Kernel of Doubt: A Neela Durante Mystery

by Hillary Avis

  “Teo isn’t a bad person. He won’t ruin your life on purpose,” Neela said. “He’ll hear us out. I know Miles was murdered, and I know Demetrius isn’t a killer. That means someone else did it—probably someone we know. And if the murderer succeeds in sabotaging Broad Earth, it’ll mean more deaths. If that corn goes into production, there will be thousands of livestock deaths from toxic feed. People could die, too, because dent corn is used in tons of foods. Kids will eat it.”

  An-Yi closed her eyes and stilled her face for a moment, her hand on her belly. Then she opened her eyes and said, “I guess we have to take the risk.”

  Chalk made the call, and while they waited for Teo to drive from the DALE offices over to the restaurant, Neela and Chalk dug into their waffles, which were still crisp and warm. Neela even coaxed An-Yi to take a few bites from her plate. She could see An-Yi’s spirits rise as she ate, so she pushed her whole breakfast across the table.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “You’ll need it—for courage.”

  An-Yi smiled at her. “Thanks. You’re right, I do need it.”

  Neela turned to Chalk. “Can I have a bite of yours?”

  He put his arms around his plate to block her fork. “I know you’re joking, but it’s not funny!”

  She grinned at him, and then turned toward the door when she heard the bells jangle.

  Neela watched as Teo scanned the restaurant for them, and his face lit up when he spotted her. She caught her breath when he smiled so easily. It had been a long time since he’d been genuinely happy to see her.

  He came over and stood awkwardly at the end of the table. “I’m really glad you called me for help.” He didn’t take his eyes off Neela’s, and she felt her cheeks warm. Chalk kicked her under the table.

  “I called you, actually,” Chalk said dryly.

  Neela patted the seat beside her, and Teo slid into the booth. He seemed to notice An-Yi for the first time, and his mouth dropped open.

  “Why are you here?”

  An-Yi twisted her napkin her in hands. “I—I—”

  Neela couldn’t take the suspense. “She didn’t do what she said she did. And Demetrius didn’t do what she said he did, either. You have to believe us. Someone else is trying to sabotage Broad Earth. And that someone killed Miles.”

  Teo sat back and rubbed his hands over his face. “This again. DALE has worked really hard on this investigation. You can’t imagine how we’ve pored over the details, Neels. I know it hurts to imagine your friends involved in this kind of theft on the heels of Miles Hutto’s suicide, but life isn’t always pretty. At some point, you have to let this go.”

  Neela growled in frustration. “Nobody was stealing those files. Miles figured out something was wrong with those traits—and someone else was trying to cover it up! That’s why he was murdered, to keep him quiet. If you could stop for a minute and consider the possibility that this is sabotage instead of espionage, you’d see! There’s no point in stealing bad data.”

  Teo turned to her, his expression quizzical. “So you’re saying you want me to charge Demetrius with murder instead?”

  An-Yi burst into tears. “I knew this was a terrible idea!” she wailed.

  The red-haired waitress brought over a box of tissues. “You look like you need these, honey.” She scooped up their empty breakfast plates and nodded at Teo. “I’ll get you folks some more coffee. You need anything else?”

  They shook their heads silently and waited until she left to continue their conversation.

  “Pay attention,” Chalk said to Teo. “Neela is one of the top scientists in her field, and you’re not taking what she’s saying seriously. She’s not trying to one-up your investigation. She’s trying to prevent a catastrophe!”

  Teo rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “I get it. She doesn’t want this guy to go down for a crime he maybe didn’t do. I don’t, either. If he didn’t do it, the lawyers will sort it out. But all the evidence we found points to him. To them.”

  “I don’t care about Demetrius.” Neela put her hand on his arm and shot a look at An-Yi, who was still choking on her tears. “I mean, I do care. But it’s not the big deal here.”

  “It is a big deal!” An-Yi managed to get out.

