Improper Influence

by Melissa F. Miller

  “Okay. Let me read this more closely and think about our response. In the meantime, you go nowhere alone. Understood?”

  His face clouded and, for a moment, she thought he was going to argue with her, but he didn’t.

  “Understood.”

  She shrugged out of her suit jacket and draped it across the back of her desk chair.

  “Okay, who’s next?”

  She smiled at Naya and Connelly.

  “Ladies first,” Connelly said, sweeping his hand toward Naya and bowing with a flourish that made Sasha giggle despite the triage atmosphere of her office.

  Connelly rewarded her with one of his lopsided little grins.

  Naya huffed past him and braced her arms against Sasha’s desk, the muscles in her forearms straining against her fitted blouse.

  “Will called,” Naya said in a flat, dangerous voice.

  “And?” Sasha prompted, although she had a feeling she knew what was coming next.

  “And he’s really sorry but the business and finance lawyers and the litigators have put aside their constant internal sniping to join forces and demand that I stay off the case. He said Marcus threatened to force him out of the chairmanship if he doesn’t roll over.”

  Sasha felt her eyes widen.

  “He told you that?”

  “He’s almost as disgusted as I am, Mac.”

  Sasha could see that. Will wasn’t one for playing games.

  “Well, our hands are tied. It sucks, and it still makes zero sense, but it is what it is, Naya.”

  “Screw that noise. I told him to stick his scholarship where the sun don’t shine.”

  Naya’s body actually vibrated with tension.

  Sasha narrowed her eyes and stared at her legal assistant.

  “Tell me you didn’t?”

  Naya fixed her with a dark look.

  “Naya—”

  “Don’t even bother. Just tell me which box to start with.”

  Sasha tried to beat back the guilt that rose in her chest. She reminded herself that Naya was an adult who could make her own choices. It didn’t work.

  “We’re going to talk about this later, okay?”

  “Whatever Mac. Which box?”

  Sasha shook her head and pointed at the mountain.

  “The top one, I guess.”

  Naya grabbed it and heaved it off the pile.

  “Come on, Buddha. You can help,” she said in Bodhi’s general direction.

  He trailed her out of the office.

  Sasha turned to Connelly.

  “Well, what’s your drama?” she asked.

  “Mine can wait until you tell me what happened.”

  He crossed the room and tilted her chin up with one hand, staring at her with his light gray eyes that reminded her of her softest cashmere sweater.

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Liar.”

  He searched her face, and she felt her cheeks grow pink again as she remembered Daniel’s parting words to her.

  “It’s nothing, I mean it’s stupid. I had a bad workout.”

  “Workout? Or sparring session?”

  His tone was innocent, but she stiffened.

  “Did Daniel go behind my back and call you?”

  “He’s worried about you, Sasha.”

  She sputtered, trying to formulate a response that didn’t sound like a petulant teenager and failing. “I can take care of myself, Connelly. I don’t need two big strong men to put their heads together to keep the little lady safe. How dare—”

  He covered her mouth with a finger.

  “Take it easy, tiger. Nobody’s doubting your capabilities—least of all me. Come on, I know you’re a badass.”

  She huffed out a breath and let the tension out of her shoulders. “But?”

  “But, we seem to have landed in the middle of another ugly situation. And, so far we’ve been lucky getting out of jams. One of these days our luck is going to run out, and when it does, it’ll be important that you haven’t lost your edge. I might need you to save me. So, Daniel thinks you should go back to the morning class and brush up, okay?”

  She had the distinct impression she was being handled, and she didn’t like it. But everything he said made sense and rang true. So she nodded.

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Also, just so you know, he didn’t call to give me a report on you. He was returning my call and just mentioned that Hurricane Sasha was headed my way.”

  She couldn’t help laughing at that. She had left Daniel’s studio in a foul mood; the warning had probably been warranted.

  “Why did you call him? Are you setting up a time to meet with Chris about the music?”

