Lexie found the files on Veronica’s computer and copied them to her external drive. Veronica also had the intranet open to an area with the forms she had shown Lexie. From her experiences with other company intranets, Lexie knew that information was often buried several layers deep, so she copied the link to a text file. No way did she want to have to ask Veronica twice for any information.
‘Have you got the file now?’ Peter Webber sounded extremely bad-tempered, and while Lexie could understand his irritation, she didn’t ever want to be on the receiving end of his temper.
The answer must have been positive as he got up and stomped out of the room. Lexie stared at the desktop image on Peter’s laptop. He hadn’t even bothered to lock the screen. She looked at her external drive and back to Peter’s laptop. It was so wrong, illegal even. She thought of Patrick and Evelyn, of Caroline, and the old man. Peter Webber used the hangar in the compound. There was nothing to link him to Caroline and the hit and run, but Caroline had worked for Webber Media.
Lexie jiggled the mouse so the screen wouldn’t lock before she’d made a decision. She held her breath and listened. There was no sound from the room next door. She tiptoed across the office floor, not that there was any need as the carpet was so thick it deadened most sounds. The lounge was empty with just a murmur of voices from the sunroom.
Lexie hurried back to the desk and pulled the external drive connection out of Veronica’s laptop and into Peter’s. She’d never done anything like this before. Her hand hovered on the cable. She thought of the look on Patrick’s face when he talked about Caroline, and an image of him hanging from the beam in Evelyn’s house overlaid it. There might never be another opportunity like this. She scanned the laptop’s drive. She might not have long and didn’t want to waste time copying programme files. If Peter or Veronica returned to the office hopefully she’d hear them coming.
She found a folder called Personal and skimmed through the contents. There were several subfolders containing documents and spreadsheets. Lexie hastily dragged a copy of the folder to her external drive. The blue line showing the amount of files still to copy moved agonisingly slowly. Lexie wanted to shout at it to hurry and had to force herself to breathe properly. She pulled Peter’s laptop next to Veronica’s in the hope that if someone came in suddenly she could disguise what she was doing. Her hand hovered over the external drive connection, ready to pull it out at the least sound.
The last few folders copied faster than the earlier ones, and bolstered by this and the non-appearance of Peter or Veronica, Lexie made a copy of the email folder. In the quiet of the room, she felt sure she could hear her heart thudding.
‘Are you still here, Alexandra?’ Veronica’s voice sounded distant.
Lexie grabbed the drive and tugged the lead from Peter’s laptop. ‘Just finishing up.’
She dropped the drive into her bag and quickly closed the folder window on Peter’s screen. She picked up her laptop and met Veronica in the office doorway.
Veronica lowered her voice. ‘By the way, Peter wasn’t happy about us doing anything even remotely linked to the journalist’s story. If we go ahead with my idea on the series, don’t mention to anyone it started from that story.’
‘Okay, not a problem.’ Now it was Veronica’s idea. Lexie wasn’t surprised, and amazingly she didn’t care. At the moment she only wanted to get out of the house.
She strode across the gravel driveway to her car as Sean came around the corner of the house. Veronica’s desk was close to the window, and he could have seen her copying files. He was tall and muscular but was definitely more than just a dim-witted heavy. There was a keen intelligence in his eyes.
Lexie put on her friendliest smile. ‘Nice to meet you Sean, I’m off now.’
‘Drive carefully.’
It was something she said to people, so why did it suddenly seem like a threat. Her imagination was definitely running on overkill. Not a good choice of word.
‘As bad as talking to yourself,’ she muttered.
It took her two attempts to get the key into the ignition. Only once she was off the Longcross estate did the adrenalin leave her system, and her hand trembled on the steering wheel. She pulled over to the side of the road and sat there for a few minutes.
Nathan had made quite a thing about the fenced compound and the plane going straight into the hangar, but as it was Peter’s private jet the actions appeared more innocent. It even made sense of the secrecy. But this landing didn’t fit in with the pattern.
If Veronica wasn’t lying and Peter hadn’t seen her on the previous visits, who had he visited, or did someone else also use the Learjet?
The obvious reason for Peter coming would be an affair with Veronica. Lexie pulled a face; she couldn’t decide who’d be getting the rough end of that deal. Veronica was attractive in a hard, brittle way, but a total bitch. Peter didn’t have much going for him in the looks and personality area, but he was powerful and plenty of women were turned on by that. Lexie wasn’t sure if Peter was married, but she couldn’t imagine Veronica wanting to stir up problems with Jed. He had money and was certainly better looking than Peter. If Peter and Veronica were having an affair, it would be less noticeable for Veronica to go to him. Helen had said Veronica went to London on a regular basis.
There was also the man at the compound, Ian, the one who might have started the fire.
15
When Lexie got home, she started up her laptop and pulled the external drive out of her bag. Even thinking of what she’d done made her forehead and the back of her neck prickle with sweat. She could so easily have been caught.
‘It’s already done, no point worrying about that now.’ There was no one to hear her, but she wished the words had come out more forcefully.
