A Panicked Premonition

by Victoria Laurie

  “Do you know if the code was ever fixed?”

  “That was the last time I talked to her,” she said, her eyes watering.

  “Who’s running the company now that Andy has passed away?” Candice asked next. She said that like Andy had died peacefully in his sleep. It was unsettling, given what I’d witnessed at the Roswells’ home.

  “Probably his partner, Stanton.”

  “Stanton . . . ?” Candice asked, as she wrote the name down.

  “Stanton Eldridge,” she said. I cocked my head at the sound of the name. “I know,” she said, looking at me. “His name sounds like a famous English actor or something, and he’s good-looking enough to have made it as an actor, but he’s a geek at heart. He and Andy founded their company in college. I guess Stanton is the closest thing to a best friend that Andy ever had.”

  The phone in Rachel’s hand rang and we all jumped. The ringtone was loud and alarming. “Hang on,” she said, looking at the screen. “It’s the nursing home.”

  She answered the call and Candice and I waited quietly while she talked. “Oh, hey, Erma, is my mom okay?” There was a pause; then Rachel’s face flushed and she got up from the table to walk over to the corner and turn her back to us. “I’m sending you out a check today. I promise. And we’ll make up the difference, I swear.”

  There was another pause, then, “I know, I know, but . . .” Rachel’s voice faltered and a sob shook her shoulders. “I’m trying to deal with my sister’s death right now too, Erma. Can you just give me a week or two to figure this all out?”

  After another moment I saw Rachel’s stance visibly relax. “Thanks, Erma. Thank you. My mom needs you guys. I appreciate all you do for her.”

  After hanging up with the nursing home, she turned back to us, her face still pink. Wiggling her phone as she took her seat again, she said, “Robin was supposed to take care of all of Mom’s living arrangements once she got that big windfall. Now it’s all on my shoulders. I don’t really know what we’re going to do. Without Robin’s help, we can’t swing the nursing home payments.”

  As Rachel’s lower lip began to tremble, I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I have a feeling that Robin isn’t through helping you out with your mom,” I said, reading the thin line of reassurance in the ether. It was hard for me to tune in on Rachel, because there was so much worry and heartbreak there, but I managed to pull that little tidbit out of the ether.

  Rachel nodded. “Yeah, I know I’m the next of kin, but I already know there’s no will. I’d talked to them right after my son was born about becoming his guardians if anything happened to me and Allan. You’d have thought I was asking them to put shackles on their ankles, but they eventually agreed. We also mentioned to them that they’d need to get their own affairs in order just in case something then happened to them. We wanted there to be a chain of custody beyond us and them, but they both laughed over the idea of creating a will. That was something that old people did.”

  “You’re sure they didn’t create one after your talk?” Candice said. “Sometimes people just need a minute to think about why it might be important.”

  “If they did, they didn’t let us know. My husband talked to an attorney this morning who said that, without a will and with an estate the size of theirs, it could be years before it’s settled and we see any money from it. The only good thing he told us is that we should be able to take custody of the house once the police release it. I do know that Andy paid cash for it, and the attorney said although I can’t sell it until the estate is settled, I can rent it out and charge a fee back to the estate for managing it as an income property. But who would want to rent that house after what happened there?”

  I grimaced. I couldn’t imagine anyone who’d be willing to rent or buy that home now.

  “What about life insurance?” Candice offered.

  Rachel wiped her eyes. “I don’t even know,” she said. “Maybe. The attorney my husband spoke to is going to help us with all this. He’s going to look into the estate and also see about suing that company where that guy worked.”

  My back stiffened. “What company?”

  “The construction company. The police said that the guy who killed my sister and Andy was on the job at the time he killed them. My attorney thinks I can sue his employer for wrongful death.”

  My mouth went dry and I felt the blood drain from my face. Candice reached for my hand and squeezed it. Standing up, she said, “Thanks, Rachel. You’ve been super helpful.”

  Rachel nodded, then sighed tiredly, getting to her feet too. “I’ll walk you out.” Right before we left, she reached out and caught Candice’s arm. “Catch these people, would you? One or all of them,” she said, anger in her eyes that was so intense it was scary.

  Candice paused to cover Rachel’s hand with her own. “Count on it.”

  Chapter Ten

  Later, when we were alone in the car and cruising back toward downtown, I said, “Well, that was sobering.”

  “Try not to sweat the threat of a lawsuit too much, Sundance.”

  “She’s got a case, Candice.”

  “Only if Dave was responsible, which we’re going to prove he wasn’t.”

  I inhaled a deep breath and let it out nice and slow. It was a little selfish of me to focus on a potential lawsuit when Rachel had just lost her sister and brother-in-law. “That poor woman.”

  “Yeah,” Candice agreed. “She’s got it rough.”

  “I can’t decide if it’s a good thing or a bad thing to hear that Robin and Andy weren’t well thought of in the community and potentially had made a few enemies.”

  “It’s good news for Dave, assuming he’s caught and charged with the Roswells’ murder, but bad news for us, because it means that the suspect pool has widened considerably.”

  “I’m assuming we’re going to talk to the business partner?”

