“Yeah, working like they did, only to see a jerk like Ted reap all the benefit,” Luis said.
I sighed. I wasn’t sure I liked the way this was going. Yes, I was looking for suspects other than my brother. Not that I expected to find Ted’s murderer myself - I don’t share Dad’s conviction that solving murders in real life is as easy as it seems in the mystery books he devours by the dozen every week. But I did want to present the chief with a couple of plausible suspects other than Rob. His growing legal team didn’t anticipate any difficulty getting Rob acquitted if the DA tried to charge him with Ted’s murder, but in the meantime the trail of the real killer would be growing colder and colder.
But I wanted to point the chief to a plausible alternative subject, and I had a hard time believing Jack Ransom fit the bill. And I didn’t think it was just because I liked him. He was one of the few genuinely sane people around the office, which made him, in my mind, one of the least likely suspects.
Or was I too influenced by selfish motives - specifically, my investment in Mutant Wizards? Was that coloring my thinking, making me deliberately shy away from steering the police toward a key employee like Jack at this critical time in the development of the new game? At least he seemed to be key, and fairly high ranking. The only organizational chart I’d ever seen was ten months out of date, and Rob had allowed people to choose their own creative job titles, which meant I had no idea how the firm was really organized. Was a Unix Crusader - the disgruntled ex-staffer - more important than Keisha, the Cyber Goddess? Would Frankie, as Programming Warlock, report to Luis, the Senior Software Guru, or vice versa? I had no idea, apart from observing how they treated each other, of course.
When Frankie suggested something, people shrugged. When Luis suggested something, people listened. When Jack suggested something, people scrambled to do it.
But even Frankie appeared to perform a key role, if the number of people who complained when he played hooky was anything to go by. Which led me to another, more useful thought. Now was certainly a bad time to throw any obstacles in the path of the development team. Unless, of course, you wanted to cause Mutant Wizards the kind of problems that would result from a missed deadline on the new game. Was it possible that someone had killed Ted not for any of his many unpleasant characteristics but merely as a way of sabotaging Mutant Wizards? Who would have a motive to do that? Obviously not Rob or any of the other Mutant Wizards staff I knew and liked, since they all, like Rob, had a major stake in the company’s success. It would have to be someone who had it in for the company - another strike against Liz’s bete noire, the disgruntled ex-staffer? Assuming, of course, that Ted’s death would cause obstacles. No way to know without asking.
“So how badly will Ted’s death hurt our deadlines, anyway?” I asked.
Apparently this was the topic du jour. The group erupted into a flurry of incomprehensible technical jargon, until I called time-out.
“In English, please, someone,” I pleaded.
“Losing Ted won’t hurt us all that much if the police would just bring back bis computer so we could get his damned files,” Jack Ransom said. Having arrived, apparently, in the middle of the argument, he was leaning against the doorjamb, taking everything in. The several people who had been propped against various walls or articles of furniture leaped to attention. I wasn’t sure if they wanted to look alert in his presence or just felt too embarrassed to exhibit their inferior leans in the presence of the master.
“From what we saw the last time Ted showed us what he was doing, he’d effectively finished the module he was working on,” Jack went on.
“Finished it all wrong, though,” Frankie put in.
“I have no doubt he ignored all the technical standards, as usual,” Jack said, pushing away from the doorway and heading for the coffee machine. “And, as usual, someone else will have to clean up behind him. Probably you again, Luis; you’ve got that down to an art.”
“Yeah,” Luis said, shaking his head. “By now, I know exactly how his mind works - or doesn’t work.”
“Good thing whoever bumped him off didn’t do it last week,” Frankie said. “We’d really be hurting then. But now - gee, it sounds cold, but to be perfectly honest, we can do without Ted better than just about anyone, right now.”
With the possible exception, I thought, of Rob. Who knows? Having Rob in jail for a day or two might actually speed up the project. And having Ted permanently absent wouldn’t cause a problem - did that make it more likely that the killer was someone closely involved in the project, who would know when it was safe to strike Ted down? Drat.