She skimmed the list of folders she’d copied, not sure what she was looking for. The information might be valuable to a Webber Media competitor, but if she didn’t find anything relating to Caroline then she’d delete the files. The email folders would probably be the best place to start.
Lexie opened the email archive folders she’d saved and looked through Peter’s inbox. There were meeting requests, emails from companies requesting that Peter speak at their upcoming conferences. Everything looked boringly normal. Peter had a list of email folders, and Lexie flicked in and out of folders about travel, expansion of some areas of Webber Media and an approaching restructure of some departments. There were a number of emails from Veronica, but nothing other than work concerns. As it was his personal laptop there were email folders about some of his other business connections. His calendar was busy with business meetings. There were a number of social engagements, but from what she’d read and could see from his calendar, he avoided most functions that didn’t have any business connection. He obviously enjoyed being rich enough to disregard what people thought of him.
It was ironic that before she met Patrick she’d never heard of Peter Webber, but in a serendipitous fashion she’d now read a few articles mentioning him. Many hinted at his rudeness to people he didn’t care for, which appeared to encompass most people. There were a number of dinners marked as “Private” in his calendar, but he used initials rather than names for the other guests. He had a media conference and several media functions marked in his calendar and a charity art event. Lexie frowned; she was jumping to conclusions after spending such a short time with him, but a charity art event?
She flicked back through his calendar and noted another similar event about six months before. There was also a charity media event he had attended. She searched for both and discovered, much to her surprise, that Peter Webber sponsored programmes in both the media and art schools, helping talented young students who otherwise couldn’t afford the fees. She smacked her wrist in a mock “naughty you” gesture. Perhaps the gruff exterior hid a nicer person than she’d seen.
After a few minutes searching, Lexie found a Facebook page and a website covering the charity event. An expensive dinner and art a
uction raised money for student scholarships. Lexie skimmed through the photos. Among the guests were plenty of celebrities and people with titles, everyone in designer evening clothes and expensive jewellery. She spotted Peter Webber in one photo, he wasn’t part of the group being photographed but was talking to someone out of shot. Further down the page she spied a photo of Veronica and Jed. She clicked on a tab to look through photos of the previous year’s event and saw Freddie, her old boss. She checked the date of the event. It was held about six weeks before Freddie died of a heart attack. Poor Freddie, he’d been such a great boss. He would have hated what the directors had done to his company.
Lexie closed the website, her mood now deflated.
There didn’t appear to be anything of interest in Peter’s email or calendar, and Lexie hoped she’d find something in the document folders. She flicked through several, but they were all boringly work related, until she came to a folder of documents that were password protected. Annoying, but not unexpected. She was surprised he hadn’t protected more of his information.
She looked through the other files more carefully. A lot of people kept their passwords in a file. Peter didn’t appear to be more than averagely computer literate and was possibly the type who would do that. She opened a number of files before finding the one with his passwords. Thank goodness for people who did what they shouldn’t. She kept the password file open and tried each of the dozen or so passwords on the locked files. No luck, the files remained obstinately closed.
Lexie pushed her chair away from the table and stared out the window. A mere password wasn’t going to stop her. In the garage, she rummaged through a pile of boxes before she found the one containing her work-related stuff. In the job she had before Raines, she’d needed to open some files her predecessor had password protected. The IT manager had given her some software that unlocked the files. Somewhere in the box was a copy. She pulled out the CD cases and did a jubilant arm pump when she found it near the bottom of the pile.
It had taken her some time to get into all the files because she didn’t have a clue what passwords her predecessor might have used. Thanks to Peter’s password file, she had a base to work from. His passwords were fairly simple. Each was a dictionary word with a single digit at the end, and they were all under ten characters long. She hoped he’d kept to his typical password conventions for these files. She installed the software and set it up restricting the recovery to the parameters of his other passwords. If that didn’t work she’d have to expand the search.
She picked up the twins and then went to get Tilly. Helen was already waiting by the school gates when they arrived. Lexie felt a stab of guilt when she saw Helen. She’d promised Helen and Nathan she wouldn’t do anything that could cause any problems. But some searching on the Internet couldn’t do any harm, and no one knew she’d copied Peter’s files. They were safe on her laptop at the moment. If she needed to take it with her to Veronica’s she’d remove the files.
After putting the children to bed that evening, she told Nathan about the trip to the airfield and that one of the men at the compound was the person at the fire. Nathan didn’t question her certainty and remained quiet and thoughtful for some time.
‘I don’t have a good feeling about that place,’ he said finally. ‘I agree with you about the media guy wanting privacy and being able to afford it, but it doesn’t stack up with Ian being there at the same time as the fire started and don’t forget the incident with the old man. One could simply be an accident, but two is stretching it especially if you add in the hit and run. Peter Webber would appear to be the common denominator, but why would someone like him be involved with this?’
‘I don’t know.’ Lexie leaned forward, elbows on the dining table, and rested her head in her hands. ‘Because it’s his plane, I assumed the hangar and compound belonged to him, but it might not. I wonder if it’s possible for the plane to be used without him knowing.’
‘It might not belong solely to him. Could be used by a couple of companies.’