  “Yeah,” Candice said, focusing on swerving into the next lane to pass someone daring to go the speed limit. “I want to know more about this big merger between InvoTech and Market Vision that didn’t officially go through.”

  The car behind us honked. I glanced in the side mirror. The driver was giving Candice a little piece of his mind. She ignored him and swerved again, punching the gas to put some distance between our car and his. Meanwhile I did my level best to hold down my lunch.

  Amazingly, we arrived in one piece at Market Vision’s headquarters, and Candice was nice enough to hold the door open for me as I passed through on shaky legs. “You okay, Sundance?” she asked me. “You look a little pale.”

  “We need to start driving separately.”

  “Aw, I’m not that bad.”

  My jaw dropped. Did she actually believe that? Looking at her expression, I’d have to say that she did. Swell. “Who exactly taught you how to drive?” I asked.

  “My grandmother,” she said proudly.

  Ah. Well, that explained it. Madame Dubois had been a force of nature and someone I’d known only long enough to completely adore and never fully understand. Her French accent had been impossibly thick. She’d been a very unique woman, headstrong and marvelously unaffected by whatever drama was happening in the world. If I remembered correctly, Madame’s pink Cadillac had had more than a few dents in it before she’d passed away. It was no wonder that her granddaughter drove like a crazy person.

  Candice stepped up to the reception desk and passed her credentials forward, asking to see Mr. Eldridge if he was available.

  The receptionist, a lanky young man in an oversized shirt and a poorly assembled tie widened his eyes when he saw the ID. He told us to have a seat and he’d inquire about Mr. Eldridge.

  We took a seat and I looked around the Market Vision offices and wasn’t all that impressed. For a company that’d been about to close a big deal, it was a pretty cheap setup. There were the typical millennial twentysom
ething workers, almost all of whom were wearing Beats headphones and typing rhythmically on laptops. A few of the workers were actually sitting on those big round rubber balls that’re supposed to be good for your back. Or your butt. I never remember which, but you wouldn’t catch me on one. I have a penchant for falling off unsteady objects and I like the back of my head too much.

  The office itself was painted a rather dreary teal gray. Almost like the color started out very cheery until some crab ass at the paint factory felt it was too optimistic and needed a dose of reality.

  Otherwise, the space was fairly Spartan. Desks were spaced close together, and the company logo was plastered on teal gray plastic water bottles and coffee mugs littering most of the desks. There were no plants or motivational posters, and very few windows.

  Silently I thanked my lucky stars I didn’t work in a place like this. It looked and felt like a place hope went to die.

  And then something on the wall next to where I was sitting caught my attention and I got up to inspect it. “Hey,” I said over my shoulder to Candice. “Look at this!”

  Candice got up and came over. “Huh,” she said when she saw the framed cover of Texas Monthly on the wall. It was the same issue that Safe Chambers had gotten the nice write-up in. On the cover was the familiar photo of the man with brown hair and matching eyes, standing confidently next to a whiteboard with lots of zeros and ones. I’d never really considered the cover’s lead story, preferring to devote all of my attention to pages 36–40, which’d been dedicated to Safe Chambers. But now that I was really looking at the cover, I realized who the man in the photo was by way of the caption under it: “Is This the Next Bill Gates? Meet Austin’s Own Whiz Kid, Andy Roswell!”

  “The issue must’ve been how Andy first heard of Safe Chambers,” Candice said.

  “Whoa,” I said breathlessly. If not for the chance coincidence of Andy and my husband’s company being featured in a local magazine together, maybe Dave would never have gone missing. I wasn’t sure if Andy would still be alive. . . . It was still too soon to tell.

  “Pardon me, ladies,” the receptionist said to get our attention. “Mr. Eldridge can see you now.”

  Candice and I stood and walked toward the desk. “He’s through there,” the receptionist said, pointing to a hallway off the lobby. “He’ll be in the last office on the left.”

  We walked to the corridor side by side and passed only one other office, with a large glass window along the length of it, allowing us a view of the interior. Inside that space the furnishings were gorgeous: white walls, dark chestnut wood floors, a chrome and white leather seating area, and a huge lambskin rug in the center of the room.

  The office was a big departure from the dull and depressing atmosphere out in the main work area.

  One additional feature made it especially interesting, however. On the far wall, spaced between two exterior windows, was an enormous, framed, black-and-white photograph of an absolutely gorgeous woman. She was seductively posed on a lounge chair, her knees touching but her ankles splayed, her chest leaning forward as her décolletage spilled out of a loosely buttoned man’s shirt—which was all she wore—and her full lips pouting in a come-hither expression. She resembled Rachel Tibbons enough for me to conclude the portrait was of Robin Roswell, and the office had no doubt belonged to her husband, Andy.

  At Andy’s desk, however, sat a nerdy-looking man with thick glasses and hunched shoulders. He was typing furiously on a laptop and seemed unaware of our presence as we passed him on our way to the end of the hallway.

  It made me feel a little icky that someone had already taken over Andy Roswell’s space. I knew the company had a business to run, but the guy had been dead for only two days.

