The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance

by Braden, Magdalen

  “At the hotel?”

  Meghan turned her head to stare at Kassie. “Seriously, if you need a change of career, let me know.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Yes, at the hotel. We’d been working in his room, then I was leaving and he reached for the doorknob at the same time I did, and before I knew what was happening, we were kissing.” Meghan pulled in some air. “It was nice.”

  “So you did it there? Hotel sex can be nice.”

  “No condoms.”

  “What the fu—? Neither of you had rubbers?”

  Meghan shrugged. “I don’t know about Dan, but it’s been years since I needed any.”

  “Hunh.” Kassie leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “I think that’s a good detail. Like, if he’d had some, and especially if they’d been new, you know, then what would that say about him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, so no condoms. How’d you end up at his place?”

  “He invited me. We flew back on Friday, worked a little, then went to his apartment.”

  “Ooh, tell me about his apartment.”

  “It’s nice but he hasn’t been there long,” Meghan said. “So there’s furniture and curtains on the windows, but lots of boxes still need to be unpacked.”

  “And you stayed a second night.”

  Meghan could feel herself blushing. “Mm-hmm.”

  “Good in bed, was he?”

  The blush turned fiery. “I think so.”

  Kassie’s emphatic nodding made the bed rock. “What size do you wear?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re slim but not short. I’m guessing a four. You really should be a six, though.”

  “I’m too thin.”

  Meghan expected Kassie, who was hardly plump herself, to say something about one could never be too rich or too thin.

  “Probably. Stress, right? The romance won’t make that any better.” Kassie was off the bed and out the door before Meghan could respond.

  She got up slowly—strange how sore she felt—and wandered out to see what Kassie was up to.

  “This stuff is terrible for you,” Kassie said, holding up a packet of ramen noodles.

  “But cheap.”

  “Mmm. Let me think about that.” The blonde head disappeared into Meghan’s pantry. “This is better.” She came out holding a can of soup. “Low sodium. That’s good. But really you shouldn’t be eating processed food.”

  “Look, I appreciate the advice, but I can’t afford to buy all new clothes in a larger size,” Meghan said.

  Kassie stopped shifting containers and slowly withdrew from the pantry. “Oh, lord, I’m sorry. I’m doing it, aren’t I?”

  Doing what? Interfering in a near-stranger’s life? “Well…”

  “I have this compulsion to solve people’s problems.” Kassie looked contrite. “It probably keeps me from thinking about—well, never mind about that.”

  “No, I want to mind about that, whatever ‘that’ is.”

  Kassie plunked herself into the lone armchair, leaving Meghan to sit in her desk chair. Swiveling around, she could see how spartan her apartment really was. Barely enough furniture for one person, let alone two. What would Dan think of it?

  Kassie had pulled her hair loose from the elastic, roughly split it into two halves and was braiding the pigtails. Meghan went into her bathroom and returned with an elastic. “Here.” She handed it over.

  “Thanks. I get nervous. That’s when I play with my hair. It’s hell at work, where I have to look tidy and appropriate all day.”

  “I love your hair. Like blonde angel floss.”

  “It’s okay, I guess.”

  Meghan waited while Kassie gnawed on her lower lip. Then Kassie straightened. “It’s stupid. My dad’s been sleeping with someone from work. It’s breaking my mother’s heart. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Oh, God, that’s horrible.”

  Kassie grimaced. “Yeah, well, thanks. I mean, it’s shitty, but it’s really no excuse to try to fix everyone else’s life.”

  “No, but I appreciate that you told me why.”

  “So you forgive me from poking around your cupboards?”

  “Of course.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Meghan scribbled as fast as she could. “Taking incoming message into the buffer…”

  “Meghan!” Vicky Womack stood in the doorway, having rapped twice.

  “Oh, Mr. Agnarsson, could I put you on hold just for a moment?” Meghan said into the phone.

  “Sure,” Greg Agnarsson said.

  “What can I do for you, Vicky?” Meghan asked as pleasantly as she could manage. She really didn’t want to lose this guy.

  “Where’s my database printout?”

