Gabriella’s lips twitched into a smile. “Which I have every intention of earning.”
The mood in the conference room had turned tense, unlike the playful vibe I’d gotten when Gabriella had first entered the room. “Still, there can’t be too many women at your level,” I added, hoping to relax her a bit with the compliment.
Instead, her voice grew strident. “A woman was named president and COO of Mattel last year. And there are a few others outside of the toy industry—CEOs of apparel companies and that specialty produce company in Los Alamitos.”
“Frieda’s?”
“That’s the one. But you could still fit all of us into an elevator and have space left over.” She checked her watch again, tapping its face impatiently with one French-tipped nail. “Where is Mario, anyway?” she asked Merritt.
“Finalizing the schedule for your meetings in New York,” the attorney murmured, eyes back on his cufflinks.
Gabriella turned back to me. “How long have you been a detective?” she asked, clearly stalling for time.
“On the department since ’seventy-nine, made detective in ’eighty-two, and worked homicide for the last eight years.”
“Are there many female homicide detectives in the LAPD?”
“More females than in your corporate CEO elevator, but probably not enough to field a decent football team.”
This time it was Merritt who glanced at his watch. “Perhaps we should . . .”
Thor cleared his throat. “Let’s not monopolize these good people’s time.” He went on to give her the highlights of how Nilo Engalla had been found, and the cash discovered in the former intern’s car.
Gabriella listened with a look of growing surprise on her face. “And so you suspect this Engalla kid killed Mr. Shareef and shot my dad and Alma?”
“He’s been your chief suspect since he disappeared last summer, hasn’t he?” Merritt asked.
“It’s a little premature to make that assumption without more information, Mr. Merritt, which is why we’re here,” Thor said smoothly.
“What has he told you?” Gabriella asked. “Will you be putting him in a lineup, see if Alma or Mrs. Shareef recognizes him?”
“We need a few questions answered before we do that,” Thor replied. “Have there been any large sums of money missing from the company’s accounts?”
Gabriella looked to Merritt, who shook his head slightly, his mouth pulled down at the corners. “None that I’m aware of.”
“Although we haven’t received a final report from our external auditors,” Merritt hastened to add.
“When do you think that will be?” Thor asked.
“What was that about the auditors?” A man, a head shorter than Gabriella but curly-haired and more olive-complected, entered the conference room from Gabriella’s office. Mario Zuccari, as stern and proper as I’d remembered from last summer, had lost a few pounds since our first interview. It was understandable.
When I’d met him in July, Mario had been grief-stricken over his father’s shooting but clearly anticipating being named his successor. And as I gathered background information on him I understood why. He had all the tickets—summer job on the company’s warehouse floor at fourteen, took a year off from school to help his father with the relocation to Orange County, eventually earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from Stanford. He’d been Chuck Zuccari’s right hand ever since, taking on operating assignments in the company’s Latin American and Asian divisions before becoming, at thirty-five, executive vice president and chief financial officer, a position he’d held for the past five years. I wondered how he felt about his hair-tossing, couture-wearing sister getting tapped to run the company instead of him, even if only temporarily.
Mario introduced himself to Thor and nodded hello to me across the table. “When should we be receiving the auditor’s report?” Gabriella repeated.
“We’re just resolving some loose ends, so maybe three or four weeks,” Mario replied. “Why?”
“They want to know if the auditors discovered any cash discrepancies.”
Mario unbuttoned his navy suit jacket before sitting down next to Gabriella, revealing a tiny navy blue cross at the bottom of his dark red tie. “My sister forgets that our revenues were almost two hundred million last year. How would you expect the auditors to find a missing twenty-seven thousand?”
Thor and I exchanged a look. “We didn’t say how much money was found on Mr. Engalla,” he said.
Merritt frowned while Mario’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m sorry, did I get the figure wrong? I thought that’s what they said on the news this morning.”
I caught the way Thor pursed his lips and knew he was as annoyed about the media’s revelations of key information about Engalla as I was. “Perhaps you can have your Finance Department look into it,” he said to Gabriella.
