Improper Influence Page 10

  She looked up at Connelly. “Did you know this guy?”

  He shook his head. “No, but his father’s connected politically. The wife got up to use the bathroom around three and got worried because hadn’t come to bed. She went downstairs to see what he was doing and found him out on the porch. He was already cold. Her father-in-law showed up around four a.m. and started working the phones. Dad had the mayor on the horn before five. The mayor, in turn, called the governor. This game of phone tag went on all morning until it reached Hank, who, over his bowl of Wheaties, called to ask me to lend a hand to the authorities unofficially as a favor to the grieving family.”

  Politics. And money. That’s how the world worked.

  “Okay? So?”

  “So ...” he trailed off meaningfully and jerked his head toward Bodhi, who had lost interest in the conversation once he’d established there wasn’t another unexplained myocarditis death. He was working through a series of morning yoga asanas while Java swatted at his bare toes.

  Sasha looked at him blankly.

  He sighed and stepped closer to her. “We can’t leave him alone, he can’t come with me, and you have a lot of work to do. I’d planned to bring him with me to visit florists, but that’s not in the cards now,” he whispered.

  She tried to suppress a giggle but failed.

  Connelly glared at her.

  “Come on, Connelly, he’s an adult. I’m sure he can entertain himself for a few hours while you put on your secret agent suit and loom around a crime scene.”

  Connelly bent his head toward hers. “Buddhists won’t harm any living thing, Sasha. Not even in self-defense. If they find him, he’s as good as dead.”

  She tried to process this statement. “I don’t understand. He’d just let them kill him?”

  Connelly spread his hands wide. “It’s involved, and he could probably explain it much better than I can. But I know a little bit, from reading up on Vietnamese culture when I was a teenager looking for my dad. A Buddhist simply doesn’t value his own life more highly than any other life—whether that other life belongs to an insect, a stranger, or a criminal trying to harm him.”

  As if to prove Connelly’s point, Bodhi stepped out of his Sun Salutation to gently scoop up a stinkbug that Java was torturing. He opened the living room window and set the bug free to Java’s great disappointment and Sasha’s barely concealed amazement.

  Pacifist or not, she still thought a grown man could spend a morning alone in a secure apartment, but she knew better than to waste her time arguing with Connelly when he set his mouth in that thin, tight line.

  “Okay, he can come to the office with me. I want to talk to him about filing a grievance against the medical examiner’s office anyway.”

  It was Connelly’s turn to fail to stifle a laugh. “Good luck with that.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Absolutely not.”

  Bodhi made the statement flatly, but kindly. His face was impassive. Despite the lack of outward indications of firmness, Sasha could tell he wasn’t going to change his mind—no matter how forcefully she advocated.

  “Okay.” She threw up her hands, figuratively and literally. If he wasn’t willing to file a grievance against the city for its unfair labor practices, there was very little she could do to help him get reinstated in his position in the short term.

  But there was plenty he could do to help her.

  “In that case,” she said, grabbing a stack of papers from the nearest banker’s box, “can you lend me a hand? This entire box is full of technical, scientific reports. I don’t think any of them are actually responsive to my discovery request, but then again, how would I know?”

  She doubted he’d be much actual help, but she couldn’t very well set him up with a box of crayons, a pad of paper, and a tube of glitter glue like she did when she babysat her niece.

  “I’m happy to pitch in. What exactly am I looking for?” Bodhi said. His eyes glinted with interest at the task.

  She passed him a legal pad and a pen while she thought about how to explain the legal issues to a non-lawyer.

  “Okay, my client is a company called VitaMight. Ever hear of it?”

  “Sure. They sell vitamins and natural supplements.”

  “Right. Sort of. They manufacture and distribute branded health products to retailers. In the 1990s and early 2000s, they owned and operated standalone VitaMight retail outlets, but about ten years ago, they stopped selling direct to consumers.”

  He nodded, following along.

  “Since then, though, they’ve focused on wholesale sales. This case involves a breach of a requirements contract. VitaMight entered into a contract with Life Juice, Incorporated to sell as much ginkgo biloba and wild red ginseng as Life Juice needed to supply its company-owned smoothie stores nationwide. That turned out to be much more than VitaMight had anticipated, and management realized that to fulfill the contract terms and meet the retail demand for those products, they’d have to invest capital in upgrading and expanding their procurement and distribution facility.”

  He scratched out notes in that distinctive miniscule, indecipherable handwriting she assumed medical schools taught during the first year.

  “That’s a good problem to have, though,” he commented.

  “You’d think so. But VitaMight didn’t look at it that way. They were in the middle of a five-year plan to pare down and right-size, not expand. So when they got an offer from a competitor called Herbal Attitudes, who was interested in their herbal division, they decided to spin it off.”

  Bodhi’s pen stopped. “Spin it off?”

