Double Dealing (17 page)

“I had business down in California.” Automatically she
walked over and flipped off the TV. She hated having it on. Someday she would
simply toss it into the trash can. To date, however, she hadn’t been able to work
up the nerve. It seemed wrong, somehow, to cut herself off from any potential
source of information when her whole line of work was based on collecting just
that. “Did you answer my phone?”

“Nope. I knew who was calling. I listened in while your
recording machine took messages.”

“You computer freaks are born snoops, aren’t you?” she
grumbled, slipping off the black leather jacket. “Have you left anything for
dinner?”

“Sure. I went shopping. What were you doing down in
California?” He traipsed after her as she made her way into the kitchen and
watched hopefully as she surveyed the shambles he had made of the room. Samantha
knew she wasn’t a model of neatness, but Eric could not give her pointers.

Eric could afford the best, as was evidenced by his beloved
Ferrari, but he had his image as a maverick computer wizard to maintain. The
jeans he wore were old and faded, the gaudy leather belt scarred and worn. He
steadfastly refused to wear a suit to work, maintaining that genuine computer
wizards simply didn’t do that sort of thing unless they happened to work for
IBM.

“I wanted to discuss business with a… a client who lives
down there.” Samantha opened the refrigerator door, forbearing to comment on
the chaos in the kitchen. She found herself wondering what Gabriel would say if
he saw the place. He’d probably go into shock.

“There’s a pizza in the freezer. I picked it up yesterday. Why
don’t we have that?” Eric offered helpfully as he watched her standing morosely
in front of the denuded refrigerator.

“I guess it’s either that or we go out to dinner, and I don’t
feel like doing that,” Samantha muttered. “I expect you to replenish my larder
before you leave this time, Eric. After your last visit I had to restock completely,
and it cost a small fortune!”

“I needed a lot of energy while I was playing with that sort
program on your computer. I don’t see any bugs crawling in the program. Had any
trouble with it?”

“No.” Samantha smiled for the first time as she slid the
frozen pizza out of its box. “I’ve been able to do a lot with it. Very
flexible.”

“Good.” Eric looked briefly pleased because he had, after
all, designed the program for Samantha. Then the brooding look descended once
again. “Want a beer?”

“Have I still got some wine left?” she inquired blandly, turning
on the oven.

“Of course. You know I prefer beer. I’ll open a bottle of
that zinfandel I saw down in your cellar.”

“That will be fine.” What would Gabriel say if he saw this
pizza? she wondered, wrinkling her nose at the array of frozen cheese and
tomato sauce. He would probably have
chucked
it out
the window and made his own from scratch.

“How’s your mom?” Eric demanded politely, returning with the
bottle of California zinfandel. He had no trouble opening the wine. Eric bad
had the benefits of an excellent education, even though he flaunted them occasionally.

“Last I heard she’s enjoying herself working up a battle
plan to stall the licensing of a new nuclear plant that’s supposed to be coming
on line next June in the Midwest somewhere. I haven’t talked to her for a
while.” Like over a month. The closer the plans for cornering Drew Buchanan
approached completion, the less Samantha wanted to talk of her mother. Vera
knew nothing of the project. Samantha wanted the whole matter to be a fait
accompli which she could casually lay at her mother’s feet.

“What about your family?” Samantha remembered to ask
politely, although they both knew she couldn’t have cared less about general
Thorndyke welfare. At least Samantha liked to think she couldn’t have cared
less.

“You’ll find out for yourself when you turn on the telephone
recorder and listen to the playback,” Eric told her wryly.

Samantha sent him a sharp glance as he handed her a glass of
the dark red zinfandel. “That’s why my phone’s been ringing? And why you haven’t
bothered to answer? Your family is trying to get in touch with me?” Just what
she needed.

“Afraid so.” Eric threw himself down into a white, ladder-back
kitchen chair and gulped from his can of beer. He looked disgusted and
dejected, and Samantha knew her first twinge of genuine concern. Eric had sometimes
elected to use her residence as a place to hide from his family in the past,
and it always meant trouble for Samantha because the
Thorndykes
had learned where to come looking.