“I’m the company’s chief financial officer, and the Finance Department reports to me,” Mario replied, his words clipped. “And unfortunately, my people don’t have time to drop everything to look into this. They’re deeply involved in our upcoming meeting with analysts in New York.”
“And there’s the annual shareholders’ meeting in April,” Merritt reminded him.
“You’re aware this could lead us to who killed Mr. Shareef and shot your father?”
Mario glared at Thor, mottled color rising to his cheeks. Before he could reply, Gabriella reached over and encircled his wrist. “Maybe we could get the Internal Audit Department to check into it.”
Mario disentangled himself from her grasp. “It’s certainly more important than that other matter the Audit Committee asked them to investigate,” he conceded. “But that request would have to come directly from the board.”
Gabriella glanced down the table at Merritt. “We can speak to Mother about it,” she said, her tone making it more of a question than a statement.
Mario frowned as he put the tip of a pen in his mouth. With his close-cut sandy curls, he looked a little like that doll in the case. Or an Airedale worrying a chew toy.
“Both of your parents sit on the board?” Thor asked Gabriella.
“Before the shooting,” Merritt broke in, “it was just Mr. Zuccari. But afterward, the family felt it needed representation, given its sizeable block of voting stock. So the other directors decided that Gabriella and Mario’s mother should fill Mr. Zuccari’s seat temporarily and be put forward to the stockholders as chair of the board.”
“That must have happened after our interviews last summer,” I noted.
“It was the end of last year,” he agreed. “But Mrs. Lippincott’s appointment isn’t official until after the shareholders’ vote in April.”
Mario cleared his throat. “Gabby, on second thought, having our internal auditing staff look into possible missing cash is not such a good idea. A few of them worked with Nilo and might try and protect him.”
“Then what’s your solution, Mario?” she snapped back, annoyed—whether at her brother’s change of heart or his using her nickname, I couldn’t be sure.
Before he could answer, Thor said, “Perhaps we should speak to Mrs. Lippincott.”
“I hardly think that’s necessary,” Merritt objected.
Still irritated, Gabriella waved away Thor’s suggestion. “I’ll take care of it, Detective. Don’t worry, we’ll get you what you need.”
A look passed between the siblings that reminded me of when Perris and I locked horns. Mario broke the stare-down by turning to Thor. “Didn’t the news say the money was found in Nilo’s car at the scene of the accident?”
The corners of Thor’s mouth pulled downward again. “Why do you ask?”
“Point is, you don’t know who it belonged to.” Mario Zuccari looked from one to the other of us. “The money might have been someone else’s who was riding with him and not have come from CZ Toys at all. Or Nilo could have gotten it some other way.”
Thor tilted his patrician head slightly to the left and considered Mario as i
f he were an interesting toy in the case behind him. “What way did you have in mind, Mr. Zuccari?”
Mario’s face reddened again under the scrutiny. “I was just suggesting that you might be better served to talk directly to Nilo,” he said stiffly, “rather than disrupt our company’s operations.”
“The police don’t need us to tell them how to investigate their case,” Merritt said with an apologetic smile to us. “Other than checking for any missing funds, what else can we do for you, Detective Thorfinsen?”
Ignoring the attorney, Thor asked Mario what he could tell us about Nilo Engalla. “Was he a good employee?”
“His supervisors said his work was acceptable, but they only had him working on special projects. Can’t give these kids too much responsibility.”
I wondered whether Mario’s last comment was a slur against Nilo’s inexperience or his ethnicity.
“Who were his supervisors?” Thor asked.
Mario resorted to his fingers. “Natalie Johnson in Accounts Payable, Felton Carruthers in the controller’s office, and Howard Hebson in Internal Auditing. And given that Nilo worked with Hebson and his people in Internal Auditing, I don’t think we should ask them to look into whether he might have embezzled that money they found on him.”
“You said that before.” Thor referred to the notes he’d been taking. “You’ve mentioned external auditors and an internal audit department. What’s the difference?”
