by Susan Wolfe
“Well, it’s only fair.” Georgia shook open her linen napkin. “After all the work you did to put that party together, the least you deserve is a good meal.” Not to mention that if Nikki had turned her down, there wouldn’t have been one other person within a thousand miles she wanted to ask.
She’d never eaten Greek food, but the smells of garlic and lemon were certainly promising. Lots of lamb on the menu, and she hadn’t had a real hunk of meat in a while. She just had to remember not to eat enough to make herself sick.
“Did you know anybody when you moved here, Georgia?” Nikki asked as they waited to order.
“Cousin at Apple, but mostly just wanted to be in California. My sister, Katie-Ann, is going to join me when school starts. Can’t wait to see her.”
“That’s great. Older or younger?”
“Fifteen. She’ll be a junior. I just hope she’ll be able to make friends.”
Nikki raised her eyebrows. “Oh wow, a little sister. Big responsibility. So where are your mom and dad?”
Uh-oh.
“Look, here’s our waiter!” Georgia beamed at him a little too enthusiastically and pointed to her menu. “I’d like to start with this salad, please.”
“The Horiatiki?” The waiter smiled back and held her eyes for an instant. She noticed he had curly dark hair and those excellent lank shoulders.
“Oh wow,” Nikki commented as soon as he left, “that waiter thinks you’re hot. He’s cute, isn’t he?”
At least they were off the parents thing. Georgia shrugged. “Whatever. I probably just look like a big spender. So how about you, Nikki? You have a boyfriend?” Nikki recounted how she had almost gotten married a couple of years earlier, until her fiancé decided she was already married to her job. Now she was dating one of the software developers, which led to a mutual lament that there were so few plausible guys in a fairly big company. The salads arrived, and the cubes of cheese with the salty olives were delicious. As they sipped the red wine Nikki had chosen, the conversation turned to work.
“Are the executives at least nice to you?” Georgia asked.
Nikki’s grin was wolfish. “The smart ones are.”
The waiter appeared to replace the empty salad plates with plump, glistening lamb chops and roasted potatoes. Georgia closed her eyes as she bit down on her first bite of lamb and felt the juices spurt onto her tongue. She chewed slowly, and when she opened her eyes again Nikki was beaming at Georgia’s evident pleasure. The wine was so good with the lamb that for several minutes they spoke only of food.
“Hey, let’s do a toast.” Nikki’s brown eyes sparkled as she lifted her glass. Then she snatched the glass back, sloshing the wine a little. “No, make that two toasts. First: To the highest trampoline jumper on the Peninsula, and, for all we know, the world!” They drank, and her grin became conspiratorial. “Second, and also miraculous in its way: To the memory of Holly Foxx, bill-paying obstructionist, who has obstructed her last bill for Lumina Software!” They clinked glasses and drank again.
“So why’d they fire her?” Georgia asked. “Something worse than never paying bills?”
“Had to be!” Nikki laughed, throwing her hands in the air. “. . . Since she hadn’t paid a bill in years. I heard Cliff’s wife, Kathleen, forced the issue, but I really don’t believe it.” A boisterous multigeneration Greek family at the next table erupted in laughter, forcing them to lean forward to hear each other.
“Why? Were Holly and Cliff . . .”
“That’s just it. I don’t think they were. Holly has a boyfriend she’s crazy about.” Nikki shrugged. “Who knows what happened? All I know is the company’s going to work a whole lot better without her.”
“I keep hearing that. You know what, though, Nikki? Does it seem to you like there are some other people at Lumina who don’t do their jobs very well?”
Nikki rolled her eyes. “Oh-h-h, yeah! And some of them have a much bigger impact than Holly. This company is such a sinkhole of mediocrity, I sometimes wonder how we keep our doors open.”
“Like who? I mean, is, um, Burt Plowfield good at his job?”
“Who?” Nikki leaned closer, since somebody at the family table had apparently told another fine joke. Georgia cupped her hands around her mouth and leaned across the table as she repeated the name.
