Imminent Peril (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller Book 10)

by Melissa F. Miller

  Sasha followed Naya’s brightly polished fingernail along the row labeled ‘AR462.’ She read aloud: “Artie the Aardvark crayon set; MSRP, $4.99; category, art supplies; test results, N/A.”

  “N/A?” Will echoed. “Not available?”

  Naya shook her head. Her mouth was a tight line. “Not applicable. Art supplies are exempt from the testing.”

  Sasha furrowed her brow. “Who in their right mind would classify bathtub crayons as an art supply? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “But if they weren’t classified as a toy, they wouldn’t have been tested. So they couldn’t have failed the test,” Will pointed out. “It looks like you got bad information.”

  No way, she thought. There was no other explanation for those crayons to be in Prachi’s oven. They had to have been the product she wanted to retest.

  Think.

  Naya and Will were watching her. She looked at Naya. “When did they send this chart over?”

  “Beginning of the week. I had Caroline date stamp it.” She pointed to the upper right-hand corner.

  “Do you have the one it replaces?”

  Naya nodded and flipped to the next tab. “I just moved it back in the binder. I didn’t want to take anything out, not with the arbitration hearing pending.”

  The three of them crowded around the page again. Sasha’s heart raced as she read the entries for AR462 to herself: Artie the Aardvark crayon set; MSRP, $4.99; category, bath toys; test results, passed.

  She raised her head and looked at Will. He was staring at Naya.

  After a silence that seemed to stretch into the next week, Naya exhaled, “Let's call the client.”

  Hofstott’s Café Monaco

  Oakmont, PA

  Will pulled some strings and secured a lunch reservation for five on short notice. The white-tablecloth Italian restaurant was hardly convenient to their Shadyside office, but it was just around the corner from Ned Klein's Oakmont mansion. And when a lawyer was summoning the president and the general counsel of a client into a meeting on a Saturday afternoon it generally paid to be accommodating.

  Parker Rivers, Recreation Group’s in-house counsel, had the farthest drive of any of them, coming all the way from her Upper St. Clair house. But Parker was a fairly young attorney to have landed a plum general counsel position and she knew it. So when she came tripping into the restaurant slightly out of breath, she was all apologies. “I’m so sorry I'm late. I had to get the kids to soccer first.”

  “No worries,” Will assured her. “We’re grateful you and Ned were able to take the time away from your families to meet with us.”

  “How are Chase and Hunter?” Sasha asked Parker as the other woman took the empty seat. After she’d left Prescott & Talbott, Sasha hadn't kept up with many of the associates she'd supervised, but Parker had faithfully sent Sasha a Christmas card every year—even after she herself had left to take the job at Recreation Group. As a result, Sasha’d seen the metamorphosis as Parker's children had grown from chubby-faced babies to gangly kids.

  Parker smiled. “They're good. And the twins?”

  “Keeping us busy,” Sasha said.

  The pleasantries out of the way, Sasha gave Will a meaningful look.

  He let his gaze travel around the table and said, “We asked you to come to lunch because we have a situation.”

  Ned's pleasant smile vanished. “What kind of situation?

  Will gestured to Sasha. “Sasha, the floor is yours.”

  She pinned her eyes on Ned. He was the one who mattered. Parker would fall into line behind him.

  “You retained us to advise you on the acquisition of Playtime Toys. And we know your decision to go ahead with the transaction was based, at least in part, on the opinion letter we gave you after we completed our due diligence review. At this point, our firm can no longer stand behind that opinion.” She dropped her bombshell and flicked her eyes to Parker.

  The color drained from Parker's face. Sasha knew Parker was tallying up the legal fees her department had already incurred in vetting the company and pursuing the arbitration. Across the table, Ned was likely doing his own set of calculations about stock pricing and bonuses.

  Ned frowned. “Because they’re dragging their feet about getting the database to us? I thought you all said we could work that out in the arbitration.”

  Naya caught her eye and gave her the slightest nod of encouragement.

