Coldwater Revenge by James Ross (e novels to read online TXT) 📗

the sales guy. If the sales guy can keep the cash coming in long enough for Mr. Wizard to get his idea out of the lab, you’ve got the beginnings of a company.

“But even with money coming in the door, most start-ups don’t survive; because often neither the science guy nor the sales guy have ever heard of a budget, cash flow, burn rate or any of the other boring stuff that goes along with keeping a business afloat. Add a financial guy to the mix and then the company may have a chance. Mr. Salesman brings in the clients, Mr. Scientist cooks up the next wonder drug in the lab and Mr. Finance makes sure that ends meet, so that the company doesn’t have to fold in a fire sale when it can’t make rent or payroll.”

Tom nodded to confirm Sharp’s synopsis. Joe looked away.

“NeuroGene is a variation on that basic theme. I was the finance guy. Dave Willow was, or is, a kind of combo science/sales guy. We had a bunch of rent-a-scientists working on some of his ideas. Paid them as little as possible and kept them around by promising them a piece of the action, if we succeeded.”

“And why did you leave?” Joe asked.

“Dave triggered the shotgun.”

“He threatened you?”

Sharp’s lawyer snorted. “A ‘shotgun’ is an exit mechanism in a partnership agreement,” he explained. “One partner proposes an amount at which he is willing to sell his interest in the company or to buy his partner’s. The other partner gets to choose which it is: buy or sell.”

Tom nodded again. “And you sold?” asked Joe.

“That’s right. I don’t know if Dave had stars in his eyes about the future of the business, or what. But my bean-counter’s brain told me that the price he put on the table was way too high.”

“Or he knew something you didn’t,” said Tom.

Client and attorney swiveled to face each other, their expressions like opposite sides of a drama mask: Pissed! and Surprised! Joe looked annoyed.

“That’s possible,” Sharp admitted. “Though I think it more likely that Dave just got frustrated with my financial controls. But you’re right. He could have downplayed something on the research side that I might not have known about.” He turned to his lawyer. “I don’t remember you mentioning that possibility, Walter.”

Tom smiled.

Joe produced a copy of the photo he had shown to Sharp’s former partner, Dave Willow, and asked if Sharp recognized the man in it. Sharp held the blown-up copy of Billy Pearce’s New York State driver’s license close to his face. When he looked away, his eyes moved up and to the right. His head moved from side to side.

“Are you sure?” Joe asked.

“Pretty sure. This guy looks kind of scruffy.”

Joe put the photo back in the folder. “Do you know a Susan Pearce?”

“Dave’s girlfriend?”

“What!” Tom blurted.

Joe glared again.

“Maybe that’s a bit strong,” said Sharp. “Before the entrepreneurial bug bit him, Dave was just another randy junior professor at Stanford. Miss Pearce was one of his graduate students, I think. They had something going on back then. Whether Dave managed to revive it at NeuroGene, I don’t know. He sort of let on that he did. But that could have been wishful thinking.”

Though the conference room air conditioning was balanced to perfection, Tom felt his shirt absorb sweat like a sponge.

“Do you know if Miss Pearce has any brothers or sisters?” Joe asked.

Sharp looked up and away. “Not really.”

“Does NeuroGene sell only its own products or does it sometimes act as a reseller or distributor for third parties?” Joe read from the list of questions that Tom had scribbled in the car.

“Only its own products,” said Sharp.

“Does it sell any of its products outside the United States?”

“No.”

Joe ran through the list, his mouth occasionally contorting over a legal term-of-art, like a schoolboy struggling with a vocabulary assignment. But Sharp’s answers were consistent and Joe didn’t follow-up. Sharp’s lawyer seemed ready to suggest that they finish. At the risk of stepping too boldly on his brother’s turf, Tom interrupted and started to ask the follow-up questions that Sharp’s answers suggested. “Did NeuroGene have any non-research income?”

“Once in a while we’d scratch some extra revenue by renting our mailing list and providing access to our distribution network. To keep the cash coming in, we basically leveraged what we had by making parts of it available to smaller companies in the same field.”

“And which companies did you deal with on that basis?”

Sharp paused. “HGP Associates rented our customer list. The owner invented a piece of testing equipment that he hoped might catch on in the Human Genome Project. It didn’t. He went belly up before I left. U- Labs used us every once in a while for secure mailing.”

“What’s that?” Joe interrupted.

Sharp shrugged. “There are a lot of paranoid researchers in our space,” he explained. “They put their whole lives and piggy banks into the contents of one little petri dish. Then they try to keep their colleagues and competitors from finding out what’s in it until they can prove it works and lock in commercial rights. But it’s a community of very bright people, who keep close tabs on who’s doing what with whom and where. In this crowd, something as simple as an address on an envelope can be a tip-off to what a colleague or competitor is working on and with whom.”

“So this U-Labs used NeuroGene as kind of a post office box?” Joe asked, trying to nail it down.

“Basically, yes.”

Sharp’s lawyer interrupted. “Sheriff, I thought you were here to get my client’s assistance in your investigation of a homicide. I don’t see the relevance of this line of questioning.”

“Noted.”

“It’s okay, Walter,” said Sharp.

Joe nodded at Tom to continue.

“Did this rent-a-mail-room bring in any meaningful revenue?”

“Not at first,” said Sharp. “In fact, it was hardly worth the trouble. But remember, I was the finance guy. So I did what finance guys do with a marginal supplier, I raised prices.”

Joe asked, “Did you ever consider that