After Drake brushed aside Detective Carson’s blustering interference in Richard Martin’s office, he led the CEO outside.
“Is there some place we can talk privately? Carson will leave you alone for now, but I need to get a handle on this pretty quickly.”
“There’s a cafeteria in the basement. I’ll treat you to an espresso.”
“Don’t tell me there’s a Starbucks here,” Drake moaned.
“Don’t insult me. I like coffee, but I don’t need it with a triple shot of caffeine. We buy and grind our own,” Martin said, leading Drake to the elevator.
They rode down to the basement. Black and white photographs of the Oregon wilderness lined the light saffron walls of the cafeteria. A salad bar and small food service counter ran along the wall, advertising daily specials listed far below local market prices. Obviously, Martin Research took exceptional care of its employees.
Martin asked for an espresso and Drake asked for a cafe au lait. While they waited for their coffee, Drake asked about the cafeteria.
“Is there an outside service entrance?”
“No, everything comes down the service elevator from the first floor. Surveillance cameras monitor the place twenty-four seven.”
Drake saw two cameras over the service counter and three more spaced around the large room.
When they were seated, Martin held his coffee in both hands and fixed his eyes on the nature scenes lining the walls.
“I have no idea how this happened, Drake. The detectives asked me every question they could think of, and I told them the same thing.”
“Tell me what you told them.”
“That I was not having an affair with Janice. My God, she was my secretary for almost twenty years. People can work together without having affairs. There’s no way I would ever have crossed that line. I respected her too much. I’m married, and I’m not looking for anything else.”
“Okay. She was married too. How were things on her side? Any chance she was seeing someone?”
“No way. She adored her husband. She lived for him and her kids. Her biggest thrill was when the two of them could get away for a long weekend.”
“What was she doing here so late at night? She was murdered between ten o’clock and midnight, if the police are right.”
“She was getting ready to leave for a vacation. She told me she wanted to make sure everything was covered for the two weeks she’d be away. I guess she was here working.”
“Is there any reason someone would want to hurt her? Any problems her husband had that could have led to this?”
Martin shook his head and set his coffee down.
“You had to know Janice. There’s no reason anyone in the world would want to hurt her. She could convince a mugger to turn himself in rather than take her purse.”
“So that leaves us with someone stealing from your company, or something involving you, since they were in your office. Any ideas?”
“I haven’t stopped thinking about this, that somehow I could have prevented this. I hired the top security firm in the country and installed everything they recommended. I still had problems. I don’t know what else could have been done.”
“I’m not suggesting there was anything, Richard. What about something business related?”
“I have competitors who fought me for the Homeland Security contract, but that’s all that I know of.”
“Okay, what about your competitors? Anyone who might be involved in something like this?”
“No, there was only one real competitor, and DHS wound up splitting the contract between us. We work on biological and chemical monitoring, and they work on nuclear monitoring. There’s no way they’d do something like this for the rest of the research. They have enough work to keep them busy.”
Martin finished his coffee and stood up.
“You need to talk to my head of security. He might have some ideas, because I sure as hell don’t.”