Case of the Chatty Roadrunner

by Jeffrey M. Poole

  “Could you guys step out of the way for just a second?” I asked, using the politest voice I could muster.

  Three police officers, including the decorated officer I was guessing was Brad’s boss, and one guy in a navy blue suit, slowly stepped to the side. Through the doorway, I could see only one person moving about, and that person was a short, older woman carrying an armful of papers. She was throwing anxious looks into the conference room every time she passed by. Noticing that she was being watched, the woman hurriedly dropped her head and scurried off.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, as I turned around.

  “My secretary,” Glenn Ridley answered. “Why?”

  I looked down at the dogs. Both Sherlock and Watson had risen to their feet the moment the woman had disappeared from sight. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they wanted to go out after her.

  Something didn’t add up here.

  “What’s going on, buddy?” Vance quietly asked, as he appeared at my side.

  “The dogs have been staring out there ever since we stepped foot in here,” I whispered. “There’s something about that lady. Could we get her to come in here?”

  Overhearing the muted conversation, Emil Gregory was already rising to his feet.

  “Glenn? Please ask your secretary to join us.”

  Glenn made eye contact with the guy wearing the blue suit. He nodded and stepped outside, only to return a few moments later leading the middle-aged woman by the arm. Clearly, Glenn’s secretary hadn’t made it far. Had she been eavesdropping? And if she was, why?

  “Thanks for joining us, Ms. Lawson,” Glenn said, as his secretary fidgeted uncomfortably just inside the doorway. “I think these gentlemen have some questions for you.”

  Vance looked over at me and gave me a blank look. I shrugged. I wasn’t too sure what to ask this woman, either. What was I supposed to do, ask her why my two corgis wouldn’t stop staring at her? However, before I could say anything, the woman burst into tears.

  Several of Semzar’s executives hastily vacated their chairs and offered them to Glenn’s secretary, who reluctantly sat. One guy handed her his handkerchief while another slid a bottle of water over. After a few moments, the woman looked up.

  “Is there something you need to tell us?” Brad gently asked. “Do you have something you need to get off your chest? Why don’t you start with your name, okay? Who are you?”

  “Maureen… Maureen Lawson.”

  “Any relation to Abigail Lawson?” I quietly mouthed. Vance and Jillian both elbowed me in the gut.

  “Ms. Lawson, I noticed that you kept passing by this conference room. Have you been eavesdropping on us?”

  “Er…”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” Brad decided, as he again glanced over at the decorated officer. “What…”

  “I… I was just trying to protect the company,” Maureen sobbed.

  Emil Gregory sank back down in his seat and groaned, “What have you done? Are you saying there are some truths to these accusations?”

  The two corgis were switching their gazes between Emil Gregory and the secretary. I should also point out that they were no longer trying to see out the doorway.

  “I just didn’t want anyone to go through what I went through with Harrison,” Maureen sobbed.

  I glanced over at Vance, and then Jillian, who both shrugged. Jillian held a finger to her lips and then inclined her head toward the secretary. She wanted to hear what the secretary had to say, too.

  “What are you talking about, Mrs. Lawson?” Officer Harding gently asked. “Who is Harrison?”

  “He was my husband. He died from complications stemming from diabetes several years ago.”

  Glenn Ridley was nodding, “I remember you telling me about him. You were in mourning for quite a while, if memory serves. I gave you time off, Maureen. We were more than…”

  “Let her speak,” Mr. Gregory ordered, silencing Glenn in mid-sentence. “I repeat, Ms. Lawson, what did you do? Did you actually have something to do with the death of Mr. Anderson’s wife?”

  “No!” Maureen exclaimed, horrified. “Of course not!”

  “Then, what did you do, Mrs. Lawson?” Brad asked, confused.

  When the secretary burst into tears, Emil stepped forward.

  “You’ve concealed evidence which corroborates these assertions, haven’t you?”

  All eyes turned to the harmless-looking, grandmotherly-type woman sitting before us.

