The Housewife Assassin's Garden of Deadly Delights (8 page)

Jack reaches over and does the honors. Neither he nor I miss the look on Ms. Conover’s face when he honors her with his dazzling smile.

 
No surprise, she forgets she was scolding me, let alone that I’m even here.
 

When she’s finally able to break his spell, she throws her arms wide, as if to embrace everyone in the room. “Ms. Stone, your co-workers are about to embark on a marvelous journey, up SeedPlenish’s strategic ladder. As they climb each glorious step, they’ll be met with promotions, raises, stock options…” She pauses at the thought. Then, as if she’s finally seen the light, she leans in and hisses, “So do yourself a favor—
don’t get left behind.
”

As I look around, I’m met with anxious frowns.
 

And one smirk—Jack’s, of course.

I scratch my forehead with my middle finger. Jack takes the hint.
 

Smothering his grin, he asks, “Excuse me, Ms. Conover, is it lunch time?” The question sounds innocent enough—if you didn’t notice that it came with a wink.

“Why…um, yes, it is.” She winks back, then claps her hands at the rest of us. “The company cafeteria is to the left and down the hall. You have one hour. Please take your campus maps and find your way to your department, where your superiors are waiting to brief you on your new duties, once you return.”

Other than a free lunch, I hope he gets something out of her.

Or maybe not. If anyone knows the best place to (in a full bastardization of CorporateSpeak) let him climb her strategic ladder in order to drill down 110-percent, it’s got to be the corporate evangelist.

“So, you’re the new girl…woman…whatever.” Dr. Thomas Wellborne must like what he sees because he quits smacking his gum in order to give me the once-over. If he ever resembled the profile photo on the company website, it was at least fifteen years, forty pounds, and a full head of hair ago.

“Donna will do,” I assure him.

“Okay, Donna it is.” He shrugs as he leans in—a bit too close, if you ask me—in order to shake my hand.

When I take a step back, he gets the message:
Down, boy…man…whatever.

“How good are you at burying paperwork?” He nods toward my new desk, which is located in a large filing room in the building housing the R&D department. There is a five-hundred-acre cornfield between it and the rest of the company’s corporate campus. Forget being as high as an elephant’s eye. The twenty-foot corn stalks beyond the room’s two-story window undulate under a gentle breeze like a bamboo forest.

I look down at the mess. “Got a shovel?”

Frankly, a wind not much stiffer than the one blowing outside the window is all it would take for the mountain of folders and binders to begin the inevitable avalanche.

He shrugs. “Hey, don’t blame me. My past two assistants left a lot to be desired. One was out in six months. The last little lady did her one better: one week and out. Jesus, you’d think I was some sort of slave driver, or an abusive boyfriend or something!” Hoping to entice me, he raises his bushy brows twice, then licks his lips, as if I’m a pork chop.

When I don’t take the hint, he reaches beyond me for a file. It grazes my breast as he opens it and scans the first sheet. “Just what I thought! She never even got around to last quarter’s results. Why don’t you start with this pile of folders? Each batch of seeds is numbered. My field researchers assess our latest test seeds by notating the growth of each stalk.”

“I’m surprised this wasn’t done by computer.”

He chuckles. “Even iPad screens aren’t easy to read in bright sunlight. Which is where she came—and now, you
come
…in.” This lame pun is his lame excuse to give me a wink. “You’ll scan these sheets on that thing.” He slaps the desktop copier on the credenza. “That way, the data ends up where all pertinent divisions of SeedPlenish can access it: research, sales, marketing, even accounting.” He’s under the impression that leaning against the wall makes him look sexier.
 

Losing his potbelly would be a better move. You’d think he’d figure this out when his gut knocks a couple of the folders onto the floor.

“It’s a fairly big job. I better get to work.” I bend quickly to catch yet another falling folder.

Bad move by me. The next thing I know, his hand is cupping my ass.

Worse move by him, because the next thing he knows is that I’m twisting his nuts.

He yelps, but gets the lay of the land and skedaddles back down to the first floor where the rest of the R&D staff are holed up, playing mad scientist with the genetic makeup of God’s bounty.

Good riddance. I’m not here to bury dead files that no one will ever read, or to be a plaything to some horny clown in a lab coat. I’m here to learn whether the killer seeds are already out the door.

I stare out the window. Twenty-eight silos are lined up on the north side of the field, identical aluminum sentries reflecting bright rays in full sunlight. I have to shield my eyes in order to look at them. They stand at least thirty feet tall, and ladders go up one side. They are elevated, and their bottoms are coned so that the bags of seeds held within can be funneled into SeedPlenish’s delivery trucks. Right now, bags are being dropped from Silo Number 18.

Which one contains the killer seeds?

By jove, I think I’ve found them—thanks to Jilly, whomever she is.

She left in such a hurry that she didn’t even take the time to clean out her desk. A month-old ticket to a San Francisco Giants–Los Angeles Dodgers game is in one of the drawers, as well as an autographed photo of Buster Posey.
 