Gabriella sat back and gestured to Mario for an explanation. His color calmed down a bit and he cleared his throat again. “An external audit is designed to determine if the financial statements prepared by management fairly present the financial position of the company. The board’s Audit Committee selects an independent accounting firm—”
“Like Price Waterhouse or one of those Big Eight firms,” Gabriella explained.
“My sister gets her audit information from watching the Academy Awards.” Mario’s sculptured lips twisted into something between a smile and a sneer. “Financial professionals know that mergers have reduced the Big Eight significantly.”
Gabriella rolled her eyes and reached for a bottle of Perrier.
“We use Shuttleworth and Bezney, which is a regional firm and a bit more hands-on than the ‘sincere blue suit’ outfits.”
“What specifically do they do?” Thor asked.
“Audit our balance sheet and the related statements of operation and changes in net assets. They also focus on how we book revenues and inventory, cash and cash equivalents, accounts receivable from our distributors and customers, accounts payable from our suppliers, major contracts from vendors, that kind of thing.”
“And how are they different from this internal audit department you mentioned that supervised Nilo?” Thor pressed.
Gabriella checked her watch and shook her right hand as if to hurry her brother along.
“Our internal audit department conducts special focus reviews and process improvement in areas like financial accounting, operations, and information processing. In short, it provides an added layer of control we deem appropriate for the company.”
Thor nodded as he made a note. “That’s a lot of work to be sure you’re stating your profits accurately.”
“Or losses.”
Mario Zuccari frowned and looked my way. “What did you say?”
“Profits or losses.”
A veil dropped over his blue eyes, but I could tell CZ Toys’ chief financial officer was pissed that I would even suggest the possibility. “That goes without saying.”
“Although last year was tremendous for us,” Merritt hastened to add.
“The last two years, actually,” Mario corrected.
I murmured something suitably complimentary, prompting Mario to reply: “Seventeen cents net income per share was what we projected this year, but we’re coming in closer to twenty.”
Thor made another note. “So there would have been nothing last summer of a financial nature that might have worried Mr. Zuccari?”
“Nothing that we know of,” Merritt replied, and looked down the table at Gabriella, who shrugged. Next to her, Mario was drawing ovals on his notepad.
“Gabriella was out of the country during that time, Detective,” Mario explained, looking up from his handiwork. “But, as two of this company’s key executives, Robert and I can assure you that in July, as we were going into our third quarter, we’d been tracking ahead of our projections, and the stock price was up. What was there to worry about?”
“What about the letter he received?” Thor asked.
Merritt seemed to pale at the question. “What letter?” Gabriella asked sharply.
“Dad got a crank letter from some woman a while back is all, Gabby,” Mario said as he frowned at his notepad.
“And that’s all it was, Gabriella,” Merritt said, his color returning. “Nothing that need concern you, my dear.”
Gabriella shrugged, checked her watch again, and began to push her chair away from the table. “Then if there’s nothing else—”
“There is one more thing.” Thor closed his notebook with a soft thud. “We’ll need to interview Ms. Johnson, Mr. Carruthers, and Mr. Hebson as well as Mr. Engalla’s coworkers in those departments.”
“That was done months ago!” Merritt objected.
We think it would be useful to speak with everyone who knew or worked with him again. And we’d like to talk to one of the auditors from Shuttleworth and Bezney, as well.”
“Certainly,” Gabriella agreed, a look of surprise on her face. “My brother can arrange that, can’t you, Mario?”
Mario nodded, although his jaw was set in a manner that said he’d rather be doing anything else besides carrying out his little sister’s wishes.
“Good. Detective Justice and I can be back here tomorrow morning—say at ten?”
“Gabby,” Mario whispered, leaning close, “I’m flying out with you tomorrow to meet with the analysts, remember?”
“Perhaps you should stay here and work with the detectives.”
Mario whispered something else to his sister that I couldn’t make out. She mulled it over for a moment, then nodded. “Mario’s right,” she said to us, “I’m going to need him in New York.”
