Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4)

by Miller, Melissa F.

  Ben squeezed past them and sat behind the desk.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” he said. “There’s a coat rack behind the door.”

  Leo took off his overcoat and waited for Sasha to wriggle out of her red wool coat, then hung them both on the rack behind the door and eased it shut.

  “Are those your grandkids?” Sasha asked, leaning in to see the only personal touch in the musty room—a wood-framed picture of a group of towheaded kids, arms linked, standing on a beach, squinting in the sun and laughing.

  Ben’s tanned face lit up. “Yep, all five of them.”

  “They’re beautiful,” Sasha said.

  Ben laughed. “Well, I think so. Might be biased, though.”

  Then he nodded toward the cups. “Help yourselves. It might not be good, but it should still be hot. That gal of yours said you’d both appreciate a cup of joe when you got here.”

  “That sounds like Grace, all right. Thanks, Ben,” Leo said.

  Leo sipped at the muddy coffee out of politeness. Grace’s request had been for Sasha’s benefit, not his. Although he liked the stuff, he didn’t need it. Sasha seemed to be fueled entirely by coffee; despite being a fraction of his size, she consumed it in quantities that would have rendered him jerky, shaking, and frenetic.

  He looked over the cup at the man on the other side of the desk.

  He’d met Ben once before, when the older man had visited headquarters to work out the details of his contract and discuss with the operations team the logistics of filling the government’s orders. The face-to-face meetings had been unnecessary—the details could have been worked out over email or by arranging a web conference. But Ben was old school, a man who believed in handling things personally.

  “Thank you for meeting with us, especially on short notice and while you’re scrambling to meet your schedule,” Leo said, a gentle nudge toward getting down to business.

  Ben’s smile faded, and his skin drained white under his tan. “Well, as a matter of fact, I’m scrambling on this Celia Gerig thing.”

  Leo found himself leaning forward at Ben’s ominous tone. Beside him, Sasha put down her cup and mirrored his posture.

  “Oh?” Leo asked.

  “I know Grace told you about my run-in with Celia and how her references were bogus. That realtor lady called me back this morning: Celia never lived in that house. And I asked everyone on the warehouse floor today. She never shared any personal information with any of them. We have no idea where to start looking for her.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. This was a human resources error, not yours. You’ve done us a favor by ferreting it out. We’re grateful,” Leo told him.

  Ben shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s about to get ugly.”

  “Ugly?” Sasha echoed.

  Ben nodded and pushed himself up from his desk.

  “Come see for yourselves,” he said as he headed for the door.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Sasha and Connelly followed Ben along a long hallway lined with metal filing cabinets. Sasha took in the worn, thin carpet and peeling paint with one part of her brain while another processed the information Ben had shared so far: the woman Grace and Connelly suspected of being a ViraGene plant was in the wind, leaving behind a fake address, fake references, and a non-working telephone number.

  She considered the company’s options. If she were Tate, she wouldn’t let this one go. She’d hire a private investigator to track down Celia Gerig and fire a shot across ViraGene’s bow. But, what? She didn’t have the evidence to connect the missing employee with a competitor.

  Not yet. She wondered if whatever Ben was going to show them would help build a case against ViraGene.

  Leo glanced back at her, his face tense as he waited to see what Ben had in store.

  Ben pushed open one side of a set of large metal doors and held it while they passed through and entered a brightly lit, cavernous room with a concrete floor and a high ceiling. The temperature dropped a good twenty degrees as Sasha crossed the threshold, and she shivered involuntarily.

  “Sorry,” Ben said, “I should have told you to bring your coat. The vaccines are supposed to be refrigerated. We get them into the walk-in as quickly as we can, but have to check them in first, so we keep it cool in here.”

  The room was three-quarters empty. The final quarter was filled with rows of wooden pallets. The pallets were stacked high with cardboard boxes. Each pallet was wrapped in a giant sheet of what looked to be industrial-grade cellophane.

