by D. J. Herda
“I hope we didn’t come across like a bunch of horses’ asses last night. We were all pretty well lubricated.” He waved her off as he watched the tautness of her lightweight top reveal two erect nipples. She caught him eyeing her and leaned forward.
“Do you approve?”
He shrugged. “Of what?”
She folded her arms beneath her chest and slowly lifted them up and out just as the back door opened. Dom reappeared, carrying a plate filled with potatoes ready for the skewer.
“I saw you last night,” she said more softly, “trying to get a look down my top. So, I thought I’d beat mom to it today and wear something less ... confining.”
He nodded, sipped his drink, and set it down. “So I see. And, yes, I approve.”
“A little?” She grinned, her eyes narrowing as if she were a chameleon targeting a fly that had landed a heartbeat away.
“More like ... a lot.”
When the food was ready and Hightower was already feeling little pain, the group sat down to dinner, during which Dom and Carrie talked about the case they had set up while their daughter contented herself with running her shoeless foot up along Hightower’s leg, to his crotch, and back down again. Hightower smiled often and pretended it wasn’t happening, his pleasant demeanor convincing Carrie that she had bought and served the perfect cut of steak.
After dinner, Darryl and Christie retired to the patio where, darkness cloaking them, he reached out, pulled her flush against him, and kissed her. She responded by rubbing hard against him.
Within several minutes, Carrie came out with a bottle of Pinot Noir, filled their glasses, and gave Hightower a seductive smile. “Looks like things are warming up out here,” she said. Christie dabbed at her long, silken blonde hair with perfectly manicured nails. Hightower felt himself blush—either because Carrie was Christie’s mother or because mom was damned near as hot as her daughter, even without the extraordinary scaffolding. “Sorry to break this up,” Carrie continued, “but Stan and Willie are here. Stan said they’ve been kicking some things around, and he thinks they’ve come up with something. You’d better come in. You’re going to want to hear this.”
“We’re not really going to play that silly game again, are we?” Christie asked.
Carrie took a sip from her glass. “I think we’ll soon find out.”
Inside, Stan Omado stood next to the counter, propping his belly up as Peeps walked around the room in tight little circles.
“What’s going on?” Christie asked Dom.
“Shh!” Potash said. “He’s thinking.”
Peeps stopped suddenly and looked up, appearing surprised to see anyone else in the room. He froze for several seconds before his eyes exploded. “I’ve got it!” he announced, punctuating his thought with his index finger.
Dom looked from Carrie to Christie to Omado and back. “Got what?”
“How I can approach the D.A. on Monday to get him to file charges against Sandalman.”
“Can’t you just go to him and tell him what’s happened to Darryl?” Dom asked. “And to us? Our job is held up for who knows how long because of those supplies.”
“It’s not that simple,” Peeps said. “Before I can ask him to charge someone, especially a big fish like Sandalman in a small sea like Trinidale, I have to have some solid proof. And that’s what we’re going to give him.”
“Proof? How? What kind of proof?”
Peeps reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone.
“Yeah? So?” Carrie asked. “I’ll bite. Who are you planning to call?”
“No one. Not just yet, anyway. But we’re going to get the D.A. all the proof he needs, and we’re going to make sure Darryl has enough materials to finish your job, despite the thefts.”
“How?”
“Well, Stan gave me the idea just this morning. He’s going to advance Illinois Custom Design an extended line of credit, while we lay out Sandalman’s entire scheme, step by step ... on tape.” He said the words as if they were a magical incantation before he punched a few times on his phone and motioned to Omado. “Why don’t you explain what I’m talking about, Stan.”
“Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “That’s it in a nutshell. We’ll front the materials for you, youngster, so you can finish your job and drive Sandalman out of business for good.”
Darryl looked confused. “But how?”
Peeps held up his finger before punching his phone again. He waited a few moments and held it up as it belched out its magic:
Why don’t you explain what I’m talking about, Stan?
Well, that’s it in a nutshell. We’ll front the materials for you, youngster, so you can finish your job and drive Sandalman out of business for good.
But how?
Peeps clicked the recorder off.
“That’s a great parlor trick,” Carrie said, “nice recorder.” She turned to Omado. “And we want to thank Stan for making sure our job won’t be shut down with that line of credit for Darryl. But I still don’t see how any of this is going to provide the proof we need to take to the D.A.”
“You will,” Peeps said. He propped the phone up on the counter and turned to take in five sets of anxious eyes. “I’ve been thinking about this whole thing since yesterday, and I came to the conclusion that we started it all wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Dom asked.
“Well, instead of Stan playing the role of Sandalman, we’ll have Darryl here do Sandalman’s talking for him. After all, who knows better what Sandalman did to shut down Illinois Custom Design than its president? So, I’ll ask Darryl some questions, and he’ll answer as if he were being interviewed by the Sun-Times or WBKB or someone.”
Carrie’s eyes lit up. “Or the D.A.!”