  Daniel’s boyfriend was a gifted pianist and had offered to play at their wedding, if they ever got around to having it.

  “I wish. I wanted to see if he had any ideas for nonviolent self-defense tactics we could teach Bodhi.”

  “And?”

  “Nope. I mean, it’s no surprise. You can’t protect yourself if you aren’t willing to cause harm to someone else if necessary.”

  She contemplated the implications of that basic fact. Bodhi was, in the truest sense, defenseless.

  “Do you really think it’s going to come to that?”

  He worked the muscle in his cheek while he considered his answer. Finally he said, “I do. I think Stone Fredericks’ murder is connected to Bodhi’s death cluster.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Let me show you some pictures I took at Fredericks’ house.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Bodhi squinted at the printouts that Naya had made from Leo’s cell phone photographs. The quality was better than he had any right to hope for, but they were still hard to decipher. His eyes were tired and a dull headache was forming in his skull.

  He acknowledged his physical discomfort and sat perfectly still for a moment, then encouraged his awareness of his pain to leave his consciousness. While he waited, he sipped the lemon water that Naya had been kind enough to bring him and reviewed his notes.

  Leo’s instincts had been solid. Better Life Beverages had been worried about the effects of their herbal concoction. But judging by the results of the studies Leo had photographed, Bodhi thought their concerns were misplaced.

  The door opened and Naya and Leo appeared in the doorway.

  “Are you at a stopping point?” Leo asked.

  “I can be.”

  They came in and sat across the conference table from him.

  “How’s it going?” Naya asked, toying with her energy drink.

  “Well, as far as I can tell, the studies establish that withania somnifera is perfectly safe in the quantities they use, even in the carbonated formulation. Lucky for you,” he added pointedly, gesturing toward Naya’s Champion Fuel. “You drink that stuff by the gallon.”

  She twisted her mouth into an irritated little bow and cleared her throat, reading from the back of her can in a commercial announcer’s voice, “Withania somnifera, guarana, gingko biloba, and wild red ginseng combine in Champion Fuel to provide a safe yet effective boost of mental focus and clarity, physical stamina and alertness, and vitality.”

  “Could the combination of those herbs cause myocarditis?” Leo asked.

  Bodhi shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. The only one that’s there in any appreciable amount is the withania somnifera. That and caffeine are the main ingredients. The rest are there in trace amounts only. Like, when you order crab soup at a restaurant, and it seems like the crab must have walked through it? It’s like that. Naya’s paying mainly for her shiny can and the imprimatur of her favorite professional athletes.” He smiled at Naya to lessen the blow.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Whatever. It tastes like dirt, but I can almost keep up with Mac when I’m drinking this stuff.”

  Bodhi leaned forward. “Does it really?”

  “Really what?”

  “Really taste like dirt?” He could feel the exciteme
nt of discovery rising in his chest.

  “Well, yeah, it kinda does. I mean, it’s not totally nasty. It just tastes ... earthy. Here, try it.” Naya pushed the can across the table toward him.

  He picked it up and gave it a cautious sniff. It had a generally pleasant aroma. He took a small sip and held it in his mouth as if he were tasting wine. As the liquid washed over his taste buds he had to agree with Naya. It did have an earthy taste, like soil. Or mushrooms.

  “What?” Leo asked, startling him.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “No, you’re thinking. It’s showing in your face.”

  Bodhi chose his words carefully. “It’s just the beginning of an idea.”

  “We’ll take what we can get,” Leo told him. “Spill it.”

  He turned the can in his hand for a moment then passed it back to Naya. “Well, do you remember the electronic studies that I was trying to track down, the ones that were all dead pages or 404 errors?”

  “Sure,” Leo said.

  “Well, based on what I could tell from the truncated abstracts, they involved instances of viral myocarditis death clusters that were caused by naturally occurring toxins. In one case, it turned out to be a rare mushroom that grew only outside some small Asian village. Another one was a case where several vacationers in an Austrian town died after drinking a tea made from a local wildflower. I wonder ...” he trailed off, hesitant to voice his untested hypothesis.

