You Had Me at Halo(21)

Holly could feel the determination rising up through her. Finally they were getting somewhere. At this rate they would catch Rochelle, convince Todd of the truth and still have time to watch the latest episode of The Rich and the Restless before she went back to heaven. Perfect.

Gemma nodded. “That girl is toast. We’re going to take her down.”

Vince folded his arms and Holly could tell by the way his lips were turning that he was about to frown. “Before you go pointing fingers, shouldn’t we be working out how she managed to do it?”

“Oh.” Gemma paused. “I hadn’t thought of that. I guess we’d better retrace your steps first.”

Holly pulled out a piece of paper from Vince’s pocket. “I do have this. It’s a list of all the things I remembered doing on Friday. According to the Internet the tablets could still keep working for up to eight hours, so I’ve gone back as far as ten in the morning.”

Gemma peered over and chewed her lip as she studied it. “You only had one cup of coffee in work and that was made by Tina, so Rochelle couldn’t have spiked your drink. Are you sure you didn’t go somewhere for lunch? Perhaps she did it then?”

“No.” Holly reluctantly agreed. She’d been particularly busy that day trying to get her presentation all ready for Monday so she hadn’t even left the building for a break. “I brown bagged it and ate at my desk.”

“Did you put it in the staff room fridge?” Vince wondered but Gemma gave a dismissive shake of her head.

“They work on different floors.”

Holly stabbed at the piece of paper. “But our fridge was on the blink, so I did go up to fourth floor to put mine in there. I remember because I had chicken in my sandwich and I was worried about salmonella poisoning.” For a moment Holly was struck by the irony since it wasn’t the salmonella she should’ve been worrying about. On a brighter note. At least it was a start.

“Okay, so what are we waiting for? Let’s go,” she said but Vince’s feet weren’t moving anywhere. If she could’ve glared at him, she would’ve. “What? We’ve got motive, we’ve got opportunity, now we just need to find means.”

“Yes, well I hate to break up this little Law and Order episode, but aren’t you forgetting something?”

Holly wrinkled her nose as she lifted up her fingers to start mentally ticking things off. “I don’t think so. What do you mean?”

Gemma groaned as she nodded in the same direction as Vince. “He means we’ve got the company meeting which is about to start right about now.”





CHAPTER NINE


Ten minutes later they were standing at the back of the meeting room and Vince’s arms were firmly folded. Normally Holly preferred to sit a bit closer to the front, just so everyone could see she was keen and eager to make something of herself, but Vince obviously didn’t feel the need to impress anyone and had refused point blank to go anywhere near “those suited monkeys.”

Besides, being at the back meant they would be able to make a quick getaway once the meeting was finished—something Holly longed to do. Still at least she was closer to getting her issues sorted than she had been yesterday. She knew that pretending to be calm and organized was the right thing to do.

Because it was the beginning of the month, nearly one hundred people had turned up and Holly was quite pleased to have access to Vince’s extra height to check everyone out. Particularly since the Regional Executive Sales Director, David Harris, was droning on about the company decision to change from ninety-six brightness to ninety-two brightness for internal memos.

She yawned and was just trying to decide if Tina Macdonald had hair extensions in when she caught sight of a poster taped up on a the wall. It was for a suicide help line and Holly knew damn well that it hadn’t been there two weeks ago.

Unbelievable. How many times did she have to tell people that she didn’t commit suicide? Surely Baker Colwell had better things to do than put up posters like that, especially when based on such flimsy evidence. She was almost tempted to stomp over there and yank it from the wall, when David Harris suddenly coughed and changed topic.

“And now the next thing on the agenda is that I can finally reveal our top account manager for the last quarter, and who at this rate will be on target to beat the company record held by yours truly.”

There was a faint sprinkle of laughter from somewhere down near the front and Holly crossed her fingers. Last quarter Todd had just missed out and she knew he was gunning for this to help move him further up the rungs.

“So without further ado I would like to congratulate, Jim McKenna.”

Oh, Holly felt her heart sink. Poor Todd—he must be devastated. Especially on top of everything else he’d had to go through in the last two weeks, though hopefully when she—

“And Todd Harman. It was a tie,” David Harris finished off with a flourish of his arms and Holly clapped her hands in excitement as she caught sight of Todd’s proud face. She just knew this was a sign that everything was going to be okay.

I’m so happy. You have no idea how hard he’s worked for this. Though what was David Harris trying to do by pretending that there was only one person?

Vince immediately shoved his hands in his pocket to stop anymore clapping. Yeah, the crazy-wild side of Baker Colwell. Who knew? Vince retorted.