KISS THE WITCH by Dana Donovan Page B

Ferguson’s plane tickets from my pocket to show
the two. “Ferguson was just saying this morning how unusual it was
for his secretary to book him on a red eye.”
    Spinelli said, “Can I see that?” I gave it
to him. He studied it briefly before slipping it into his pocket.
“You know, maybe it’s no coincidence she wanted him out of town
last night.”
    “ Hmm, maybe. So, let us
assume this conspiracy theory is a go for the moment. You have
expendable pre-robbery participants: Gerardi, Brookfield and
McSweeney. Tell me about the other three.”
    “ The brains behind the
whole thing,” said Spinelli. “First, you have Williams, the
executive program coordinator. He is on top of everything below
Ferguson. He knows when the big things are happening, when testing
takes place, the results of those tests, perhaps more importantly
the failures of those tests. He’s the man to go to when the
operation hits T-minus now and go.”
    “ I thought that was
Brookfield’s job,” said Carlos. “He was the one reading all the
reports and could initiate the plan.”
    “ Yes, but he was just one
cog in the wheel.”
    “ Seems like a useless cog
if you already have Williams.”
    “ Let’s hear him out,” I
said. “Go on, Dominic.”
    He fingered the sugar packet representing
Williams and pushed it aside. “Keep in mind, there is plenty of
room for interpretation. It’s possible that any one or all of these
people were not in on the heist, but murdered for what they knew or
found out.”
    “ That’s right. That’s why
I want to hear the rest of your theory. So please.”
    Carlos took the pack of sugar representing
Williams and placed it on the edge of the table. Without waiting
for us to ask what he was doing, he pushed it off the edge, onto
the floor. I looked at him curiously. “Why did you do that?”
    Without smiling, he said, “That was Williams
going over the balcony.” He looked down at the packet on the floor.
“Probably messier than that.”
    I slapped his arm just as he was about to
take a sip of his iced tea, causing him to spill some on his lap.
“As messy as that, maybe?”
    “ Hey guys. Food’s up,”
said Dominic.
    We set the conversation aside and allowed
our server to place our orders on the table. I had the tuna melt,
Spinelli the Philly with cheese and the rest went to Carlos: a
cheeseburger with curly fries, garden salad, bowl of French onion
soup and a basket of chicken fingers. I mention this so that you
will know why Carlos had nothing more to contribute to the
conversation, except of course for the inevitable pass the ketchup
please.
    After settling in with our first bites, I
asked Dominic to continue laying out his theory. He picked up where
he left off by knocking aside the next packet of sugar from the
stack representing Delaney.
    “ Here we have Rick
Delaney. Delaney was operations and logistics manager. Now, if you
ask me, I think this is the guy that arranged for the actual
break-in. As operation and logistics manager, he was in perfect
position to allow an unauthorized entry into the building. He had
the security codes, computer passwords, gate passes…everything you
need to get in and out of the building without anyone seeing
him.”
    “ That’s good,” I said, and
I watched Carlos scoop up the sugar packet that was Delaney and
empty it into his tea. That left one packet remaining. I pointed to
it. “Tell me about Snow.”
    “ Ah, yes. Howard Snow.
Senior research supervisor. I suppose if you were looking for
someone who could negotiate terms for the clandestine transfer of a
super-secret commodity to a rival company, you could not do better
than Howard Snow.”
    “ Then why kill
him?”
    “ Snow? Think about it.
Even after the bad guys get the secrets and physical product in
hand, Snow still has the information in his head to reanimate the
project. It would be like stealing the atom bomb secrets from the
Manhattan project after the first bomb was already produced. If