Amuse Bouche (29 page)

I didn't owe him any explanations. "What happened when you met?" I had reason to suspect Tom had been alive up to 11:15 a.m. when Clark Shiwaga said he left after having Tom sign the legal agreements. Mrs. Coyle suspected someone else might have been to visit Tom.

Someone in a yellow car. I now knew it was Kent.

"I came over around twelve or twelve-thirty.

I wanted to get there early enough to.. .to..."

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"What? Why did you go over there, Kent?"

"I wanted to tell him not to marry Harold. I wanted him to come back to me. To give us another try!" He spit this out as if he had been dying to tell someone the truth.

"Are you saying he didn't show up at his wedding because you asked him not to? Or did he refuse? Did you get angry?" 1 was baiting this man mercilessly. My jacket was nearby. The gun was close if I needed it. But I wouldn't. I could take this guy. 1 have muscles too.

"He was very kind. He didn't laugh or get mad or anything. 1 brought some food with me and we talked about things for a long time. He loved Harold and asked me to understand that.

I did. I didn't want it to be true, but I did understand. 1 guess the news of the wedding just sent me a bit over the edge. Tom was such a terrific guy. You would have thought so too if you'd known him."

He was probably right.

"But I never hurt him. I never could. When I left, Tom was alive and well." Tears glistened.

"I'd give anything if he still was. I miss him so much."

Oh crap. Was I going to have to console him?

Hug him? "What time did you leave?" I continued my questioning—but in a caring way.

He sniffled but was under control. "Maybe Amuse Bonnie

around one-thirty or two."

I considered the options. Either Kent was stringing me a line in order to protect someone else, possibly Colleen or even Shiwaga, or he had been worried I would find out he was in Tom's apartment that day and wanted to come clean with a sanitized version of the truth. Or, alternatively, he was telling the truth and he was simply a heartbroken ex-lover who spent a few, harmless last moments with a man he loved but who didn't love him back.

"Did you give Tom a gift that afternoon?"

"A gift? No, no gift."

"Did you notice a half-heart pendant when you were in Tom's apartment?"

Kent shook his head. "No. I didn't see anything like that."

The half-heart pendant was slowly becoming the one piece of the puzzle that didn't seem to fit anywhere.

There was another loose end. "Were you spy-ing on Harold Chavell?"

He stared at me like a deer caught in headlights. I was too clever for him and he knew it.

"I saw you, Kent." 1 didn't actually see Kent, but I did see a yellow car near Chavell's property that probably belonged to him. Maybe I wasn't more clever than Kent Melicke, but I was definitely a better liar.

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He looked down, seeming to fold in on himself. "I was there," he admitted in a little boy voice. "At the house."

"Why?"

Now he gazed up at me with a look that was pleading for me to believe him. "After 1 heard about what happened...at the wedding... 1

knew something was wrong. I mean, obviously, right? Or else why wouldn't Tom have shown up? I began to wonder.
.. "

I got it now. "You began to wonder if your little talk in his apartment had changed his mind after all?"

A nod. "No matter what he said, I know a part of him still cared about me. So I had to go see for myself. That's why I started watching the house. If they were fighting or breaking up or something...I wanted to be there...for him."

He shook his head slowly and whispered, as if ashamed, "Just wishful thinking I guess."

"Would you like another glass of water?" I asked, practicing a random act of kindness.

He looked at me with something new in his eyes. "I'd like that."

I WOKE UP ON THURSDAY MORNING f e e l i n g as if I'd had no sleep at all. My eyelids were heavy curtains, my mind a soupy swamp. I eyed the alarm clock with undisguised hate. It was not quite 6:00 a.m. J lay there, still as ice, careful not to nudge Barbra. I knew if I moved too suddenly and woke her, she'd suddenly have to go outside with such pitiful desperation, I'd be unable to resist. And then she'd be hungry and then I'd put on the coffee and before you knew it, the day would have begun long before I wanted it too. As I played mummy, I tried to decide whether I was coming down with something or was simply still pooped out after a trying day. I wished I could stay in bed all morning. But that was not to be. I had the feeling my case was gaining momentum and I was getting closer to finding Tom Osborn's killer. I had definitely shaken up a few people yesterday.

