Kernel of Doubt: A Neela Durante Mystery

by Hillary Avis

  “An-Yi?” Neela wrinkled her forehead. She was hyper-conscious of his hands on her shoulders and the way his strong fingers pressed into her back. She shrugged his hands off, blushing. “Why her? She’s just a number cruncher.”

  Teo nodded. “But she worked for a Chinese seed company for eight years before she came to Broad Earth. She has access to all the trait development data, so she knows what projects are coming down the pipeline. She’s in the perfect position to steal proprietary information and pass it to her old employer.”

  “And you think Demetrius helped her?”

  “When you love someone, you’ll do anything for them,” Teo said quietly.

  Neela ignored the subtext. “But how do you think Miles got mixed up in it?”

  “They likely blackmailed him. Maybe threatened his family. They needed his help—they wouldn’t have been able to download the files without his user privileges.”

  “Or mine.”

  Teo nodded. “That’s what I was thinking, too. Your friendship with Demetrius might have saved you.”

  “Or the fact that my husband is a DALE officer.” Neela smiled crookedly at him.

  “Don’t give me too much credit.”

  Neela watched Molly splashing in the shallows as she dragged a big stick out of the water. They’d almost made a complete circle around the lake. “Don’t worry, I don’t. Actually, I think you’re completely wrong about this.”

  Teo raised one eyebrow and gave her a side-eye. “Oh really? What’s your alternate theory of the crime?”

  “I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. I signed an NDA when I started working at Broad Earth that prohibits me from discussing any proprietary work.” Neela sighed, frustrated.

  “Neels, an NDA doesn’t protect illegal activity. If you know someone is breaking the law, you’re still obligated to report them. Tell me what’s going on!”

  “Here, Molly!” Neela called, her voice shrill. “I have to get back now. Do you mind taking me?”

  Molly ran up, wet and grinning. Teo grabbed her collar and toweled her off with a T-shirt from his gym bag. “You’re ignoring my question.”

  “I—I’m not ignoring it. I just don’t know if what’s going on is illegal. And I don’t know who’s doing it. All I’m sure of is that Miles was involved somehow.”

  “If this is about his relationship with Cassie Tremblay, we already searched her house and didn’t find anything pertinent to the case.”

  “Cassie? What? Why’d you search her house?”

  Teo shrugged. “Standard. He apparently stayed there most weekends. We thought he might have given her the flash drive or had other work materials at her home. But nope—nada. Not even a toothbrush.”

  Neela reeled. It all made sense: why Miles would call Cassie that evening, why Cassie was so upset when Miles was found dead. Everyone who worked with him was upset, of course, but Cassie was nearly hysterical. “No,” she managed to get out, “not about her. It’s about the projects Miles and I were working on together.”

  Teo loaded Molly into the back of the SUV and shut the door. “I just want you to know I’m on your team. Whatever has gone wrong between us, I’ll always have your back. The minute you have something, you call me.”

  “K.”

  They rode back to Broad Earth in silence.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Neela said as she opened the door to get out. “And for the Molly time. You be good, girl!”

  “And you be careful,” Teo said. “I’m serious. These foreign corporations can be pretty cut throat.”

  CHALK GAVE HER A RIDE home that night, if the word “home” could be applied to a place where she spent less than half her time. There was not even the smelly welcome of a naughty dog to remind her of who she was. The telephone glared its red light to say that someone had called and left a message during the day. Two someones, two messages.

  The first was from Wendy. “Neela, I wish you were there. I really need to talk to you. Things are not good. Papa is getting worse, and we can’t seem to get things done without him. Mama is trying, but you know how it is. She mostly stays in bed, like she’s the one sick. The hens are laying, but Rick burnt the farm stand down so we have nowhere to sell them. It was an accident, but it’s burnt down just the same. The goats kidded just fine and are milking great but Robin went off with Rick when Mama kicked him out so all that milk is going to waste. I quit school to manage it all, but I can’t make cheese for the life of me, not like Robin does. Dot and I are at our wits’ end, and Rindy is so fed up with the bickering that she’s staying over with the Turners. Please call and tell me everything is going to be all right. Love you. This is Wendy in case you couldn’t tell.”

  “Mrs. Durante, this is Curt Chamberlain, legal counsel for Mr. Durante. We require your response with regard to division of property before the divorce proceedings can move forward. My office would be happy to recommend a mediator to settle any disputes you might have with Mr. Durante. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

  Neela lay down on the couch and put a pillow over her head.

  Chapter Seven

  Neela slipped the envelope addressed to Wendy in the outgoing mail slot of the Broad Earth foyer and pressed the elevator’s “up” arrow. She hoped the check would make a difference, keep the farm afloat for another month or two. And hopefully Papa wouldn’t confiscate it and send it back out of misguided pride.

  When she got out on the fourth floor, she turned right and headed toward her old office. She pushed open the door to QA and was surprised to see Cassie’s name on her office door. Oops, autopilot. Neela turned to leave but then, out of curiosity, swiped her keycard across the door handle. The light clicked “green.” They hadn’t removed her code from the lock. Cautiously, she turned the handle and opened the door.

