Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery (25 page)

“Let’s hope so. If the guy tries to sell it to someone other than Borgot, it’s going to be a lot harder for us to track.”

“Isn’t Huntington too busy working on the burglary case to work on this?” Secretly, I’d been hoping that Huntington would drop out of the case.  After all, he’d caught the perps he was after when we caught Joe’s mother delivering unregistered Borgot phones to her biker friends.  The murders and stolen Borgot code hadn’t been part of his original case.

Mark shook his head. “He has plenty of time to help. His other clients were happy once the phone connection was discovered and severed. Borgot is the only place left to keep following the money trail. Some of the venture capitalists are probably the same ones who invested in Clockworks. Maybe one or more of them was in on selling Borgot code to Rohit.”

Maybe.  But I still had no idea how we could catch the programmer in the act.

* * *

Normally, I didn’t care a whit about venture capitalists or angel investors as they were also called. They funded a lot of startups, including Borgot.  As a test engineer, I’d never been required to attend the meetings when a new investor was interested or an active investor required an update.  I understood the necessity of them, especially after we listened to Rohit’s story, but I’d never had any real reason to pay close attention to their comings and goings.

When I pulled into the Borgot parking lot in the morning, I recognized Huntington’s Viper.  I sighed and headed up the stairs.

Chaos greeted me before I made it to my cube, but these days, unless someone pointed a gun at me, tantrums, ballerinas, and yelling engineers weren’t even a reason to slow down.  The platters of food, however, were enough to make me stop and stare.

Would it be rude to grab a carrot stick off one of the veggie trays as it floated past?

When a large cheese tray went by, I followed it.  A guy in a white apron was in the break room flinging his hands up and down hard enough to shed his own skin. In a loud stage whisper, he bellowed at Monique and Kay.  “I cannot be expected to cook under these conditions.  I am a caterer.  A full
chef caterer.
It says right on the contract that
you
provide a full kitchen! This is a water faucet and a coffee pot! Real chefs do not cook under these conditions.” 

I snagged a carrot from the tray on the counter. “We have a toaster oven,” I offered helpfully.

He swung his burly body towards me. His curled lip revealed stunted canines that were thick and yellow like those of a woodchuck that had gone one too many rounds with ironwood.

I retrieved a paper plate from the cupboard and helped myself to cheese and crackers. If real investors were awaiting this spread, I might not have been so cavalier, but Huntington wouldn’t be dumb enough to hand over money to this company.

Mr. Woodchuck gasped and made shooing motions at my audacity.

Roscoe, he who stole food on a regular basis and took it home, shouldered me away from the platter. “This is for the investors! And we’re going to need these prepared ones since he,” Roscoe jabbed a finger at Mr. Woodchuck, “refuses to cook up the dips and finger food without a real kitchen.”

“Don’t worry, I know how to snag from the spots where it won’t be noticed,” I explained to Roscoe. “I’ve made these trays before.”

Roscoe spun around to face Monique. “You’re supposed to manage Sedona.  You tell her. We all know what happens when the venture capitalists back out. I’m not a big enough fool to hang around like I did at my last job.”

The cheese froze on its way to my lips. “Your last job?  Where did you work?”

“Hardly matters now, does it? If a startup doesn’t get funding, it dies.”  He turned to the chef. “And people like you don’t get paid.  So I suggest you cook up something, full kitchen or no.”

Oh, that set off the woodchuck.  “Not get paid?”  He lost his stage whisper and any pretense of professionalism. Monique’s shushing and reassurances did nothing to halt his performance either.  He untied his apron, hissed out threats about lawyers and, “I’d better see the second half of my payment.”

I kept up a continuous scan for any sign of a Borgot phone on his person or one being added to one of his food boxes.  That last phone with the code hadn’t made it to its final destination. Maybe Woodchuck here was the next train ticket.  “What was on the menu?” I asked, helping myself to more cheese. It was very good cheese.

“Sedona, will you stop eating all the food?” Before I could protest the “all the food” comment, Monique ruined her own order by filching a sausage stick from the meat tray.  She came from a marketing background. If anyone complained about missing food, she’d blame me.  “Listen, Saul.”  When he sputtered, she corrected herself.  “Chef Saul. We can get you anything you need, but there was nothing on the menu that had to be served hot.”