Giving up my dream of a morning of leisure I gently heeled Barbra and watched her eyes open. She pulled herself up to my face and began a mixture of tentative licks and plaintive whining. I pretended to be asleep and she let out a loud sigh and collapsed her furry head so close to my nose I could barely breathe. This 336

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dog knew exactly what she was doing.

"Time to go out?" I muttered, trying not to ingest any fur.

Her ears perked up at the sound of my voice and she leapt off the bed with the grace of Hyacinth, the animated hippopotamus ballerina from that classic Disney film,
Fantasia. I
pulled back the covers and shivered in the coolness of the room. I dove into my woolly bathrobe and covered my nakedness. I let Barbra out through the bedroom's French doors at the same time sticking out my rooster-haired head for a wake-up whiff. It smelled like fall—deep, musky and woodsy. The sky was ruddy as it awaited the sun, an almost startling contrast to the bright tincture of autumn showing off throughout the yard. By the time I retrieved the
Star Phoenix
from the front yard and set the coffee to perk, Barbra was at the kitchen door ready to be let back in, fed and watered. For half an hour we dawdled in the kitchen doing morning stuff, thoroughly enjoying each other's company.

I pulled into the parking lot nearest the building that housed QW Technologies before 8:00 a.m. I was betting Randy Wurz was the kind of guy who started his day early to make up for long lunches, golf games and 4:00 p.m. cocktail Amuse Bouche

hours. I was right. The front door of the office was open but Miss Saskatoon 1979 was not yet in for the day. I dinged the little silver bell on her desk and waited patiently.

The door behind the receptionist's desk swung open and Randy Wurz appeared, "Mr.

Quant?" He seemed surprised to see me. I wasn't sure if it was the time of day or whether he simply never expected to see my face again after our brief conversation at Kathryn Wagner's house.

"Mr. Wurz. Sorry to bother you so early in the morning. I was passing by and thought I'd take a chance on catching you before your day got too busy. Do you have a minute? There are a couple of things I want to discuss with you."

I looked closer at the man. The sharpness was gone. His clothes, although pricey, appeared decidedly less than crisp. He looked as tired as I'd felt earlier that morning. I was fine now. Maybe he also needed some coffee and doggie love.

"I am quite busy today, Mr. Quant. With Tom's death, the responsibility around here is all mine now. And really, I don't understand what's left to discuss. Tom is dead. Harold Chavell has been arrested for his murder. What more could there be to talk about?"

"I'm sorry, I know this must be a difficult 338

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time for you. Not only losing your business partner, but a friend."

"Yes."

"A friend who may have been murdered by someone other than the man they have in jail."

I knew it was an insensitive trick, but appealing to his loyalty as a friend to get his attention was the only card I could think of playing.

"What are you talking about?" He looked genuinely surprised and taken aback, though I'd given him a hint of this at Kathryn Wagner's house. Of course he was probably too much in shock at the time to have heard anything I'd said.

"I'm not convinced Harold Chavell is the man who killed Tom."

His mouth remained open but no sound came out. A good opportunity for me to get to the point of my visit. "I saw you speaking with Dave Biddle at the reception after Tom's funeral. Do QW and Quasar do business together?"

"No," he said, looking as if he was still trying to catch up with what I'd said before. "Biddle's company develops long range, wireless communication software. Nothing to do with video games."

"So are the two of you friends?"

"No...well yes...well not really. Not friends.

We're business acquaintances. I'd say Tom and Amuse Bouche

Dave were friends of a sort. They knew how to talk to each other—both techno wizards, if you know what I mean. When Quasar first moved their operations to Innovation Place a few years ago, their offices were right next to ours in The Galleria. Dave and Tom became friends then I think. They'd toss ideas off one another. They both loved to theorize about new technologies no one had ever heard about or tried before. A lot of pie-in-the-sky kind of stuff mostly. Of course Quasar really took off when Dave invented a groundbreaking subway communications system that's now pretty much the industry standard, particularly in Europe.

