A Motor for Murder (Veronica Margreve Mysteries Book 1) Read Free

He was dressed in a typical young engineer / nerd attire: t-shirt w/ a funny slogan, hoodie and jeans – a bit under- dressed for such a fancy soiree; in fact, the first person I saw at the party breaking the unspoken dress code.
    “Very nice to meet you. What do you think of the area?” I knew that Rita's family was originally from California, and assumed that Roger grew up there as well, and wasn't as familiar with the Pacific Northwest.
    “I like it. I've been here 3 months already. The summer was great!”
    “Do you like the outdoors, hiking, or mountain climbing?” A lot of the Seattle tech geeks were very outdoorsy – kayaking, mountain – biking, hiking in a National Park or somewhere in nature every weekend in the summer and early fall. It was also one of my hobbies, and I enjoyed talking to fellow nature-lovers.
    “Yeah, but I didn't really do much of it this summer – I've been busy working.”
    “What do you do?”
    “I used to be at Stanford. I'm taking a break from my studies, working on my start-up.” He tried to be casual about it, but was quite obviously bursting with pride.
    “What does your start-up do?” I always enjoyed talking to fellow techies, even if their field was different from mine. And Roger was dying to talk about it more, even if he stood there sipping his beer nonchalantly.
    “I work on battery technology for electric cars, extending the battery storage capacity.”
    “That sounds so interesting! I would love for my next car to be electric. And increased battery storage is one of the things that could really popularize them, since it would mean increased driving range. How much progress have you made?”
    “A bunch. In fact, I have an idea and I think I’m really close to a break-through in how to manufacture it at scale.”
    “That's great! Where have you been doing your experiments?”
    “We have some space in Redmond for our office, and the lab is there, too”.
    “Is your company big?”
    “Oh no, it’s pretty much just me so far. I do all the experiments, all our R &D”.
    “So it’s your baby. How did you get started on this?”
    “I was always interested in cars. And now electric cars are really taking off, becoming popular.” I agreed with him on that. Electric cars, from Teslas to Nissan Leafs (or is it Nissan Leaves?), have become a common sight on the streets of Seattle. “I spent 3 years at Stanford studying engineering, and I had this idea about the batteries, and I thought it might work. And George shares my interest in cars, and of course has a car dealership, so that's been convenient – I can look at a lot of the gas-powered super-cars and compare.”
    “What about funding? Do you have investors? Did you have to pitch them? If you don't mind me asking, of course.” I hurried to add.
    “Umm, George has given us a bunch of money. We have enough for now”. This seemed like a ticklish subject for him – maybe because he was embarrassed that being funded by his brother-in-law meant nepotism? Or that he didn’t have “real” angle investors?
    “That's good not to have to worry about that for a while. What's your plan for your idea? It sounds like it might cause a massive change in the industry.”
    “Not sure yet. I'll patent it first. Maybe also manufacture. Or maybe go another route. John, George's lawyer, has been advising my company on trying partnerships.” He waved his plate in the general direction of the back of the house, to indicate that John was somewhere inside. Underneath his bravado, there was some uncertainty about the future. “He thinks this idea has a lot of potential. Here, here's my card – as old-fashioned as that may seem”. He got out his wallet from his jeans pocket and extracted a business card. It had his name, and title: CTO of Ba-Ele Tech Inc, and their logo (which looked to me like a swirling white-yellow solar flare) and office address on it, in some Redmond office park.
    As I read the card, he clarified “It