  “You all have no idea what I’ve done to insure everyone still has a job,” Maureen continued, addressing the startled onlookers. Her sobbing had stopped and now, if I wasn’t too far off the mark, it sounded as though she was growing angry. “If it wasn’t for me, this company would have bankrupted itself years ago.”

  A cold feeling of emptiness washed over me. I shrugged off Vance’s restraining hand and stepped in front of Glenn’s secretary. Maureen Lawson defiantly met my eyes.

  “You? Are you responsible for Samantha’s death?”

  Maureen slowly shook her head, “I have no idea who, or what, you’re talking about. This was about making certain glucosoquin would see the light of day so others wouldn’t suffer the way I have suffered.”

  “Glucosoquin is way too dangerous to be approved for the general public,” Vance argued.

  “Don’t you understand?” Maureen all but cried out. “They found the cure to diabetes! It’s worth the price we’ve paid.”

  Before I knew what I was doing, my right hand snapped closed, forming a fist, and my arm cocked back. Thankfully, before I could deliver the punch that I clearly wanted to throw, another arm hooked itself through my own and locked it into place. I turned to look into Vance’s surprised eyes.

  “She’s not worth it, pal,” my friend quietly told me.

  “By what right have you tampered with glucosoquin’s test results?” Emil raged on. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to this company?”

  “I haven’t tampered with anything,” Maureen snapped, lifting her nose into the air. “I just made sure certain reports never saw the light of day.”

  It was so quiet in that conference room that you could have heard a pin drop.

  “How?” Glenn asked. “How were you able to read those reports? Your computer doesn’t have access to them.”

  “But yours does,” Maureen shot back. “You want to know how I did it? Fine. It was easy. I just pretended I was you, Mr. Ridley. I have everything of yours: usernames, passwords, server access, and most importantly, security clearance. You’re away from your desk so often that I could examine those test results at my leisure.”

  “I have to travel a lot,” Glenn weakly protested.

  “You knew their drug was killing people, and you were okay with it?” I accused. “How do you even look in the mirror each morning?”

  “Glucosoquin is only dangerous if you stop taking it,” Maureen haughtily informed me. “That was the first report that I concealed. Let the decision to stop taking the drug be up to the patient. It’s a small price to pay, when you never have to worry about diabetes again. As for the other reports, well, the side effects of glucosoquin were starting to add up. Obviously, I had to hide those, too.”

  “You hid the reports?” Arthur asked, sounding impressed. “Where? On our network?”

  Maureen nodded, “They’re buried in a hidden folder in Mr. Ridley’s personal files.”

  With a smirk, Arthur produced a tablet and began tapping the screen. After a few moments, he grunted and held the tablet up for all to see.

  “Found ‘em, unfortunately. She… whew. She wasn’t kidding. I’m sorry, Mr. Gregory, but there are all kinds of reports in here, dating back from about five years ago. I don’t get it. Why not just delete them?”

  “You found that awful quick,” I quietly observed. However, the conference room had gone deathly quiet, allowing everyone present to hear my comment.

  “What was that?” Arthur asked, as he looked my way.
/>   “You found those reports in, what, less than ten seconds? How did you do that? Did you get an anonymous tip?”

  Arthur Mazlo’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. I then noticed that he quickly looked over at Emil Gregory before dropping his eyes to the floor. There was no denying what I saw. The CEO was scowling at his head of IT. Then, Emil’s face cleared, as if a switch had been flipped. The smug smile was back.

  Then it clicked.

  These two were in it together. That is to say, they were in… what’s the word? Cahoots? Arthur must have directed all damaging reports on glucosoquin straight to Glenn Ridley, knowing full well that his accounts were being accessed by Maureen the secretary. It’d be easy for him, being VP of IT. He’d be able to monitor the flow of information through their own intranet, so it was just a matter of deciding who would be the recipient of all those damaging reports.

  Semzar’s bigwigs were setting Maureen up to be the scapegoat should any of this ever come to light. Vance must have come to the same conclusion, as he suddenly nodded his head.

  “Ms. Lawson?” Emil’s voice suddenly said, snapping me back to reality.