  Men and women wearing fingerless wool gloves hurried back and forth between an open loading dock bay and the columns of pallets, wheeling dollies piled high with more cardboard boxes.

  “Another truck full of vaccines came in this morning,” Ben explained. “So, we have to check them in, make sure nothing’s been damaged in transit and that the shipment quantity matches the manifest. Then, we restack them and wrap them up for pickup by the Army.”

  “You open every box?” Sasha asked.

  Ben nodded. “It’s a pain in the rear, but the contract requires a manual check of each box of vials. That’s the government for you. And that’s the other problem we’ve got.”

  He crossed the room and walked past the tall rows of pallets and headed for the far corner where one lonely, wooden pallet had been shoved up against the wall, its clear wrap torn open.

  “What’s wrong with that one?” Leo asked.

  “Well, Jason over there got his keys caught on the wrap as he was walking by this morning,” Ben said, pointing to a tall, muscular man whose keys dangled from his belt.

  Jason kept his head down and moved in the self-conscious way of someone who knows he’s being watched, every motion exaggerated.

  “And, thank God he did. Because as he was rewrapping the pallet, he noticed that a box lid was open. So, he went to close it and, sure enough, two vials were missing.”

  “Missing?” Sasha asked, her stomach dropping with dread.

  “Yup. That box was two vials short. So, Jason called me. I came down here and went through the rest of the boxes myself. Each pallet holds 144 boxes. Every box on this pallet is missing two vials. That’s 288 missing doses that we know of.” Ben flung his arm wide, gesturing toward the stacks of pallets. “Who knows how many more there are? I’m going to have to have these guys work mandatory overtime and recount six pallets.”

  “Why just six?” Leo asked. “Why not all of them.”

  Ben removed his glasses with one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Because Celia Gerig checked in a total of ten pallets, according to our records. One is right there, with the missing doses. Six more are somewhere in the stacks.”

  “And the other three?” Sasha asked, afraid she knew the answer.

  “The other three were picked up on Friday and taken to Fort Meade,” Ben said.

  CHAPTER 7

  Colton pushed the brown, wilted lettuce around on his plate with the side of his fork. He realized it was the dead of winter, but for the amount of money he was paying for a salad he expected fresh greens.

  He snapped his head up and scanned the room. When he caught the waiter’s eye, he gestured with a finger. The young man gulped visibly and trotted over to the table, walking as quickly as he could without breaking into a run.

  “Is everything okay, Mr. Maxwell, sir?” he said, the crisp white napkin draped over his arm, still fluttering from his rushed approach.

  “No, everything is not okay, Manuel,” Colton said, reading the waiter’s name from the small gold bar pinned to his starched shirt. “I ordered the fresh grilled salmon salad, did I not?”

  Manuel’s eyes darted to the salad plate to confirm that he’d brought the right dish. Then, they clouded with confusion, and he answered slowly, “Yes, sir.”

  Colton speared one soggy leaf of arugula with the tines of the fork and held it up for Manuel to inspect. “Does that look fresh to you?”

  “No, sir,” he said immediately.

  “That’
s right. It does not. Take it back and bring me a new one,” Colton said. He released the fork, and it clattered to the plate. He congratulated himself on resisting his initial urge, which had been to fling the lettuce at Manuel’s face.

  Relief flooded the waiter’s face, and he ducked his head and scooped up the plate. Colton realized Manuel had been expecting to be pelted with greens. It appeared the story of how he’d returned cold chowder at his last visit had made the rounds of the Club’s wait staff.

  He didn’t need to draw attention to his temper. He indulged in a small measure of regret for his decision to dump the crab chowder over Marta’s head.

  “Thank you,” he called to Manuel’s retreating form in a belated effort at damage control. Then he turned to his lunch companion and smiled. “How’s your sandwich?”

  “Fine,” he said, mumbling the words around bites of his Reuben. Then he returned the sandwich to his plate and dabbed his mouth with his napkin.