  We found Stanton Eldridge at the office next to Andy’s, which wasn’t nearly as nicely appointed and seemed to have been thrown together as an afterthought.

  Stanton was indeed a very good-looking man, as Rachel had suggested. When we walked into the open doorway of his office, we found him hovered over his laptop, momentarily typing before lifting his chin to observe one of three monitors, one at a time.

  Candice cleared her throat to get his attention, but he didn’t look up from the screen. “Mr. Eldri—”

  “One sec!” he interrupted sharply.

  Candice turned at me and raised a brow, like, Really?

  I gave a one-shoulder shrug like, Yeah, but what can you do?

  She rolled her eyes like, Whatevs. He’s a douche.

  I nodded like, True dat.

  Sometimes Candice and I have whole conversations without ever actually speaking. We have these most often in the company of our husbands, but that’s probably just a coinkydinky.

  We waited silently while he continued to type and consult his screen. I became aware of the passage of time. I checked my watch, then rocked back and forth on my heels, rolling my own eyes to let Candice know I thought his douchiness was surpassing even my early expectations.

  She shook her head slightly, and I knew that was trouble. For the most part, my best friend and partner is the calmest, most levelheaded person I know. Until you’re openly rude to her. Repeatedly. And then she’ll do something—usually physical—to make you regret that decision. I worried that Eldridge was quickly approaching the “deep regret” segment of his day, so, to spare us from continuing to wait, as much as his as-yet-unbroken pinkie finger, I said, “Mr. Eldridge, we understand that you’re busy, but we have just a few ques—”

  “I said hold on!” he snapped again.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Candice set her jaw and square her shoulders.

  Uh-oh . . . , I thought

  Before I could do much else to defuse the situation, she had stepped forward to pick up one of the gray plastic water bottles bearing the Market Vision logo from the side of Eldridge’s desk. Unsnapping the plastic cap before holding it above his keyboard, she flashed him a wicked smile. Meanwhile, he’d frozen in place, moving only his eyes to look at her with a shocked expression. Candice’s smile got bigger and a little more wicked. She then slowly, deliberately began to tilt the water bottle over the central monitor, which I could now see was also the desktop computer. There was a crack in the panel above where she held the bottle.

  I couldn’t help it. I smiled a little wickedly too.

  “What’re you doing?” Eldridge barked as he got to his feet.

  “Getting your attention,” she replied. “Do I have it?”

  His face flushed with anger. “You know I can have you thrown out of here, right?”

  “Of course you can,” she said. “But I’m afraid that anyone who lays a hand on my arm might cause me to drop this very full bottle of liquid all over your computer. It’d be a shame if that ruined your productivity.”

  His hands balled into fists. “You wreck this computer and I’ll sue you into the ground.”

  “I have no intention of wrecking it. But I have every intention of holding this water bottle right here for as long as it takes for you to answer a few questions.”

  He glared hard at her, refusing to speak.

  “Dude,” I said to him. “I’m only an observer here, but I think the safest and quickest path to letting you get back to work might be to talk to us.”

  Eldridge ignored me and began to reach for his phone. Candice wrinkled her nose and sniffed loudly. “Oh, man! I think I’m allergic to something in here. I’d hate to sneeze right now. It might cause my arm to jerk.”

  Eldridge backed his hand away from the phone. “I already talked to the police,” he said, his voice so low it was hard to hear him. “And I’m on a deadline. You two are just going to be wasting my time.”

  “Really?” Candice said. “Assisting with the investigation into your business partner’s murder is a waste of your time?”

  Eldridge put the heels of his hands against his forehead and slum
ped back into his chair. For several seconds he just sat there, pressing his hands to his head. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “It’s been a really bad past two days, and I don’t want to be here, but there’re things that have to get done before I can take a few personal days to mourn my friends.”

  He spoke with such mournful sadness that it was hard to stay angry at him. “We understand,” I offered, because I knew we both did.

  Eldridge took his palms away from his eyes and his whole expression had changed. “Please forgive me. How can I help?”

  Candice nodded as an acknowledgment of his apology, but she didn’t lower the water bottle. “We understand that the deal with InvoTech didn’t go through as planned due to an issue in the software code.”

  Eldridge’s expression changed yet again to one of alarm. His gaze moved to the open door of his office and he said, “Would you please keep it down? That’s not common knowledge.”

  “So it’s true?” Candice pressed.

  Eldridge was about to answer her when there was a knock on the door behind us. I turned to see the nerdy-looking man from Andy’s office standing there, and the expression on his face was a mixture of worry and regret. “Stanton?” he said.

  “Greg,” Eldridge said, his voice tense. “Did you find anything?”

  “No,” Greg said. “I looked through every file. It’s not there.”

  My attention turned back to Eldridge. The color had drained from his face and he seemed on the verge of crying. After a hard swallow he reached over to the side of his computer and pulled out a flash drive. “Here,” he said. “There’s a shitload of data on here, which I’ve been trying to sort through all morning. The first section of code we need is in the very first file. Beyond that, we’ll need the next three sections, which have to be somewhere in the remaining files.”