and talk while they ate po’ boys and drank sweet tea. Her dad would bring the family dog up and Peanut would walk around looking for a pet. Everyone acted like family.
“No, you didn’t.”
She sighed like she hadn’t expected the response. “Huh. I guess I didn’t realize how much I missed him until recently. His name is Hutch. We went to high school together.” She was actually a couple of years younger than him, but he had a baby face. And according to MaeBe, he also had a fake birth certificate that showed the proper age. “We broke up when I went to college. He came up here for a job interview, but he’s going to stay with me. We’re going to try to make it work.”
“Who was the big military-looking guy?” Pete knew his guys.
“His brother who recently got out of the Navy,” Noelle replied. “He made a big impression on the boss. She’s pretty aggressive. His girlfriend was standing right there and Jessica pretty much hit on him.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. That woman goes after what she wants.” Pete stood again with a sigh. “Well, I’m going to check on some tests I’ve got running. I tweaked some things on the MRI and I’m happy with how fast we’re hitting the right temps.”
She glanced at the clock and hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. She still hadn’t asked some of the questions she was curious about. She’d tentatively broached the subject of Madison’s lab with Jessica, who had deflected and turned the subject back to Noelle’s fake love life. But Pete might know some things. “Did you work on the biotech lab last week?”
“Do you mean ground zero?” Pete asked with a shake of his head. “Yeah, after the police were done and the biohazard unit left. You should be glad you weren’t here last week. It was bizarre. At first we had DPD all over the place, and then they were gone and men in biohazard suits were cleaning stuff up.”
“Did you read any of the reports?”
Pete chuckled like she’d asked a naïve question. “Honey, no one has. Jessica locked everything down as quickly as possible. I’ve heard the police report is calling it an accident. Supposedly OSHA investigated, but I don’t know anyone who talked to them. They’re blaming it all on Madison. She was up in the lab after hours, and the rumors are she was taking some pretty stiff pharmaceuticals. Not the legal kind.”
She had a hard time believing health nut Madison had a drug habit. She didn’t even touch alcohol. “Do you know if they did an autopsy?”
“I would assume so.” Pete stopped and his gaze became wary. “Why? I didn’t think you two were friends. She was always such a bitch to you.”
Noelle glanced around to make sure no one was listening. It looked like most of her team was cleaning up and finishing their daily reports in advance of quitting time. She leaned over and dropped her voice. “Don’t you think it’s weird?”
“That a young, intelligent woman blew herself up in a lab?” Pete asked. “Yeah, I do, but she was working with some pretty unstable chemicals, from what I heard. She had ammonium perchlorate in her lab. If she was playing with that while she was high, we’re lucky she didn’t blow the whole floor up.”
That was another mystery. “She was working on a biochem experiment. Why would she have a chemical used as a rocket propellant in her lab? Have we seen her inventories?”
Each lab kept a careful inventory that was tied to the budget system since each lab had a different budget. Madison’s would have been large. Noelle’s wasn’t. Madison had run a lab with ten techs and a medical doctor on staff. Noelle had three techs and Pete. She had to do her own paperwork, for the most part, and there was a ton of paperwork.
They had reports for everything. Shouldn’t there be one for the accident?
“The word is Jessica locked everything down pretty fast,” Pete explained. “Legal was definitely all over the place last week. I know all of Madison’s team spent time with them. Besides a couple of the engineers, the building was empty of regular employees with the exception of legal and Madison’s team.”
“Who cleaned up the lab?”
“She brought in another firm. I was only allowed in to test the remaining equipment and to walk through with a structural engineer to make sure the building is okay and the fire didn’t damage the