With a final hand fling, he finally loosed himself from his apron.  If the phone was in one of the pockets, he wasn’t leaving with it because he tossed the huge white sheet down and stomped on it.

“John expects snacks throughout,” Kay put in. “What exactly do you intend to serve that requires a full kitchen?” She tapped frantically on her tablet.

“A full kitchen. It’s in the contract.  No kitchen, no food.”  With that announcement, he sailed off down the hall to the elevators.

Kay scrolled here and there on the tablet.  “I ordered salads, snacks and finger sandwiches.”  More scrolling, during which time I inspected the contents of the nearest box.  “Damn. There is a clause in the contract about a full kitchen.”

“We have crackers, and if we put the M&Ms in a bowl, we can keep food flowing,” Monique said.

The box in front of me was full of avocados and a dry mix that smelled and looked like one that could be turned into spinach dip.  “Looks like he planned guacamole? And some other dips.” I scanned another box. “These are cookie trays with dough already shaped out. The dough is plain...so he probably has frosting around here somewhere.  Cute. I think they are meant to be phones.”  I grabbed one of the trays, marveling at the rack arrangements all stacked neatly in a box.  It was easy to slide a few cookies off onto tinfoil and pop them into the toaster oven.  “At six at a time, we can get enough of these done in a half hour to make it look good.  Someone find the icing. It will be in one of those cake decorating bags, probably.”

No one moved.  Monique stared at me.  Roscoe blinked.  Kay finally reached for a box. “He was supposed to take various items into the meeting room in shifts, like a nine-course meal over the day.  At least that’s the way the brochure described it.”

“It’s early for cookies,” Roscoe said. “Shouldn’t you save those for the afternoon?  We gotta keep these guys happy.”

“Geez, how long are the investors hanging around?”  I’d figured Huntington could ask his forty questions and be out of here in an hour.

Roscoe snorted at me again. “We’re presenting, Sedona.  This is an opportunity to sell ourselves so that we don’t go down the drain!”

I grabbed an avocado and began peeling it. From the items in the box, this guacamole was going to be thinned with cream cheese. “Like your last company, right?”

“It wasn’t my fault! My code was perfect. Borgot knew what it was doing when it picked the cream of the crop to come work here.”

“I’m sure.  Do you know anything about homebrewing beer?” I asked innocently.  Maybe he knew Rohit. Maybe I could somehow get him to admit it.

His eyes widened. “You’re going to brew beer for these guys?” He gazed down the hall towards the meeting room. “I never thought of that.  Maybe that would be a good idea.”

I didn’t know much about beer brewing, but I was fairly certain it didn’t happen in one morning.  His line of thinking was not even close to mine. “No, I’m looking into beer and wine making, but beer brewing is cheaper.”

Roscoe blinked at me.  His bushy eyebrows came together while he tried to process my comment.

The first batch of cookies was done, so I removed the tray and tinfoil and started another tray.  I inspected a few more boxes.  There were several loaves of fresh bread, cucumbers and a giant jar of mayonnaise.  “Hmm.  Can we just put the mayo in a small bowl, slice the bread and let the investors make their own sandwiches from the meat tray?”

Before Roscoe could sputter out a complaint, I added, “No one really wants to eat cucumber sandwiches, Roscoe.  Sure, they look nice on the platter, but I don’t see any actual lunch here.  The meat tray could easily be made into sandwiches.  Or was a full lunch planned?”

Kay shook her head, her tablet still in her hand.  “He was supposed to supply a light lunch, but he didn’t specify exactly what that would be.”

“Okay, let’s go with toasted bagels, cream cheese and that fruit tray for breakfast.”  Instead of full bagels, there were pieces.  “I’ll toast the bagel wedges as soon as these cookies come out. The cheese and crackers can go with lunch.”

Monique joined me in saying, “If I don’t eat it all first.”  We grinned at each other.  “It’s good cheese,” I told her.