Without another word Samantha walked over to where the
recording machine sat on the end of the pleasantly cracked tile counter and
flipped the device to rewind. Then she sat down in the chair facing her half
brother and sipped the wine while they both listened in silence to the string
of increasingly annoyed Thorndyke voices on the tape.

“Samantha? This is Emily Thorndyke. Is Eric with you? Please
have him call home as soon as possible.”

“Samantha, this is Mrs. Thorndyke again. We want to reach
Eric, and we know he’s probably staying with you. This is
family
business and has nothing to do with you. Please do not get
involved?”

“Samantha? Mrs. Thorndyke. I insist you have Eric get in
touch at once. If you don’t, I’ll have to ask Victor junior to take a hand in
this.”

It was the ultimate threat. Samantha was only mildly amused
that Eric’s mother still called her eldest son “junior” even though his father
had been dead for two years. The woman was a creature of habit.

Emily’s voice came on the tape three more times before she
made good on her threat and had her son make the call. Victor Thorndyke Junior’s
deep tones held all the dynamic disdain his position as president of Thorndyke
Industries had given him. He was thirty-eight years old, and he didn’t care
very much for Samantha. But, then, none of the
Thorndykes
did, except for Eric. Samantha didn’t blame them. Every time they came into
contact she managed to annoy them.

They’d liked her even less after she’d accidentally gotten
wind of the take-over attempt planned by a Thorndyke rival shortly after Victor
Thorndyke had died. For no good reason that Samantha could think of, she kept
Thorndyke Industries on her list of continually monitored companies, and when
the hints of take-over activity had filtered through her rapidly expanding
information network, she’d passed the word even though the firm was not a
subscribing client.

Actually, Samantha reflected, it was facetious of her to say
she didn’t know why she monitored Thorndyke Industries now that her father was
dead. She did it precisely because the company was her father’s legacy. It had
been his creation, a businessman’s work of art which he had left behind as a
testimony to his genius. Samantha felt an odd loyalty to the firm even though she
had never been actively involved in it. When she had provided the take-over
warning, Victor Junior had successfully used the extra time she had bought him
to counter the attack. There had been no thank-you note from the
Thorndykes
, Samantha recalled dryly. None was expected.

“Samantha,” Victor Junior’s voice declared with all the
firmness he normally applied to incompetent staff members, “I must insist you
stop playing games. This is business. Have Eric call me at once.”

There were no more calls on the tape. Samantha rose and shut
off the machine with a long-suffering sigh.

“Well, Eric, what are you up to this time?”

He stared at her for a long moment as if trying to line up
the right words. Then he said slowly, “I’m leaving the firm, Sam.”

She arched an interested eyebrow, unsurprised. She only
wondered what had taken Eric so long to make the decision. “Going to become the
first Thorndyke on welfare?”

“Sam, this isn’t funny! The only way to make it on your own
terms in this world is to make it on your own terms! The way you and Dad did.”

“You’ve been studying elementary philosophy? That was a very
profound statement.” She chuckled.

“Don’t laugh at me, Sam.”

“You know I always laugh at
Thorndykes
.
It’s good for the digestion.”

He ignored that, watching her with a grim set to his mouth.
There was a hardness in his eyes that Samantha had never seen there before, and
she wondered at it. “I had my way out all planned, Sam. I’ve been working on it
for months. I had developed a product to market, and j was going to set myself
up in business somewhere here in the Northwest.” His band closed into a taut
fist on the table.

“Had?” Samantha questioned very gently. “Past tense?”

“Vic stole it.”

“He what?”

“He stole it!” Eric repeated in a tight voice. “He took the
software packages I’d been working on and patented them in the name of
Thorndyke Industries.”

“Eric, what are you talking about? What software packages?”