  Sasha took a sip of her ice water. Then she continued, “No, not because of the database. Look, Ned, if I can speak frankly, one of the things I most admire about your company is your commitment to your mission and your values.”

  Ned smiled.

  She plowed ahead, “That's why I know you don't want to do business with a morally bankrupt company. And, unfortunately, that's what Playtime Toys is.”

  “I don’t understand.” He looked to his in-house attorney for help, but Parker turned up her palms in a ‘beats me’ gesture.

  “Bear with me while I walk you through this, because it gets somewhat convoluted. As you know, they missed their deadline for turning over the completed product database. Apparently, that’s because they hadn’t actually created the framework. All they had was a stack of papers. So they found a scientist in India with dual degrees in chemistry and computer programming and brought her over on a skilled worker visa to create the database and get it up and running. Her name is Prachi Agarwal. Have either of you heard that name before?”

  Ned shook his head no.

  “Not that I can recall,” Parker said.

  “Okay, so Dr. Agarwal was the architect for the database and she was solely responsible for populating it,” Sasha summarized.

  “They have one person populating the database?” Ned exclaimed. “No wonder they're so far behind schedule. It’s data entry—a team of temp workers would have it done in a week.”

  “They had one person. But Prachi Agarwal’s been missing since Monday. The police are investigating her disappearance. Foul play may be involved.”

  Parker’s blue eyes were enormous. “What’s going on? Is her disappearance somehow related to her work for Playtime Toys?”

  Sasha paused as a team of wait staff arrived at the table with warm rolls and a pitcher of ice water. After they’d taken salad and appetizer orders and were too far away from the table to hear the conversation, she continued, “To answer your question, Parker, I think it might be. This seems like a tangent, but it’s not—as you know, I was recently involved in an altercation.”

  Ned nodded. “Right. That’s why you chose to step down from the arbitration team.”

  “As part of my agreement with the district attorney's office, I'm taking an anger management class. Prachi Agarwal is—or was—one of my classmates.”

  “Really?” Parker asked.

  “Really. When I spoke to her at our first session, I didn’t know where she worked, but she told me she was being set up by her company because she’d alerted management to a safety issue.”

  “A safety issue? With a product?” Ned wondered.

  Naya spoke up, “We have a guess, but it’s not confirmed because they haven't disclosed the problem as part of their supplemental document productions.”

  “Not only have they not disclosed it to you; they also haven’t disclosed it under the consumer product safety law. They haven't undertaken the requisite re-testing of the product. They haven’t initiated a voluntary recall,” Will added.

  “All they’ve done is covered it up and smeared the reputation of the woman who brought it to their attention,” Sasha said. “Now, Dr. Agarwal wasn’t about to let the issue go, so she apparently planned to retest the product herself. But then she vanished.”

  “What’s the product?” Ned pressed.

  “Well, the police found three samples of the Artie the Aardvark Bathtub Crayon Set in her apartment.”

  Parker made a disapproving sound. “Kids get those bathtub crayons all over their naked, little bodies, not to mention thei
r mouths. If they’re toxic …”

  She trailed off, and Sasha let the silence blanket the table for a minute. Then she moved in for the kill.

  “Right. And based on documents they have produced in the arbitration, sometime in the last week or so, they updated their product schedule to recategorize the bathtub crayons. Now they’re listed as an art supply, not a toy.”

  “What’s the difference?” Ned asked.

  Sasha knew his general counsel could field this one. “Parker?”

  Her eyes flashed. “It’s a big difference. If the product’s a toy, they have to test it for the heavy metals. But if it’s an art supply, not marketed to children under the age of fourteen, they don’t.”

  “Oh, come on. I've seen those crayons in stores. There’s a freaking cartoon aardvark on the package.” Ned thumped the table in outrage. The clattering of silverware drew a few looks from the wait staff.

  “Precisely,” Will said. “If Playtime Toys is willing to do something this egregious to save a few dollars, what else have they done? That’s why we can’t stand behind our opinion any longer. We’re sorry.”