  “You wonder what?” Naya urged with a hint of impatience.

  “I wonder if the wild red ginseng could be contaminated in certain batches. If it’s toxic, the fact that it’s a trace amount might not matter.”

  “Why are you focusing on the ginseng, and not one of the other ingredients?” Leo wanted to know.

  “Wild red ginseng is rare. It’s being harvested faster than it grows. So, if it’s hard to come by and in short supply, it’s possible that some resourceful, entrepreneurial villagers somewhere might be cutting it with a local fungus or something.”

  Naya laughed. “Like drug dealers cutting their marijuana with oregano?”

  Bodhi didn’t laugh. “No, more like dealers cutting their cocaine with levamisole.”

  Naya and Leo looked at him questioningly.

  “A few years ago we had an epidemic of deaths from cocaine. The users weren’t overdosing, but they all had cocaine and levamisole in their bloodstreams. It turns out some cost-conscious South American drug lord who also raced horses got his hands on levamisole, which is a veterinary de-worming agent. He decided to cut his stash with it.”

  Leo and Naya’s faces were identical masks of disgust.

  “Yeah,” Bodhi continued, “I’ll spare you the description of the effect that levamisole has on humans. Anyway, it could be that there’s something in Champion Fuel that’s not supposed to be there.”

  Naya lowered her can to the table and pushed it away.

  Leo leaned forward. His eyes were bright and interested. “Can we test for that?”

  “It can be tested for, but I can’t do it. You’d need to hire a commercial lab. It’d be easy enough to analyze the contents of a can of Champion Fuel and see if the ingredients match up with the printed information.”

  Naya raised a hand. “Hold up. I don’t want to be a buzz kill here, but if all the dead women drank Champion Fuel that contained something toxic in it, wouldn’t you have seen that in your autopsies?”

  “Not necessarily.” Bodhi didn’t like to equivocate, but sometimes the answer wasn’t clear cut. “I did analyze the contents of the dead women’s stomachs and had their blood tested, but that wouldn’t provide a granular analysis of the makeup of any one item they’d ingested. And, at the risk of further disheartening you, I can’t even say for sure that they all drank Champion Fuel before they died.”

  “But, I thought you said—” Leo began.

  “I said they had all consumed withania somnifera. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. It’s not usually toxic in the amounts consumed by humans. I can’t consult my notes, obviously, but I don’t recall any of the other ingredients registering on the tests we ran. Then, too, that could simply be that they were present in such small amounts that they weren’t detectable.”

  “But how could you dismiss it as nothing? I mean, it was a common thread,” Naya insisted.

  “It was a common thread, but it’s also a common herbal supplement. Other names for it include Indian ginseng and winter cherry. It’s used in several brands of energy bars and drinks. The dead women all shared a profile. They were young, fit, and relatively health conscious. It wasn’t surprising to see that they all had consumed a fairly common herb. They all also had eaten Greek yogurt, albeit different flavors, and some variety of leafy greens before they died, too. It just didn’t seem remarkable.”

  “But it must be. Because someone’s willing to kill over it. Well, over the fact that they drank Champion Fuel, at least. I’m sure of it,” Leo said.

  Bodhi shook his head, unconvinced. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Even if these studies aren’t conclusive, the fact that Stone Junior was poking around in research and development reports that raised a concern about the interaction among the various herbals is material. It wasn’t something that would have fallen under his area of responsibility. He was worried. And now, he’s dead. I find it hard to believe that’s a coincidence.”

  “There’s no such thing as coincidence, as far as I’m concerned,” Naya opined.

  Leo nodded his agreement. “What about the fact that all the deaths have been women? Plenty of men drink Champion Fuel. At least half our volleyball team drinks it in the hopes of achieving the athletic prowess of the Steelers’ offensive line. Why haven’t any men died?”