  Meghan forced a smile. “I put it into interoffice mail this morning, first thing.”

  The redhead looked disappointed. “Well, I don’t have it. I need it.”

  What a crock. “Shall I call your assistant and see if she’s got it for you? Or would you like me to print out another copy?”

  “What’s the problem, Vicky?” Dan asked, strolling into the frame of the doorway.

  “Oh, Dan, thank goodness you’re here.” Vicky’s voice dropped an octave and softened like gooey toffee. She turned toward him, her body seeming to quiver with enthusiasm. “Meghan’s lost my database, and I really need it for those interrogatories you requested.”

  Dan’s head tilted slightly. “Can’t you access the database? I know I can. C’mon, we’ll go get Tessa make you a new copy.” He waited for Vicky to precede him. Once she walked away, he winked at Meghan.

  She smiled as she went back to the phone. “Mr. Agnarsson, I’m so sorry about that interruption. You were explaining about the buffer overflow?”

  “Hey, no problem. I’m retired. No place to go, nothing to do. Kind of fun to talk over old times.”

  “Great. I’m enjoying it too. So, you’d explained about the code necessary to deal with the overflow of a text message, how it had to be stored someplace?” Meghan went back to her notepad, already covered with information. She prayed she’d be able to make sense of it all when she got off the phone.

  Three hours later, she called Dan.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “I found it.”

  “What? Sycophanta’s heart?”

  Meghan swiveled around to check that her door was shut. It was. “Very funny, but no. I’ve found the key to getting ProCell dropped from the case.”

  “That’s gre— Wait, I thought we wanted to get them severed.”

  Meghan wanted to dance, she was so thrilled. “I think we can get the plaintiffs to drop ProCell entirely.”

  Silence.

  Finally, Dan spoke very slowly. “Okay, I know you mean that, but that’s going to require plaintiffs’ counsel to agree to drop them. They’ve got the FCC case, why would they drop ProCell when they can show ProCell paid the FCC fine?”

  “By giving plaintiff’s counsel—and the Feds—a Sherman Act case.”

  She could hear Dan whistle at the thought of an antitrust violation—proof that the defendants conspired to fix prices. That would generate punitive damages…and a lot more money for the plaintiffs. “No way.”

  Meghan grinned. “Pretty sure. I’ll need to collect some evidence, but yeah, I think we’ve got a smoking gun against Argus and Tech 3.”

  “Get over here now. I’ll tell Tessa to hold my calls.”

  Meghan gathered up her notes—the original sheets and her carefully typed out transcriptions—and walked around the corner to Dan’s office.

  He was on the phone when she walked in.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I’m free.” Pause. He waved Meghan over to a chair. “Great. Will do. Bye.” He hung up.

  “Okay, hold on.” He shut the door then returned to his chair. “Start at the beginning, okay? I’m still pretty stupid on this case.”

  She took a deep breath. “R
emember we talked with Vince Johnson about how Jenner had the number three spot in the market but then they went bankrupt? Argus and Tech 3 stayed in the top two spots, while ProCell rose up to take over Jenner’s spot?”

  “Sure.”

  “Johnson’s office faxed me some names and addresses of former Jenner officials. I started to call them, but was getting nowhere until one of them—Tom Stevens—called me back. He’d just remembered he had a company phone book on his computer.”

  “And he shared it?”

  “Stevens was on the board of directors. I gather he was pissed off at the CEO for driving the company into the ground.”

  Dan pursed his lips. “Okay. Any worries that he was feeding us bad information?”

  Meghan shook her head. “There was nothing there but names, departments, and extensions. But I started Googling all the people in their engineering department, and I found the man I wanted. His name is Greg Agnarsson. He’s a retired mid-level guy, but it turns out he did all the work on the SMS system for Jenner’s phones.”

  “Nice.”

  “Best part is that Agnarsson’s name isn’t anywhere in any of the Jenner material I could find on my own. It’s not in the bankruptcy filing, not on the SEC filings, nowhere.”

