I KEPT MY EYE on the barn, trying to decide the best way inside. “Interesting like what?”
“Something I saw when I looked at the campaign finance records for that judge. I sent you that article, by the way.”
“I saw that, thanks. You all right? You sound tired.”
“No duh. I’m eating for three now, remember?”
“Time for more soul food?”
“Maybe. All this red meat is driving Troy a little crazy, since he’s trying to go vegan. But he’s being a good guy about it.”
“No surprise there.” Bonnie’s boyfriend was devoted to her, as anyone spending even a few minutes with them would see.
“You still need to take him for that beer.”
“For sure, once this is all over. So—campaign finance records. Interesting how?”
“For starters, I found a couple people from Rumford Realty who donated.”
“How much?”
“Not a lot. Two hundred and fifty dollars each. As far as I can tell, one’s from the president of the company and one’s from his wife.”
“What are their names?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Rumford, believe it or not. That’s not the interesting thing, though.”
“I did a couple category sorts of the donations for the heck of it, to check for any patterns on addresses or anything else.”
“And?”
“So the address for Rumford Realty is Britton Parkway on the west side. It’s an industrial park, from the looks of it on Google Maps.”
I told her I knew where it was.
“It turns out there were some bigger donations from a different company. But here’s the funny thing. They came from the same address as Rumford.”
“But not from people at Rumford?”
“Not as far as I can see. It’s got another name. PG Inc.”
“Say that again?”
She repeated the name.
I thought back to my conversation at the restaurant this morning with Gloria. The rental car she traced. PG Inc. Now that was interesting. I made the connection for Bonnie. I heard keys clacking in the background.
“Anything?” I said.
“Maybe. It shows up in a couple searches connected to cloud computing.”
“Cloud computing?”
“Online information storage. Where all your songs on iTunes hang out when you’re not listening to them.”
“They’re going to be pretty lonely on my cloud.”
“You know what I mean. It’s a little hard to tell what this company does—its website is kinda vague.”
“Any swamps on there?”
“Swamps?”
“Never mind. So it’s one of these storage companies?”
“Looks like. It’s all the rage now. Amazon and Google and Facebook—they all need huge server farms to store all the information they generate. Especially with the AI stuff.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. Siri and all that. Artificial intelligence. It’s the next wave of information storage. You need someplace to put the chips that let you talk to your toaster.”
“As long as it doesn’t get mouthy. Someplace like where?”
“Someplace big.”
I thought about the acreage that constituted Mendon Woods. Except for the swamp, most of it was prime development land of the sort that got gobbled up all the time. Come to think of it, it was some of the last major space around Columbus that hadn’t been slated for construction. Both Amazon and Facebook had opened that very type of information warehouse in and around the city in recent years to great acclaim from various mayors, state lawmakers, and the governor, all of whom were drooling to cash in on the information economy as soon as possible. It was part of Columbus’s booming high-tech economy that was continuing to propel its growth. Hey, Siri. Come to Ohio!
I said, “These PG Inc. donations. How big?”
“Pretty sizable. Twelve thousand five hundred. I think that’s the maximum. Looks like six of them from individual employees.”
I did the math. Obviously timed for Laura’s run for the Supreme Court. But also when the Mendon Woods lawsuit was on her docket.
“One-time donations?”
“All but one. Same-size donation from one guy earlier this year. I guess before the primary.”
“Same address?”
“I don’t think so. Someplace in Cleveland.”
“Who is it?”
“Schiff somebody.”
“OK.” The name didn’t mean anything. I asked her to e-mail me the names of all the contributors. “Thanks a lot,” I added. “Be sure to send me an invoice. Maybe I’ll throw in a couple of hamburgers.”
“A couple?”
“One per baby?”
“At the rate I’m going, a cow apiece is more like it.”
“I’m sure Troy will appreciate that.”
“He’s for anything that makes me happy. And less grouchy. You’ll text him about the beer?”
“It’s what I do best.”