All Her Little Secrets, page 17
Little meeting? Oh God. Getting more folks of color inside the doors of Houghton was going to take some kind of Herculean strength.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” Willow cut into the lettuce wedges of her salad. “Anything.”
“You seem to spend an awful lot of time with Nate. Everywhere he goes, you go. What’s going on?”
“You noticed.” Willow smiled, ate a forkful of salad, and then lowered her voice. “It’s for his protection.”
I didn’t respond. She needed to keep talking if she wanted me to believe her.
“Well, you’re the lawyer, honey. This is a family-owned business that Nate doesn’t want in the hands of someone who’s not family. The company could become the target of a hostile takeover or acquisition by an equity firm if word got out that Nate is not one hundred percent himself.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“About two years ago, he got a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s. I just stay close to make sure Houghton’s interests are protected.”
“And why you?”
“Why not? The guys are so busy with running the company for Nate. I can spare the time to run to a few extra meetings.”
“Who else knows?”
“Now? Everyone on the Executive Committee.”
I pushed my salad away from me. “Wait. The board of directors doesn’t know?”
“No.” She gave me a pained expression. “They might not have Nate’s best interests in mind if they did.”
“And how long do you plan to keep up this charade?”
“As long as necessary.”
I was incredulous. “This is a family-owned business. Is there a succession plan in place?”
Willow shrugged. “Nate doesn’t have any family interested in the business. He lost his only child.” She shook her head sadly.
“But who runs the day-to-day matters?”
“Jonathan and Max have things under control,” she said.
“Willow, this can’t be a long-term solution. You can’t expect to run a company like this. I mean, what are you thinking? Did Michael know about this?”
“It was Michael’s idea, honey.” Willow grinned and ate another forkful of salad.
“Michael approved of this?! Are you sure? I mean, we have an obligation to bring this to the board’s attention. I’m sure something can be worked out.”
“Leave it be, Ellice. Yesterday, before the Executive Committee meeting, I was going to give you a bit of advice. Specifically, let the guys handle things. That buzz saw you walked into yesterday with Max and Jonathan is just the sort of thing you can avoid in the future. I told Nate you were the best choice to replace Michael because this company needs someone like you.”
“You mean someone Black to shoo away the protesters?”
“I’m in HR. I don’t see race. I only see people.” She turned and scanned the room.
I rolled my eyes in frustration. If people didn’t see race, they wouldn’t have to go around saying they don’t see race. No wonder there were protesters at the front door of this place.
Willow let out a dainty sigh, like a petulant little girl. “What I mean is that we need someone who can use an artful hand in working with the guys. The way Michael did.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Sorry, but yesterday’s meeting was about as artful as I can get without turning into a doormat.” So Willow had chosen her path for survival in the executive suite, working as a second-class, deferential lieutenant to the men. That wouldn’t work for me. I would leave first.
“Trust me, Ellice, you don’t want to make waves. Jonathan’s got the company operating at a profit. Max has all our trucks at full capacity. Things are fine.”
“If things were fine, we wouldn’t have protesters out front and a murdered executive inside.”
Willow stared at me for a beat, then closed her eyes briefly and shook her head in exasperation. “Honey, you won’t last long up on Twenty with such a negative perspective. Do you want to be right or do you want to be successful up here?”
“Are you serious?”
“Trust me, it won’t help matters much if you bump up against folks around here. You’re new. Get a lay of the land first. Let Jonathan and Max run things for Nate. I think this is the way he would want it.”
“Are you guys nuts?!”
“And on that note, I’d better go check on what Nate’s up to.” Willow tossed her napkin on the table and sashayed toward the exit.
Chapter 21
I settled in on a park bench in the playground section of Piedmont Park, waiting for Rudy and watching my warm breath hit the cold air. The chilly temperature forced me to button my coat and I wished I’d brought gloves. The park was empty except for a couple of millennial moms pushing their kids on the swings and a squat older woman chasing a curly-haired blond boy, tightly bundled in a red barn jacket but no hat or gloves. Such a cold day and she hadn’t bothered to at least put a hat on him.
Watching kids play was like a guilty pleasure for me. I was a sophomore at Coventry Academy before I finally understood that giggling or singing loud and off-key was actually a part of childhood, that parents encouraged it. Once at Coventry, a girl who lived in my dormitory fell doing some silly pratfall and fractured her arm. Her father drove down to Virginia from New York City to check on her. I was studying in the common space and I eyed her as she explained to him how it all happened. He watched in amusement as she demonstrated her silliness. I was awestruck. That someone loved her enough to make such an effort and then encouraged her silliness hit me in a way I hadn’t expected. I never really cared for the girl, but from that day on, I hung out with her just so I could be close by whenever her parents visited campus.