  Neela nodded sympathetically. “I know it’s a big deal to you, but in the scheme of things, it’s one person. I’m talking about the global food supply, Teo. Miles figured out that two lines of Broad Earth corn are poisonous, and they’re in the production pipeline now. Next year they’ll be planted across the whole country—probably the whole world. Animals that eat the corn will get sick and maybe even die. People who eat the corn will, too. And these traits went through my QA tests. I’m responsible. That’s why I couldn’t talk to you about it before...I had to be sure that something illegal had happened instead of just a mistake in the lab. I’ve been working on one of these lines for a year. All those late nights, all those weekend getaways I missed—it was for this.”

  As Teo listened to her speak, his arms slowly uncrossed and his mouth fell open. When she paused, he shook his head. “I had no idea you were working on something with such serious consequences, Neela.”

  “You thought I’d destroy my marriage for something unimportant?” She blinked back her own tears.

  “No, I didn’t think that—well, maybe I did. I knew it was important to you, at least. More important than I was.”

  “Like I said, it’s more important than one person, whether that’s you or Demetrius.” She nodded at An-Yi. “We all have to make sacrifices, and I made mine...but she shouldn’t have to. Not this time.”

  Teo spread out his hands helplessly. “All DALE can investigate is the evidence, though, and we only have evidence that trait files were taken, not that they were sabotaged.”

  Chalk pulled out the little gray laptop. “I have some for you. This has a copy of the files that Miles downloaded that night. Neela found his external drive and turned it over to Broad Earth, but I made a copy before she did, just in case. It’s yours. It has everything: the trait files, the data from the animal trials, the blots, the tox reports.”

  Teo took the laptop and slid it into his backpack. “It’ll take a few weeks for DALE to interpret these.”

  Chalk rolled his eyes. “You’re married to one of the world’s foremost experts on this stuff. Maybe DALE can hire her for a couple of hours to explain it to you.”

  Neela couldn’t help grinning. She elbowed Teo gently in the ribs. “I’ll help for free.”

  Something in his expression shifted as he looked at her. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, and then his face hardened again. “I promise, we’ll get the person responsible in the end.”

  An-Yi clasped her hands. “Does this mean Demetrius will be released?”

  Teo nodded. “If we review the data and DALE comes to the same conclusion as Neela. It could be a few days.”

  An-Yi let out a squeak and slumped back into her seat. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”

  Neela added, “And in the meantime, we can figure out who killed Miles. The murderer will have their guard down while Demetrius is in jail.”

  Teo shook his head. “I can’t see how this proves murder. Dr. Hutto had residue on his hands and the gun beside him. We’ll probably never know the reason he took his own life in that test field, but we’ll know it wasn’t because he passed those files to someone else.”

  Chalk drummed his fingers on the table. “Let me ask you something. Did you interview the security officer on duty that night?”

  “Yup. She did her usual rounds, and we confirmed them on the security footage.”

  “Didn’t see anything out of the ordinary?”

  Teo shook his head. “No.”

  “Hear anything?”

  Teo shook his head again.

  “That test field is maybe a hundred yards from the security booth, and she didn’t hear a gunshot in a cornfield in the middle of the night?”

  Teo took a long drink of
his coffee and set his mug down on the table. “She didn’t do it. She’s on the camera the whole time.”

  “He didn’t ask if she did it. He asked why she didn’t hear it.” Neela bounced in her seat. “There had to be a silencer. The murderer took it away when they left!”

  “There’s no evidence of murder,” Teo said stubbornly.

  An-Yi heaved a sigh of relief, and the noise made Teo look up at her as though he’d just remembered she was there. “Why don’t I take you down to DALE to recant your statement, Ms. Ming?”

  She nodded and scooted out of the booth. Teo started to do the same, but Neela put a hand on his thigh to stop him, and he froze, staring at it.

  Neela blushed and jerked back her hand. “I just wanted to ask—what if I brought you evidence? Would you investigate it as a murder then?”

  “I would.” He heaved a sigh. “But we have all the evidence from the scene. There’s nothing to support murder.”

