Hiding in Plain Sight (14 page)

“Oh, yes, a water cooler.” She nodded, looking past me as though she was picturing the room in her mind. “And some plants and a couple of stone sculptures. That's about it.”

“The plants aren't there now,” I said. “They're in the pictures, but they've been moved. Darla has the fern in her office and Debbie's spider plant is in the reception area.”

“Well, thank goodness!” Mrs. Thompson kind of laughed and rolled her eyes. “Those two squabbled about which one should be near the window almost constantly from the moment Debbie brought in her plant. Ridiculous thing to fight over, really.”

I closed my eyes and tried to envision the picture I'd studied. “The fern was closest to the window, wasn't it?”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled ruefully. “No mistake about
that
. Debbie was forever claiming that the spider plant needed the sun more and that ferns don't like direct sunlight. I think she was right, too, and I think Darla knew it, but you know how it is when you say some-thing and then you don't want to back down. She wouldn't give in and she insisted that the fern keep the spot closer to the window.”

“Sometimes people get dug in on silly things,” I said. I'd seen it lots over the years and I might as well admit I'd been incredibly stubborn about some pretty dumb things myself a few times. “Anyway, I don't sup-pose an argument over plants has anything to do with a robbery.”

“Do you have
any
ideas?” Mrs. Thompson asked then.

“I'm sorry, I really don't,” I admitted reluctantly. “But I've got the weekend to review everything. Maybe something will come to me then.”

She looked disappointed. I was getting used to seeing that expression on her face.

“Uh, this is probably nothing,” I said, “but what do you know about Dymelle Enterprises?”

“Dymelle … where are they located?”

“Saint John.”

“The name's not familiar to me,” she said. “Where did you hear of this company?”

“Someone called from there to speak to Stuart. I just wondered because of the student, uh, Gary Todd, having gone there. I wondered if there was a connection.”

“It's probably just a client,” she said. “I couldn't tell you the names of half the companies NUTEC does web design and maintenance for.”

“Okay, well thanks.” I glanced at the notepad where I'd made a list of things to ask. So far I'd learned nothing of value and I was almost out of questions. “You mentioned before that the password to access the stolen program could be figured out.”

“Yes, that's right.”

“Could anyone figure it out? Or would it take an expert?”

“Oh, no, not just anyone. Of course, at NUTEC any of the software developers could do it.”

“Could you?”

“Oh, goodness, no.”

“What about Darla, Janine, James, Angi, or Carol?” I asked.

“No, none of them. Only Stuart, Debbie, or Joey.”

“Don't you think that sort of clears everyone else?”

“Well, not really.” She sighed. “A disreputable buyer could easily have someone break the password.”

I sighed too. There was only one thing left to ask. “The safe,” I said. “Do you open it with other people in the room?”

“Never,” she said, shaking her head to emphasize it. “I'm very careful.”

It was the answer I'd been expecting. Mrs. Thompson's diligent and cautious approach to security — normally a commendable thing — was working against her at every turn. If she'd left keys around now and then and opened the safe in the presence of others occasionally, it would at least have shaken the case against her.

I could picture her going to trial and being convicted by her own testimony.

B
etts hadn't seemed to be paying any attention while I was talking to her mom, but as soon as Mrs. Thompson left the room she practically grabbed me.

“Shelby, you've
got
to find out who did it. My mother
cannot
go to jail.”

“Betts, please,” I said, swallowing hard. “You have to believe I'm doing everything I can think of, only it's like there are no clues whatsoever to help me. I've met everyone at NUTEC, looked through the file Mr. Zuloft gave me, and thought until my head hurts. I just don't have anything to go on.”

She deflated quickly, sinking onto a chair and putting her head between her hands. “I can't believe this is happening to my family,” she said, beginning to cry. “We could lose everything.”

I patted her arm, thinking what a useless gesture that was. Here her whole world was falling apart, or at least it seemed that way to her, and all I could do was admit failure. I wished I'd never agreed to get involved because then, no matter what happened, I wouldn't feel like it was my fault.

It took a while for her to quit crying. When she had, I suggested a walk, knowing that walking briskly for a half-hour causes the brain to release some chemical that has a calming affect. Or so my mom told me.

“I might as well,” she said sadly. “It won't be long before I won't be able to show my face anywhere in town. Everyone will be whispering behind my back, talking about how it was my mother who robbed her own business and got sent to jail.”

“No one will be whispering behind your back,” I said soothingly. I knew she was right, though. If her mom was convicted, the gossip would take a long time to die down. “Anyway, I don't think everyone goes to jail on their first conviction.”

That reminded me of something that had been lurking in the back of my brain and had almost been buried under other things. I told Betts to hold on, I had to ask her mom something else, and I'd be right back for our walk.

Mrs. Thompson was in the back of the house, sitting in the dark in the sunroom they had recently built
just off their living room. It's made of rounded Plexiglas that looks out over their backyard, which showcases a fantastic flower garden. In the night, though, it's almost spooky, especially if there's any wind to make the trees that surround the yard sway against the sky. All the bushes and shrubs that are so lovely in the daylight hunch there like goblins and monsters, with craggy arms reaching out to grab you.

Anywhere else in Little River the street lights would be enough to illuminate the yard a bit more, but their place is on the edge of town, at the end of a dead-end street, and the light just doesn't reach back that far.

Mrs. Thompson seemed almost in a trance, sitting there all alone. I wondered where her husband was and how this was affecting him. Did he have moments of doubt about his wife's innocence? And how would it feel to be on the verge of seeing your whole world turn upside down?

