“Not much. We haven’t been able to get a meeting with Grant, and I haven’t found out from Jo what Kate was wearing when she died.”
“Not to worry, I hiked further up the mountain and managed to get some decent reception today. The button shows the crest of Abbythorne, an elite public school. You’d love the place, gorgeous – the buildings look like something from Hogwarts. A quick perusal of the Abbythorne alumni reveals that Grant Hosking attended the school as a boy. And look at this – he recently attended a reunion in which all the prefects wore blazers.”
Morrie sent me the image of Grant Hosking with his smug beard standing in a line of equally-smug looking middle-aged dudes. All the guys in the picture wore black jackets with shiny buttons. The same buttons as the one Sherlock found near Kate’s body.
Something else about the picture looked familiar, too. Something about the blazers… it niggled at me, but I couldn’t place it.
I sent my reply. “It’s all connected. I know it is. Tara and Grant were seeing each other. If only we could get in to see Grant, but so far we haven’t been successful.”
Morrie sent me a link to a job website. Curious (and with a due sense of trepidation), I clicked on it. My phone read out the ad – a personal assistant required to work ‘up close and personal’ with the founder of Ticketrrr.
My lips pulled back into a wild grin. I knew exactly what Morrie was suggesting. Trust him to figure out the perfect way to get a captive audience with our number one suspect.
Quoth dropped over the arm of the chair, wrapping his arms around my neck. “What does Morrie say?” His voice hitched with concern. “Is he holding up okay as a caged bird?”
“Morrie is just fine. In fact,” I held up my phone to show Quoth the text. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get to bed if I’m to wow my new potential employer with my wit and beauty in the morning.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Hi, Mr. Hosking. My name is Mina.” I batted my false eyelashes. “I’m so excited to be here. I love… um, tech.”
Things move fast in the tech world, so I’d been called in for an ‘informal chat’ an hour after submitting my resume. Heathcliff stayed in the store to wait for Handy Andy and keep my mum from having any more oysters delivered there, while I took Oscar and Quoth up to London on the train. Quoth was handling being around Oscar so well I left them to wander around Hyde Park and get acquainted while I wowed Grant Hosking with my… assets.
I hadn’t had a lot of time to prepare for my interview, so I was still pretty unsure what exactly Ticketrrr did beyond providing some kind of cloud ticketing app for large events and having three superfluous ‘r’s in its name. It didn’t look like my lack of knowledge would be a concern. As Grant drew his eyes up my body like I was a tender brisket and he’d just got off a two-week juice fast, I knew I nailed the outfit. It was just corporate enough to get me in the door, but the skirt barely covered my arse, and adding the knee-high white socks with the bows?Genius.
At least, that was what Morrie told me after I texted him a selfie. He said some other things that were so filthy I blushed just recalling them.
Focus, Mina.
I’d forgotten what I’d been talking about, so I just batted my eyelashes again. Grant’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he struggled to formulate coherent thoughts. He placed his laptop over his crotch in such a way I knew he was thinking inappropriate things about me. I was almost proud of myself until I remembered that this guy could have killed Kate Danvers.
“We do things differently at Ticketrrr. We don’t believe in hiding people away in offices and silos. We work in one large shared workspace – no assigned desks. You never know who you’ll sit next to, and when a chance conversation can spark a million-dollar idea. This room is one of our shared meeting spaces.” Grant glanced at the screen on the wall. “We have to leave in twenty-two minutes so the office pub quiz team can practice.”
How does a pub quiz team practice?But then I noticed a beer fridge in the corner of the room, with bags of crisps and boxes of doughnuts on top, and I suspected I knew the answer.
“Fascinating. I’m so excited to be a… team player.” I twirled a strand of hair around my pen.Urgh, I’m almost criminally good at this.
“I appreciate that, Mina. It’s been difficult to find someone who can adapt to the hard and fast pace of work here. I used to have an amazing senior developer, Kate, but ever since she left, I haven’t been able to find someone who’ll stay for more than a few weeks.”
Probably because you’re a class A wanker.I beamed. “Well, I don’t give up easily. Tell me, what made this Kate leave? Did she move on to a better position in the company?”
“Er, no. It’s a sad story, actually. She died.” Grant’s gaze slid to a spot behind my head. I noticed he didn’t sayhowshe died.
“That’s too bad.”
“Yes… but we can’t dwell on the negatives when we’re disrupting the events ticketing space. It’s an exciting time – we’re a team of ninja rockstar developers, and building the plane while we’re flying it. Right now we’re only ramen-profitable, but our big IPO is right around the corner. Did I show you our system? We do everything in the cloud, so we’re scalable and agile. I’ll show you how our app works—” Grant pulled his chair so close he was practically sitting in my lap, and he brushed his arm against mine as he opened an app on his laptop.
What a wanker–I’m not even in tech and I can tell he just threw every cliche and jargon word in the book at me to make himself sound clever.I tried to act interested as Grant described the app while making circles on my thigh with his fingers. Every inch of me crawled with the desire to get out of there, but I wouldn’t leave until he gave mesomething.
But how to bring up Kate and Tara in a natural way?
Grant closed the window on his laptop, and I noticed his screensaver wasn’t the usual random desert island but a photo of twenty dude-bros giving the metal horns at the camera.Gross. I bet they’re all Ed Sheeran fans who’ve never heard a punk or metal song in their lives.
Something caught my eye in the back row. Or rather,someone.
Grant turned the computer away, but I grabbed his arm. He froze in surprise. It was probably the first time a woman had ever initiated contact with him. His skin felt clammy, and I suppressed a shudder, but I kept my cool and batted my eyelashes again.
“That picture on your desktop – it looks like a fun event. Can I see closer?”