  Everyone turned to look at Emil Gregory. He was regarding the secretary with a cold expression. However, damned if he didn’t have a little bit of a smirk on his face. Now Arthur did, too.

  “You’re fired.”

  Officer Harding pulled out his cuffs. Maureen Lawson cringed, but held her ground. That’s when I decided I couldn’t let either of these two to get away with this scheme.

  “Wait a moment,” I interjected, as I stared at the woman I was supposed to believe was responsible for Samantha’s death. “She’s the one who hacked Sam’s car? Does it look like she has connections that could pull it off? No. I don’t buy it. However, I do buy one of those two arranging it.”

  “What about Samantha Anderson?” Brad asked, as he turned to look at both the CEO and Semzar’s head of technology before looking back at Maureen Lawson. “What happened to her car?”

  “I told you,” the secretary huffed, “I had nothing to do with hacking a car. I wouldn’t have any idea how to pull something like that off.”

  “I believe you,” I quietly stated.

  “Then who does?” Officer Harding asked.

  “Him,” I answered, and pointed at Arthur Mazlo. For the record, both Sherlock and Watson were still alternating their gazes between the CEO and the VP of IT.

  “I told you,” Arthur began, “I had nothing to do with it. I’ve never hacked a car before, let alone disable its brakes.”

  Vance was suddenly grinning, like a Cheshire cat.

  “Who said anything about disabling the brakes?”

  Arthur absent-mindedly twisted several strands of his beard and his eyes darted about, “Er, you did, obviously.”

  “But I didn’t,” I confirmed. “I only said Sam was in a car accident. I never said anything about the brakes.”

  “But… but…”

  Ol’ Maz had started sputtering and had turned as pale as a ghost.

  “So, it’s you,” I said, as I gazed at the out-of-shape bearded nerd. Vance and I converged on Semzar’s head of IT, who had started backing away from us. However, there was nowhere to go.

  “You hacked my wife’s car and made her drive into the path of an on-coming semi,” I accused, as blind hatred washed over me.

  The room fell silent. All conversation came to an abrupt halt. Everyone gazed piteously at the wretched simp before me.

  “It wasn’t my idea!” Maz cried. He immediately swung his gaze around so that he was staring at his boss. “It was his! He said there was a sales rep that would’ve cost the company billions of dollars if we didn’t get rid of her. He said she would’ve bankrupted us!”

  “Don’t try to avoid taking responsibility for your actions, Arthur,” Emil calmly told his unfortunate employee. “You clearly slipped up. Besides, don’t think you can try to pin this on me.”

  “I can and I will,” Maz contradicted. “Do you really think I wouldn’t have protected myself? I saved every correspondence and recorded every conversation we ever had, Mr. Gregory. I can promise you one thing: I won’t be going down for this by myself.”

  Emil’s smooth countenance finally slipped, and his true feelings finally came through. What I saw had me taking a few steps back from him. A wild, maniacal expression appeared on the CEO’s face and he all but snarled at Arthur.

  “Keep your idiotic trap shut!

  EPILOGUE

  “It’s over. I can’t believe it’s finally over. Samantha would be so proud of you, Zachary.”

  We were inside the Masters home several days later, killing some time before we all had to head back to the airport. With Maureen Lawson’s full confession behind us, and Arthur Mazlo’s wide variety of proof that Emil Gregory was the mastermind behind the whole affair, it was finally time to go home. Quite frankly, I was glad. It was funny. I used to enjoy city life. I enjoyed the hustle and bustle, and all the activity Phoenix had to offer. Now, the city gave me nothing but a headache. Traffic, houses crammed too close together, lack of open spaces, and tons of people all did nothing but get on my nerves.

  Vance, Jillian and I were all sitting on the couch in the Masters’ living room, while Jason and Denise Masters claimed the loveseat. Randy had also stopped by, taking the armchair directly opposite his parents. Both Sherlock and Watson were sitting in front of Randy, but that was only because Sam’s brother kept feeding them doggie biscuits from some hidden pocket.

  “They almost got away with it,” Denise was saying. “And that poor Maureen woman. I just don’t understand why she would do what she did.”

