Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict Read Online Free PDF Page A

appear in court on the date specified therein.”
    Wells opened the envelope, scanned the subpoena, and observed that it listed both John and Callie as well as a number of unspecified John and Jane Does. The date was for a month hence—plenty of time for her to investigate, file motions, and get to the bottom of whatever it was that had happened.
    “So noted,” she agreed. She laid the document on John’s desk.
    At her nod, he summoned the receptionist to escort the two visitors out, but he signaled for Wells and Callie to remain.
    Antigone Wells moved around to one of the guest chairs in front of his desk.
    When the door was firmly closed, John looked first at his daughter, then at Wells, and asked, “Any idea what all that was about?”
    Callie sat slumped, arms folded, face creased by a deep frown.
    Wells bit her lower lip. “They must have something solid, if those two will identify this Willbrot woman to us so openly. Some hard evidence. Maybe even a confession.”
    “Callie?” John prompted.
    “Kunstler,” his daughter said.
    “She worked on the bid documents, of course,” Wells observed. “But then, so did two or three of our engineers, some of the clerical staff—”
    “She went to Los Angeles,” Callie said. “Alone. She met with people, made contacts. None of the other staff did that.”
    “Do you have reason to suspect she might have bribed this woman?” Wells asked, glancing sideways at John, who met her eyes. “In my review of them, I thought our bid documents looked reasonable, in line with—”
    “Let’s say I have no reason to suspect she wouldn’t, ” Callie offered.
    “I don’t understand,” John said. “Why would she do that?”
    “Because,” the daughter said, “Mariene likes to win.”
    “But … you brought her into the company.”
    “Yes, because I thought I knew her.”
    “Not well enough, evidently.”
    Wells had a sick feeling in her stomach. First, the Praxis grandsons in the Security Department and their unindicted felonies—assault, murder, destruction of property, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to commit all of the above. Now, the friend and protégé of Praxis’s own daughter and the suspicion of underhanded business dealings—subornation, bribery, conspiracy. What kind of mob family had she joined? And where would it end?
    She quietly moved her chair back away from John’s desk. Just a few inches. But he noticed the gesture.
    * * *
    When Penny Winston was called into the media room by the spooky new receptionist, she found the chairman, John Praxis, the president, Callista Praxis, and the lawyer, Antigone Wells, all seated at the table facing the webwall. Callista had Rover’s text box open and was clearly trying to get information out of him—without success. His previous responses alternated between null signs, question marks, and requests for restatement.
    Callista caught sight of Penny. “Well, hell, about time,” she said. Then her head jerked in annoyance.
    “What?” Penny asked.
    “Your tee shirt …”
    The front lettering read “What part of t√1-v 2 /c 2 don’t you understand?” It was the Lorentz transformation governing time dilation in special relativity. The shirt’s back, which was covered by her jacket, showed a saddle-shaped universe compressed into a globe, like the yin-yang stitching pattern on a baseball. That represented distance dilation, which was the flip side of the transformation. With all these engineers in the room, she figured someone had to have studied cosmology. Apparently not.
    “It’s just science,” Penny said.
    “Yes, but that’s hardly business attire.”
    “Could we get back to the subject at hand?” John Praxis suggested.
    “What’s the problem?” Penny asked. “Rover’s not responding?”
    “I need to find out who authorized and distributed a sum of money,” Callista said.
    “Oh, that would be in accounts payable,” Penny replied. “Rover?”
    The cursor in the window blinked its