Improper Influence Page 14

  As Valentina scrubbed her hands at the kitchen sink, she spoke over her shoulder.

  “To answer your question, your notion that you’ll just pick a date you like and miraculously find, not only a church and a reception site that you like, but also vendors that are available is just naive. Where were you when your sisters-in-law were planning their weddings?”

  Working, probably.

  “Mom, it really doesn’t matter to me where Connelly and I get married, just that we do.” Sasha took one last stab at getting her mother to understand her viewpoint, knowing full well that it was futile. She jiggled Julian against her shoulder.

  Her mother turned and arched an elegant brow.

  “Careful he doesn’t spit up on your suit jacket.”

  Sasha grabbed a burp cloth off the freshly laundered stack and shoved it between her nephew’s tiny milky smelling head and her five hundred dollar jacket.

  “Mom, did you hear me?”

  Valentina locked eyes with her daughter and her expression softened.

  “I heard you, Sasha. But, I think that’s just your frustration talking. I know it’s a lot of work, but when you look back on your wedding day, you’ll be glad that you took the time to make everything perfect.”

  Perfect for whom?

  “If Connelly and I are husband and wife at the end of the wedding day, I’ll consider it a roaring success.”

  Her mother cocked her head and considered her like she was an alien life form.

  Sasha knew the feeling

  When she was ten, after yet another go around with her mother about appropriate behavior for a lady, she’d cross-examined her older brothers about whether they were sure their mother had been pregnant before a baby girl arrived. Despite their insistence that Valentina had definitely been pregnant and had returned home with a squealing green-eyed baby, Sasha clung to her suspicion that someone had left her on the McCandless family’s doorstep—or that there’d been a mix-up at the hospital. Only after her father had pointed out that she was a younger carbon copy of her maternal grandmother had she reluctantly conceded that she must be related to Valentina.

  But, sometimes ...

  “And does Leo share that unsentimental view?”

  Sasha gritted her teeth to stop from shouting ‘No, but that’s because you’ve been working him over every time you see him.’

  Say what she would about her mother, Valentina was shrewd and very smart. She knew her future son-in-law craved family and connection and had spent the past several months drilling into him the idea that a big, fancy wedding was what family was about.

  “Well? Does he?”

  Sasha wished she’d visited her mother before her Krav Maga class instead of the other way around. She was going to leave her parents’ home with pounds and pounds of pent-up aggression.

  “No, Mom. I guess he doesn’t.”

  “It’s his special day, too, honey,” her mother said gently.

  As if to express his agreement with this point, Julian shot a thin stream of partially-digested breastmilk at Sasha’s lapel, just to the right of the protective cloth. He looked right into her eyes with his own enormous blue eyes and smiled.

  “Now that’s a real smile,” her mother observed.

  Sasha wondered how much worse her day could get.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Leo couldn’t spend another day cooped up in Sasha’s office staring at contracts and purchase orders until his vision blurred. He’d tried to talk Bodhi into playing hooky with him, but the forensic scientist seemed to enjoy the document review and had headed into the office with Sasha.

  Leo decided to spend some time digging into Saul and Wally’s personnel records. He could have invoked Hank’s name and called in some favors at the National Security Agency to get pretty much everything he wanted, but he decided to try it the old-fashioned way first. He trusted Hank completely, but he had no illusions that every civil servant working for the federal government was squeaky clean. The fewer people who knew what and who he was investigating, the better.

  He picked out a suit that didn’t scream ‘G Man’ and paired it with a sloppily knotted tie. He refrained from his usual precision when styling his hair and left it slightly mussed, even though doing so made him feel off-balance and unfinished. He was fairly confident he could pass himself off as a freelance writer. And, if he couldn’t, he’d try the old Connelly charm.

  The cat appraised him from his perch on the counter and gave him an approving meow.

  “Thanks, Java.”

  Leo grabbed his keys from the valet tray. In the process, he knocked a glossy tri-fold flyer off a small stack of junk mail destined for the recycling bin. He bent to retrieve it. Your Destination Wedding Starts Here! promised the brochure. A sapphire blue sky met impossibly bluer water and the silhouettes of a barefoot bride and groom walked through the snowy white sand.

  He turned the paper over in his hand, noted Sasha’s name in the recipient field, and then folded the pamphlet in half. Instead of returning it to its place on the entryway table, he stuffed it into his pants pocket.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Getting into the office of the Medical Examiner’s Press Officer proved harder than he’d anticipated. He spent twenty minutes loitering in the hallway outside the door that he’d been directed to by the security guard manning the entrance to the building. He was just about to try another fruitless round of knocking on the windowless wooden door when he heard the clatter of high heels drawing closer.

  A hugely pregnant woman, with a complexion like peaches, came hurrying along the corridor. Her belly preceded the rest of her by a good six inches.

  “Oh.” She drew up short when she saw him and blew a stray curl of hair out of her eyes. “Are you waiting for me?”

  “I don’t know. Are you the press officer?” He smiled disarmingly.

  She smiled back right away but a cloud passed over her face when she answered. “That’s my title, all right. Are you a stringer?” She eyed his rumpled attire.