  Colton’s guest took a long drink of water and then said, “So, I have what you want.”

  Colton flicked his eyes to the nearest occupied table. Two trophy wives were babbling about their tennis lesson and paying no attention to anyone else.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  The man—who’d told Colton to call him Andre, even though they both knew he wouldn’t be using his real name—shrugged. “I think so. You’re the expert, not me.”

  Andre reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small glass vial. He handed it across the table, “The rest of it’s in my trunk. You can inspect it there. Either way, payment’s due in full.”

  Colton stared at the ampule in his hand. The man was insane to just pull it out in the middle of the dining room.

  He scanned the room to ensure no one was watching them, then hissed, “Don’t worry, Andre, your money’s in my trunk.”

  Colton slipped the vial into his briefcase as adrenaline coursed through his body.

  “Forget the salad. Let’s go.”

  He stood and waited for Andre to gulp down the last bite of his sandwich, eager to get on with his plan.

  CHAPTER 8

  Sasha let Connelly drive her car back to Pittsburgh so she could work the phone. Her representation of Serumceutical had taken on a new urgency. The familiar sense of all-consuming drive filled her.

  Connelly glanced over at her. “You look jazzed,” he commented.

  She was sure she did. The stakes had been raised, awaking her love for competition. ViraGene was going to pay for what they’d done to her newest client.

  She just smiled at Connelly and held up a finger to silence him as she waited for Naya, her legal assistant to answer the ringing phone.

  “The Law Offices of Sasha McCandless,” Naya’s voice rang out through the speakerphone, clear, formal, and businesslike, especially for a Saturday.

  Sasha felt a smidgeon of guilt for asking Naya to come in, especially with all the holiday preparations she had going on with her church’s pageant, but Naya had assured her it was fine, as long as she didn’t miss the pageant rehearsal Sunday afternoon.

  “Naya, it’s me,” she said.

  “I know, Mac, just messing with you.” Naya laughed. “How’d the meeting go?”

  “It was interesting. Oh, you’re on speaker,” Sasha said, giving Naya an unspoken warning not to ask about her relationship with Connelly.

  “Hi, fly boy,” Naya cracked.

  “Hello, Naya,” Connelly said, unable to hide his smile at Naya’s ribbing. “Have you missed me?”

  Before Naya could respond, Sasha jumped in. “You two will have plenty of time to play your games when we get back to the office. Naya, I need you to get started on something.”

  “Got it,” Naya said, the playfulness gone from her voice. “Hit me.”

  “Okay, first, Celia Gerig is gone. As far as we know, all of the information on her application was false, except for her social security number and her name.”

  “Will do. Do who know what she looks like?” Naya asked.

  “Ben’s secretary is going to email you a copy of her personnel file, which includes a digital photo they took at the distribution center for her employee ID. That’s all we’re going to have, I think. A name, a social, and a picture,” Sasha said.

  “I’ve done more with less,” Naya told her.

  It was true. Naya had what Sasha considered good people skills. She wasn’t always great at dealing with people, but she was an ace at two more important things: finding them and reading them. Naya could track a person down. She could also look at a person and know if he was lying. Those two valuable traits more than made up for her occasional lack of tact in her personal interactions.

  “Great. There’s more, but start there, because we have to find this woman. And fast.”

  “I hear you. Hey, should I order you guys some food from Jake’s?”

  Sasha checked the time. It was past lunchtime. After Ben had dropped his bombshell, the three of them had returned to his office and hammered out their next steps. None of them had been in any mood to eat at that point.

  Now, she felt too wired to eat. She looked over at Connelly, who was nodding vigorously. His stomach rumbled loudly, driving home his view.

  “Connelly’s stomach says ‘yes,’” she told Naya. “We’ll be there in about forty minutes.”

  “See you later,” Naya said and ended the call.