“Right,” Peeps replied. “And we’ll tape everything. Including the corroborating witnesses, Carrie and Dom Potash, here. That way, the D.A. will know everything that Sandalman did, he’ll know exactly what damages Darryl and the Potashes suffered, and he’ll know precisely how Sandalman sabotaged your jobs, all just to put Darryl and Illinois Custom Design out of business because he couldn’t stand the competition.”
Hightower looked at Potash, grinning from ear to ear, and then turned to Carrie, who sat with her drink in her lap, craning her head and nodding. He looked at Omado, who sat with folded arms, looking for all the world like the Cheshire cat who had just swallowed Alice. And then he turned to Christie, who had already turned to him.
“I like it,” she said.
“I do, too,” Carrie said, and Dom chimed in.
“Well,” Hightower said, shrugging, “we’d might as well make it unanimous.”
“Good. Let’s get started.”
“I could use a fresh drink,” Omado said.
Carrie sat back in her chair. “Is that permissible in court?”
“We’ll bend the rules,” Peeps said, and Carrie grabbed the bottle and began making the rounds while the investigator turned on the recorder. He motioned so that everyone knew it was running, and he introduced the proceedings and all the participants, dated the recording, and explained how Darryl would be speaking on Sandalman’s behalf in the man’s absence. Then he introduced Hightower with a question:
“Illinois Custom Design and Construction filed a complaint with the Trinidale Police Department regarding a theft in excess of twenty thousand dollars of unordered goods that were ultimately removed from a remote jobsite for which Scott Sandalman was supplying materials, is that correct?”
“Yes,” Hightower said, feeling giddy with power. It was the first time he’d ever felt such a rush—as if he were holding another man’s life in his hands while being appointed judge and executioner.
“Did you know that Trinidale Builders Supply’s owner, Scott Sandalman, authorized the shipment of those materials to your site?”
“I didn’t at the time, no. And it was twenty-two thousand dollars’ worth, actually.”
“Did you later receive an invoic
e for those materials billed to your company account?”
“I did, yes. It was about a month later.”
“Did you at the time realize that you neither ordered those materials nor authorized anyone else working for you to do so?”
“Yes, I knew that. You see, at the time, Trinidale Builders Supply had a woman working for them by the name of Kelli Powell. She was an interior designer and decorator whose job was to ...”
Peeps held up his hand. Hightower raised his brows. “Yes?”
“Darryl, just answer the questions yes or no.”
“But, don’t you want to know the details? I mean, there are a lot of facts that ...”
“We’ll get to those later. I assure you. But I want to do so in an orderly fashion so that everything I give to the District Attorney on tape flows from one issue to the next. Remember, this is my job; it’s what I do for a living.”
Hightower nodded. “Okay.”
“Just trust me, all right?”
He nodded again.
“Good. Now, getting back to the issue, did you also work on a project for Mr. and Mrs. Potash known as the Illinois Hotel, which was an old abandoned building they had purchased and hired you to convert into six condominiums or rental units?”
“Yes.”
“And did you hire a subcontractor by the name of Robert Snow to install a heating and cooling system for the building?”
“Yes.”
“Had you used Mr. Snow’s services before?”
“Yes, many times.”
“And on this particular occasion, did Mr. Snow come to you and request a check from you to purchase heating supplies for the hotel, stating that he would pick them up from Trinidale Builders Supply and deliver them to the hotel jobsite at no charge to you?”
“Yes.”
“And you gave him a check for twelve thousand dollars made payable to Trinidale Builders Supply for the supplies.”
“That’s right.”
“And did Mr. Snow purchase the supplies from Trinidale Builders but fail to deliver them to the hotel as promised?”
“That’s right. We gave him the check and never saw the materials.”
“And did you learn later from his ex-wife that he had returned the supplies to Trinidale Builders Supply, received a cash refund from Scott Sandalman for twelve thousand dollars, closed his business, and disappeared from Trinidale without returning the money to you?”
“That is correct.”
Peeps, turned and looked around the room at four sets of eyes, spellbound, before rising and walking from one end of the room to the other and back again. He cleared his throat.
“Now, Mr. Hightower, do you or did you know a woman by the name of Kelli Powell?”
Hightower had to keep from laughing. “Yes. Of course, I did.”
“And she worked as an interior design consultant and a salesperson at Trinidale Builders Supply, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Is it true that the order form for the materials sent to your jobsite was authorized and signed for by Ms. Powell?”
“That is correct.”
“Bitch!” Carrie snorted. “I never liked her.”
“And did you telephone Scott Sandalman directly when you learned that those materials for which you had no need yet had already been delivered to the jobsite?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And did Mr. Sandalman inform you that the material he delivered to your jobsite could not be returned because they’d been specially ordered for you through Ms. Powell at your request?”
Hightower was amazed at how much information Peeps had acquired virtually overnight. But then again, he assumed he had probably gotten it from Omado, who kept one ear to the ground and had snitches scattered all over town. “Yes, he did.”