Lexie shrugged. ‘I didn’t really take to him, but that’s not enough to pin a couple of deaths on him.’
Nathan grinned at her. ‘Pretty poor justice system we’d have. I’ve also driven round there a couple of times on my way home, not that it’s exactly on my way home. It’s mostly quiet, but I have seen a couple of vans there. One of them was there the night the plane landed.’
‘So, not doing any investigating then.’ Lexie kept her tone light. Driving around the airfield was pretty innocuous compared to copying Peter Webber’s files. She’d keep that to herself.
‘Anything else exciting happen while you were at Veronica’s?’
‘Peter yelled and swore at some lawyers. He keeps a few bodyguards around but other than that nothing exciting.’
‘How did it go with the gossip lady?’
‘I don’t really like her, but I can put up with her as long as the work is interesting. She’s not stupid and I need to remember that, and she’s business savvy in her line of work. I guess she’s made it out of sheer bloody-mindedness and not being averse to using other people.’
‘She doesn’t sound like the type of person you’d normally choose to work with.’
‘You’re right, I wouldn’t, but as I don’t have offers of work flooding in I’ll stick with this for now.’
Veronica’s only positive point was in having useful contacts and giving her a good excuse to do some digging.
After dropping the girls off the following morning, Lexie was keen to get back home. The software had unlocked the files the previous evening but she hadn’t had the opportunity to look at them.
Lexie booted up her laptop and opened the first file. It contained photos of paintings. Most had the name of the painting typed beneath the photo and some had a note of where and when they were being exhibited. Peter must appreciate art after all. The second file was similar. She recognised a couple of the paintings but most she’d never heard of before.
The last file was a spreadsheet. She was familiar with business budget spreadsheets, but this was more like a personal list of figures with no explanatory text and a few cryptic notes. She had hoped for something exciting, especially given the difficulty she’d had in opening them.
She did a search on the paintings. They were reasonably well known as her searches yielded results. However, none of this was what she’d hoped for.
Her phone rang.
‘Are you able to come up to London tomorrow?’ Veronica phrased it as a question, but the underlying tone suggested Lexie had better be able to make it. ‘I’m on my way now and will be there for a few days. There’s some people you need to know and it will probably make your job a little easier if you meet them face to face.’
‘How long do you need me there?’ Although Lexie didn’t appreciate Veronica’s tone, for once she agreed with her, but these meetings and trips to London had better not become a regular occurrence. One of the positive points of the job was being able to do most of it from home.
‘I don’t need you here at all. I’m doing this for you. An hour or two at most.’
Lexie thought through her options quickly. She should be able to drop the girls off and get to London and back in time. She’d check with Nathan and see if it was possible for him to leave early, but she was pretty sure Helen wouldn’t mind picking them up if she were just a few minutes late.
‘It won’t be a problem. I’ll see you mid-morning.’ Lexie put down her phone and turned back to the laptop. She spent a few more minutes looking through the files but couldn’t figure out why Peter considered they needed a password. If she was going to London the following day, she’d better do a bit of research on the working women project.
Lexie spent some time researching larger national companies and the number of women they had in top management roles and then checked the statistics for international companies. The information for senior executive levels was interesting, but the statistics for the next tier down o
f managers would also be useful for comparison purposes. She started working on small to medium businesses to see how the equation of men and women compared there.
Later, when she met Helen at school, Lexie asked if she would be able to pick up the girls the following day if Nathan couldn’t leave work early.
‘Not a problem,’ said Helen. ‘Actually I wanted to ask if you were doing anything Friday evening. Debbie our babysitter can’t make it, and I wondered if you’d be able to look after Rebecca and Jake. It won’t be a late night, we’re both too knackered by the end of the week, but it’s our wedding anniversary and I’d like us to go out for dinner at least.’
Lexie was happy to oblige as she didn’t want the helping-out situation to become lopsided.
Far from having nothing to do, the next morning she was once again smartly dressed and in the car, trying to feel like her London self. She didn’t know how formally dressed they’d be in a magazine office, but she was sure they’d be fashionably dressed and so she passed on her corporate suits and went for an olive-green dress that suited her colouring, adding some burnt-orange chunky jewellery she’d bought just before leaving London.
Lexie located the Webber Media building and managed to find an underground car park two streets away. The offices were in an older narrow structure, sandwiched between two new office blocks. There was no reception on the ground floor, but the large brushed metal sign next to the lift showed a number of companies were housed in the building. Webber Media used floors six through to nine, with reception on level six.
The reception area had the spartan look of somewhere that wasn’t used. After Lexie stood there for a moment, a young woman wandered over from a nearby desk. Obviously they didn’t expect many visitors. The young woman rang Veronica and then nodded at Lexie to wait. The office furniture was modern and ergonomic but couldn’t disguise the old building. The lift shafts ran through the centre of each floor, so there wasn’t a great deal to see from where she waited. She’d imagined a wide expanse of desks and lots more noise. Films and television must give people the wrong impression of many workplaces. Most people worked quietly at their computers.
Still Death (A Lexie Wyatt murder mystery Book 1) Page 14