Roscoe complained when I suggested that he and the other engineers would have to help serve, but I ignored him. It would be hard for me to serve with a straight face knowing Huntington was there to investigate, not drop millions. He probably had the money to invest, but only an idiot would put money into a company whose phones had just been used in robberies and kidnappings.  And that wasn’t even counting the stolen code and murders.  Yeah, we had it all at Borgot.  I wouldn’t ruin Roscoe’s day by telling him, but we’d have a lot better luck if a mafia boss came along to buy us out.  Only someone with a criminal background would be interested in us now.

When it was Kovid’s turn to cater in trays, I asked him where he used to work.  “Clockworks, why?”

“I just wondered.  Roscoe said something about Borgot having mined the best of the best.”

Kovid nodded. “Yeah, we were both at Clockworks. Borgot was already up and running when we lost our investment backing. John and Cary were right there with job offers.  There were a few other guys I wished they had hired before the hiring freeze.”

I already knew that Lawrence had worked there, so I asked about some of the others instead. “Did Monique work there?”

“No.  I saw her once or twice, but that was because she was dating Lawrence. Then when he got on here, she was hired shortly after.”

We shared a knowing glance.  “I wonder why Lawrence didn’t just hire her at Clockworks too.”

“Hiring had been shut down for a solid year over there.  He couldn’t have hired his own brother if he had wanted.”

“I guess Cary and Joe must have worked there too.”

“No.  Cary did and he was already here when I was hired. Joe came after that. He wasn’t at Clockworks. Are you going to give me that tray or take it in yourself?”

I handed him the tray. “I have to finish preparing the cookies.”  The cookies were all baked, but there were some that still needed icing.

It didn’t take me long to finish them.  Just for grins, I took the platter in myself. Huntington probably wouldn’t be surprised to see me, but it might throw him off his game a little if he had to pretend not to know me.

When I entered the meeting room, the surprise was all mine.  Huntington was there, businessman cool as usual, and sitting next to him, almost as calm and collected was Clint Lewis, the ex-marine ballet teacher.

Chapter 35

Mark and I met at Happy Family Chinese to compare notes.  I ordered egg rolls even though I’d eaten plenty of food samples while prepping snacks for the investor’s meeting.  First things first. I told him about the multiple employees who had come from Clockworks. “Half of Borgot knew about the possibility of a smartwatch because they worked there.  Any of them could have decided to supply the Borgot code so that Rohit could still bring a watch to market. If Rohit failed, whoever controlled the code would still have a job. Borgot would still have a product, albeit not as good as the one sold to Rohit.”

He nodded. “Rohit, through his lawyer, supplied a list of employees and the final financials for Clockworks.  I went through them today.”

I didn’t ask how he obtained that list.  “Was Clint Lewis on the list of previous employees?”

“The karate guy?”

“Ballet, karate, whatever.  Yes, him.”

“No, why?”

“He was there today at the meeting. He was also at Joe Black’s funeral.”

Mark’s eyes narrowed. “He walked into an investment meeting at Borgot after teaching ballet and delivering the wrong phone to Clockworks?”

“He didn’t look the same, believe me. He had shaved his head completely, but grew in a nicely trimmed beard and mustache. There was a huge diamond earring in one ear as if he wanted everyone to notice he had money to throw at a project. He also wore funky rose-tinted glasses. They weren’t sunglasses, but they looked like those kind that darken outside and never get completely light when you’re inside. If we hadn’t talked to him at his dojo face-to-face, I might not have recognized him as the ballet teacher. You take away the tights, add facial hair and put him in a suit, and he looked nothing like the guy prancing around our break area last week.”

“Hmm.”

I told him about Lawrence having a patent. “Most patent lawyers have to learn at least enough code to read and understand it; some of them probably start out as programmers or get pretty good at it. His fingerprints are all over this case.  He could be programming the languages on the side.  And maybe Clint wasn’t so innocent when it came to the phone delivery. Maybe Lawrence hired both him and Cary so that he could stay in the background and look innocent.”

“You think he also hired Joe?”

I shrugged. “It’s more likely Cary hired him to do the deliveries because he thought such work was beneath him.”

“But Cary ended up dead in your garden. You think Lawrence murdered both of them?”

I swallowed hard. My egg roll was not taking the edge off this conversation. “Lawrence is taller than either of them.  He’s in decent shape. We all worked together so suggesting a private conversation, one that lured someone to his death, wouldn’t be impossible.”