“Excuse me, ma'am,” I said as softly as I could, so as not to startle her.

It didn't work. She half jumped from her seat and turned to me. My eyes had adjusted to the dark enough by then to allow me to see that her face was kind of crumpled looking.

She cleared her throat. “Yes?” she asked.

“I'm sorry to bother you, but I just thought of something else I wanted to ask you. Have there been
any unresolved problems at NUTEC that you can think of? Anything unusual that's happened lately?”

“Such as?” Mrs. Thompson rubbed her forehead with her fingertips as though she was trying to nudge information loose.

“I don't know, exactly.” And I didn't. I felt like I was just floundering all over the place. “Anything where things just seemed amiss.”

“There
was
something a bit odd that happened few months ago,” Mrs. Thompson said slowly, “though I don't see how it could be related to the robbery. We had a big meeting with some executives from head office. There were a number of us doing presentations — Joey, Debbie, Darla, James, and I. The program designers were demonstrating some new software, Darla was doing project analysis, I was doing a managerial report, and James had done up a financial report with projections for future profits and such, based on our output and potential at the time.

“Anyway, I went first, then Darla, and James was up next. Only, when he went to pass out the copies of his report for them to follow along with, it was missing. We'd all put our presentations in there an hour or so before the meeting, on the desk in the corner by the filing cabinets. It seemed that they were all still there, but when he picked up his stack, it was just a bunch of garble instead of the actual report.”

“That's odd,” I said.

“Oh, that wasn't the worst of it.” She shook her head, remembering. “We looked high and low while the executives sat there waiting, and then James found his report copies.”

She drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “They were in my briefcase, leaning against the wall under the desk.”

“What made him look there?” I asked.

“He happened to notice the case was bulging, even though I'd emptied it when I'd put my presentation out earlier.”

“How did they get in there?”

“Well, I suppose someone did it as a joke and then didn't want to admit to it when they realized how much trouble it had caused. We looked like fools in front of the executives. But there was nothing actually taken — especially of value, like the program that was stolen last month.”

She reached for a tumbler sitting tidily on a coaster on a nearby. “Why did you want to know that?” she asked after taking a sip.

“I just wondered,” I said lamely. It wasn't like the two things were related. What I'd mainly hoped to gain from the question was some idea of office dynamics, but the story she'd told me hadn't even given me that. Mrs. Thompson was probably right. Someone
had been pulling a practical joke without stopping to think of the possible ramifications. Naturally, once that person saw what havoc was caused, they wouldn't be eager to claim responsibility.

I was right back where I started.

T
he first thing Betts did when we set out on our walk was apologize for how she'd acted a bit earlier. It wasn't a traditional kind of apology, but then friends have their own language about those things.

“It's been pretty weird here,” she said, her eyes downcast.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Anyway, what I said earlier…”

“I know,” I said.

She flashed me a kind of shaky smile and we just kept walking and never mentioned her borderline attack on me again.

“How are things between you and Derek lately?” I asked when we'd walked in silence for a little while.

“Fair to middlin', I guess,” she said.

“
What
?”

“Oh,” she smiled, a real one this time. “That's an expression my dad uses a lot.”

“I never noticed.” Truth is, her dad is kind of shy, so the conversations I've had with him have been pretty limited.

“It means so-so.”

“Oh.” Old people sure say strange things. And they complain about us!

“We're going out tomorrow,” she went on. “Me and Derek, that is.”

I started to say “Derek and I” automatically, but stopped myself in time. My folks have this annoying habit of always correcting every little grammatical mistake I make. I never thought it would get to this point, but I notice myself automatically doing it in my head when someone else says something wrong.

“Where're you guys going?” I asked instead.

“Probably the theatre. There's not much else to do, especially with the Scream Machine being closed.”

She was right. The most popular spot for teens to hang out in Little River had just been sold, and the new owners had closed it for renovations. I must admit it was more than due for a facelift, but it was still strange not to be able to pop in there for gossip and greasy food. Now there was talk that it was going to be changed from a soda shop into an elegant little diner. If that were true, there'd be one less place for us to go,
which didn't leave many options, believe me. No one seems to care very much about whether we have things to do in our free time.

“What show are you seeing?” I asked, drawing my thoughts back to our conversation.

“I dunno. Some stupid action show, most likely. Derek wouldn't agree to go if it was a chick flick.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “Greg will go to them with me, but I don't ask anymore, because the last time we went to see a romance I heard his father ask him what he was doing that evening, and he said ‘penance.'”

Betts giggled at that but quickly grew serious again.

“I wish I had the same kind of relationship with Derek that you have with Greg,” she said wistfully. “You guys get along so great.”

“Not always,” I admitted, though it's nice to have people think that. “We argue once in a while.”

“Yeah, only your definition of an argument might not be the same as mine,” she said. “When's the last time you two yelled at each other and said mean things?”

“Well, we don't argue like
that
,” I said, “but we don't agree on every little thing, either. Disagreement is disagreement, however you express it.”

“We
express
it,” she said, “in pretty terrible ways sometimes. It seems that lately, instead of having a good time together, all we do is fight.”

“I imagine you're really stressed out these days, with everything that's going on,” I pointed out. “Maybe that's affecting your relationship with Derek.”

“I don't think it's that,” she sighed. “Like I told you before, he never does anything thoughtful or romantic anymore.”

“Do you fight about
that
?” I asked.

“Maybe a little,” she admitted.

“Well, fighting about it isn't likely to make it better,” I commented. “Anyway, when's the last time you did something thoughtful or romantic for him?”