by Terri Reid
Chapter Twenty-six
Mary and Bradley seated themselves on the side of the conference table that faced the door.
“I don’t think Ms. Tate was taken in by your charm,” Mary teased.
“Really?” Bradley replied, smiling at her. “And here I tried my best to win her over.”
“I don’t think she likes to be crossed,” Mary said.
Bradley’s face turned serious, and he nodded. “I agree,” he said. “And the next thing we need to learn about her is if she has access to a gun.”
“Do you think…” Mary gasped, shocked.
Bradley shrugged. “Motive and opportunity,” he said. “That’s all it takes.”
A knock on the door halted their discussion, and Chandler poked his head into the room. “Are you ready for me?” he asked.
Nodding, Bradley motioned him to the chair across from them. “Yes, please come in,” he said.
Chandler closed the door and hurried over to the chair. He smiled at Mary and gave her a half-wink before sitting down.
“He does that to all the girls,” Ruth said, appearing in the seat next to Chandler. “I told him it was a little obvious.”
Mary bit back a smile and focused on Chandler. “Were you and Ruth friends?” she asked.
He shook his head in confusion. “What do you mean were?” he asked. “Ruth and I are still friends.”
“He doesn’t know,” Ruth said and then shrugged. “He never watches the news. He only watches the cooking and home improvement shows.”
“You probably missed the news,” Mary said. “We found Ruth’s body yesterday.”
“What?” Chandler exclaimed, clearly surprised as he shook his head in denial. “No. No, Ruth is way too young to die. She was so healthy. She was always, like, drinking milk. You have to be mistaken.”
“Really?” Ruth asked. “You think milk stops bullets?”
“No, it was Ruth’s body,” Bradley said. “Her parents confirmed it last night.”
“How did she die?” he pleaded.
“She was shot,” Mary replied. “She was murdered.”
For a moment, Chandler went so pale that Mary thought he was going to faint. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Wow, he’s taking this hard,” Ruth said softly.
The young man took a slow, deep breath and leaned forward. “Do you know why she was murdered?” he asked quietly, glancing carefully around the room.
“We have our suspicions,” Bradley said. “But why don’t you tell us what you think might have happened.”
Chandler glanced around the room once more. “This room is clean, isn’t it?” he asked.
Ruth sighed and rolled her eyes. “Okay, other than the cooking and home improvement shows, he watches a lot of spy stuff.”
Mary turned to Bradley. “You know,” she whispered. “They were the ones that suggested this room. We could have company.”
Bradley nodded, pulled out his cell phone, clicked on an application, and suddenly the room was filled with noises.
“What’s that?” Chandler asked.
“An audio jammer created by a scientist at mynoise.net,” Bradley said. “It’s specifically made to interrupt listening devices. Now all we have to do is keep our voices fairly low and no one will be able to hear us.”
“That is seriously cool,” Chandler said. “It’s safe now?”
“Yes,” Bradley said. “Tell us what you think.”
“Well, Ruth, she was…she was almost inhuman she was so smart,” he said.
“That was a weird compliment,” Ruth said, screwing up her face.
“She knew this biotech stuff like the back of her hand,” he continued. “So, one day I’m working on some routine stuff, and she calls me over to her workstation. She’s all excited. She tells me to look into her microscope, so I do and I see these, like, squiggly things. I look up and she’s smiling at me, like whatever I saw is a big deal. And I say, What?”
“He had no idea what I was talking about,” Ruth inserted.
Shaking his head, Chandler wipes a few stray tears from his eyes. “Sorry. It’s, you know, I just saw her smile, in my mind and I know I’m never going to see it again,” he said softly.
“Awww,” Ruth said and brushed a few tears of her own away. “That was totally sweet.”
He took a deep breath and continued. “So, she punches me lightly and calls me a dork, but then she tells me that the bacteria in the slide is from the special seed coating Granum puts on their corn seed. It prevents a whole lot of stuff, but then it’s supposed to just die off in the soil. And that squiggly thing isn’t dead.”
“So Granum wasn’t telling the truth about their seeds?” Bradley asked.
Chandler nodded eagerly. “Right. Exactly. It was like false advertising, or worse,” he said. “So Ruth said she was going to tell Darren about it. And I was like, Ruth don’t you think they already know?”
He shook his head. “She came back to her desk, like an hour later, and she was really upset,” he said. “Darren took her up to see the dragon…I mean Ms. Tate. And they said something about a confidentiality agreement she signed with her internship, and if she shared her findings with anyone they would sue her and her parents and they’d lose their farm.”
“Did she stop?” Mary asked, already knowing the answer.
He shook his head. “No. She said these bacteria could hurt people, and she knew her parents would want her to tell the truth,” he said, and then he looked up at Mary and Bradley. “But I don’t think her parents would have wanted her dead.”
Ruth stared at him for a long moment and then slowly shook her head. “No,” she said as she started to fade away. “No they wouldn’t have.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
The next intern was the only other woman on the team, Sonja Morgan. She was tall and thin with bright red hair and a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Mary smiled when she walked through the door. “Sonja, thank you for meeting with us,” she said.
