Stuff to Spy For by Don Bruns

Author:Don Bruns [Bruns, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9781608090020
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I called her when I walked in the door. The laptop continued to run on the kitchen table. Every once in a while I heard Sandy Conroy grunt, chuckle, laugh, or cough. I couldn’t wait to see what the conference between Sandy and Sarah was about.

“Skip?”

“Em. Can we meet at Ester’s?” Quick and formal.

“Ummm, yeah. You’re making this sound like a business meeting rather than a date.”

“Ummm. Yeah. It sort of is.”

“Doesn’t sound good.”

“No. No. No. It’s all good. I just need to run this idea by you.” I glanced at James and he nodded in affirmative.

“Okay. I’ll be there. What time?”

The movie probably had another twenty minutes to run. “Half an hour.”

“You’re not in more trouble, are you?”

“Me?”

She didn’t laugh.

I went back to our small kitchen table and stared at the computer screen. Nothing was happening, but Sandy Conroy’s clacking at his computer and occasional noisy outbursts kept the camera and microphone activated. The phone rang, and I looked around for a second. We don’t have a phone, just our cells.

“Yeah.”

Conroy waited a minute for the person on the other end.

“All right, you tell Jason Riley that we go into production in three weeks. Three weeks. And we need the codes by then. Hell, you tell him we need them before that. Some story about how we have to program in some stuff to the security system. We weren’t aware we needed them this soon, but since Tony Quatman isn’t around any more yada yada yada.”

More silence.

“Look, I don’t care what you tell him. You’re good at making things up. Just get the codes.” He shook his head back and forth and then slapped his desk with an open hand. The loud slap bounced off the cheap sound system in the computer. “I wish Ralph was handling it too, damn it. It worked a lot better that way. But he’s not with us anymore if you remember.” The person on the other end must have tried to abdicate some responsibility. I could almost see Conroy roll his eyes in disgust. “You’re in charge of it now. Do you understand? It’s in your hands.” The deliberation was taking entirely too much time and we didn’t have a lot of time.

Watching someone on the phone when they don’t know you’re watching, gives you a whole new understanding of how they react to situations. Conroy doodled on a pad, tapped his foot, kept looking around the room like he thought someone was hiding somewhere. The man was obviously very uncomfortable with the conversation. I checked my watch. Whoever was on the other end was taking a long time to make his case. Minutes went by and I checked my watch again. Finally Conroy spoke.

“Look, the thing with Ralph is taking care of itself. There’s nothing else they can prove. It’s going to be ruled a suicide.” He stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders. “No, I don’t care what his wife thinks. And we know that Tony, Julia, and her husband won’t be back anytime soon to discuss the matter with anyone.

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