  “They wanted to sell just that portion of the business. The way their lawyers structured the deal, VitaMight separately incorporated that business line into a wholly-owned subsidiary, which it then turned around and sold, along with the business’s goodwill, assets, and liabilities, to Herbal Attitudes. The sale included the obligation to fulfill the requirements contract with Life Juice and all of VitaMight’s other contracts. There was one carve out. VitaMight had been providing branded ginkgo biloba product to the Greenway Pharmacy chain. VitaMight and Herbal Attitudes agreed to leave that contract with VitaMight for complicated regulatory reasons until it came up for renewal, when Herbal Attitudes would take it over. Until then, VitaMight would purchase the supplement from Herbal Attitudes and continue to manufacture the store brand for the retailer.”

  “I hear a ‘but.’ Let me guess, Herbal Attitudes realized it couldn’t supply both VitaMight and Life Juice with enough product.”

  She smiled. He was a quick study; maybe his assistance would turn out to be more than an adult version of an arts and crafts project.

  “Exactly. For a while, that was okay. VitaMight purchased the herbals from another company and got a credit from Herbal Attitudes. The problem arose after the Greenway contract was renewed and Herbal Attitudes took over filling the orders directly. First, they started shorting Greenway’s order. Then, they just canceled the contract. So, the drugstore sued VitaMight for breaching the distribution agreement.”

  “But I thought you said Herbal Attitudes breached the agreement?”

  “That’s right. But, the renewal had a clause that allowed Greenway to look to either Herbal Attitudes or VitaMight for any damages. It was poorly drafted. VitaMight could have added Herbal Attitudes as a defendant, but the in-house counsel made a strategic decision not to.”

  And by strategic decision, I mean bone-headed mistake, she thought.

  He looked unconvinced by her efforts to explain the interwoven rights and liabilities at issue in the case but changed the subject. “What’s this stuff supposed to do anyway?”

  Sasha rolled her neck to work out a knot while she tried to decide how to answer his question without revealing her personal belief that the supplement was a complete rip-off.

  “Magic, apparently. It’s been touted as aiding in weight loss, muscle building, relaxation, increased energy, better sleep, and brighter, younger-lo
oking skin.”

  As she spoke, Naya walked through the door carrying yet another bankers’ box. From the way she held it, Sasha could tell it was heavy.

  Yay, more paper.

  “Don’t forget increased brain function and sexual potency,” Naya cracked, dropping the box on the nearest clear horizontal surface with a thud.

  “Oh, right. What’s that?” Sasha asked, although she suspected she knew.

  “A present from your friends at Greenway Pharmacies. Supplemental document production—they just found these in a warehouse, allegedly.” Naya’s tone made clear what she thought of that explanation for the late documents.

  “Just one box? That’s not too bad,” Sasha said, trying to convince herself.

  Naya looked at her with a mixture of amusement and disbelief. “What have you been snorting? There’s another eight boxes sitting in the hallway.”

  “I have a question. Shouldn’t you be doing all this electronically?” Bodhi asked.

  He was right. Typically, in the modern world, discovery in civil litigation focused on ESI—electronically stored information. But Greenway hadn’t yet entered the modern world. It maintained paper archives. The stores faxed their orders to the central warehouse. Who used faxes anymore? Greenway, that’s who.

  Sasha shook her head. “Usually, yes. But Greenway’s a little bit behind the times.”

  That understatement drew a deep chuckle from Naya.

  “A good bit behind the times, you mean. Those fools are still filling out forms in triplicate.”

  Naya plunked herself down in the free chair and looked over Bodhi’s shoulder.

  “What are you doing anyway? Did Sasha put you to work?”

  “She was just filling me in on some background,” Bodhi explained. “But, yes, I’m going to help out. It’ll keep my mind busy and give me something to focus on other than the situation with my job.”

  Naya nodded at his explanation, but she threw Sasha a dark look.

  “Hey, Mac, give me a hand with the rest of these boxes,” Naya said.

  Bodhi put down his pen and stood.

  “I’ll get them. I could use to stretch my legs. You said they’re in the hall?”

  “Yes. Thanks, that’d be great. Why don’t you put them in the conference room across the hall for now. At this point, if I bump my desk, I’m afraid there might be an avalanche.” Sasha smiled.

  “Sure thing.”

  He strode out of the room with long, loping steps. The door shut behind him. Sasha counted silently, one, two—

  “Come on, Mac. What are you thinking?”

  Sasha exhaled. “Look, Will said he’d straighten things out with Garrett, but it hasn’t happened yet. You can’t work on VitaMight until we resolve this.”

  “Watch me,” Naya snapped.

  “Naya—”

  “Don’t Naya me. You can’t let some Buddhist coroner mess up my system! I have a system, you know.”

  It wasn’t clear to Sasha how Bodhi’s occupation or religion would impact Naya’s system, but she decided to leave that discussion for later.

  “I know you have a system. I won’t let him mess anything up. But, he’s just sitting here. He needs something to do. And, frankly, even if Will does come through, we could use an extra set of hands.”

  Naya muttered under her breath.

  “Why don’t you walk him through the way you do a review. You can certainly train someone else, Chinese wall or no. Even Prescott & Talbott wouldn’t complain about that,” Sasha suggested, knowing full well that, given the chance, Prescott & Talbott would complain about the color of the sky. And probably file a motion to have it changed.

