  He put his hands on his hips in exasperation and opened his mouth to say something.  I had no idea what he bellowed. I hopped the mess on the floor and chased after Rohit out the front door.

I skidded to a halt as soon as I cleared the entrance.  Mark was waiting behind the lineup of sculptures on the right. He’d catch Rohit easily before he made the parking lot.

Well, he would have except that Rohit glanced back at me and plowed right into the largest sculpture by the walkway. It was an ugly looking swan that was just sprouting green from whatever was trying to grow in the peat moss or straw.

Mark grabbed at Rohit.  He got one arm and a lot of swan. The three of them danced an odd tripping waltz with Rohit’s arm wrapped around the neck of the swan.

I dashed over to help, but the swan’s neck snapped and Mark lost his grip against the struggling Rohit.

Rohit ran, yanking on sculptures to block our path as he went.

As I came even with Mark, Rohit nearly tripped us both with one particularly tall tangle of metal and plants. The towering monument was an ugly thing with green moss all along the bottom and pansies hanging from some sort of copper bucket.  “Hey, isn’t this the sculpture for Monique?”  I grabbed at a blue octopus arm for balance as I tried to dodge it. There might have been strawberry vines poking out of the holes until my flailing hands ripped the octopus completely off the sculpture. The ceramic shattered on impact with the ground.

I was mad enough to grab a piece of strawberry plant dirt and throw it hard at Rohit, scoring a hit on the back of his head.  “Stop!” I panted.

Mark didn’t need any more of my help; he was faster and more agile. He closed in and locked a leg under one of Rohit’s.

For a half a second, he held Rohit up by one arm and a handful of hair.

Rohit fell to his knees.  Mark kept him there by twisting his head to one side and planting a foot on the back of one leg. The fight went out of Rohit on a gasp for air.

“I thought you were going to ask him a couple of innocent gardening questions,” Mark said to me.

“I just asked if he ever worked at Clockworks!”

“Okay, okay, I give up!” Rohit pleaded.  “I did it, I accepted the code, and I knew it was stolen.  I knew it came from Borgot.  Dave told me you hunt down crooks and thieves and to watch out for you.  I knew when you asked about my old job that my ticket was punched.”

I blinked.  Dave had said he warned Rohit about me, but not because he thought Rohit was a crook.  “Who gave you the Borgot code?” I demanded.

He sucked in deep lungfuls of air. “I don’t know.”

“Liar!”

He tried to shrug, but with his head twisted, he could barely move. “Clockworks was my dream. I worked my way through college selling beer and risking everything because I didn’t have a license to sell booze. I tutored for half the departments, and I saved every penny! At first, the venture capitalists were hungry to join the company, but we couldn’t stay on schedule, and there were always other companies after the venture capitalist money.  When the money demanded I step aside so they could put in one of their own as CEO and control everything, I refused.”

I caught Mark’s eyes. “And they withheld the cash.”

“There was no point in succeeding if I couldn’t do it my way! And they wanted me out completely.  Sure, they offered me a vice president job, but I knew what would happen. I’d seen it before.”

He was right, of course. Venture capitalists tended to dump founders at the first opportunity. They didn’t want big dreams; they wanted someone they could control.  The consolation prize that was offered would quickly turn into a nudging towards the door and no job at all.

“If you don’t know who was coding the phone and language parts, how did you get the code at all?” I asked.

Mark let up on his hold. Rohit collapsed down onto the dirt. He rolled over and sat up, but didn’t try to stand. Instead he put his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with dry sobs. One sandal had been knocked askew, but still dangled from his ankle by the top velcro strap.

I resented the fact that he hadn’t collected nearly as much dirt on his person as me. “Well?” I demanded. “How did you get the code?”

It took him more than a few moments to collect himself, but eventually he started talking. “I was cleaning out the Clockworks office and selling off equipment when a package came in.  It was an offer to keep delivering the phone end of the code that was needed to work with the watches we had started.”

“For a price?”

He nodded. “A large price. Every cent I had left, and I had to start selling beer again just to keep eating. The only thing that was paid up was the yearly lease on the building because that payment was made right before the funding was yanked.”

“What made you think you could use stolen code to finish the watches?” Mark asked.