Nikki’s cheerful face turned downcast. “Poor Burt. He’s kind of a sad case. You know, he used to have Andrea’s job at another company.”
“Really! How’d he end up here?”
“As I understand it, he couldn’t get along with their new CEO. Evidently the two of them were just at constant loggerheads, and after a while she canned him. Funny, he’s so mild-mannered you’d think he could get along with everybody.” Mild-mannered with sneaky punches to the diaphragm. Evidently he’d been smart enough never to throw a punch at Nikki.
“But otherwise, he was good at his job?” Georgia persisted.
“Well, I assume so.” Nikki shrugged. “He has a Master’s from Caltech, so he must have something on the ball. I know he looked for another R&D job, but if that CEO wouldn’t give him a recommendation . . . Anyway, Roy hired him to find software companies to buy. The other side always seems to think he’s great, but I’ve heard he doesn’t hold his own too well in negotiations.” She tilted her head back and drained her wine glass.
“Isn’t that just two ways of saying the same thing?”
Nikki laughed. “Good point. So maybe he doesn’t get all the fine points of negotiation.” Her attention was drifting, and they watched the hostess brush past them with a woman whose glittering necklace would have funded Georgia’s lifestyle for about five years. Then Nikki glowered. “You know who I think’s an even bigger problem? Sally Kurtz.”
“Sally? How come? I mean, I notice she’s a little Jekyll and Hyde, but she certainly seems quite devoted to Roy.”
Nikki rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Devoted. That woman sidled in here on her very first day, determined to make him her own entirely. She sneaks in without an appointment when my back is turned. She writes him little emails saying how exhausted he must be after his big long trip with those nasty old analysts. She just kind of oozes all over him in every meeting with empathy and understanding until you want to puke.”
“Yeah, I might’ve seen some of that.”
“It’s actually sort of sci-fi. She’s the alien who creeps into the captain’s office disguised as a human, stings him to paralyze him and then plays with his insides for a while.”
“Blech!” They both laughed.
“And for the rest of the movie everybody keeps saying”—Nikki deepened her voice and scrunched her eyebrows—‘Is something wrong with the captain? He doesn’t seem quite like himself.’”
Georgia shuddered. “Gross! You think she really influences him, though? In a funny way, he doesn’t even seem to acknowledge her much.” Partyers at a big table in the center of the room erupted in an enthusiastic rendition of Happy Birthday, to a smattering of applause.
“Oh, she influences him all right. If nothing else, she reinforces every completely lame idea he comes up with by telling him it’s genius. If he had even a little bit of people smarts he’d see right through her. But Roy has the emotional IQ of a fire plug.”
“So, why’s she doing that? Just insecure? Or does she have something bigger in mind?”
“Good question.” Nikki scrunched her mouth to one side, considering. “You know, I saw some form she filled out a few months ago, and for where she wanted to be in five years, she put ‘CAO.’
Acronyms at dinner. Georgia sighed. “Sorry, what does that mean?”
“Chief Administrative Officer. Some companies put everything that isn’t sales or finance under a CAO. And then the CAO and the CEO and the CFO make a little triumvirate that runs the company.”
“Does CAO include the legal department?”
“Yep.”
“Sally wants to be in charge of our legal department?” Those cozy rotisserie flames dancin
g at the edge of her vision suddenly seemed devilish.
Nikki grinned. “She wants to be in charge of the solar system, Georgia, but for now she’ll settle for legal.” Noticing Georgia’s face, she stopped smiling and held up her palm. “Hey, bad joke. Just some stupid form, and she had to put something in the blank to look ambitious. Anyway, don’t let Sally ruin your great mood. You still have important choices to make, like baklava with Greek coffee, or chocolate with espresso? This is your night, Georgia.”
Nikki was absolutely right, of course. No reason whatever to let some hypothetical future trouble interfere with this rare and sumptuous dinner. She’d think about Sally later. And that good-looking waiter did sort of think she was hot. She flashed Nikki a reassuring smile as she settled back in her chair and speared a wedge of perfectly roasted potato.
