Bruzinski shook his head, “It hurt a little but like I said earlier, we’re having a great year so we could absorb it pretty easily. The fix just ate into the profits a little is all. I’m a CFO. I just hate to see that money going out the door.”
“Did Checketts seem particularly bothered by it? Was there anything unusual about the project?”
Bruzinski gave it some thought. “He didn’t seem overly bothered by it that I could tell. The only thing that was unusual was that he was a little more hands on in this case, I guess.”
“How so?” Wire asked.
“He decided who we would hire as the subcontractor which was usually a decision for Gabe and I, but he was emphatic we use a specific contractor so we did. It was a company I’d never heard of. In any event, he wanted to know how the process would work, the timeline for completion, who would be doing the installation of the cards, when they would go out, so on and so forth.”
“And that was unusual?” Mac asked.
“A little,” the CFO replied. “He was pretty hands off most of the time. He would let Gabe run the technical side and our manufacturing people would run the production side with our outside vendors and he would just say get it done. In this case, he took much more active interest. I figured he did that because it involved an error on our part.”
Mac snuck a glance at Wire, who was looking right back, the recognition on both of their faces. Was this what this was all about? He looked to Bloom. “Ms. Bloom, did either Mr. Checketts or Mr. Martin express any concerns about this project or anything else that was going on?”
“Mr. Checketts didn’t.”
“What about Martin?”
Bloom hesitated for a moment, as if she was giving deeper thought to the question. “He didn’t say anything about that project to me.” She glanced in Bruzinski’s direction but Mac could see she was becoming guarded and hesitant. “He was involved in evaluating what the problem was with the memory cards but otherwise he didn’t say much about the completion of that project.”
Mac’s eyes shifted over to Wire again. She’d seen it too. Bloom knew more than she was letting on. She wasn’t necessarily lying, he wasn’t getting that vibe, but she was holding something back, perhaps thinking it through. Mac looked down to his notebook and jotted down some notes about the conversation, not wanting to lose track of this thread. Then he went in another direction to give her some time.
“Mr. Bruzinski or Ms. Bloom, does the name Jason Stroudt mean anything to you?”
Bruzinski and Bloom shook their heads.
“How about Adam Montgomery. Does that name ring a bell?”
Bruzinski shook his head and said: “No.”
Bloom’s eyes went wide and then she looked over to Bruzinski quickly and then said: “N… n… no. I do… do… don’t know that name.” Wire looked at Mac, did you catch that? Mac raised an eyebrow.
Montgomery registered with Bloom.
Why?
There was a knock on the door of the conference room door and Bruzinski was asked out into the hallway, “If you’ll excuse me for a moment.”
Wire leaned over and whispered to Mac: “You caught the hesitation?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s see what it’s about.”
“Go.”
Wire leaned away from Mac and looked to Bloom: “The name Adam Montgomery means something to you, doesn’t it?”
Bloom bit her bottom lip and a scared look washed over her face and sadness became nervousness.
“Ginger, something has you spooked here,” Mac asked quietly. “What is it?”
“Gabe gave me something a day before he was killed. I have it at my apartment. He told me that if anything happened to him, I should give it to Adam Montgomery and he gave me a phone number to call. I’ve tried to call Montgomery but he hasn’t answered his phone.”
“Ginger,” Mac answered, “Adam Montgomery is dead. He was killed last night in St. Paul.”
Bloom’s right hand went to her mouth in shock. Wire lightly grabbed Ginger’s left hand. “He was meeting with a friend of mine when he was killed,” Wire added. “My friend was shot and killed as well.”
Very quietly, Mac said: “Ginger, I’m going to make sure you’re safe. But you’re going to need to show us what Mr. Martin gave you, but not here.” He took out a business card and wrote instructions on the back.
* * *
The vice president was in the middle of his speech, just getting warmed up about