“I didn’t think I had a choice,” Sonja replied.
Bradley met her eyes and nodded. “You’re correct, you didn’t,” he replied. “Ms. O’Reilly was just being polite.”
Sonja rolled her eyes and settled in the chair. “So?” she asked.
“So, I see by your records that you’re older than the other students in the intern program,” Mary said.
“Is my age relevant to your investigation?” she asked.
“At this point, we don’t know what’s relevant or not,” Bradley said. “So, we’d appreciate your cooperation.”
With an impatient sigh, Sonja turned to Mary. “Unlike my fellow interns, I had to pay my own way through school,” she said. “So, I’ve had to skip semesters and work to earn enough money. That’s why I’m older.”
“How well did you know Ruth?” Bradley asked.
“We were roommates,” Sonja said. “We shared an apartment in Freeport near the community college.”
“Were you interviewed when she disappeared?” Mary asked.
“No, because I was the one who called the police,” Sonja replied. “Ruth was out late sometimes, but never overnight. When I woke up the next morning and saw that she hadn’t come home, I called 911.”
“What did you think happened to her?” Mary asked.
Sonja glared at Mary for a moment, her angry eyes filling with tears. “I thought she was dead,” she spit out. “I thought she had finally gone too far and someone had killed her. I thought we were all going to die just because Miss Smarty-pants couldn’t keep her nose out of someone else’s business.”
“Whose business?” Bradley asked.
Sonja turned to him. “You just interviewed Prince Charming, so you know all about Ruth’s project and the seeds,” she said. “She spent night after night in the labs at the community college running tests. And you could see from that stupid smile on her face, she’d found her evidence.”
“Did you warn her?” Bradley asked.
&n
bsp; “Hell, yeah,” she said. “She was such an idealist. She was so sure people would be pleased with her findings.” Sonja buried her face in her hands for a moment. Finally, she looked up and the anger was gone, replaced with sadness. “She was nice to me. She lent me money, she helped me with homework. She helped me get a scholarship for next semester. Why the hell was she so damn stupid?”
“I know it sounds like we’re asking the same questions,” Mary said. “But we need to be sure we are hearing what you’re saying. Do you think someone from Granum was responsible for Ruth’s death?”
Sonja took a deep breath and glanced around the room. “Yeah,” she said. “It might not have been someone from this office that actually pulled the trigger, but they were the ones who had the most to lose. They were the ones who Ruth was going to threaten.” She shook her head with certainty. “Yeah, it was someone from Granum alright.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Charlie Paul was everything Chandler was not. His thick glasses perched on the end of his thin, long nose, and his dark hair was oily and unkempt, like he often forgot to wash it. His complexion was pallid and scattered with acne. He had a slight build, wore dark, loose clothing, and was only about five feet tall. He kind of reminded Mary of a Goth scarecrow.
“Charlie, thank you for meeting with us,” Mary said.
Charlie slipped meekly into the chair and nodded. “My pleasure, ma’am,” he replied.
“How well did you know Ruth?” Bradley asked him.
Charlie pushed up his glasses and stared owlishly at Bradley. “We worked together as interns,” he said.
“Other than your work?” Bradley asked.
Charlie shrugged. “She was from the University of Illinois, I was from Wisconsin,” he said. “So we really didn’t know each other more than here.”
“Did you hear about her death?” Bradley asked.
Charlie nodded. “Yeah, I heard about it on the news last night,” he said.
“But you didn’t tell anyone here at Granum,” Bradley said.
“I didn’t want to be that guy,” he replied.
“That guy?” Bradley asked.
“You know, that guy who gives people bad news,” he replied with a shrug. “So, I just wanted to wait until someone else brought it up.”
“Did you socialize with her?” Mary asked.
“Socialize?” he repeated, confused.
“Did you go out and have drinks or pizza with her?” Bradley asked. “See her outside of work?”
“Like date her?” Charlie asked, pushing the glasses up again. “You asking me if I dated her?”
Mary shook her head. “No, we just wanted to know if you ever saw her, with the group, outside of this building.”
Charlie stared at Mary for a long moment. “A couple times we all drove back into Freeport for lunch,” he said. “I saw her then.”
“Did you work on any projects together?” Mary asked. “Here at Granum?”
He shook his head. “Naw, she didn’t like how I did my experiments,” he said. “So, we never worked together.”
Charlie’s words reminded Mary of something she’d seen at the work stations. “You mentioned that she didn’t like how you did your experiments,” she said. “Can you tell me if Chandler uses a lot of rats for his experiments.”
A slow smile crossed Charlie’s face. “That’s the big joke here,” he said. “Chandler really likes the rats.” He chuckled shyly. “Yeah, he really likes those rats.”
“But Ruth didn’t like the rats?” Bradley asked.
“Ruth didn’t have time for those kind of experiments,” he said. “She was working on her special project.” He pushed his glasses up again. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Ruth would always get her work done. But then she’d work on her project. She said she didn’t have time for games.”
“Do you and Chandler have time for games?” Mary asked.
Charlie shrugged. “Not too often,” he said. “Mostly we just do the experiments and note the results.”
