Page 27 of Fatal Conspiracy

Derek walked to the whiteboard and wrote two names. “Granite Intelligence,” he said, tapping the name. “Hugo had a run-in with their CEO, Marcus Bonner, at a conference about three years ago now. They were trying to sell an app that had too many glitches and was susceptible to hacking. Hugo called them out on it, and the app flopped.”

“Not because Hugo called him out on it then,” Alayah muttered, and Derek glanced at her.

“Correct. It was destined to fail, but Marcus didn’t want to hear that. He’s no longer with Granite Intelligence, though.”

“He could still carry a grudge,” Efren said, leaning back in his seat.

“That’s the reason I included him,” Derek confirmed. “The other business is Forest Networks, which Spencer Williams owns. I’m behind the eight ball for this one because I don’t know why he and Hugo hated each other. They run in the same circles and are close to the same age, but other than that, I don’t know a lot about Spencer. When I asked Hugo, he refused to answer.”

“It’s a woman,” Selina said without hesitation. “It’s always a woman in these situations.”

“That had never crossed my mind,” Derek admitted, Selina’s lips splitting into a grin.

“That’s because you’re a guy. Trust me on this one. It’s a woman. We will find her.”

“It’s hard to believe that a guy like Hugo Victor had only two enemies,” Cal said, leaning on a table. “Considering the business he was in, a person picks them up simply because they exist.”

“That’s accurate, but these three are the ones I remember being a real thorn in Hugo’s side. I don’t have access to the records that might give us more names, but something tells me maybe someone on your staff can bypass those pesky log-ins and passcodes to find them.” Roman bit back a grin at his implication. “If I had to put my bets on one of these guys, it would be Josh. He’s the one with the most to gain from Hugo’s death,” Derek said, tapping the name again.

“Explain,” Cal said.

“With Hugo dead, the business will likely go into public trading. If that happens, it’s a door for Josh to enter and slowly infiltrate the company again.” A thought struck Derek, and he snapped his fingers, turning to write another name on the board. “This one almost escaped my memory. It may not be a big deal, but I’ll mention it in the interest of transparency. John Lavelle owns Clover Industries. Hiscompany makes things like paper products and such, so not remotely the same as Black Marlin, but Curtis Clemons was his chief operating officer before Hugo wooed him away.”

“People leave jobs all the time for better positions and greener pastures,” Cal said.

“You’re not wrong, but less than two months later, Salma Barker left Clover Industries and came to Black Marlin Technologies.”

“That feels suspicious. Were they setting Hugo up?”

“We never saw it that way. Salma’s husband accepted a job as a bigwig at an insurance company in Minneapolis. Salma reached out to Curtis since she knew he was working in town and asked about companies that might be hiring.”

“Okay, then all you can say there is ‘that’s business,’” Zac said, swiveling in his seat. “You can’t get upset because an employee finds a job with a competitor when they’re forced to move.”

“Exactly what Hugo told him, but John was hot about it and accused Hugo of purposely targeting him.”

“How long ago was that?” Cal asked, and Derek counted back to when the board was set up. “About ten years ago? It was long before my time with the company or as Hugo’s assistant. Of course, if you want a list of all the people who have ever had an issue with Black Marlin, it will be long. Hugo had a short fuse for mistakes, so plenty of people came and went in the company over the years.”

“Sounds like the kind of guy who was hard to like,” Mack said, and Derek shrugged.

“Not so much hard to like as hard to work for. When I first started working for him, he worked sunup to sundown. It took me a few years, but I taught him about work-life balance. He told me in the car on the way here that he was moving toward semi-retirement, which was another reasonI decided to turn in my resignation. If he was moving that direction, my job would become obsolete.”

“It looks like someone wanted him in permanent retirement. I’ll see if we can get a list of people with an ax to grind before the cops do,” Cal said. “While that’s being populated, we’ll look closely at Josh and Marcus. Chances are that John was annoyed with him ten years ago, but is no longer in a murderous rage about losing a few employees. He doesn’t have a compelling motive for murder, in my opinion.”

“Agreed,” Declan and Alayah said together, making everyone chuckle.

Cal glanced at his watch. “We’re going to wrap this for tonight. I want everyone to get a hot meal and some sleep. We’ll have our friends back at Secure Watch running some of this stuff down overnight. Let’s meet for breakfast at 0700 hours.”

Derek noticed the fatigue on everyone’s faces as they packed up their laptops and headed out of the room. Guilt lanced through him for putting them through this until he remembered that Cal had a vested interest in finding Hugo’s killer, too.

Chapter Sixteen

Once they were alone in the room with just Cal and Roman, Derek asked the question he really wanted the answer to. “Have you heard from Detective Henry?”

“Not today, but Ryland is running interference for us,” Cal answered. “He’s forcing them to go through him to get to either you or me. Henry has nothing on us besides the water bottle being in both of our hands. Alayah said that there was more than one?”

“I have four bottles that all look the same,” Derek explained. “Hugo was superstitious about using this particular type when doing a presentation, but I never wanted to be caught with my pants down if it got lost, so I kept extras around. This time, I only brought one because I wasn’t going to be here, and I didn’t want him to know that there was more than one bottle.”

“He didn’t know?” Roman asked in surprise.