Merritt said: “I’ll stay here and oversee the interviews, Gabriella, not to worry.”
Gabriella’s assistant appeared at the door. “I’ve got Mr. Agnafilo over in Laguna on the line.”
Gabriella rose and walked around the table to shake our hands. “Mrs. McIntyre is at your service. She or Mr. Merritt will know how to get in touch with us in New York, should you need to speak with me or Mario directly.”
Gabriella strode out of the office, Mario close on her heels. Merritt lingered behind. “Thank you for your discretion about that letter,” he murmured to Thor. “Mr. Zuccari would have been mortified if some wild-eyed story about his father had gotten back to his family or out to the press. He’s always been a stickler about appearances.”
“That I can see,” Thor said, looking about the elegantly appointed office. “Did you try to find out who wrote it?”
Merritt started stacking up his papers. “Not really. Chuck was adamant that we not give it any more attention than it deserved, but we still took certain precautions.”
“The outside PR firm and the extra security,” I reminded Thor.
Merritt nodded. “We wanted to be prepared for any eventuality, but as Mario said, it turned out to be nothing.”
Thor nodded thoughtfully. “Do you know where the letter is now, Mr. Merritt?”
The attorney gave an elaborate shrug. “I think it irritated Chuck so much, he eventually destroyed it.”
“And you didn’t keep a copy?”
“Mr. Zuccari never let any of us see the damned thing,” he said, with an embarrassed chuckle, “never mind copying it!”
“But you were concerned enough to hire the PR firm and the extra security personnel?” Thor pressed. “Why, if it was so insignifica
nt?”
“Just being prudent. The PR consultant helped us craft a response in case the rumors got to the press. And as for the security, Mr. Zuccari was worried some Jewish survivors’ group might try and accost him—you know, act out in some way like those god-awful PETA people. So, we had our security chief add an extra guard in the lobby and a private detail to keep an eye on Mr. Zuccari’s residence. He was pretty annoyed by that. God knows what he’d say about the guys at the hospital.”
“Was that necessary?” I asked.
“Mario thought so.” Merritt stood up a little straighter. “Enough to hire two private contractors, through our security department after the shooting.”
“Ex-cops?” Thor asked.
Merritt shook his head and pursed his lips. “Given the attempt, Mario felt Mr. Zuccari needed something a little earthier, if you will.”
Thor and I exchanged a look. “Did Mr. Zuccari say there was a specific threat in the letter?” Thor pressed.
“To be perfectly honest with you, I thought Chuck was going a little overboard,” Merritt said as he walked to the door. “From what he told me, that letter was just a bunch of innuendos from a bitter, disgruntled woman.”
After the door closed, I said to Thor: “What’s Gabriella playing at?” I was about to say more when Thor put a finger to his lips and moved across the room to sit next to me.
His note read: I think the room is bugged. Maybe mics in the table somewhere.
I ducked under the conference table to inspect the fabric-covered shelf running around it, which was full of plugs and dials. And discreetly placed microphones.
“I don’t think Mario told his sister anything about Engalla.” I wrote on the page he’d started.
Thor nodded emphatic agreement. “I need to make some calls,” he said aloud as he resumed writing. “Give me that number for Alma Zuccari. I’ll call and tell her we’re on our way. You make the arrangements for tomorrow.”
And get the lowdown on the family, his message read.
6
Hell in Heels
It wasn’t until I was at the wheel, steering us deeper behind the Orange Curtain, that I felt I could talk to Thor freely. “Mrs. McIntyre was so full up, she was about to burst.” I filled Thor in on the son’s background history with the company, and the initial impressions I had of his expectations about the job, which McIntyre had confirmed. “But Gabriella’s mother went to bat for her baby girl when the board brought her in as the interim chair. She convinced them Gabriella would be better suited to serve as interim CEO than Mario. McIntire said they literally had to remove the son from his father’s office, he was so sure he was getting the job.”
Strange Bedfellows v5 Page 6
