She opened a package of ramen into boiling water, then sprinkled dried basil and oregano on top and set it on medium heat. Lunch would have to be a twenty-minute affair given her 12:30 PM telephone appointment with Franklin Houser, the scion of the Idaho family that had sold Headwaters to Daniel Gaines and Web Hudson two and a half years before. She was starving. She’d spent the morning, in fact most of the week, at the public library, poring over microfiche news stories on the transaction. There wasn’t much to be found, since the company was privately held, and the grunt work of digging up what did exist was laborious. But Alicia guessed it was a far sight better than bouncing off the walls of her house. Besides, what else could she possibly be doing? She had filed her suit for wrongful termination. Louella was pursuing the case file from Massachusetts on Theodore Owens’ felony conviction. How could she not keep trying to nail Joan Gaines? Milo Pappas had been completely on target not to believe she’d lost interest in the case.
