“We do appreciate your cooperation,” Leda said benevolently, and Niki kicked her under the table with her booted foot. Leda was careful not to look at Grady and whatever side-eye he was flashing her. She only smiled bigger.
Grady worked around her. “I have your statements from the last go-round, so I don’t want to make you rehash too much of the same old information.”
“I mean, there’s not very much to rehash, you know?”
Abbot looked confused and a little anxious when he fiddled with his mug of coffee. Was it coffee? On second glance, Leda thought maybe it was chai. Either that, or he’d really loaded up on the creamer.
“I didn’t work for Gilman very long, and I wasn’t around when he died, either.”
“I know, but I wanted to talk about that fight the two of you had, just…” Grady flipped open his notebook and glanced at whatever was written there. “Six days before the murders. We’re taking a broad look at Digital Scaffolding, getting a little more in-depth with regards to the company’s dealings. We’re starting to wonder if Christopher and Kevin weren’t killed over some shady business dealings. Maybe they screwed over the wrong person, or people. Maybe they were making bad deals that hurt someone, or maybe they were taking money from investors.”
Keyes shot a glance at Niki. “That’s what the forensic accountant’s for?”
Grady said, “What?” then caught himself quickly. “Oh, yeah, right. Yes, we’re exploring all possible avenues here.”
Leda leaned forward and asked, “So why don’t you tell us about that fight you two had, shortly before Gilman died?”
“It wasn’t, like, a knockdown, drag-out thing. Nobody threw any punches, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Grady jumped in. “But someone did throw a paperweight through a window.”
“Ah. Well, that’s true. That was me,” Keyes admitted. “I was pretty pissed off. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone; I was just mad, and it was stupid. I felt stupid about it then, and I feel stupid about it now.”
“At the time, you said the fight was over a bunch of credit card reimbursements that never happened.”
“That’s right. I didn’t love being treated like an errand boy, but that was part of the job, and I did whatever Chris asked me to. But I’d run up all these toll charges, and gas charges, and all that stuff. The guy refused to reimburse me, even when I gave him all my receipts. It was only a few hundred bucks, but come on, you know? It’s not like I was making big money over there, at an entry-level gig in a start-up.”
Leda nodded. “Oh, no kidding. I had a gig like that, and it sucked. Who the hell can live on twenty-two grand a year in Seattle? I mean, come on.” Then to Grady, she added, “There weren’t even any benefits.”
“Bad benefits, bad money, bad everything, got it,” Grady said with a note of finality that suggested everyone except for him and the interviewee needed to back out of the conversation, right freaking now. “But is that all you did there, at Digital Scaffolding? Coffee and dry cleaning?”
“Sometimes I rotated PDFs. Once, I helped Mrs. Gilman scrape ice off her car windows with my ORCA card.”
Niki laughed. “Sounds like a thrill a minute.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t the kind of job that I mourned a whole lot, once it was over.”
Grady jotted something down that Leda didn’t see. “And do you know of anyone else who may have had any difficulties with the work environment? When I asked around last time, there was not a lot of love lost between Christopher Gilman and literally anybody he knew or worked with—which made it tricky to narrow down suspects. But everyone really liked Kevin, and no one can figure out how he got wrapped up in his father’s mess.”
“Kevin was all right—I didn’t have any problem with him.” Keyes agreed. “Nobody did, as far as I know. I assumed that he got caught up in something with his dad, or he showed up at just the wrong time. I don’t think anybody really thought Kevin had anything to do with what happened, but anything’s possible, right?”
Leda let out a laugh that sounded more like a snort. “Anything is definitely possible.”
“We’ve looked into Kevin pretty extensively, and I think we’ve more or less ruled him out as the intended target. He was on the board of two charities, with an ex-wife who sang his praises and a dog-rescue group that started an adoption grant in his honor. The guy was practically a saint.” Grady leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. Somehow, he looked both relaxed and accusatory.
Abbot Keyes felt it, too. He clutched his mug again and gazed down into its depths. “You know what’s funny? I’d talked to Kevin about using him for a reference. I was already planning to leave when he and his dad died. I only stayed on as long as I did because… God, it sounds terrible to say out loud, but here you go: I stayed at Digital Scaffolding because Chris was gone. He was such a bully, I hated having him for a boss. His wife took over after the funeral—but mostly she was doing the work of shutting the company down. I don’t think it made much money, and it was never her baby. She didn’t want to run it, and she had money of her own.”
“Speaking of Janette Gilman—any thoughts on her? You think she had something to do with it?” Grady asked.
“I mean…?” Keyes replied, a slow shrug joining the sentiment. “She seemed like a nice lady, but I didn’t know her well. I didn’t know her at all until after Chris died; I’d only seen her once or twice in passing. After that, she came into the office a couple of days a week—sorting out paperwork, making phone calls, I don’t know. She worked out of Chris’s office. Within three or four months, I think, she’d cleaned house and shut the doors. But by then I’d quit to go work as a freelance writer.”
“You don’t do that anymore?” Leda asked.
“No. It’s really hard. Even when you know people at Amazon or have contacts at some of the consulting firms, there’s all these weird rules for tech writing when you work for big digital marketplaces, and it’s hard to make anybody happy, ever. I gave up on that pretty quick.”
Grady asked, “Then you went to work for Uber?”
“No, then I went to work for Starbucks. Don’t laugh,” Keyes said hastily, even though no one had done so. “The hours are okay, and the benefits are pretty good. But it was really hectic, and I had a hard time keeping up.”
“Then you went to Uber?”
“Yeah, then I went to Uber. It’s better, kind of. I don’t have to answer to anybody, and that’s something. I want to go into IT, though. That’s why I’m back here at the university, taking computer science classes. It sounds perfect—you get an office to yourself, and you help baby boomers reset their internet passwords. Stuff like that,” he said dreamily.
“That can’t possibly require a degree,” Leda said.
He shrugged again. “Sometimes IT jobs require the degrees just to get an interview. Companies put it in the job listings, even if you never need to know Java, or C++, or anything like that in order to do the job. Everybody needs a job, and employers around here get picky. You can’t just apply for whatever strikes your fancy, like, ‘Hey, I’m Abbot—and I know how to do what you need done. Hire me!’ ”