I glanced down at an old keloid scar on the back of my hand. The skin, a slightly lighter shade of brown, puffed and twisted over itself like kneaded bread. A searing brand that reminded me of my days growing up in Chillicothe. Now, here I was—never married, no kids. With such imperfect role models for parents, I was afraid that raising one of my own would be another exercise in dysfunctional child-rearing. All the better to let my scars and wounds serve as the last remnants of the Littlejohn family imprint. Anyway, my life was fine without the traditional trappings. I have Vera, and Sam when he wasn’t off the grid. I have my law degree and my job. I’m the executive vice president and general counsel for Houghton Transportation.
I have a life, at least.
“So what’s with all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?” Rudy asked as he strolled up to the park bench. “It’s like thirty-five degrees out here. Couldn’t we meet in a warmer venue like . . . uh, I don’t know. Maybe that big fancy office of yours?” He snickered and blew a quick puff of warm air into his hands before he rubbed them together like a praying mantis.
I reached into my bag and pulled out the manila envelope. “There’s something really weird going on up on Twenty. Michael’s wife, Anna, found this in a safe-deposit box he secretly kept. Houghton is supposed to do a joint venture with a Mexican company called Libertad. Here, take a look.” I handed Rudy the envelope. “The day of Michael’s memorial service, someone broke into his house. They ransacked his study. I assume whoever killed Michael was looking for these documents.” I sat quietly, allowing Rudy time to read through the papers.
“Michael was going to resign?!”
“Looks like it. I think he found out Houghton is laundering dirty money for that Libertad company. Hardy looked into it and found a list of Houghton’s bank accounts. Houghton has a quarter billion dollars in a small bank in the middle of nowhere.”
“What the hell?”
“Yeah. And there’s no record or paper trail for this deal.” I recounted my phone conversation with Richie Melcher, the outside attorney. “Michael should have been talking to Richie about a deal like this. Instead, he was consulting a white-collar defense firm.”
“Oh shit.”
“But that’s not even the best part. Nate has Alzheimer’s and my esteemed colleagues on the Executive Committee are covering for him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Willow plays nursemaid and attends all his meetings with him, and Jonathan and Max are acting as de facto CEO. And just to round things out, Max made a veiled threat. It’s like a corporate freak show up on Twenty.”
“What the hell? You have to go to the police. Show them this stuff. Tell them what Max said.”
“No. I can’t disclose the email thread or the bank information because they’re privileged and confidential company records. Although, if the police are smart, they’ll figure out a way to get their hands on them soon enough.”
“But there’s criminal activity involved . . . somebody murdered Michael. All bets off. That’s a clear exception to the privilege rule,” Rudy said. “Besides, if Anna has already seen these documents, the privilege is broken anyway, right? You can take the documents to the police.”
Lawyers inside corporations are bound by the same ethical canons as lawyers in law firms. If a lawyer discovered illegal activity going on inside the company, ethical rules required the lawyer to report it up the chain of command, to the CEO and/or the board of directors. It was essentially “see something, say something” for lawyers, with a few exceptions. If you have an iota of a moral compass, a lot of practicing law is a matter of doing what’s right, making commonsense choices. Admittedly, since I discovered my own brother was mixed up in this mess, I hadn’t tried very hard to justify taking the documents up the chain of command or to the police. Doing what’s right in this case meant protecting my brother. I think the only reason I was telling Rudy about all this was to vent and have someone tell me I wasn’t crazy. Deep down, I knew I needed to give this information to the authorities. But doing so would be like handing Sam over to the police too.
I sighed. “I haven’t brushed up on the ethics rules lately, but I think there has to be some threat of imminent harm or danger before I can go to the police without breaching my ethical duty. And as for Anna seeing them, the privilege might stand if it was Michael’s intent to keep them under lock and key away from her. Anyway, I don’t have any proof that these documents got him killed. A resignation letter and an email thread to schedule a phone call isn’t much motivation for a murder. And Anna made me promise that I’d find out what’s behind all this, just in case Michael was tangled up in some sort of trouble.”
“That’s not your job, Ell. Who are you? Nancy Drew?! This isn’t just Houghton’s confidential information. It’s possibly evidence in a murder investigation. Maybe somebody killed him because he threatened to blow the cover on Nate’s dementia.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But Willow said the cover-up was Michael’s idea.”
“What the hell? The guy was having an affair with some woman. Now he’s involved in a fraud and cover-up. He sure fooled me.”
I ignored Rudy’s comment about the affair. But he was onto something. Michael must have been involved in something pretty bad to get him killed. This entire situation was a complicated knot of moral and ethical issues I wasn’t quite sure how to fix.
“Rudy, listen to me. I’m stuck. I can either lose my license to practice law for releasing privileged company information or get hemmed up in an obstruction charge in a murder case.”
“So you’re gonna sit on top of information that could help the police find Michael’s killer?” Rudy shook his head.
“I told Anna I would look into it a bit, but then she’d have to go to the police.”
Rudy looked at me with a knitted brow then stared out into the distance. “I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t Michael’s wife immediately go to the police to give them info to find her husband’s killer? Why would she call you? Humph . . . sounds suspicious.”