  “I won’t bring you evidence of a murder. I’ll bring evidence of a murderer.”

  Teo pressed his lips together disapprovingly. “If I know anything about you, Neela Durante, it’s that it doesn’t matter what I say—I can’t stop you.”

  Chalk laughed. “I guess he knows you pretty well.”

  Neela watched Teo hold the door open for An-Yi as they walked to his SUV, and she couldn’t help the tingle that ran up her spine. He called me a Durante.

  Chapter Eleven

  “So what’s your genius plan, Doc?” Chalk tilted his head and smirked at her across the table. “Sounds like you know who did it.”

  “I don’t, but we don’t have to know who killed Miles. The killer will tell us.”

  Chalk raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”

  Neela nodded confidently. “Think about it. The killer wasn’t following Miles around, waiting for the perfect moment to off him. The killer acted because Miles did something that threatened their plans. The killer was protecting the production of those two lines of corn, right? It was nothing against Miles personally. If we threaten the production, the killer will show up to stop us.”

  Chalk shook his head. “No, no, no. What happened when Miles was just investigating this? Pow pow, dead. It’s too dangerous.”

  Neela rolled her eyes. “We won’t be there. We’ll use your superpowers to download the files remotely. Then we’ll watch the security footage to see who shows up. Pow pow, murder solved.”

  “What if nobody shows up?”

  Neela bit her lip. “Then we know DALE arrested the right guy.”

  The waitress came by the table. “You folks about finished, or you want another refill?”

  Chalk pushed his mug toward the center of the table. “Nah, we’re done. Just the check.”

  The waitress slapped the slip of paper down on the tabletop, and Neela grabbed it. “My treat.”

  Chalk stood up and swiped it from her grasp. “Nope. Not while you’re technically unemployed.”

  She chuckled and let him have it. “This time, OK. But once I’m reinstated, I’m taking you out for a steak dinner.”

  “Like a date?” he grinned.

  “No, I think I might still be married,” she said thoughtfully, remembering Teo’s eager smile.

  Chalk nodded. “I think you are, too. I saw the way he looked at you.”

  “So will you lend your superpowers to the cause?” Neela asked.

  Chalk stretched out his arms and flexed his fingers. “Of course. These babies could use a workout.”

  He paid the check, and they walked out into the Waffle Nook parking lot, where the temperature already topped ninety degrees even with the murky gray cloud cover.

  “I’ll meet you at Broad Earth”—Chalk bumped her old pickup’s hood with his fist—“if this beast can make it there.”

  “I can’t go to the office! I’m not allowed inside during the HR investigation. I don’t have a badge or anything.”

  “It’s a Saturday; nobody will notice if you come in with me.”

  Neela shook her head adamantly. “The cameras will notice. And we know the killer is savvy about the cameras. Remember the deleted security footage? We can’t risk it. It’s safer to do it remotely.”

  “I’m sure it would, but this is one of those things that I need to be inside the network to accomplish...I may have superpowers, but I don’t have omnipotence.”

  “You sure?” Neela couldn’t help grinning. “Guess you’ll have to complete this mission without your trusty sidekick, darn it.”

  “No way I’m letting you miss out on this. I already have an idea for how to get you into the building.”

  NEELA COULD HEAR CHALK whistling as the elevator doors swooshed open.

  “Going down,” he said cheerfully. When the doors closed and the elevator started to move, he tapped the box. “You OK in there?”

  “I’ll be honest, I’m getting a little claustrophobic.” Neela squirmed inside the tight confines of the box that had once held a locker-sized server rack.

  “Just a couple more minutes,” he said, failing to keep the amusement out of his voice.

  “You’re enjoying this way too much,” she said darkly.

  The elevator dinged—basement level—and Neela felt Chalk carefully wheel the dolly down the hallway to his office. The door clicked shut, and Neela burst out of the box with a sigh of relief.

  “Phew, remind me to never become a vampire,” she said. “The whole coffin thing is not for me.”