Georgia was blessed with an innate talent for deep and restful sleep, even with the Futuresoft deal in deep trouble, even with Jim Prizine’s heroic efforts to Swiftly Acquire Patent hanging by a single thread. Even when she was wedged into the back seat of her Subaru. She almost never woke up before sunlight slanted onto her face through the windshield, so maybe it was that late night espresso with Nikki that caused her eyes to blink wide open in the middle of the night. The first thing she saw was a bright moon shining in through the slanted back window. The second thing she saw was a man’s face pressed against the window six inches from her own.
She started violently and scrambled upright against the back of the driver’s seat as far from him as possible. Had she screamed? His tangled hair obscured the faint outline of his face, but she could make out sloping shoulders and a wide, saggy body. He cupped a hand around his mouth and said slowly, “I live there.” He pointed to the house behind him and said something else. When she didn’t respond, he moved around the car to where she had left the passenger window open a crack.
“I said, you should start sleeping in my driveway.” Only his thick lips were visible in the crack in the window. “I see you out here every night, and you’ll be safer in the driveway. The police won’t hassle you there.”
Georgia was suddenly furious. “You needed to tell me that at, what, four in the morning? You scared the living shit out of me!”
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said defensively. “I wasn’t even going to wake you up. I just wanted to see if you were all right, like I do every night. But then your eyes opened.”
She watched in fascination as the lips in the crack above the window said, “You’re pretty when you sleep, you know?”
Her heavy wrench was under the front of the driver’s seat where she couldn’t reach it. Had she locked her doors? Her pulse was thundering as she forced a smile and said calmly, “Thanks. Appreciate the invitation, but I wouldn’t want to be a nuisance. You sure it would really be all right?”
He pulled his ear away from the crack in the window and his lips reappeared. “It’s definitely all right. You could come in sometimes and watch TV.”
“Wow, that would be great. Now, where should I park?”
He pointed. “Over on that side, away from the streetlight.”
“On the far side of your pickup? Great. Would you mind standing exactly where you’d like me to stop my front wheels? I don’t want to be in the way. I’m going to get in the front seat and start the car, okay? This’ll be great.” She snaked a leg between the front seats and hoisted herself into the driver’s side.
She caught a glimpse of his bare legs as he disappeared into the dark driveway on the far side of his pickup. “Over here,” she heard him call.
Starting her engine, she popped off the brake and accelerated so fast that the car fish-tailed. She turned the corner and kept speeding, checking her rearview mirror every five seconds. The street behind her remained dark.
Crazy fucker! Looking in at her every night? She shuddered. No more uncovered windows, even if the coverings did attract attention. No more staying in one place for more than a night. Should she check into the Castlekeep to calm down? It was already 4:30, big waste of money. She was done sleeping for this night.
Stupid creep. What if this made her scared to sleep in her car for the next two weeks? One thing for sure, she’d spring for a can of Mace tomorrow, and sleep with it right next to her head. What if he had her license plate number? Would that let him find their new apartment? She confirmed that her doors were locked, and headed to the all-night Happy Donuts in Palo Alto.
CHAPTER 9
By the time Georgia and Quan entered Ken’s office at 9 a.m. that morning, she had jogged, showered and consumed an impressive quantity of donut holes. Now she welcomed any distraction that would dislodge last night’s drama from her mind.
“So,” Ken began, “I went over this Norditch relationship with the CEO of Futuresoft yesterday. I’d say my suspicions grew instead of diminishing.”
“Oh no,” Quan said, raking his fingers through his thick black hair. “You think there really might be Crooks and Dirt?”
“I’m afraid I do, but it’s still only speculation, and we can’t let suspicions slow us down. We have to go all out to get answers and then fix any problems if we possibly can.”