“The phones and code I was given worked. The first drops on the SD cards weren’t complete, but it was a big piece of what we had been missing when we’d designed the watches at Clockworks.  With the code I was getting, I hoped...I dreamed that maybe I could get the watch to market after all.”

“But how did you obtain code when you didn’t know who was writing it in the first place?”

He shrugged. “I met Joe Black here at the garden center.  He put the phone on the counter, I picked it up. He bought a roll of coconut fiber rolls that I had lined with money that was the payment for the code drops.”

“You knew he wasn’t the one writing the code?”

Rohit looked at me with his mouth gaping. “No way. I used to tutor in college. Are you saying Joe could write code?”

I shook my head. “No. I just wondered if you thought he could.”

Rohit shook his head. “He didn’t seem to know about the smartwatches at all until he stole one from me.”

“How did he manage that?” Mark asked.

“I wore it to work. I did some of my testing during the day if things here were slow. The watch strap was already loose and somehow when I was rolling the coconut fiber, the watch fell off or got tangled in it. I didn’t notice it until after Joe picked up the bundle. I wouldn’t have even known he had found the watch, but he wore it when he came back in with the next drop of code!”

That sounded like Joe. Too stupid to cover his tracks even if blind luck sent him a gift.

“This would go easier on you if you turned evidence over and pleaded guilty,” Mark said.

Rohit hung his head. “I’m too stupid for that. The only person I ever met in person was Joe. Even after the watch was stolen and I tried to get it back, I couldn’t figure out who was behind the code.”

“How did you try to retrieve it?” Had he murdered Joe in the attempt to get the watch back?

“Joe delivered phones and code back and forth. When I needed to request certain features or fixes to the language modules, I used the phones to leave instructions for the guy coding on the other end.  In this case, I left a text message on every single Borgot phone I sent back. The message made it clear that the stolen watch wasn’t part of the deal. No more payments unless I got the watch back.”

“But you never did.”

He shoulders couldn’t slump any further, but he dropped his head. “I got a message back on another phone indicating the watch would be returned, but that never happened. Whoever he is, he’s probably reverse engineering it and preparing to sell my end of the technology. His code is good.  I know he has the ability.”

“If the deal was working other than the stolen watch, what makes you so sure your original contact has turned on you?” I asked.

“The last drop of code didn’t contain any of the language modules at all. It was old code that I had a long time ago.”  The bitterness in his voice was laced with defeat.

Ah, the complexity of thieves dealing with thieves. Rohit assumed a double-cross, when in fact, it was just incompetence.  Well, and me, inserting myself in the phone exchange process. Rohit had gotten old code because I had taken the new code.  The slightest feelings of pity stirred in my cold heart.  “It wasn’t a double-cross. Joe stole the watch on his own,” I said. “He was wearing it when he was murdered.”

Rohit’s head shot up. “Murdered?”

“Not all was well on the other end.  That’s why the phones have been delivered differently the last couple of drops. But Mark is right. You’d best turn over what you know and hope whoever is on the other end doesn’t try to pin the murders on you.”

“Murders?” His voice was little more than a croaking sound.

Mark hauled Rohit to his feet just in time.  Police lights, red, white and blue, flashed in the parking lot.  At least they hadn’t turned on the sirens.

Dave stood at the entrance of his store, his arms folded.  His glare was reserved for me, which was completely unfair.  It wasn’t my fault he had hired a thief.

Chapter 34

It took a while to get cleaned up.  While I showered, Mark called Radar and Huntington to give them the latest news.

“Delivering code via the phone SD card means we still don’t know who wrote those extra modules and sold them to Rohit,” Mark said when he got off the phone. “Whoever is doing this has been very careful to cover all their tracks.”

“Which means the real perp is still working at Borgot. Once that person figures out there is no one on the other end to work on the code or the watch, he’ll probably just look for another buyer.”

Mark nodded. “He may already be doing that.  Steve has inserted himself into a venture capitalist meeting at Borgot tomorrow. He plans to find out whether or not anyone at Borgot has started talking about buying the language modules instead of coding them in-house.  He’ll also ask if Borgot is planning to add a watch to the phone products.  Whoever coded those languages isn’t going to be satisfied with just selling pieces to Rohit on the side, especially now that he’s been arrested.  He’s going to need a new customer.”

“And who could be an easier customer than Borgot?  They’re desperate for the code to make their ship date.”