  Sasha cleared her throat. She had more calls to make, but first she wanted to take one more run at Connelly.

  “Connelly?”

  “Yeah?” he said in a tone that suggested he knew what was coming.

  “You have to call Tate,” she said in a soft voice.

  “I know, Sasha. Not yet.”

  She watched his knuckles turn white as he gripped the steering wheel tighter and waited a moment to see if he would say anything further. He did not.

  “Waiting’s only going to make it worse,” she said.

  She’d tried to explain as much back in Ben’s office. But Connelly and Ben had refused to budge. Ben wanted to finish checking in the new shipment of drugs, then have his employees open the six pallets that Celia had handled and recount all the boxes to determine the extent of the problem before they told anyone.

  Connelly had agreed with Ben’s suggestion because he wanted Grace to coordinate with human resources to finish all of the distribution center employees’ reference checks to ensure there were no other Gerig-type problems lurking in the files.

  She understood their instinct to get a full picture of the damage done. But the board of directors had to be informed and soon. They needed to authorize a move against ViraGene and, perhaps more critically, they needed to tell the government.

  Sasha knew from past experience representing companies in antitrust, accounting, and bribery investigations conducted by the various arms of the federal government that self-reporting always resulted in cooperation and leniency from the governmental alphabet soup. If, however, a government agency suspected a corporation of stonewalling or covering up a problem, there would be consequences—usually to the tune of several hundred million dollars, but occasionally jail time for corporate management. Sasha was fairly certain her relationship with Connelly could not withstand distance and an orange jumpsuit.

  “The board has important decisions to make, and I want them to do that with full information. Surely you understand,” Connelly said in a firm voice.

  Sasha shook her head. “I do understand. But it’s really not your call to make. You need to talk to Tate,” she repeated.

  “Later. We’ll get Oliver on the phone as soon as Ben and Grace finish,” Connelly promised.

  Connelly had instructed Ben and Grace to work around the clock if necessary to get him all the information he needed.

  “Connelly, if ViraGene is behind this, nothing’s stopping them from anonymously tipping off the government that the shipment was short. In fact, they probably will. You have to get out in front of this.”
>
  “We will,” Connelly said, setting his mouth in a firm line.

  Sasha exhaled loudly. She knew him well enough to know he felt responsible for the theft. And he wouldn’t drop a problem in the decision makers’ laps without also presenting them a solution. He was right that they needed to know the full extent of the issue in order to address it. She just hoped it wouldn’t be too late by then.

  “You’re the client.”

  She opened the Amazon shopping app on her phone.

  Connelly glanced over at her. “What are you doing now?”

  Sasha answered without looking up. “Some Christmas shopping.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. I have to do it some time, don’t I? And until you’re ready to talk to Tate, there isn’t much I can do for you.”

  She was working her way through her list methodically. She started with her nieces and nephews because shopping for kids was easy and fun and saved the harder people for the end. Connelly was, not surprisingly, dead last on her list.

  “Who are you shopping for?”

  “I’m finishing off Jordan now. I’m just getting her a box of ginger cookies and some preggie pops.”

  Both of her brothers’ wives were pregnant. Again. But, this time Jordan was carrying twins and having a difficult time of it. Sasha’d gotten both Jordan and Riley gift certificates for pregnancy massages at their favorite day spa, but she wanted to add something small for Jordan’s stocking.

  “Preggie pops?”

  “I don’t know, Connelly. They’re these special lollipops that are supposed to help with nausea.”

  “Oh. Could you imagine having twins?” Connelly asked.

  The undercurrent in his voice made her look up. “I can’t imagine having a cat, Connelly, let alone two human beings who are utterly dependent on me.”

  “Don’t you ever see yourself having kids?”

  Sasha wasn’t sure how to answer. “Maybe, I guess. Sometimes. When I’m reading a book with Daniella or helping Liam work on a science project, I think about how amazing it must be to have that relationship. But, right now? How would that work?”