  The office was empty. She let out a sigh of relief. No Cassie. Though she should probably tell security to change the permissions on her key card, it was comforting to be back in her old space. She’d done some good thinking in here over the past year, and it still felt more hers than the office in R&D. She sat down at the desk and felt her shoulders relax. The room hadn’t been changed much yet. Cassie had hung a pretty watercolor painting of flowers on the wall, but otherwise, things were the same, even most of the reference books on the bookshelves. Except one—Corn and Corn Improvement, Neela’s ersatz pillow when she spent the night on her office floor, was an inch or so farther out on the bookshelf than it should be, like someone had started to remove it and been interrupted.

  Neela reached over to push it in, but it wouldn’t budge, so she pulled it off the shelf to see what was stuck behind it. Some kind of paper. Must have fallen down the back of the bookshelf. Neela reached between the books and slid the paper out, doing her best not to crease it in the process. It was a manila envelope addressed to “N. Durante,” but Neela had never seen it before. It definitely wasn’t there when she moved offices, because she’d put Corn and Corn Improvement back on the shelf then, and it had fit on the shelf just fine.

  She shook the contents of the envelope out into her hand. A flash drive marked M.H. with Sharpie. Miles Hutto. She closed her hand around the flash drive and squeezed. Could this be the external drive with the downloaded data? Neela could hardly catch her breath. Her heart pounded in her ears. She stashed the flash drive in her pocket and replaced the empty envelope behind the books, sliding Corn and Corn Improvement back until it jutted out slightly from the shelf.

  She listened at the door to make sure nobody was outside it and darted back to the east wing and the dark safety of Miles’s old office. Obviously whatever was on the drive was something Miles wanted her to see, but she didn’t dare look at the files on her work laptop. There was every chance that it would trigger someone’s notice, someone who didn’t want her to look at the files. Maybe Chalk would know a way to look at what was on the drive without sounding a silent alarm.

  Neela: Basement?

  Chalk: OK. 5 min.

&nb
sp; Neela tried to walk casually downstairs, but it was impossible to keep her feet moving slowly. She burned down flight after flight, the metal stairs ringing. When she got to the basement, Chalk’s office door was open, and Neela could hear him talking to someone inside. Art. She wondered for a moment if she should let him in on what she’d found, but decided against it. Miles had addressed the envelope to her, so she wanted look at the contents of the drive before she showed anyone else. She ducked behind a support pillar as Art left Chalk’s office and, hands in pockets, whistled his way into the elevator. Neela then dashed in, still panting from her race down the stairwell.

  “Is someone chasing you or something?” Chalk asked.

  Neela rolled her eyes. “Not funny if it could be true. Look what I found!” She produced the drive and held it under his nose.

  Chalk opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out an identical flash drive. “Ooh, me too! You’ve entered the twenty-first century, congrats.”

  “It’s Miles’s flash drive, you condescending jerk.”

  “Wait, the drive?”

  Neela shrugged and handed it to him. “I don’t know what’s on it yet. I figured someone might find out if I looked at it on my laptop, so I brought it to you for super-secret looking. That’s the technical term.”

  “Hey, you’re really catching on to some of this tech stuff. The old Neela would have reformatted the drive and deleted all the data by accident. Where’d you find it?”

  “My lips are sealed. So can you open it or not?”

  Chalk went to a cabinet and brought out a compact gray laptop. “This is an air-gap machine. One that’s never been connected to the internet or the local network. Let’s fire her up and see what’s on that drive without anyone looking over our shoulder.”

  Neela watched as he inserted the drive and opened the files.

  “He password-protected them, but guess what? He used your password, the one everyone knows. Child’s play.” Chalk was looking pretty pleased with himself. “This is it, Neela! The trait files for 375 and 13X. And a couple other things. Looks like emails from Cassie Tremblay.”

  “Let me see!” She grabbed the laptop from him. “They’re from the night he died. She must have sent them after they talked on the phone. It looks like Cassie has been doing her own investigation into the deaths in the animal trials. She identified the mystery protein in 375 and 13X! Or at least, she narrowed it down to a phytotoxin: a variant of swainsonine, similar to Oxytropis. People call it locoweed around here. It’s poisonous to cattle, so that makes sense.”

  She looked over at Chalk to gauge his reaction. He wore an expression of dread.

  “This means someone killed Miles, right?”

  She nodded slowly. “He didn’t give these files to anyone, though, so why would he kill himself? He didn’t commit a crime. He was just afraid someone was going to change or delete the files to obscure what he suspected—that these two corn lines contain a toxin that’s poisonous to livestock!”

  “And they did,” Chalk said.

  “Yup. Whoever did this isn’t trying to steal from Broad Earth—they’re trying to sabotage the company!”

  Chalk looked skeptical. “Maybe. Or maybe ruin the farmers growing the dent corn. Or the cattle industry. Or people who eat meat.”

  Neela nodded. “Or people who eat tortillas.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t get that far.” Chalk grimaced. “Looks like it’s time to fall on our swords.”