  “She lost her husband to diabetes,” Jillian told her. “In some twisted part of her brain, she thought people were better off not having to worry about diabetes at all. She just never anticipated any of them intentionally quitting the drug.”

  “Did you ever find out who had been calling you every day at 3:30 am?” Jason asked. “The woman who claimed she was Samantha’s friend?”

  I nodded, “Turns out she was Samantha’s friend, only she wasn’t as close of a friend that she had implied. Her name was Isabelle Anton. She claimed that she and I had met before, and I’m inclined to believe her...”

  “Yet you still don’t remember her?” Jillian guessed, after I trailed off.

  “Correct. As for the phone calls at 3:30am, well, she couldn’t come straight out and tell me she believed employee #330 was guilty, ‘cause she also believed she was being watched. She...”

  “Who was employee 330?” Randy interrupted.

  “A VP by the name of Glenn Ridley, only he was just as innocent as everyone else,” I explained. “The funny thing is, Semzar’s CEO, Emil Gregory, was the one behind everything. He ordered his head of IT to conceal all of glucosoquin’s negative side effects. Consequently, Emil Gregory was told of Harrison Lawson’s death due to diabetes and played on that.”

  Jason was nodding, “So, he was feeding the data to that Glenn Ridley person, knowing full well that it was being intercepted by his secretary? And she’s the one who arranged to have everything hidden?”

  Vance shook his head, “You’re close. Mr. Gregory instructed Arthur Mazlo to channel all glucosoquin’s damaging reports through Glenn Ridley’s account, knowing his secretary had full access to his computer.”

  “Why?” Denise asked. “Why would that woman go through all of that? It sounds like a lot of work.”

  “She lost her husband to diabetes,” Jillian reminded her. “She truly thought she was doing the world a favor by making sure glucosoquin was readily available to whomever wanted it.”

  “As for Isabelle,” I added, “well, she was just doing what she thought was best. She was right about one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?” Randy wanted to know.

  “She was being watched,” Vance reported, flipping through his notebook. “Arthur Mazlo knew that Samantha’s laptop hadn’t turned up. He admitted he arran
ged to have tracking software installed on practically all Semzar computers, looking for any mention of Sam’s laptop. That’s how he was able to zero in on her.”

  “What will happen to the drug now?” Jason asked.

  “The FDA had literally just given it their approval,” Vance answered, “but as soon as they learned of what had happened, and all those negative reports finally saw the light of day, they revoked that approval and banned the drug. That happened first thing this morning.”

  “What about Samantha’s car?” Jason asked. “Did they ever reveal who was responsible for taking it over? Was it Arthur Mazlo?”

  Vance nodded, “I heard back from the Phoenix police chief. Mazlo could have done it, but he didn’t want someone’s death on his hands. Therefore, he looked for someone else with the skills to pull it off. As it happened, he didn’t have to look far. Turns out there was a decent hacker already on Semzar’s payroll, and he was fed up with his… how did he put it… mundane position at the company. Ring any bells?”

  I perked up, “It sounds vaguely familiar. I just don’t remember from where.”

  Vance was nodding, “Right. Wait until you hear where you remember him from. He…”

  “Were they able to pick him up?” Jillian asked.

  Vance grinned and then shook his head, “No, and that’s because they didn’t have to. They already had him in custody. Zack, do you remember Chuck?”

  I snapped my fingers, “The guy we found in Zone? The one who hacked the hotel to get the codes for your hotel room door?”

  “That’s the one. Also, in the mother of all twists, it turns out Chuck is Maureen’s nephew, although neither knew the other was involved. As for Chuck, he admitted he was tired of answering phone calls day in and day out. He wanted something bigger; juicier. So, when an anonymous email appeared in his inbox, promising a cool 25 grand for what promised to be just a few hours of work, he jumped on it.”

  “Chuck,” I scowled, shaking my head. “All those Zone stores that the dogs were barking at? What do you want to bet that Chuck was there, trying to hide his tracks.”

  “He’s the one who installed the malware, looking for Sam’s laptop,” Randy guessed.