  “Noted. Now let’s get you logged in.” Chalk opened a terminal on his computer and typed in a few commands. “Uh oh. I forgot that your login is deactivated.”

  “Of course it is—I’m suspended. Can’t you do it with your account?”

  Chalk shook his head. “Has to have the right permissions. Only you and Miles—”

  “Cassie,” Neela broke in to correct. “Cassie has the same permissions now. Can you hack into her account?”

  “I don’t have to hack—I know her password. One of the dubious benefits of being the only tech person in the building.”

  Neela gave him a thumbs-up. “That actually makes me feel a lot better about you knowing my password.”

  He gave her a look. “You could have changed it, you know.”

  “But then how would I remember it?” She giggled. “This is fun, by the way.”

  “Oh yeah, I always spend my weekends hunting murderers. It’s a blast. Hey, I’m in. I logged her in via the fourth-floor hub, so it looks like she’s in her office.” He plugged a flash drive into the computer. “Come download the correct files onto the drive and let’s get this guy.”

  “Don’t be so sure it’s a guy,” Neela said as she pulled up a chair. “What if it’s Cassie? Do you think she’ll fall for it if we’re using her login?”

  “Definitely,” Chalk said. He pushed off and rolled his chair across the room to turn on the wall screen. “She’ll think someone is in her office. If that doesn’t make her come running, what will?”

  Neela downloaded the trait files for 13X and 375 and then stopped, her fingers poised over the keyboard. “Should I log out?”

  “Nope.” Chalk rolled back over to her. “Let’s keep ‘Cassie’ in her office so the killer looks there first.” He clicked a few keys and brought up the security footage on the big screen.

  “How long do you think this will take?” Neela asked, scanning the windows for movement. The only other humans in the building seemed to be a lone security officer in the lobby and a two-person cleaning team working on the second floor. More employees could be in bathrooms or offices, but considering the scant few vehicles she could count in the parking lot—four, counting Chalk’s hatchback—that didn’t seem likely.

  Chalk shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Miles was killed about six hours after he downloaded the files, so we could be in for a long day.”

  Neela groaned, but then sat up straight in her chair as she watched a car pull into the Broad Earth lot. “Is that—?”

 
Chalk zoomed in on the figure walking toward the front doors. “Yep, Vince Crawford.”

  “Do you think—?” Neela held her breath as the head of security stopped at the booth in the lobby and then walked to the elevator.

  “Shhh. Let’s wait and see.” Chalk hunched over his desk, his mouth a tense line as he stared at the screen. They watched as Vince checked in at the security booth and walked to the elevator. “It all depends on where that elevator stops, doesn’t it?”

  Vince stepped out of the elevator onto the second floor, and Neela let out a sigh of relief. They watched him walk into his office and come out with some papers. He stopped to talk with the cleaning team and then left the way he came.

  Chalk sat back in his chair again. “Not him.”

  “I feel sick from the adrenaline,” Neela said, holding her stomach. “No, wait, maybe I’m hungry.”

  “We just had a giant breakfast!”

  Neela snorted. “Correction—you did. I gave my waffles to An-Yi, remember?”

  Chalk rummaged in a drawer, pulled out a bag of chips, and handed them to her.

  Neela had a chip halfway into her mouth when another vehicle pulled into the parking lot. She gasped and pointed at the screen.

  “Mail truck,” Chalk said matter-of-factly. He was right. The driver opened the back of the truck and wheeled a bin of mail to the security booth. The two tiny figures chatted for a few minutes, and then the mail carrier went back to the parking lot and drove off. “Guess we’re in for a little more of a wait.”

  While Chalk doodled around on his computer, Neela crunched through the rest of the bag of chips. Licking her fingers, she threw the empty bag into the trash can. She was just about to head to the restroom when she noticed movement on one of the screens out of the corner of her eye. She shook Chalk’s shoulder so he’d look up from his computer, but instead of looking at the screen, he looked at her hand.

  “Augh,” he said.

  “I know!” Neela whispered, her eyes fixed on the screen. “I can’t believe it. This can’t be right.”