“They’re called ‘application generators,’ Sam. A new idea in
the computer world, and they’ll make millions for the people who develop and
market them. I’ve been working on mine for ages, and they were absolutely brilliant!
Beautifully simple. Most of the bugs worked out. Incredibly adaptable…. “

“Okay, okay, buy all the glowing adjectives. Tell me what
they do.”

“Application generators are little modules of preprogrammed software
which you can plug into any new program that’s being developed. Saves countless
hours of routine programming.”

“But every program is unique. Made to do a special job like
crank out payroll checks or produce an inventory list. How could you preprogram
sections of them?”

“Because even though every company wants its computer programming
to do jobs which are unique to that company, there really are a lot of
similarities in the tasks involved,” Eric told her impatiently. “All payroll-writing
programs have certain things in common, no matter which firm they’re designed
for. They all have to figure deductions, vacation pay, stuff like that. I’m designing
little modules which a programmer can simply plug in whenever he gets to the
routine part of his program. Instead of having to write out all the lines of code
it takes to tell a computer to deduct social security taxes, he simply inserts
the lines of code I’ve already written.”

“Can that be done? Can programs be written that are interchangeable
for different computers?” she asked.

“That’s the magic part. Making them adaptable to a variety
of computers,” Eric told her with great satisfaction. “I can do it.”

“Sounds good, Eric,” she said slowly.

“It
sounded
good,”
he corrected heavily. “It sounded like my ticket out of Thorndyke Industries.
It sounded like the perfect way to start in business for myself”

“So what went wrong?” she asked gently.

“What went wrong is that, thanks to another guy in the
computer department at Thorndyke, Vic found out just how valuable those program
modules of mine might be.”

“He hadn’t known you were working on them?” Samantha
frowned.

“Oh, he knew, he just didn’t pay much attention to what I
was doing. He agreed to let me play with the computer on my own time, and he
agreed that anything I developed during that time would be mine. He didn’t seem
to care what I did as long as I handled Thorndyke business during regular
working hours on the computer.”

Samantha waited, knowing from what Eric had said in the past
that Victor Junior had probably brushed off his brother’s computer talents, considering
them rather clerical in nature. The family had more than once tried to pry Eric
out of the computer room and into the front office as a vice-president, deeming
that role more in keeping with the status of a Thorndyke. But Eric hadn’t budged,
and his desire to stick with computers had been grudgingly tolerated.

“Go on,” she finally prompted.

“Well, Vic found out from this other guy about the potential
value of what I was doing, and the first thing I know he hauls out an old,
standard form everyone, including me, signs when they go to work for Thorndyke.”

Samantha winced. “The kind of form which clearly states that
anything developed by an employee during his tenure with the company belongs to
the company?” It was a fairly standard contract in most technologically oriented
businesses.

“Yeah.” Eric stared grimly at the counter across from him. “Everything
happened very quickly after that. Vic can move fast when he wants to. With the
help of my so-called friend in the department, tapes were made of my little
programs, patent applications were filed, and Vic graciously offered me the
great honor of being promoted to vice-president of Research and Marketing for
the new Thorndyke Industries product.”

“Oh, Eric.” Samantha sighed sympathetically.

“He
knew
I wanted
out of the firm, and he guessed I was going to use my inventions as a way to
start over on my own. But he never said a word until I had everything done and
ready to go!” Eric slapped the table in fury and frustration. “But I’m not
going to let him trap me this way, Sam!”

The buzzer on the stove sounded, indicating the pizza was
ready, and Samantha got to her feet to check on it. Eric’s eyes followed her
across the room. “What are you thinking of doing, Eric?” she finally asked
quietly.

“I handed in my formal resignation before I left to come up
here,” he began steadily.

Samantha nodded as she gingerly plucked the tray of bubbling
pizza from the oven. “So you quit? Hence all those calls on my answering
machine?”

“Yeah, but Vic and Mom and Amanda don’t know the half of it
yet.”

“I’m listening,” Samantha said in resignation.

Eric drew a long breath. “I decided that, since Thorndyke
Industries deprived me of my ticket out, it was only fair that it finance my
new start in some other way.”