Anyway, Quasar stayed in Innovation Place but moved to a much bigger space in another building on Downey Road. I think Dave and Tom still kept in touch after that. But they weren't as close anymore."

"Did you know Tom and Dave would meet with each other at Tech World?"

I was definitely rocking Randy Wurz's world. Once again he was speechless as he processed the information I supplied him.

I gave him a break and kept on talking.

"Apparently Tom had a lab booked at TechWorld and Dave met him there as recently as the day before Tom's disappearance."

More gaping.

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"Were you aware of the TechWorld lab? You told me Tom wasn't working on anything worth moving off the drawing board."

I could see Randy's eyes dart crazily about the room as if they were somehow connected to the part of his brain that was wildly trying to make sense of what I'd just told him. "I did know about the lab," he finally got out. "He was always playing around in there. It was nothing major. He was just fooling around with some new game ideas. He always had something on the go. That's how this business works, Mr. Quant.

You've got to keep on trying new things and consider yourself lucky if one out of every thousand bright ideas actually turns into something even potentially marketable."

"I see," I said. Then added, "Does it seem odd to you that your partner might have been working on a project with Dave Biddle and not tell you about it?"

"Good question," Randy said. The man no longer looked tired. There was something else going on in his face. I couldn't decide whether he was upset, confused or something else. I didn't know him well enough to be sure. "Tom and I told each other everything about what we were doing. This doesn't sound right."

"But you've said Tom and Dave were known to use each other as sounding boards 341

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on occasion?"

"Oh sure, they talked, but they didn't
work
together. There's no reason I can think of for Dave Biddle to have been in that lab."

"Were you and Tom having any disagreements before he disappeared? Was there any reason to suspect he was working on something without your knowledge or had you sensed that Tom might have wanted out of QW?"

He didn't answer for a count of ten.

Controlling his anger perhaps? He didn't seem to be appreciating my insinuations. Neither would I if I were in his shoes. "No. There had been no change in our relationship at all.

Actually, Mr. Quant, I question whether your information is accurate. How did you find out about all of this? From Dave Biddle?"

I shook my head.

"Well, I certainly need more than your word on this."

"That's what I was hoping you'd say. I was wondering if you could get us into Tom's lab at TechWorld?"

"Absolutely not," he answered quickly. "The equipment and information in that lab is confidential. For QW eyes only."

"Dave Biddle was in there." Gotya!

"Y-y-yessss..."

"Do I look like a guy who knows the first 342

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thing about building computer games? You don't even want to know what I think a Game Boy is."

He looked doubtful.

"Listen, if I'm wrong, no harm done. If I'm right, there might be something in there that could lead us to find out who killed Tom."

He was struggling between a rock and a hard place. I'm not sure which one I was. "The police already know who killed Tom. And so do I.

Harold Chavell."

Tsk, tsk, tsk. I dislike inflexibility. Time for a little threat. "The police don't know about the TechWorld lab. Yet." It was one thing for me to go rooting around QW stuff, but I was pretty certain Randy Wurz didn't want a bunch of cops in that lab.

After brief consideration he frowned and said, "Let's go."

It didn't take long to convince TechWorld security to allow us access into Tom's lab. Once Randy explained that as the only remaining QW partner he was suspending rental payments on the facility, me young guard was happy to oblige us. He also instructed us to have the room cleaned out before the end of the day.

He didn't bother getting up. He had us sign in, Amuse Bouche

gave us a key, brief directions and sent us on our way. The halls were beginning to buzz with the arrival of scientists and technicians and people who did for a living things I could never come close to comprehending. Randy Wurz led the way and we were soon at the door of Tom's lab. He inserted the key and we entered. It was a long, narrow, windowless room with thick, soundproof walls. We looked around and stared in amazement.

Except for a desk, chair and myriad jumbled cables on the floor plugged in to nothing, the room was bare. I guessed the clean-up wouldn't take us long.