  The table fell silent. Then Naya said, “We’re recommending that we enlarge the arbitration to cover a claim that they haven’t been fulsome in their disclosure. We’ll ask for supplemental documents, basically redo the diligence. It’ll mean a delay, but you have to be sure about what kind of company you’re buying.”

  Sasha added, “Take a day or two to think about it, but you have to decide soon.”

  Ned shook his head. “There’s nothing to think about. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act exists for a reason. The regulations are onerous for a purpose. They protect Parker’s kids and Sasha’s kids, my grandkids—we’re talking about getting cute with a product category to weasel out of compliance and for what? A bigger profit. At the expense of the wellbeing of children. That’s gross.” He jabbed his finger angrily in the air, pointing around the table as he spoke.

  He took a breath and went on. “I don’t need an expanded document review and a new opinion. I wouldn't take that company now if it was offered for pennies on the dollar. Parker and I will break the news to the board. You folks do what you need to in order to rescind the purchase agreement and nail their hides to the wall. Can we stop them from shipping the bathtub crayons?”

  “I think so,” Sasha ventured.

  “In that case, let’s order some vino and toast to taking them down,” Ned boomed.

  The tension that had been hanging over the table dissipated. Even Will cracked a smile.

  Sasha shook her head. “No. You and Parker should celebrate dodging this bullet, so go ahead and order. But the rest of us have a long weekend of work ahead. So I’ll take a rain check on the celebration and stick with water.”

  Naya turned to her with a half-smile. “I thought you weren’t ready to come back?”

  Sasha grinned at her. “Oh, I’m back, baby.”

  Leo and the twins had just finished lunch when his cell phone rang. He checked the display.

  “Mommy’s calling from her office. Do you want to say hi to her?”

  Finn and Fiona looked up from the pile of cardboard boxes that surrounded them. Finn shook his head no. “We’re busy, Daddy,” Fiona told him.

  He chuckled as he answered the call. “Hey.”

  “I just wanted to see how you’re doing. By my calculation, this must be Hour Seven of the no toy regime,” Sasha said.

  He laughed again. “As it turns out, they’ve been so busy they haven’t even noticed that all of their toys are gone. We made homemade playdough this morning. Then they spent well over an hour in the backyard making a fairy house out of rocks and sticks. After lunch, they raided the pile of boxes in the recycling and have been making trains, forts, and what may or may not be a rocket. So I guess saving our children from potential, horrific poisoning wasn't such a bad idea after all.”

  “Glad to hear it,” she said. “Especially because it looks like it's going to be a late night for me.”

  “Does that mean you’re back in business?”

  “Yep. I’m back, and now Naya, Will, and I are going to try to save everybody else's children from potential, horrific poisoning.”

  He could actually hear the smile in her voice. “Go get ‘em, tiger. I’ll hold down the fort. And the rocket. And whatever else these two create.”

  She laughed. “Don’t wait for me for dinner. But I’ll be home in time to tuck them in.”

  31

  Sasha woke early and took the twins to the playground while Connelly slept in. She figured it was the least she could do because, with her parents out of town, the weekly Sunday dinner with the McCandless clan was canceled. That meant he’d be two-on-one with the twins for the second full day while she was at the office.

  After a solid hour of swinging, running, and sliding with Finn and Fiona, she got them their breakfast before gently shaking Connelly awake and handing him a mug of coffee. Then she jammed a baseball cap over her unwashed hair, laced up her shoes, and ran to the office, hoping the exercise would jolt her brain into working mode.

  She popped her head into Will’s office to say a quick hello. He was already busy pulling relevant caselaw from the online databases. She wondered when Will Volmer had last done his own legal research and made a wager with herself that it hadn’t been in this millennium.

  She then spent the morning wrapping her arms around the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 and the federal regulations interpreting the act. Dense was one way to describe them. Mind-boggling also worked. She stopped only to refill her coffee mug and stretch her back.

