Page 8 of The Beachside Cafe 3
Unable to answer those questions, Alex had skirted off onto another subject, which happened quite often with the sharp-minded scientist.
“Greetings!” Alex said, lifting one hand and hurrying up the curved metal steps to get to them. He reached out for the bag Cameron was holding. “I am starving to death! Thank you so much, Jaymee!”
“It’s my pleasure. There’s a bag of chips and a slice of pickle in there for you, too.”
“Ah! You are a dreamboat, my friend. A pure dreamboat.” He gave Cameron a side-glance. “This one’s a keeper,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t mess it up.”
He turned and scampered back down the metal stairs. Cameron and Jaymee shared an affectionate look as they followed him down.
“So have you been perusing the files in the IDL computers?”
“I got access to the personnel files, yeah. Everyone on your list has a reputation for something. I mean, all of them. I’m surprised the list isn’t longer.”
“Well, Doug wouldn’t have been blackmailing them if they were straight-laced individuals,” Cameron said. “I suppose there are some good people working there.”
Alex had dropped into the chair in front of the computer, setting his bag of food next to the keyboard. He glanced at Cameron as he took the food out. “Highly doubtful actually. No one working with the kind of experiments they are doing is above suspicion. They’re already devious, playing with people’s lives and health and wealth. From the lowest assistant researcher to the CEO.”
“I guess you’re right,” Cameron said. He bent over the table and stared at the computer screen. “So what can you tell us so far?”
“They all have reputations, like I said. Especially this one.” Alex had ripped open the bag of chips and was using one of them to point before he put it in his mouth. “You see that? Multiple complaints about her.”
“What does she do there?” Jaymee asked.
“She’s an assistant researcher.”
“We think she might be up to something with Dylan Lianetti. Do you think you can find a link between them? Are they having an affair or something?”
Alex snorted. “If not, she’s got enough stuff hanging over her that she would probably need his legal advice. Look. Multiple counts of harassment, one of stalking and she wasn’t stalking Lianetti. She was stalking to carry out some kind of revenge. These people are all shady. I wouldn’t trust not a one of them. Not in my lab and not in my personal life.” He swiveled the chair, eyeing both of them. “Don’t get too involved in their lives.”
“You know,” Jaymee said thoughtfully, “if Doug was blackmailing them for doing something illegal, couldn’t the detectives just arrest them for that and they can get answers out of them?”
Alex shook his head, stabbing at the air with yet another chip. “No. I mean, yeah, I suppose they could but getting a confession out of them about what happened to Doug would probably be impossible at that point. If they’re all out and roaming free, we have a better chance of them leading us to wherever he is. One of them is bound to slip up. Plus, I think it would be a great idea to gather as much information as possible to shut down IDL for good and capture all the criminals. We go after these few right now and they’ll close ranks, hire lawyers like Lianetti and they’ll all go free. We have to catch them when they think they’ve won.”
“A backhanded win for us and the whole operation gets busted.”
“Exactly.” Alex nodded, his eyes on the screen again. As if he had a sudden thought, he sat forward and started typing in a search box at the top of the screen. “I think… we might be able to…” He didn’t finish his thought.
Jaymee was about to ask what he was thinking when he hit the enter key and a picture popped up on the screen. “Yeah, look. I thought I saw this earlier.” He looked at Jaymee. “Do you recognize this picture?”
Jaymee examined what she saw, her memory lighting up, taking her back to that day. “Yes, of course. That’s Mercury Park. That’s where IDL has – or had, at least – all of their company picnics.”
“Looks like all our major players are captured in this pic, no pun intended.” Alex sat forward again, pinching his finger and thumb together, touching the screen and zooming in on the pic by spreading his fingers. Jaymee was surprised to see the picture didn’t distort when he brought it closer. As if he heard her thoughts, Alex looked up at her. “This computer is special. It has a lot of additions and can do things most computers can’t. However, it can only do what I program it to do. It’s not A.I. I don’t want robots taking over and won’t be the one responsible if that happened.”
Jaymee nodded. “Yeah, I don’t want robots taking over either.” She looked at Cameron. “Do you?”
He shook his head. “Nope. That’s a no-go for me.”
Alex raised his eyebrows at both of them. “Laugh all you want, that’s a future you should be worried about. That and aliens coming back for the planet they abandoned years ago.”
Jaymee didn’t know whether to laugh or not. She didn’t want to hurt Alex’s feelings. She leaned forward and stared at the picture. “There’s Doug,” she said, pointing to the screen.
Alex turned his attention back to the picture and touched the screen to move it from side to side as he spoke. “Yes, that’s him. I don’t see you in this picture but it might have just been of employees. You may not have even attended this one, unless you went to them all.”
“I usually did. I don’t remember this one, though. And no, I don’t seem to be there.”
“So we’ve got Doug here and look at the way he’s staring out like that.”
“He’s looking at something,” Jaymee said, curiously.