“Do you have any thoughts about who might have killed Ruth?” Bradley asked.
Charlie thought about it for a moment and then shook his head. “Someone who wanted her dead, I guess,” he said.
“And do you know who would have wanted her dead?” Bradley asked.
“Well, I think that report she was writing could have gotten a lot of attention,” he said. “So, you know, maybe someone didn’t want Ruth to get all that attention.”
“Do you think someone at Granum could have killed her?” Mary asked.
Charlie looked slowly around the room and then pushed his glasses up once more. “Well, really, who else is there?”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Mary sat back and sighed after Charlie left the room. “Well, we have a lot of witnesses for motive,” Mary said.
Bradley nodded and picked up his phone to quickly glance at his emails. “Yeah, and not a whole lot of anything else,” he replied. “Are you hungry?”
She smiled. “Starved. And I really have to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“Well, I noticed the bathroom is down the hall and around the corner,” he said. “And I just sent a text to Alex to have him come join us when we interview Angela Tate and Darren. I think we need to bring in the big guns for this interview.”
She nodded. “That’s a good idea,” she said.
“And I told him to pick up lunch and bring it with him.”
She smiled widely. “And that’s a great idea.”
He chuckled. “Okay, go use the bathroom, and then we can go over our notes until Alex gets here.”
Slipping from the conference room, Mary made her way into the women’s room and a stall at the far corner of the room. A little while after she’d locked the stall door, Mary heard the door to the bathroom open.
“What did they ask?” the now familiar tone of Angela Tate’s voice echoed in the small, tiled room.
“I don’t know,” Sonja answered. “Just the usual questions you get during a murder investigation.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Angela snapped. “Don’t forget. Without me you wouldn’t have this internship.”
Mary listened intently and heard Sonja’s sigh. “You know, I don’t think that would be a really wise move on your part,” Sonja replied easily. “Admitting that you brought someone in to spy on the rest of the interns might make you look, I don’t know, suspicious.”
Mary really wished she could see Angela’s face. Then she smiled, quickly finished in the stall and flushed the toilet. She exited the stall and turned to the surprised women standing in the middle of the bathroom.
“Well this is awkward,” Mary said with a little grimace as she walked over to the sinks to wash her hands. “Although, really, it will make our interview with you, Ms. Tate, so much more interesting.”
The other two women still stood in shock while Mary pulled a paper towel out of the dispenser, quickly dried her hands, tossed it into the waste receptacle and shrugged at both of them before exiting the bathroom. She allowed a smile to grow on her face as she walked back down the hall towards the conference room.
“Sonja was spying on me?” Ruth asked, appearing next to Mary.
“So, you heard that?” Mary whispered.
“Yeah, I heard it,” Ruth said. “Sonja was my roommate. I thought she was my friend. How could she spy on me?”
Mary hurried into the conference room and closed the door. Ruth glided through the door behind her.
“Mary,” Bradley began, but Mary held her hand up to stop him.
“Ruth’s here,” she said, before turning her attention to the ghost. “You don’t know what circumstances caused Sonja to agree to spy for Angela.”
Bradley’s eyebrows raised, and Mary nodded. “I know, right?” she said to him.
Turning back to Ruth, she continued. “I’ve learned that until I have all the evidence, I shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Mary said. “Sonja could have been true to your fri
endship. She could have kept your secrets. We don’t know yet.”
Ruth sighed. “Okay, you’re right,” she said. “But it still sucks.”
Mary nodded. “Yeah, it really does suck,” she agreed. “But don’t condemn Sonja until we get all the information.”
A knock on the conference door interrupted their conversation. Mary opened the door to find Sonja there. “Can I talk to you?” she asked.
Mary opened the door wider and motioned her inside.
“I don’t know how much you overheard…” she began.
“Pretty much everything,” Mary inserted.
Sonja sighed. “Okay, so here’s the deal,” she said. “Angela is my stepmom.”
“I didn’t know that,” Ruth exclaimed.
“I didn’t have a lot of choice about being a spy,” Sonja continued. “If I wanted the internship, I had to agree to watching out for Angela’s best interests.”
“How much did you tell her about Ruth’s project?” Mary asked.
“Not much,” she said. “I mean, she already knew what Ruth had found out because Ruth told Darren and then they both spoke with Angela. So, Angela would ask about it, but I’d just tell her that she scared Ruth with the threat against her parents.”
She paused for a moment, and her eyes glistened. “Listen, Ruth was one of the few people I ever met who didn’t want something from me,” she said. “She was a real friend. I kept warning her, because I know what my stepmother’s like. I kept telling her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”
Mary nodded and looked over at Bradley.
“I just have one question for you,” Bradley said.
“Okay,” Sonja replied.
“At the end of our conversation, you said that you thought someone from Granum did this to Ruth,” he said, reading from his notes. “You said they might not have pulled the trigger, but they would have hired someone to do it. Do you have any proof that Angela Tate hired someone to kill Ruth?”
Sonja shook her head. “No, I don’t,” she admitted. “And if I did, I would hand it over right away.”
“Then why did you say that?” Mary asked.