  By ten-thirty when Naya arrived, straight from church in her Sunday best, the Code of Federal Regulations’ tiny print was swimming in front of Sasha’s eyes. She worked for another half an hour before her blurring vision convinced her it was time to take a break.

  She rousted Naya and Will from their offices so they could all gather in the conference room for a status update.

  “How are you guys doing?” she asked, as they trudged into the room like zombies.

  “Wired and tired,” Naya told her.

  “I’ve finished drafting the legal argument,” Will announced. “And it’s a good thing because I’m afraid I’m going to need to duck out for a few hours this afternoon.”

  “And where do you think you’re going, mister?” Naya teased.

  Will looked sheepish. “My wife called and reminded me we have a previously scheduled social obligation. A First Communion party for Kevin Marcus’s youngest daughter, Cassidy. I won’t stay long.”

  Leave it to Will to hobnob with the man who’d just threatened to sue her and their firm, Sasha thought in wonder. A second thought struck her. “Can you casually ask Kevin a question for me? Without ruining the mood or anything?”

  “That depends on the question,” he countered.

  “How was it that Prescott & Talbott came to represent someone like Steve Harold? Something’s been niggling at me ever since I read Kevin’s letter. If Steve Harold is so broke that he’s judgment-proof, how on earth could he afford Kevin’s hourly rate?”

  Will’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Now, that’s a darn good question. I’d like to know the answer to it myself.”

  “Good,” Sasha said. “Now you can sneak away to your country club party with a clear conscience.”

  “How’s your section of the argument coming, Mac?” Naya asked.

  “I’ve got the statutory language laid out and I’m just about finished sketching out the regulatory provisions that we need to be sure to include,” Sasha said. “How’s the statement of facts look?”

  “Solid,” Naya told her. “The two versions of that schedule of products is the key. That and the packaging from the Artie the Aardvark bath set ought to be enough to get an injunction.”

  Sasha beamed. She felt the familiar exhausted but energized sensation that came from a big litigation push. “Awesome. Let’s try to get the
whole shebang together before we leave today. Then tomorrow morning, we can all read it over one last time with fresh eyes and get it on file. With any luck, we’ll have a hearing on Tuesday.”

  “We have to have a hearing on Tuesday,” Naya informed her in a suddenly grim voice. “Playtime Toys sends out its shipments every Wednesday. The bath crayons will be on their way to store shelves if we don’t have an order in hand before then.”

  Sasha’s stomach clenched. “Good,” she deadpanned. “I’ve been thinking all that’s missing is a ticking clock.”

  “More like a ticking time bomb,” Naya muttered in response.

  Leo’s cell phone chirped in his pocket. He grabbed for it and accepted the call before the noise could wake the twins.

  “Agent Connelly,” he answered.

  “Oh, are we being formal tonight? In that case, this is Officer Minet.”

  “Ha, hi, Cheryl. The call came up as Pittsburgh Police Switchboard, so, better safe than sorry.”

  “Roger that. Listen, I know it’s late but I thought you’d want to know—”

  “Did you get a break in the Agarwal case? Did someone ID the sketch?”

  “We got a break, I think. But not that. The Little Washington police—”

  “Who?”

  “Washington County. We just call it Little Washington, you know, to distinguish it from big Washington—the one in D.C.?”

  He’d never heard that particular bit of Pittsburghese before. “Sure. Makes sense. Go ahead. Sorry I interrupted.”

  “Anyway, they got a tip about some stolen guns. Your ATF boys came down and they conducted a joint raid on a camp, or more of a compound, really, up in the mountains outside Uniontown.”

  “Did they hit the jackpot?”

  “The federal agents hauled away a crate of Smith & Wessons. And, suffering from an apparent failure of imagination, they left everything else for the local PD.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as a couple five-gallon drums of hydrochloric acid, several vats of lye, a pallet of bottles of bleach, and an array of off-the-shelf enzyme removers for getting out bodily fluid stains. You know, like blood.”