  “Freelancer. I’m doing a piece on the myocarditis deaths.”

  “Well, if you’re looking for a comment for that story, you’re going to have to go through the Mayor’s Economic Development Deputy Director.”

  “Why would I have to do that?”

  For a moment, the woman looked as if she were going to launch into a rant, but instead she clamped her top teeth down over her lower lip hard. Then she said, “Good question. You should feel free to ask Ms. Lane.”

  “Lane?”

  She nodded and dug a small notepad out of her overloaded leather handbag. She rested the pad on her stomach as a ledge and scribbled a name and telephone number.

  “Mackenzie Lane.” She tore the sheet from the pad and handed it to him. “Call first or she’ll have you cooling your heels forever.”

  “Got it. Thanks.”

  “You bet.” She turned and jammed her key into the door.

  “Wait. Can I a least get some background from you?”

  She turned, halfway through the door.

  “What kind of background?”

  “Stuff like how many coroners—I mean, forensic pathologists—work for the office. Who’s senior? Who’s not? What the atmosphere’s like. Whether there are any feuds. You know, background.” He smiled.

  She stuttered for a moment, and he thought he had her. Then she shook her head and spoke in a low whisper. “I’m sorry. Things are ... tense ... around here. I can’t risk losing my job, not with the baby coming. You have to talk to Ms. Lane. But, just between you and me? It’s like any other workplace with the usual in-fighting and backstabbing. Just add dead bodies.”

  She turned back to her office.

  “Got it. Thanks. Oh, and congratulations on the, um, baby,” he said.

  She tossed him a smile over her shoulder before disappearing behind the door.

  He stared down at the name and phone number and then shoved the paper into his pocket along with the resort weddi
ng brochure. Try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a good reason why the mayor’s deputy director of economic development, rather than the county’s chief medical examiner, would be fielding questions about a rash of deaths.

  Out of Sasha-enforced habit, he took the stairs and emerged in the main hallway, which was filling with city worker bees swarming on their ten o’clock breaks.

  As he passed the line at a coffee kiosk, a shock of ginger hair caught his eye. A gangly red-headed man and a morose-looking colleague, both wearing white lab coats, stood together, waiting to order their mid-morning jolt of caffeine.

  A hunch told him the pair was Wally and Saul. Connelly didn’t believe in luck, and he knew he was unlikely to hear anything relevant, but it seemed imprudent to pass up a perfect eavesdropping opportunity if the universe was inclined to hand him one.

  He hesitated in the middle of the concourse for a moment, then stepped into line behind them and pulled out the brochure, pretending to examine it while he tuned into their conversation.

  “—not going to happen, Wally,” the man he assumed was Saul insisted.

  “It did happen, you moron. Sonny told me himself. Bodhi’s not coming back. And I’m getting his lab.”

  “Who cares who gets his lab? What difference does it make? No way would they fire Bodhi. He’s out on admin leave, is all.”

  Wally flicked an impatient hand at his co-worker. “He was, but Sonny’s drawing up the termination papers now. And you say you don’t want his lab, but the next time you’re bending your honey over your piece of crap desk, you’ll be wishing you had it. It’s private. He has that sweet stainless steel desk. Hey, maybe, I’ll invite your girl over to check it out.”

  Saul balled his hands into tight fists at his sides.

  Leo waited to see what he did next. But the shorter man just took three deep breaths and muttered, “Don’t talk like that.”

  Wally responded with a nasty laugh.

  Saul looked nervously over his shoulder, and Leo stared down at the pamphlet.

  They shuffled forward as the line moved up closer to the counter.

  Leo shoved the paper back into his pocket and made a production of looking at his watch. With a loud sigh, he stepped out of the line and hurried toward the door as if he were late for an appointment.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Connelly came banging through the office door like he was being chased. Given their history, Sasha craned her neck to peek through the swinging door and confirm that there wasn’t a pursuer running down the hallway.

  “Listen, this is important. I was lurking around the Medical Examiner’s Office this morning. I learned three things. Saul is absolutely having an affair; Wally is definitely suffering; and Bodhi—”

  “—Is about to be fired,” Naya finished.

  Connelly blinked. “That’s right. How—?”

  “Saul just called my cell phone to give me the head’s up,” Bodhi said in an oddly flat voice.

  Sasha recognized that lack of intonation as the voice of someone who hadn’t yet accepted the reality of his situation.

  “Did Saul also mention that all comments from the Medical Examiner’s Office must now go through the Mayor’s Deputy Director of Economic Development?” Leo asked.

  “I don’t—that doesn’t sound right. I don’t know what’s going on over there,” Bodhi managed.

  Sasha stared hard at him. “How exactly did you learn all this, Connelly? Who did you talk to?”

  “No one. I hoped to get something from the press secretary, so I posed as a freelance writer—”

  “That explains that tie,” Naya observed.

  Sasha bit her lip to suppress a laugh.

  Connelly ignored the jab and pressed on. “But the press secretary told me comments on the myocarditis deaths had to come from this Mackenzie Lane woman in the mayor’s office. As I was headed out of the building, I noticed two men in white lab coats in line for the coffee kiosk. One of them had red hair, so, on a hunch, I got in line behind them and overheard their conversation. The redhead, Wally, was needling Saul about his mistress. They were also talking about Bodhi’s, um, termination. I’m sorry, man.”

