Drip Dead by Evans Christy

Author:Evans, Christy
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-12-19T16:00:00+00:00

chapter 20

We left Franklin’s in separate cars with the same destination: Wade’s office. His friend David Young was meeting with my mother and he had promised to call us as soon as they were through.

I stopped at the house to change cars and let the dogs out. Much as I loved driving the ’Vette, I didn’t want to park it on Main Street on Sunday afternoon and advertise my presence at Wade’s office.

The Beetle was a little more discreet.

Wade left the door unlocked for me. He was at his desk with a mound of file folders, several of them bulging with computer printouts. He already had his computer on and was typing rapidly.

“Behold the paperless office,” he joked. “Weren’t you computer types supposed to save us from all this?” He gestured toward the piles on the desk, nearly toppling one precarious stack.

“And weren’t you accountant types supposed to give up your paper files and trust the electronic ones?” I shot back. I knew Wade could have cut the paper files in half, or more, if he was willing to trust the electronic backups he made with regularity.

Instead he kept paper and electronic copies of all his files, which threatened to overwhelm his tiny storefront office. He was constantly culling his files and putting boxes into the bulging storage unit he maintained nearby.

Judging from the stacks of cartons lining the back wall it was about time for another storage run. And probably time to rent another unit.

He registered the laptop case slung over my shoulder and waved me toward his clerk’s desk. “Use Karen’s desk if you want,” he said. “You have the passwords for the wireless if you need it.”

“Thanks.” I sat down, booted up Mom’s laptop, and went back to work on the Veritas folder. I was determined to find out what was in there.

The spreadsheets were easy. In the locked folder Gregory had obviously assumed the files were safe and there were no passwords or locks on the files themselves.

The contents, on the other hand, were going to take some translation.

“Wade?”

“Um-hmm?” Wade looked up, startled. He had been deeply engrossed in his papers, and it was as if he had forgotten I was there.

“Can you take a look at this with me? I have no idea what some of these fields might mean.”

Wade rolled his chair over to where I sat and peered at the laptop screen over my shoulder. Maybe Gregory knew what the various rows and columns meant, but his labels were cryptic to the point of being indecipherable, though some could be guessed from the content.

I connected to Wade’s wireless network and negotiated the security system so I could search wine terminology.

Wade was one of the few people in Pine Ridge that didn’t need the Samurai Security standard lecture. Everything he did was hidden behind firewalls and password protected.

Like I said, he took his clients’ privacy seriously.

Which was why I was startled when he dropped a file folder on my desk.

I glanced at the tab and did a double take.

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