Rudy’s armchair detective work was making me both uncomfortable and frightened. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was being gullible, and Anna was setting me up. Lord knows she had every reason to. I was sleeping with her husband and she knew it. But according to Anna, it was because I was sleeping with her husband that she called me. Me and Anna, the defenders of Michael’s spotless reputation.
This whole thing was beyond bizarre. Here I was helping people I shouldn’t be in alliance with and chasing after my brother, who was knee-deep in the middle of a murder and disappearance of lawyers he shouldn’t even know.
The cold gusts picked up. An eddy of dry leaves skittered near my feet. The women began packing up their young charges.
“Maybe I’ll go to the police.” I hated cops and Detective Bradford hadn’t changed my mind either. I closed my eyes briefly to break Rudy’s stare. “Listen, I’d better get back to the office.”
Rudy handed me the documents and shook his head again. “Be careful up there, Ell. I know you’re the boss and all, but it seems to me that you’re completely justified in going to the police under these circumstances.”
I glanced at Rudy. This was the second time in one day I’d been warned to be careful on Twenty. But it wasn’t as easy as Rudy made it seem. I had let Sam down so many times before. Good, bad, or otherwise, he was still my brother. And I wouldn’t send him back to prison for something I knew he didn’t do.
Rudy and I headed back to the office, in lockstep silence, before my cell phone rang. I fished it from my pocket and checked the caller ID.
“Uh . . . why don’t you go on ahead. I need to take this call.”
Rudy’s eyes narrowed in confusion.
“It’s personal.”
Chapter 22
I retreated back to the park to answer the call. “Sam! Where are you?”
Sam’s tone was cheery and upbeat. “Hey, Ellie, what’s up?”
I eased back onto the bench in the playground. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you! Why haven’t you called me back?”
“I guess I’ve been busy.” Sam chuckled into the phone.
I gave an exasperated sigh. “Sam, I don’t have time for games. Why were you at my office last week?”
“I stopped by to meet with a guy I’m working for.”
“You’re working for somebody at Houghton?!”
“You’re not the only one who gets to work for the big shots. I was over there last Monday to meet the guy.”
Sam knew people at my job?! I shot up from the bench. “Why didn’t you tell me? What guy? Who?”
“Jonathan Everett . . . you know him?”
“Jonathan Everett?! Of course, I know him. What kind of work are you doing for him?”
Sam chuckled. “The kind of stuff that pays better than working in a hardware store.”
“This isn’t funny, Sam. What the hell are you doing for him?” I yelled into the phone.
“Look, the guy just needed some help—”
“Needed some help with what?!”
“Why are you yelling? And why are you so interested in my business all of a sudden?”
“The police have you on security tape walking into the lobby of Houghton the day before my boss was killed.”
“What?”
“Sam, listen to me. My boss was killed last week, and the police probably think you did it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?!”
“Geez, don’t you watch the news? An executive was murdered at Houghton last week.”
“I didn’t kill anybody! The Everett guy hired me to do some insurance surveillance work. Just tail someone for a few days. That’s all. If the police are investigating a murder, maybe they’re looking at the wrong Littlejohn, huh?”
My stomach gave a flutter at Sam’s dig. “Sam, I don’t have time to get into it with you today. How did you get my ID badge to get in the building?”
“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The Everett guy gave me a badge to get in.”
A young couple jogged past me. I lowered my voice. “Jonathan gave you my security badge?”
“I don’t know. He gave me a badge with the name ‘Littlejohn’ on it.”
“How do you even know Jonathan?” I could feel my heart start to speed up.
“We have some mutual friends.”
“One of your gambling buddies?”
“I told you, Juice hooked me up, a friend of a friend. Hey, you’re the one who told me to get a real job,” Sam pointed out.
I wanted to reach through the phone and throttle him. “Who’s the guy you’re tailing? Was it the guy in the pictures on your cell phone? You know the man in that picture was working with my boss and now—”
“Wait a minute. So you were in my house? Going through my phone. I knew someone had been in there! What the hell, Ellie? You’re too damn tight to lend me a few bucks, but you feel entitled to go rifling through my house? By the way, you left my door unlocked. And where’s my cell phone?”
I took a deep breath and tried to speak slowly, trying to de-escalate things between us. “Sam, I didn’t take your phone. Someone else was in your house when I was there. Whoever it was took your phone. And before they left, they cracked me over the head, too.”
“What? Somebody hurt you?”
“I’m fine. Listen to me, the police are looking for you. We have to figure this thing out. We can go to the police together and clear this up. I can tell them—”
“Are you nuts?!” Sam hesitated for a beat. “I’m still on probation. I can’t just go waltzing into a police station to tell them I work for a guy who’s involved in a murder. Besides, I didn’t do anything. And I’m surprised at your sudden interest in helping the police.”
Crap! I’d forgotten about his probation. “Okay. Let me think. Maybe we—”
“Oh, wait a minute. I see. Did you have something to do with your boss getting killed? You want me to clear things up for you. Now I see what’s going on.”
“Sam, this is not a game.”
