Pride and Principal: A Silicon Valley Mystery (Book 6) by Marc Jedel

Author:Marc Jedel [Jedel, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BGM Press
Published: 2024-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

11

Friday Afternoon

“Ready for lunch?” Raj asked.

“Nah, no lunch for me today,” I told him.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Skipping lunch—it is just not like you,” he said.

I shrugged. “I grabbed a late breakfast at Meghan’s house. I got here late this morning, and I’ve got to leave early again. Plus I’ve got this big shindig tonight.”

“Please do not be mature today. I need you to be my crazy work friend,” pleaded Raj.

“What?” I chuckled.

Raj’s words spilled out of him. “Someone is always the crazy friend from work. If you look around and cannot identify anyone as the crazy one, then it must be you. I do not want it to be me, Marty. Please! You be the crazy one again. Please.” He said this with a smile on his face, but I could detect the slight edge of actual panic in his voice.

“Your mother-in-law hasn’t left yet?”

Raj slumped. “Yes.” He nearly began to cry. “Now, can you please do something crazy?”

I felt for the guy, but nothing came to mind. It was actually a bit embarrassing. I considered myself to be a spontaneous guy and yet here I couldn’t manufacture something silly to distract my friend. Then I snapped my fingers. “I’ve got it. After you go eat lunch, could you please research slow-acting poisons?”

Raj looked up with a smile. “Yes. Yes, I can.” He nodded enthusiastically and almost as an afterthought, he added, “For what purpose if I might ask?”

I chuckled, idly wondering if his eagerness was connected to any desire to test out the substances on his mother-in-law. “Since the camera didn’t capture anyone coming to kill the principal, I got to wondering about whether someone slipped him something, say at dinner the night before, and that killed him the next morning.”

He nodded in understanding. “Those two parents who were in the restaurant video. Good idea.” As he left for lunch, he seemed back to his usual cheerful self, although perhaps not quite normal since he walked away muttering about poisons.

Once Raj returned, he sat in his cubicle clicking, reading, and mumbling to himself for at least an hour before he let loose with a mighty yawn and stood up. “That was interesting, but now I am tired,” he declared when he came into my cubicle.

“Did you learn anything useful?” I asked.

“Poisons are very interesting. There are many common plants that can kill you.”

I agreed and told him about oleander bushes, the popular colorful roadside bushes so poisonous that animals who eat the leaves could die. I’d once solved a murder involving a neighbor who ground up oleander leaves and mixed them into the victim’s tea.

“But those bushes are all over—on the highways, in yards, and just out in the wild.” Raj seemed perturbed by his new understanding. “You could brush up against them without even noticing.”

“Just don’t let a leaf fall into your salad if you’re eating outside or get into your sleeping bag.”

“Why do people go camping and expose themselves to this risk?” he asked.

“Exactly,” I agreed wholeheartedly.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.