  Dan pulled out a pad and started to make notes. “Okay, so let me see if I understand. You got to this guy only by getting a company phone book from before the bankruptcy—”

  “Agnarsson retired in 2001, and Jenner filed for Chapter Eleven in 2002, so even the company directory at the time of the bankruptcy won’t have his name.”

  “Excellent. And the director, Stevens, who gave the directory to you—would he hand that over to just anyone?”

  “I doubt he’d give it to the plaintiffs’ counsel,” Meghan said. She thought about it. “Or the Feds, for that matter. The fact that I represented ProCell mattered to him.” She rolled her hand in a circle. “I think you’ll see why in a minute.”

  Dan leaned back. “Okay, I’m intrigued. Go on.”

  “Agnarsson is old-school. He has notebooks for every project he ever worked on, he has copies of every email, you name it. He even recorded our conversation.”

  “Did you agree to that?” Dan squinted as he looked out the window. His lips twisted. “It’s not a privileged conversation.”

  Meghan put her hands up, her palms batting air toward Dan. “Relax. I think you’ll find we’ll be covered there as well.”

  Dan’s smile was slow and lingered. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”

  “It’s true.” Meghan laughed. “Oh, by the way, thanks for rescuing me from—”

  “Sycophanta. Yes, that was nice of me. You can repay me later.”

  Meghan blushed. “Moving on. Here’s the juicy stuff. Agnarsson says he wrote the code that resulted in the overbilling.”

  Dan’s chair snapped upright. He put his hands on the desk. “Holy shit.”

  “It was a glitch, he says, and I believe him. But he knew about it and, more important, Jenner’s management knew about it.”

  “They knew it would result in nearly imperceptible overbilling?”

  Meghan nodded slowly. “And…” She paused for effect. “Jenner told ATC.”

  “American Telecom? The service provider?” Dan stared at her. “You mean, the overbilling wasn’t accidental?”

  “Quite deliberately not accidental. ATC made a deal to have Jenner share the glitchy code with Argus and Tech 3.”

  She watched as Dan put the pieces together. If Agnarsson’s account was true, such an action by ATC would amount to price fixing, collusion, and a violation of who knew how many federal and state laws.

  “I haven’t started to research all the laws they violated,” she said. “I can get onto that, if you need to know…”

  “Don’t worry, it’s a lot. That’s all we need to know.” Dan picked up one of his wooden puzzles and started to twist its pieces this way and that. Finally he put it down. “We need proof. Specifically, we need proof that ProCell wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “Agnarsson taped the meeting.” Meghan waited. In her entire career, she might never again hold such an explosive piece of evidence. She was going to savor the moment.

  “He has the tape? After ten years?”

  She nodded. “He went and got it and played it for me. Not all of it, but enough for me to tell it’s of the right meeting.”

  “My head is exploding. How did a mid-level engineer tape a meeting—who was at the meeting, anyway?—in which Fortune 500 companies colluded to defraud their customers?”

  “Exactly my question.”

  Dan shook his head. “No, there’s a hole, a gap, something. It can’t be this easy.”

  “I thought so too,” Meghan agreed. “He’s an engineer. The way he tells it, his boss knew that he taped all his meetings as a way of taking notes. And his boss’s boss knew. But, for reasons that I think you can guess at, Jenner’s CEO didn’t consult any of Agnarsson’s bosses when he asked Agnarsson into the meeting with ATC’s head of marketing and the CEOs of Argus and Tech 3. Agnarsson says he put his recorder on the table, already running. The conference room was cluttered with papers, files, coffee cups, napkins, half-eaten Danish, you name it. According to Agnarsson, the recorder was in plain sight and no one noticed it.”

  “Okay, let’s look at that for a moment.” Dan fiddled with his pen, not looking at Meghan. “This engineer may have violated anti-wiretapping laws, but chances are the statute of limitations has passed. In any event, he would get immunity from the Feds if they decide to use his evidence.”

  “And he’ll need a lawyer,” Meghan pointed out. “I’ve offered Fergusson’s services.”