  “I’m just theorizing, but the fact that deaths all occurred in women, more specifically, thin women, with low body mass and low body fat percentages, could lend further credence to the fact that the ginseng is tainted. A small amount of poison will be absorbed much more readily and will have a greater effect on a smaller person.”

  “See, so, the theory hangs together,” Naya said.

  He opened his mouth to caution them again about jumping to conclusions. He was a scientist at heart. These leaps of logic unsupported by anything but gut feelings made him supremely uncomfortable.

  Sasha burst into the room noisily before he could get out the appropriate caveats.

  Everyone turned to look at her.

  Her face was flushed and long tendrils of hair had worked their way out of the smooth knot she’d secured at the nape of her neck with an old-fashioned hairpin. Bodhi wondered idly if the jeweled hairpin was purely decorative or if she could also wield it as a weapon.

  “What’s going on?” Leo asked.

  From the spark in her eye and her breathlessness, it was clear something noteworthy had happened.

  “You’re never going to believe this. Greenway dismissed the case.” she said, the words rushing out of her mouth in a jumble. “You’ll never believe who just made a settlement demand.”

  “With prejudice?” Naya asked.

  “Yep.”

  “You didn’t tell me you were talking settlement.”

  “We weren’t.”

  “Then, why—?”

  “I have no idea. I mean, they were going to lose, probably on summary judgment. Definitely if we went to verdict. But, who just gives up and goes home in the middle?”

  Naya stared at Sasha. Leo caught Bodhi’s eye and shrugged. It sounded strange to Bodhi, but the world of civil litigation was foreign to him.

  “They must be afraid of you,” Naya said with a smirk.

  “It’s crazy. Totally crazy. But who cares. VitaMight is thrilled. A happy client is a happy client. And if there’s no case, there’s no conflict. So you should smooth everything over with Prescott & Talbott.”

  Naya glared at that statement but held her tongue.

  Leo’s eyes fell on the rows of banker boxes. “Do you have to
return the documents if the case settles?”

  “Ordinarily. I have to shred Greenway’s production and certify that I haven’t kept any copies. That’s fairly standard, and it’s required by the confidentiality agreement.”

  “But not Herbal Attitudes?” Naya asked.

  “Our good friend Garrett didn’t produce them subject to a provision to return or destroy them. Sloppy, if you ask me.” She shrugged.

  “So we can keep looking at them?” Bodhi wanted to know.

  Sasha scanned their faces and wrinkled her forehead at their sudden heightened interest in the mountain of documents.

  “Why would you want to?”

  “Wrong question. Why don’t they want us to?” Naya said. “There’s something in those boxes, Mac. I know it.”

  Bodhi felt in his bones that she was right.

  “Knock yourselves out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Mackenzie had spent two college summers hawking an overpriced, unproven early learning curriculum door to door to suburban parents staring down the barrel of a long, hot season of sticky children whining ‘I’m booooored.’ Both years, she was the top salesperson in her region.

  Although the company trained the sales force to use high-pressure tactics to get a foot in the door and then refuse to leave until the sale had been closed, Mackenzie’s success came from her innate ability to find the secret fear hidden in the heart of a given mother and bear down on it until the checkbook came out.

  Dusty piano sitting in the family room while a gaggle of boys rappels down the side of the staircase (or, even better, climbs out a bedroom window to the roof)? The curriculum would build concentration and enable the kids to sit quietly and focus.

  Sunday New York Times on the front porch and a Subaru in the driveway? Time to trot out the terrifying statistics about the ‘summer slide’ and the prospect of mom’s well-groomed children losing two grade levels of learning during the three-month break.

  If there was a Darwin fish on the bumper of the Subaru and/or an infant wrapped in a cloth sling hanging from the front of the mother, she’d go one further and throw in a spiel about how European countries handle the break, appealing to the former global citizen she figured was trapped inside the harried-looking woman.