  “Yeah. We have to tell Art what we know. He’ll believe us when we show him the drive. He’ll stop 375 and 13X from going into production, and I can start reviewing all the other corn lines to make sure no other Broad Earth products are tainted.”

  Chalk clicked around on the laptop. “Gimme a sec. Just backing this up in case the flash drive gets dropped in the toilet or something.”

  “Or something,” Neela said darkly. As she waited for the files to be copied, she realized that this drive might not be the only copy. Just because Miles mailed a version to her didn’t mean that he hadn’t passed a second drive to someone else in that corn field.

  Chapter Eight

  By the time Neela finished explaining all the clues they’d pieced together, she was out of breath.

  Art sat back in his chair and pressed his fingertips together. “This is very serious, very serious. May I review the files?”

  Chalk passed him the flash drive. “It’s not foolproof, but I recommend disconnecting your device from the internet before plugging in the drive, just in case someone is watching the network.”

  Art nodded and tapped a few keys before inserting the flash drive and opening the files. He scanned them for a few minutes as they sat silently. “Hm. And where did you say you found the drive?”

  “My old office,” Neela said.

  “You mean Dr. Tremblay’s office?” Art raised his eyebrows. “Does she know you—ahem—borrowed this?”

  Neela shook her head. “I don’t know how she got it or even if she knows it was there. It was in an envelope addressed to me.”

  “Let me call her in.” Art picked up his desk phone. “Cassie? Can you please stop by my office?”

  When Cassie opened the door to Art’s office, she was chewing her lip nervously, but when she saw Neela and Chalk there, she relaxed. “What’s this about?”

  “It’s about Miles,” Neela said gently, and Cassie’s face froze. “It’s OK. We think we know what happened.”

  Art held up the drive. “Dr. Durante found this.”

  Cassie crossed her arms and sat down in a chair against the wall. “It was delivered to my office. I assume Miles sent it to Neela the night of...of...and the mail room hadn’t updated the info about the office change. I tried to open the files, but I couldn’t.”

  “At least one person doesn’t know your password,” Chalk muttered.

  Neela glared at him. “It has trait files on it and some emails from you about your toxicology findings.”

  Cassie sat forward in her chair and gripped the arms. “You think someone killed him for that?”

  Art held up his hands. “Now, now. Nobody is saying Miles was murdered. We just simply know more about his state of mind that night. Maybe he realized he made an error when he was developing the traits, for example. Maybe he was trying to undo something he’d done.”

  “So he killed himself when he realized the lines were poisonous? Because of me?” Cassie’s face crumpled.

  “It’s just one theory,” Art said soothingly. “It’s not our task to figure out what happened that night; we’ll leave that to DALE and the local police.”

  Neela asked, “What’s our task, then?”

  “I’ll take care of it. I’ll pass this along to law enforcement and let headquarters know about the situation. Broad Earth will likely do their own internal investigation. We’ll be back to business as usual sooner than you think. Don’t you worry about a thing.” Art rose and came around the desk to pat each of them on the shoulder. “I’m the one who should be worried. Lisa is going to be all over this.”

  Neela and Cassie took the elevator up to the fourth floor in stony silence, neither one making eye contact with the other. But when they exited the elevator, Neela couldn’t help following Cassie to her office in QA. She could barely keep the words in until the door shut behind them.

  “Why didn’t you bring me the envelope when you got it? It was obviously addressed to me, not to the director of QA!”

  Cassie sighed. “I recognized Miles’s handwriting, and I was curious about what was inside. I thought you and he might be—”

  “Dating?” Neela finished.

  “Well, were you?”

  “No! Why would you even think that?”

  “He ended things. You know, in that last call. He asked me to send him what I knew about the animal trials, and said we shouldn’t be together. He said it wasn’t good for either of us professionally. He thought our relationship was maybe why I didn’t get the QA director position the first
time.” Cassie chewed her bottom lip pensively.

  “Art knew you were together.”

  Cassie nodded.

  “So why didn’t you tell me when you figured out that the new lines were poisonous? I asked you about the animal trials, and you just said you couldn’t get in contact with the vet.”

  Cassie didn’t answer, her mouth set in a thin line.

  Neela gasped. “You were waiting for something to happen? You figured you could swoop in and save the day once I got blamed for the problem?”

  Cassie stayed silent.

  Neela paced up and down in front of the desk. “And Miles found out about it. You thought maybe telling him about the toxin would keep him in the relationship because it’d make me look bad?” She balled her fists, and her face burned.

  Cassie took a few steps back. “No—no. He suspected problems with the lines already. I just confirmed what he was thinking. I didn’t know he was going to break up with me then.”

  Neela moved closer to Cassie until they were almost nose to nose. “Maybe he was going to expose the whole thing, and you couldn’t stand the idea of not getting the credit you deserved for figuring it out.”

  Cassie reached for her desk phone. “Stop. Stop, you’re scaring me! Leave right now, or I’m calling security.”

  Neela took a deep breath and unclenched her fists. “Sorry. I got carried away.”

  “Go. Now.”

  “We good?” Neela held up her hands to show she wasn’t harboring any ill intentions.

  Cassie nodded warily, and Neela left, her brain buzzing with the new information.

  Chapter Nine