  “Thanks,” Bodhi muttered.

  Connelly turned his attention from the newly unemployed man and sought Sasha’s eyes, giving her a meaningful look that said what the devil is going on?

  She shook her head, slowly. She had no idea.

  Meanwhile, Naya was typing furiously on Sasha’s laptop.

  “This Mackenzie Lane woman is all over the Champion Fuel deal,” Naya said, scanning a page of search results. “I mean all over it.”

  Sasha watched the others’ faces. Naya and Connelly were scowling, making the same unpleasant connections between Bodhi’s situation, the VitaMight settlement, the dead young women, and the murder of Stone, Junior, that she was trying to ignore.

  “It’s too neat, you guys,” she said. “There’s no way I just happen to have a case that’s somehow related to this death cluster scandal.”

  “Well, Prescott & Talbott’s tied up in it. So, it’s not really all that surprising,” Naya muttered darkly.

  Connelly added, “And you are a trouble magnet, don’t forget.”

  She bristled. “Hey, Bodhi’s your friend, so this one’s on you.”

  Connelly just laughed, but her face flushed as she realized what she’d just said.

  She turned to Bodhi. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  Bodhi tossed his curly hair like a dog shaking off water.

  “It’s okay. It’s true, I’ve brought trouble into your lives.”

  He said it in a matter-of-fact tone that only made her feel worse.

  She crossed the room and searched his face. His eyes were sad.

  “Bodhi, listen. Honestly, I was just needling Connelly. You wouldn’t know this, but the past two years or so have been one dangerous crisis after another. I mean dangerous, like people trying to kill us with alarming regularity kind of dangerous. This—whatever it is—is a kerfuffle, a little blip in comparison. The only one who’s truly in danger here seems to be you. And, we’re going to do whatever we can to protect you and force the City’s hand to investigate the connection between the myocarditis deaths and Champion Fuel.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “You didn’t. We offered. And it’s settled. So, let’s move on.” She looked around the room to include Connelly and Naya in the conversation. “Anybody have any brilliant ideas about our next steps?”

  The early afternoon sun slanted through the window, throwing a beam of light across the middle of Naya’s face. She met Sasha’s gaze and shook her head slowly. Connelly looked equally defeated.

  She felt her own shoulders sag. They were in the middle of a sticky, interconnected web, and she knew without a doubt they were the fly, not the spider. Beyond that, she knew little else.

  Bodhi coughed.

  “Let me talk to Sonny.”

  “He’s not going to tell you anything. He just fired you to avoid your finding out more than you already know,” Naya protested.

  “Maybe so. But I’ve worked for him for a long time. He can’t expect that I won’t have questions. And maybe he’ll say something that he doesn’t realize is significant. Sonny can be ... loquacious. If can get him started talking, he’ll have plenty to say.”

  Connelly’s clenched jaw told her what he thought of this plan, but Sasha shrugged.

  “It’s not like anyone else has a better idea. If you feel comfortable talking to him, then I say go for it.”

  A smile flitted across Bodhi’s face. “I’ll try to catch him outside the office. He likes to take an afternoon constitutional when the weather’s nice.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Connelly said. “I’ll stay a half block behind, but you aren’t going to wander around without protection.”

  Sasha was glad to see that Bodhi acquiesced with more grace than she would have in his shoes.


  As the men walked out of the room chatting about volleyball, Naya turned to Sasha.

  “What about us.”

  Sasha smiled at her. “VitaMight signed the settlement agreement this morning. The case is over.”

  “So?”

  “So, there’s no case for you to be conflicted out of. You can paw through those boxes to your heart’s content and find whatever it is that Prescott doesn’t want us to find.”

  Naya smiled back, a wide, eager grin that lit her eyes.

  “I thought you’d like that.”

  They both knew Naya wouldn’t rest until she found the document that prompted Herbal Attitudes to foot the settlement bill.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Pay a visit to an old enemy.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  District Attorney Diana Jeffries wasn’t exactly an enemy, but the woman was certainly not a friend.

  She’d managed to win her last election despite her office’s well-publicized mishandling of two murder cases. Sasha’s role in defending the accused hadn’t endeared her to the district attorney. But, Sasha told herself as she checked her reflection in the mirror that inexplicably hung on the wall over the desk of the district attorney’s secretary, she had made up for that later. Two killers were behind bars, and while Diana had taken the credit, Sasha had done all the work.

  Her green eyes looked back at her, skeptical and unconvinced.

  The secretary started as Diana’s office door swung open.

  Diana strode out into the reception area and offered Sasha a limp hand.

  “Attorney McCandless, to what do I owe the pleasure of this little surprise visit?”

  Her dark lips parted into an approximation of a smile, but she was looking over Sasha’s shoulder at herself in the mirror. She dropped Sasha’s hand and straightened the patterned scarf draped artfully around her neck.

  “Thanks for seeing me without an appointment.”

  “My secretary says you told her it was urgent,” Diana said flatly, finally turning her attention from her reflection to Sasha.