“So, you knew that the materials were not going to be taken back even though you requested them to be removed?”
“Yes.”
“After speaking with Mr. Sandalman, did you confront Ms. Powell about the delivery of all those unauthorized materials?”
“Yes.”
“And did she tell you that Scott Sandalman had ordered her to deliver the unauthorized materials to your jobsite?”
Hightower felt his brows rise. “Yes, but how did you ...”
Peeps held up his hand.
“Oh, right. Sorry.” He took a sip from his wine before setting the glass on the cocktail table. “Yes.”
“So, in the end, you decided to keep the materials that had been delivered prematurely for when you reached a stage in construction where they would be necessary, is that correct?”
“Yes. Well, I mean, not exactly. I put pressure on Kelli to have Scott take them back, telling her outright that I wasn’t going to pay for them because I never authorized them.”
“Realistically speaking, you had to send the materials back because you simply couldn’t afford to pay for twenty-two thousand dollars’ worth of finish supplies just to have them sit in the garage of the country house you were building for several months until they were needed, is that right?”
“That’s correct.”
“And did Ms. Powell ultimately convince Mr. Sandalman to take the materials back and credit your account accordingly?”
“No.”
“So, it’s safe to assume that your account was in serious jeopardy as of that time, is that correct? I mean, if you paid Sandalman’s bill, you would have been under great financial stress.”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me why that is?”
“Well, we only receive advance payments for a job to the tune of around five or ten thousand dollars a month. That’s per draw. That meant it would have taken up to four months of bank draws just to cover the finish materials sitting in the garage, gathering dust.”
“In effect, Mr. Sandalman was using your jobsite as a storage facility for the unordered materials while charging you for the privilege of stumbling over them every time your crew went to work, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And is it true that Illinois Custom Design had suffered other financial losses of a considerable amount at around this same time?”
“Yes.”
“And these came from overcharges made by a roofing crew, who ordered three times more roofing materials than called for and then returned the excess materials to Trinidale Builders Supply for a refund, which the individuals received in cash instead of as a credit to your company, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Is such a refund standard in the industry, a cash refund given to subcontractors or employees instead of a credit made to the company’s account?”
“No.”
“Would you say it’s a rare occurrence for that to happen?”
“It never happens.”
“Except in this case.”
“Yes.”
“But there were also other losses you incurred. I understand that someone gained entrance to your office and stole 15 thousand dollars’ worth of tools. And that, in another instance, you had completed work on a reconstruction job for the homeowner, who had arranged in writing to pay you after she closed on her mortgage with the bank, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And who was the owner of that house on which you worked for several months without any appreciable cash flow?”
“Kelli Powell.”
“The same Kelli Powell who worked for Scott Sandalman at Trinidale Builders Supply and the same Kelli Powell who authorized the delivery of materials from Trinidale Builders Supply to your rural jobsite before they were needed.”
“The same.”
“Why did you go so long, working on Ms. Powell’s home renovation project without receiving any pay?”
“Because she was strapped for cash. She had hired a general contractor to do the job prior to our coming to town, and he really screwed things up and left her with a mess. Once her money ran out, she was desperate to finish her reconstruct
ion so she could qualify for a bank loan, pay off all her debts, and move into the house as her primary residence with her young son.”
“She was divorced?”
“Yes.”
“And her ex-husband couldn’t or wouldn’t help her out financially?”
“She said she hadn’t seen him for years, that he just left for work one morning and never returned.”
“So, is it safe to say you felt sorry for her?”
“Yes.”
“And maybe felt a little attracted to her.”
Hightower shrugged. “Maybe. A little. But mostly we were just friends. She’d helped me out when I needed advice on finish products. She looked in her books to find just the right hardware or the best bathroom fixtures or whatever we needed. And sometimes, when the everyday pressures of work got to her, she’d ask if I wanted to go to lunch with her.”
“And, in return for her helping you find the right materials for your numerous building projects, you advanced her credit for her own renovation.”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t working on her job for, how long, six months or more, put a strain on Illinois Custom Design financially?”
“Nothing we couldn’t handle. You have to remember that, up until then ...”
Peeps held up his hand.
“Sorry.”
“So, your arrangement with Ms. Powell was that, upon your completion of the renovation of her home, she would receive funding from her bank, pay you off, have you sign a waiver for payment received, and everyone would be happy, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever in fact finish that job?”
“Yes.”
“And did Kelli Powell ever receive funding upon the completion of the remodel so that she could obtain funding from her bank to pay you off?”
“No. Well, in effect ...” He raised his brows. “May I elaborate?”
“Let me do it,” Peeps said. “My job, remember?”
Hightower smiled, took a drink of wine, and nodded.
“Near the time of completion of Ms. Powell’s home, she was approved for a home loan, which the lender informed you of directly, saying that he hadn’t heard back from Ms. Powell to schedule a date for closing on the loan and for converting her construction loan to a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, is that correct?”