“Did you find out how Norditch managed to stay in business with no customers or salespeople?” Quan asked
Ken shrugged. “They didn’t. After Futuresoft stripped out the bulk of their business, Norditch sold the little sliver that remained to Cordova.”
“Cordova,” Georgia repeated. “Our big rivals again? So, if we buy Futuresoft, and Futuresoft cheated Norditch, and Norditch is now Cordova, is it really the same as us having cheated Cordova?”
“You got it.” Ken nodded decisively.
Quan laughed. “Oh, no! Exact repeat of the SAP disaster, where we buy our way into horrible legal problems with our worst enemies.”
“Yes, but only if Futuresoft really did cheat Nordich,” Ken said, “which is what we have to find out. I’ve asked Futuresoft to produce every piece of paper that relates to Norditch employees and customers becoming employees and customers of Futuresoft. Georgia, you okay?”
“Fine.” Georgia jerked herself out of the image of those thick red lips moving in the crack above her car window. God, had she shuddered or something? “Sorry. Weird dream last night. So we need a new document request.” She picked up her pen.
“Unfortunately, Futuresoft has refused any new document request,” Ken replied. “They said if we slow the deal down that much, they’ll just walk away. What they will do is put a lot of documents they’ve supposedly never reviewed into a room up in Seattle. We can go in the room and look through them, as long as we don’t take notes or make copies.”
Georgia’s eyes narrowed. “So there must be something nasty. “
Quan laughed. “ I wish Burt had your insight. So the battle of wits continues. They want to increase the odds that we’ll overlook something horrible in their documents, and then they’ll be off the hook because technically they allowed us to see them.”
How gratifying that a smart person like Quan thought she had insight. “So now what?”
“Now we go up to Seattle and look at all that paper,” Ken stated. “Quan, can you make it up there for a day this week?”
“I’ll go tomorrow, but can we get this done in a day?”
“We have to try. Let’s make a list of what we’re looking for.” Twenty minutes later Georgia and Quan stood to go, and Ken said, “Before you leave, Georgia, update on the ’401 patent application?”
She turned back as Quan continued down the hall. “Our new patent lawyer, Jim Prizine, is sitting on a wooden bench outside the office of the Director of Drawing and Diagram Review somewhere in the bowels of the Patent and Trademark Office. Jim delivered the file into the Director’s hands yesterday, jumps to attention every time she goes in or out, and will hand carry the file to the next guy. Two more departments and two days to go.”
Ken pressed his lips into a tight line. “Boy, this really is a cliff-hanger, isn’t
it? Exactly what you don’t want with something this important. Does Archie have any ideas?”
“Archie? Haven’t spoken to him since we hired Prizine. Hasn’t he called you?”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t you think he’d be curious?” Probably reckless to criticize a big shot, but also irresistible. “For months he pretended to be Paul Holder’s patent psychiatrist instead of actually tracking the patent, which is why we have this disaster on our hands. Now he acts like it has nothing to do with him.”
Ken stood up, brushing his palm across the stubble of his militarystyle haircut. “To be honest, Georgia, you’re much more capable of managing this kind of thing than Archie is. He’s a good person, but he doesn’t seem to be very practical.”
“He’s about as practical as wings on a cucumber. I’m happy to track the patent, but shouldn’t he feel slightly responsible for jeopardizing our whole patent case?”
Ken’s green eyes searched her face for a moment. “Maybe you should talk that through with him. He’s a person we have to work with, and it’s better not to have the whole relationship poisoned if you can avoid it.”
“Really?” Her dread must have been obvious, because Ken’s smile was sympathetic.
“Do what you think best. I just think one way or another it might help if you get to know him a little better.”
After lunch she dutifully crossed the fountain-cooled patio to Archibald’s office unannounced.
“Archibald?” she called, rapping against the half-open door. Somebody was seated across from him, a man in his thirties with stringy dishwater-colored hair that matched his dishwater-colored T-shirt. One of their software engineers, probably.
Archie set a smoldering cigar in his ashtray as he looked up. “Don’t believe I’ve had the honor.”