Could it be possible? Were they really onto something? Something that William could perhaps enlist to save ICP from the switch Matthew Locke had just thrown?
Jones. That was the mistake he had allowed Matthew to make. A mistake that would now work in his favor.
Perhaps you were right, Matthew, William mused, sliding his fingertip to an appended e-mail file. He opened it and searched for Matthew's very first message to him after the board meeting in which Jones had been voted out of Wallaby. There it was. Though Matthew had tried to persuade Jones to stay on at Wallaby, his exact words in the message were, "We'll succeed regardless."
You may be right, Matthew, William thought silently. He slid his fingertip over to a tiny card-file icon on the screen, typed "Holmes" on the keyboard and tapped the find icon.
He tapped the phone icon and the Joey's modem dialed Byron Holmes's telephone number. As he waited for his old friend to answer, he stared at his fingertip resting comfortably on the trackpad. A sudden awareness hit him as if somehow he had just solved a puzzle that had been silently challenging him for a long time, that Wallaby without Peter Jones was as unsound as a the Joey without its sleek intuitive trackpad.
Grace answered, and they exchanged a few moments of courteous conversation then William asked for Byron.
"He's in his play room. I'll tell him to pick up."
A moment later, Byron came on the line. "Hi, Billy."
"Byron, how are things coming along?" William asked.
"Oh, not bad. You know, too cold to fish, mostly sitting around the house, stoking a fire."