How to Succeed in Murder
Page 26
“It might not have been my first time in his desk drawer,” Jack said.
“Hey!” Harry yelled. “Who wants to go for a ride in a helicopter?”
I looked up at Jack. “I think I’d just as soon go home.”
“Right!” Simon hollered. “We’re going to Charley’s house! Last one there drinks the cheap champagne!”
As if I’d ever serve cheap champagne.
Chapter Thirty-nine
The Four Seasons at Langkawi. The most gorgeous, relaxing, sun-soaked beach resort I had been able to book on no notice. The web site had said Langkawi was an archipelago in the Andaman Sea, and while I had no real idea where that was, it sounded just about far enough away from Zakdan, Inc. to make me happy.
Jack and I were on our honeymoon.
About damn time.
The room, all gloriously polished wood and clean, simple furnishings, had one wall that swung open completely, revealing a private deck and a pristine white beach beyond. It was exotically beautiful, a genuine tropical paradise.
And it was raining.
“They said this only happens in September and October.” I pulled a hibiscus-print sarong around myself and sat up to look out at the meteorological anomaly that hadn’t let up since we’d gotten there.
“You can never trust a weatherman,” Jack stated. Which was a slightly sore subject, since he sometimes claimed to be one, but as he was naked and in bed next to me, and at least close to a beach, I let it pass.
“What did Brenda have to say?” He propped himself up on one elbow, making strategic adjustments to the sheet.
I might have wanted to get away from it all, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t call home every day. I’d spoken to Brenda that morning.
“Morgan Stokes offered her a job at Zakdan,” I told him. “He wants her to come work with Tonya in Human Resources, and lead the effort to draft a new corporate code of conduct. The salary is huge.”
Jack’s eyebrows went up. “Is she taking it?”
I shook my head. “Not a chance. She says in academia at least the backstabbing is all verbal. And she’s still taking that group of students to Europe.”
Jack looked at me carefully. “Is Harry going with her?”
I looked at him more carefully. “I didn’t ask.”
I was slowly adjusting to the fact that there might—okay there probably was—a relationship between my best friend and the madman who’d driven me crazy most of my life.
It was likely to be a long period of adjustment.
Jack wisely changed the subject. “How’s Eileen?”
“Brenda says she’s swamped since she went back to work. Oh, and Anthony keeps asking her if they can go see Mike’s office with all the computers.” I reached for the room service menu. “He now officially wants to be a geek when he grows up.”
“There are worse things,” Jack responded. “And he’s on the right track. If he hadn’t found that bug in the pirate game, we might not have been able to trace the virus back as far as we did.”
Jack and Mike had decompiled the pirate game and apparently found something like a signature in the virus that predated anyone but Jim Stoddard at Zakdan. They’d known then that the exec had to have been behind the years of sabotage. And that his long-time colleague, Bob, must have helped him cover it up.
“But you’d have known about Stoddard anyway,” I said, flipping through the menu. “I can’t believe he was stupid enough to keep a journal—or at least, if he was such a genius, he might have put it in code or something.”
The silence from my husband was profound. I looked at him.
“He didn’t keep a journal, did he?”
Jack shrugged. “Yahata had to say something to get Bob talking.”
I stared out at the rain-soaked beach. “Do you think Mike and the hackers-for-hire have finished cleaning up the code yet?”
“They’ll never get everything out of applications that have already been deployed, but they should be able to strip the virus from anything that gets shipped in the future. And they’ll take out all Mike’s spyware while they’re at it.”
“But the virus is still out there? Lurking?”
Jack nodded.
“And whose finger is on the button now? The three best hackers in the world?” Somehow, that didn’t give me a warm glow of security.
“No, only Mike knows all the components of the trigger.”
Mike. I was going to have to remember to be nicer to him.
I tossed the menu aside and stretched.
“Don’t tell me you’re not hungry?” Jack said.
“I just remembered we have all that fruit.”
There had been a gorgeous platter of tropical fruits, most of which I couldn’t possibly identify, waiting for us when we’d checked in. I went to get it, and brought it back to the bed, along with a sharp knife.
“What do you suppose this one is?” I poked a green spiky thing with the knife.
Jack took both dangerous objects from me. “I have no idea.” He cut in. “But it smells good.”
He gave me a sliver of fruit on the point of the knife. Whatever it was, it was yummy.
I sighed happily and stretched out next to him.
“This is more like it. Being fed exotic fruits by a naked man in the tropics. This is how I should spend my life.”
“You’ll be bored by Tuesday,” Jack informed me. “And I’m not entirely naked. Don’t make this any more depraved than it already is.”
“A sheet doesn’t count,” I told him. But he may have been right about the boredom thing. Paradise is great in small doses, but I was already starting to think about what Kevin Allred, the decorator Morgan had recommended, might be doing to my house.
I rolled over toward Jack. “Whatever shall we do next, to keep away the tedium?” I used my huskiest voice and wiggled my eyebrows for emphasis. “Since it’s still raining—”
“I thought we might read something.”
I blinked. That was so not where I had been going.
Jack was looking through the fruit again. He hesitated over a mango, and I willed him to choose it because mangos are so juicy, and I could think of some fabulous ways to deal with that problem, given our current state of undress.
He was still talking, I noticed. “Since it’s raining, and since I need at least a few more minutes to recover before we do what I suspect you want to do with this passionfruit…”
Passionfruit, mango, whatever.
“…maybe you want to read something?”
“I didn’t bring any books.”
He nodded. “Neither did I, but I brought a play. It’s the weirdest thing. I don’t know how it got into my luggage—which the TSA would not be happy about—but there it was.”
He licked his fingers clean, reached around to the other side of the bed, and came back with a manuscript.
I looked at the cover.
“Power.”
I continued reading.
“By Harry Van Leewen.”
I stared at my husband. “You have got to be kidding me.”
He grinned. “You’d be surprised. It’s not bad.”
There was only one possible response.
“Damn.”
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