Free Minnie Chase Makes a Mistake by Helen MacArthur Page B

her ear. Minnie was in urgent need of background noise not motel room silence so she grabbed her laptop bag and headed back to the diner she had visited the night before. San Franciscan urban birds greeted her with a rousing dawn chorus. The high-pitched chirps of the sparrows, in competition with the roar of the early morning traffic, were a welcome distraction as Minnie waited to cross the road. James George’s insistent voice, unrepentant voice, if she was honest, was finally beaten into submission.
    Morning trade at the diner was brisk. Free refills of industrial-strength coffee were going down well with the regulars. Minnie slid into an empty booth with her back to the morning sunshine and found herself confronted by Sarah-Jane, the waitress who had been the calm at the eye of Minnie’s emotional storm the previous night. She ordered coffee and waffles with syrup and sat back. 
    Sarah-Jane returned with a jug of coffee and smiled reassuringly at Minnie. A slightly raised eyebrow suggested the unspoken message: caffeine first, put the world to rights later.  
    After a gulp of steaming coffee, Minnie took a deep breath and opened her laptop. The search started here. She quickly checked her personal emails. Her work account had been deleted, thank you Ross. Minnie considered hacking into the system to retrieve useful contacts but was distracted by a message from Sid Zane, the man behind the voice recognition software. What now? She feared bad things. It had been forwarded by Angie as requested. Angie added her own subject title: silver linings. 
    Dear optimist Angie was reaching out through Minnie’s computer screen. 
     
    Hi Minnie,
    Tried emailing you at work but Angie has now brought me up to speed. I’m gutted to hear that you’ve lost your job over this. I know the advice you offered to Ashton Greene was well-intended and genuine. Such a shame it blew up like the way it did.
    However, it might help you feel better about it all to know that we have had an incredible response from around the world. We’ve had an amazing amount of support and appreciation over the last 24 hours. Thousands of people have contacted us via our website to find out more about the software. 
    Parkinson’s isn’t the easiest disease to diagnose so the awareness-raising might speed up that process and enable treatment to begin earlier. YOU made this happen. I know it was unintentional but some good has come out of a bad situation. Please believe this.
    Thank you.
    Give me a shout when you’re back in London.
    All the best,
    Sid
     
    Minnie exhaled. She did feel marginally better. Sarah-Jane had topped up Minnie’s coffee without her even noticing, that was helping her along too. Then she tapped Greene into Google and her new-found optimism faded to black. There had been total silence from Team Greene but the same couldn’t be said for the rest of the world. The Internet was still chattering about the billionaire who, apparently, was not rich enough to fight a disease that was drastically reducing his ranking among the world players. 
    Social media sites, tweeters and bloggers had truly sensationalised the scandal and it was starting to read like a Hollywood script. Speculation was mounting. Some would have it that Greene had just months to live, others knew for a fact that the man was already dead, yet others suggested he had faked his own death to escape gargantuan debts or some sordid secret. Some news feeds fixated on a tropical island getaway facilitated by private jets and a huge entourage. Then there had been ‘sightings’ and quotes from ‘reliable’ unnamed sources saying Greene had been spotted drowning his sorrows at a bar; one even claimed to have spotted the businessman at an assisted suicide facility in Switzerland. Minnie shuddered as her mind worked overtime:would Greene go for a lethal fast-acting barbiturate to end it all? 
    Parker Bachmann and Greene’s relationship was also extensively dissected. ‘Is The