  Dan lifted his head. His eyes had never looked bluer. “Which makes your phone call with him…”

  “Covered by the attorney-client privilege…”

  He finished her thought. “Even if he uses a different lawyer. Brilliant.”

  She nodded. It had been one of her better ideas. Then she had a thought. Shit. “Except, I’m not a lawyer here. I can’t offer representation, I’m not authorized.”

  “True. But you were working for ProCell, so your conversation is work product and not discoverable by plaintiffs’ counsel. Agnarsson can produce the tape, but they’d still have to find him.”

  “Not quite as good, but probably safe enough,” she said.

  Dan went back to his pen fiddling. “Okay, so why is ProCell safe?”

  “Because Argus and Tech 3 made it a condition of the deal that ATC shut out ProCell. Agnarsson says that’s on the tape.”

  “Holy shit,” Dan said again. “That’s on the tape?”

  “I didn’t hear it, but Agnarsson is certain it was part of the deal. Worst case would be we’d have to show that ProCell’s technology didn’t have the coding glitch that Jenner shared with Argus and Tech 3.”

  “So the plaintiffs’ case just went from the accidental overbilling the FCC uncovered to some very lucrative price-fixing claims.”

  “Which should help ProCell in their current market share, I was thinking,” Meghan said.

  “We need to nail this down before we even tell Lou. Hell, before we tell the managing partners here,” Dan added.

  “Right. So what I was thinking was that someone should go to Ohio to meet Agnarsson, gather his evidence, retain him as a client, and so forth.”

  Dan frowned. “No one is getting credit for this but you.” Then his face relaxed. “And as I’ve pledged to supervise you at every turn, I guess I’ll have to go with you.”

  “It’s just document review, Dan. As much as I’d love to do it as a couple—” That sounded wrong, but Meghan didn’t want to correct herself and make it sound worse. “Anyone on the team could do this.”

  “It’s a hell of a lot more than document review. We’ve got to figure out how to get plaintiffs’ counsel to drop ProCell in exchange for the smoking gun. Let me think about that, okay? And in the meantime, don’t talk to anyone about this cas
e. Not even Lou, if he were to call you.”

  “Okay, but why?”

  “Because this is a lot bigger than we thought. As I understand it, three men know Agnarsson was at that meeting. They’ve forgotten all about it because it was ten years ago, and anyway, why would anyone care about a glitch in technology that’s a decade old? As soon as the plaintiffs go after those three companies for price-fixing, all bets are off. Agnarsson is at risk as long as he’s the only one who has the evidence. I don’t want to go all John Grisham here, but I’ll feel better when we have copies and Agnarsson’s sworn deposition as backup.”

  “Jesus. Do you really think he’s in danger?”

  Dan stopped fiddling to look at her. “Not yet, and if I have anything to say about it, not ever. But it’s a risk. This is going to destroy some people, but they don’t know that yet. As soon as they realize what we know, your engineer’s at risk. We have to make it clear it’s too late to stop the destruction.”

  Meghan flopped back in her chair. She knew she had something important while she was talking to Agnarsson. That’s why she was so annoyed when Vicky deliberately interrupted her, even though luckily—

  She sat up again. “Vicky knows his name. Unless she listened for a long time, that’s pretty much all she knows, but still. She doesn’t like me.” Meghan winced at how self-important that sounded. She was about to qualify it when Dan spoke.

  “No, you’re right. Okay, I think I know how to deal with this.” He reached for the phone. “Hi,” he said in a low, warm voice. “I have a problem only you can solve. Can you come down?”

  He rolled his eyes as he listened. “Great. See you then.”

  After he hung up, he turned to Meghan. “This is going to be unpleasant, so I’ll apologize now, okay?”

  Her eyes widened. What was about to happen? “Sure.”

  Dan went back to fiddling.

  When Vicky knocked, Meghan jumped.

  “Hi, Vicky,” Dan said in his warm syrup voice. “Have a seat.”

  Meghan shifted her legs so Vicky could sit in the other chair. The redhead immediately pulled the chair a few inches closer to the front of Dan’s desk, making it obvious that theirs was a tête-à-tête to which Meghan could only be a witness.