I guess we know which team she roots for. But, obviously, she didn’t make the game, or the ticket wouldn’t still be here.

Dr. Wellborne was stupid to leave me her computer, especially since SeedPlenish’s tech personnel haven’t ditched her old password. First, I try
BusterPosey
. No luck. Then
Buster
, then
Posey
. Both dead ends.

I use my cell to call Arnie. “I’m trying to hack my predecessor’s computer. From what I can tell, she’s a baseball fan—specifically of the SF Giants’ Buster Posey. I’ve tried the name in various combinations, but no luck.”

“Didn’t you read your manual? For example, the password has to be alpha-numeric.”

Duh.

“Just a wild guess, but why don’t you try the name, ‘Buster,’ with his team number?”

I type
Buster28
. “Bingo,” I murmur.

“Link me in,” Arnie suggests. It’s a good idea to allow his employee ID to access it as well, so that he can see what I’m seeing, and perhaps pick up on other clues throughout all her stored data.
 

We roll through her emails. At first, the ones to and from Dr. Wellborne are all business, then become flirtatious, and, finally, all pleasure—

Until the last week of her employment. For some reason, the tone is now stilted and distant.
 

The last email between them comes from her. It reads, simply:
 

You lied. It hurt.

“She is—or was—a Thomas Wellborne fan girl—at least, at first,” I murmur. A renowned scientist as a notch on your belt? To each her own, I guess.”

“Wow, wow, wow,” Arnie murmurs excitedly. “Jackpot!”

A file pops up on my screen, entitled,
Strain v.101313.

“How do you know this is it?” I ask.

“Because she copied it from his secure cloud.”

“I wonder how she figured out his password,” I mutter out loud.

“She knew him well enough, I guess. By the way, it’s
AssMan1.”

Ouch. Yep, that hurts.

“Apparently, she got her revenge. This file has everything: his correspondence with an entity he refers to as BIG PAY DAY, in which he puts out feelers for its interest in what he calls ‘the Exodus Strain, 22:6.’ There is also a response in the affirmative, along with confirmation of a one billion-dollar payoff, placed in a Cayman Islands bank account.”

“‘Exodus?’
That’s a book in the Old Testament of the Bible.” A thought hits me. “Hey do me a favor and look up verse 22:6.”

I hear a few clicks. “Oh, yeah, this is it,” he finally says. “It’s a real toe-tapper too. Listen to this: ‘
If fire break out, and catch in thorns, so that the stacks of corn, or the standing corn, or the field, be consumed therewith; he that kindled the fire shall surely make restitution.’
Well, I guess we now know who’s been quote-unquote kindling the fire.”

“Poor choice of words, but I hear you. If this Jilly person took off, something tells me it’s because things got too hot for her to hang around, no pun intended,” I say with a sigh. “Arnie, is there any indication where the seeds were—or hopefully, are—being stored?”

“My guess is that Wellborne keeps them within reach, and within sight. The R&D department’s organizational chart shows that half of SeedPlenish’s silos hold corn kernels, and the other half hold bags of seed.”
 

“At least we now know which half to investigate.”

“That would be Silos Fifteen through Twenty-Eight.”
 

“Is there any way to narrow it down even more?” I ask.

He’s silent as he taps away. Finally, he says, “Let me work on it for a while. By the way, I’ve duplicated what we have here, and uploaded it into the Acme cloud, so that you and Emma’s ComInt team can also scan for clues. Keep your cell phone handy in case we come up with anything, okay? ”

“Will do. In the meantime, text Ryan to put a tap and a tracer on Dr. Wellborne’s phones—home, office, and cell. If we get lucky, he may lead us to the Exodus seeds.”
 

I spend the rest of the afternoon going through the office, to see if Jilly planted some clue as to which silo contains the Exodus strain, but I find nothing.
 

Since I worked through my lunch hour, I clock out an hour early. From here to home still puts me in I-405 traffic, but at least I’ll get to Hilldale in time to pick up Trisha and Jeff.

I text Jack to give him the great news that I’ll be couriering Cheever and Morton. Only after I hit SEND do I remember that I’ll be doing it in the new Jackmobile.

Oh well, goodbye to that wonderful new car smell.

The first mistake Cheever Bing makes in Jack’s new BMW is to let loose with a burp. “Tacos,” he says as a way of apology. “Gotta love ’em.”

His next faux pas is to jump in the front passenger seat. “I call shotgun!” he crows.

I shake my head. “No, no, no—out! That’s where Trisha sits when we pick her up.”

“But—but I called shotgun!”

“You can call a cab for all I care. Better yet, if you want to lose those taco love handles, walk home.”

He shuts up. But instead of opening the door, he climbs over the front seat into the back.
 

“I call window!” He shoves Morton Smith toward the middle. Morton shoves back.
 

I’ll be damned if I’m going to play Margaret Dumont to their Groucho-Chico shenanigans. “Jeff, in the middle, please.”

“But, Mom, today was taco day.”

Note to self: look at middle school lunchroom menu before committing to carpooling—especially in the new car. Oh well, too late now.