The Accident
Quite a number of years ago now (probably during the nuclear winter around 2000), Decameron Enterprises was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Roger had made some over-ambitious decisions and stretched the company too thin, and it looked like it might be on the verge of layoffs at best, most likely a downspiral into bankruptcy.
At this point, one of the founders (possibly
F Ronit) came up with the idea of arson. Several of the founders argued about that for a month, but nobody could think of anything better. For the company to survive, it needed to find a new direction, and that could only happen with an infusion of cash. The markets were locked up, so venture money wasn't going to happen, but they
did have a warehouse full of old model rocket parts. Arson would be almost trivially easy: since the materials themselves were so flammable, it wouldn't even have to be sophisticated. So they got
L Amilcar to set it off, claimed a large insurance settlement, and the company reinvented itself as a tech firm.
Of course, there were inquiries, but
R Archie did a good job of shutting the objections down.
The one loose thread was that they had originally reached out to the recently-disgraced
Tagh O'Malley to do the job; they were vague about the details, but he could smell that they were looking for dirty work, and when the warehouse blew up he was quite clear about what had happened. He initially mentioned to the inquiry that he might have some information, but recanted when they began to pay him some (fairly modest) blackmail. He originally used this connection to help get Seamus hired in the first place, and to arrange for Seamus to get a generous options package; he has laid off the company ever since, now that he has a vested interest in seeing it be successful. Now, his main interest in making sure that his son get exonerated, since he is sure that it's all a stitch-up. And he has a secret in his back pocket.
S Mercer has, meanwhile, been looking for dirt on the competing candidates, and has long suspected that Decameron has to hold
some secrets sie can use against
F Ronit. Sie found the accident in hir research, and has been trying to find some dirt there. Sie had been thinking about looking into Tagh anyway, and when things happened this morning, sie began wondering if there was a connection there...
