Janet Evanovich - Motor Mouth

“Now you’re all accomplices to kidnapping,” Ray said. “If you don’t get me out of here, you’re all going to jail for the rest of your lives.”

“What did he do?” Felicia asked. “He cheat on you?”

“No. He’s my brother-in-law,” Suzanne said. “He rudely killed my husband before I had the chance to do it myself. And now he’s planning to swindle my kids out of their inheritance.”

“You have no proof,” Ray said.

“It’s always a mistake to mess with a mother,” Suzanne said.

“So this is where Ray went after he talked to Hooker and me,” I said.

“It was easy,” Suzanne said. “I told him I wanted to talk to him in private about transferring the boat over to him. He came up here. I hit him with a blast from a stun gun, trussed him up, and I was in business. I guess the moron never told anyone he was coming here.”

“Ask her about the chip,” Ray said to Suzanne.

“Shut up.”

“Ask her!”

“What about the chip?” I said to Suzanne.

“Ray and Oscar have a product in R and D that’s worth a lot of money. They didn’t realize I knew about it, but I keep my ears open.

“I knew it was ready for sale, and I knew Oscar was using it on the cars. It got him a championship, but more than that, it was a flashy way to demonstrate the technology to prospective buyers. I was willing to be the good corporate wife and keep my mouth shut. I was even willing to be the good ex-corporate wife and keep my mouth shut. I’m not willing to be the widow who sits by and watches the slime-bag brother rape the company.” Suzanne’s frozen eyebrows narrowed ever so slightly. “So I had to bring Ray in for questioning, right, Ray?”

Ray gave her the death glare. And Suzanne ignored it.

“And now the prototype has disappeared, and Ray doesn’t want to tell me where it’s wandered off to,” Suzanne said.

“I told you where the chip is,” Ray said. “Jesus, why don’t you just ask her?”

Suzanne kept her eyes on Ray. “Ray has this insultingly ridiculous story he’s constructed about the product disappearance. His contention is that you and Hooker have it. And it gets even better. He claims you got this particular product by stealing a car hauler. The same hauler that was supposed to carry Oscar back to Mexico.”

“Are you talking about the gizmo in the gearshift knob?” I asked her.

Suzanne turned to me, mouth dropped open, eyes as wide as they’d go on Botox. “I thought he was lying. The story was insane. I mean, who would believe something like that? Don’t tell me it’s true!”

“It’s true,” I said.

Suzanne tipped her head back and gave a whoop of laughter. She looked over at Beans. “I guess the tooth marks in Oscar make sense to me now. You should give him an extra dog biscuit for that one.”

“He thought Mr. Dead Guy was a big chew toy,” Felicia said. “He’s just a puppy inside.”

“So where’s the circuit board?” Suzanne asked. “Do you have it?”

“Not exactly. But I know where it is.”

“And it’s safe? You can get it for me?”

“Yes.”

Suzanne gave a sigh of relief. “You can’t imagine how much time and money went into the making of that thing. It’s my sons’ future.”

“So it wasn’t about the boat?”

“Not entirely. The boat was just part of it. By the time Ray’s executorship ran out, there wouldn’t have been anything left of the company. Ray would have stripped every asset from it.”

Ray didn’t say anything. They’d obviously had this conversation before and it didn’t end well for Ray.

“There are a couple things I don’t understand,” I said to Suzanne. “I know the value of traction control in a race car, but I get the feeling this is bigger than just rigging a contest. Why is this one little circuit board so important?”

“The technology has the potential for wide use,” Suzanne said. “Everything on that tiny circuit card is exclusive to Huevo. The concept, the programming, the wireless technology, and the battery composite are all straight out of development and have never before been seen…anywhere. If the circuit board fell into the wrong hands, it could eventually be unraveled and the technology could be stolen. The battery alone is worth hundreds of millions. The wireless technology will revolutionize the aircraft industry.”

“So you wanted to get it back just so it wouldn’t get duplicated?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Suzanne said. “Idiot Oscar amused himself by producing a microprocessor that could easily be embedded in an engine and regulate engine speed. It was illegal and made use of the new battery and wireless technology, but it was a simple program, and it self-destructed each week when given the signal. At the same time, Oscar had established a partnership with a technology broker.”

“Anthony Miranda?”

“Yes. Miranda has an overseas client who is willing to pay top dollar. Unfortunately, some of that technology could have been used in very bad ways by Miranda’s client. I would have stepped in sooner, but I didn’t know that part of it until I got to Florida.

“Anyway, a prototype circuit board had been produced for Miranda. It was programmed to demonstrate the wireless technology that could be used in aircraft. So genius Oscar brought two different circuit boards to Florida and somehow managed to put the wrong circuit board in the sixty-nine car.”

“It was Rodriguez,” Ray said. “He picked up the wrong package. I had both packages labeled and locked away in the hotel’s safety-deposit box. Miranda’s man was flying in the day after the race to pick up the prototype for demonstration. I didn’t even know about the mix-up until the day after the race when I went to get Miranda’s package.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me get this straight. Rodriguez put the wrong circuit board in the number sixty-nine?”

“The chip that actually controls engine function is embedded directly onto the engine, but since the signal was traveling some distance to the car, we found it to be a more reliable system if we added a second chip that picked up the start signal and relayed that signal to the primary. Because we powered the relay chip with the new battery material, we kept the chip close to us until the last moment. And as a final precaution, it was programmed to self-destruct. Plus, we only used the second chip on Huevo cars. The morning of the race Rodriguez was in a hurry and grabbed the wrong package out of the safe. And Rodriguez placed the chip in the knob without examining it.”

“Could that prototype circuit board control the car?”

“No,” Ray said. “And it wasn’t programmed to self-destruct, either.”

“So you’re telling me Dickie actually won the race?”

This was the first time Ray smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Isn’t that a kicker? Who would have thought he could actually drive that car?”

“Why didn’t you hurry up and make another circuit board for Miranda?”

“There’s no way to hurry. The prototype circuit board and battery could have been reproduced…but not quickly. Certainly not in the two week window we were tied to. The demonstration schedule was in place.”

“Why didn’t you just reschedule?”

“Imagine that Miranda is Darth Vader,” Ray said. “And you had to tell Lord Vader that he needed to reschedule his demonstration. Miranda is ruthless. Miranda has no tolerance for mistakes. And when the chip didn’t get dropped into Miranda’s hand as promised, his twisted paranoid mind screamed double cross . Miranda’s assumption was that I was selling the chip elsewhere. And things turned very ugly.”

“Anybody mind if I have some stone crabs?” Felicia wanted to know.