  Naya continued to glower, but she nodded her assent.

  “Great. I’m going to give Bodhi a hand with the boxes, then,” Sasha said.

  Naya followed her out into the hall and grabbed a box. Sasha could tell from the faraway look in her eye that her friend and paralegal was hatching a plan of some sort. She had no interest in finding out what it was.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Leo clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward to study the wall of photographs that hung in the Fredericks family’s great room, or family room, or whatever they called the large living space that sat adjacent to their kitchen and was anchored by a double-sided fireplace.

  He deliberately ignored the heated discussion taking place in the marble foyer in the front of the house, where a Fox Chapel police officer and an agent from the FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office were circling each other like bears or MMA fighters.

  Behind him, footsteps sounded. Someone was tromping down the back staircase, which originated in the kitchen and, Leo assumed, at one time led to the maid’s quarters but now probably just served as a second set of stairs.

  He turned and watched as a stocky, balding man hit the kitchen floor with heavy feet and headed straight for the butler’s pantry, highball glass in hand.

  The man drew up short when he noticed Leo standing in front of the photo gallery.

  “May I help you?” He squinted at Leo suspiciously, and possibly slightly drunkenly.

  Leo stepped forward and extended his hand.

  “Leo Connelly, sir. My condolences on your son’s death.”

  Fredericks looked at Leo’s hand as if it were a dead animal but finally gave it a perfunctory shake.

  “Do I know you?”

  “No, sir. I recognized you from the pictures.”

  Leo nodded toward a series of glossy black-and-white shots of the junior and senior Stones deep sea fishing, shaking hands at what appeared to be Junior’s wedding, holding an infant in a christening gown, and cutting a ceremonial ribbon at the site of their South Side bottling plant.

  Stone Junior resembled JFK, Jr. He looked handsome, privileged, and earnest. Senior, even posing for pictures, looked like a hardened, unsentimental businessman, which squared with his reputation according to Hank.

  Fredericks nodded, satisfied by the explanation and then turned away from the pictures.

  “So, Mr. Connelly, which of the bumbling idiots out front do you belong to?” Fredericks asked, pulling the crystal stopper out of a heavy, round-bottomed decanter. He jerked his head toward the two law enforcement officers in the hallway, who were now staring at one another, thumbs through their belt loops, like outlaws squaring off for a duel at high noon.

  Leo knew Hank had instructed the Bureau field agent to play the part of the overzealous fed with the hopes that the local police department would throw him out of the house. Hank didn’t want there to be any official federal involvement in the investigation into Stone Junior’s death. It was an admirable goal, but the agent in question wasn’t ready for prime time. He probably wasn’t ready for community theater—every word he uttered was stolen from the arrogant, self-righteous federal agent character in a movie.

  Leo tried to block out the argument that raged in foyer, mainly so that he wouldn’t laugh.

  “Actually, I’m retired—formerly with the Department of Homeland Security. Hank Richardson asked me to stop out on his behalf and convey his personal condolences on your loss.”

  The man’s eyes glinted, and Leo knew he’d gotten the message: the politicians who owed Fredericks favors had delivered.

  “You aren’t here in an official capacity, then? Good. I’m tired of drinking alone.”

  He snatched a clean highball glass from the cabinet above and poured in several fingers of the same amber liquid that filled his glass.

  “Twenty-one year old scotch,” he said, handing the glass to Leo. “S.J. was saving it for a momentous occasion. Stupid thinking. Especially, now that he’ll never drink it.”

  Leo tipped his glass toward the photographs. “In his memory, then,” he said. He took a long swallow.

  “Down the hatch,” Fredericks replied, draining his glass. “Can you get rid of those two morons out front? S.J.’s wife, Deb, is upstairs trying to rest. The doctor gave her a sedative. I don’t think a brawl in her ent
ryway is really going to help keep her calm.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  He found a marble coaster on the side table near the hearth and abandoned the scotch, which, while smooth, was not his preferred breakfast drink.

  He walked through the hallway and, as he neared the front of the house, the indistinct angry voices grew less muffled and clearly heard the phrases ‘pissing match,’ ‘jurisdiction,’ and ‘jagoff’ echoing off the walls.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, keeping his voice low and his tone genial, “Mr. Fredericks’ widow is upstairs resting under her doctor’s orders. Let’s show some respect.”

  The police officer had the decency to look abashed. Agent Central Casting rolled his eyes.

  Leo cocked his head to the side and gave the field agent a meaningful look. “I’m pretty sure there’s no federal issue here, Agent. Why don’t you leave a card for Mrs. Fredericks and be on your way.”

  The guy opened his mouth, then thought the better of it, and shrugged. He plucked a business card from his wallet and tossed it on a carved marble entryway table that held a vase of lilies.

  “Fine by me. I have better things to do.”

  He jutted his chin forward and stalked out the door. Leo waited until he heard an engine start outside, then he turned to the cop.

  “What a hard case, huh?”

  The police officer eyed him, unsure if he should speak freely. Leo smiled in what he hoped was a trust-inspiring manner.

  “Uh, yeah. You could say that. Aren’t you FBI, too?”