Sacrifice, Part One

Three quick knocks on the door made Frank Towers look up from his computer. “Yeah?”

            “Frank?” Sean Plunkett, the chief financial officer, stood just inside the door. “Got a minute?”

            “Sure, uh—” He fumbled to press Save on the computer. “What’s up?”

            “It’s about the board meeting next Saturday.” Plunkett walked in, leaving the door open.

Towers clicked on the computer to save his work, suddenly nervous. He was 52, planning for retirement, and worried mostly about his hairline, not his job. What was going on? Nervously, he texted his wife he’d be home late, then put his phone down on the desk. “Am I in trouble or something?”

“No, nothing like that.” Plunkett smiled. “Brad?”

Then Bradley Hallinan walked in. CEO of Hallinan Furniture. He closed the door. “Hi, Frank.”

            “Brad.” Towers nodded, his muscles tensing. “Is something wrong?” Oh shit, I’m getting fired. 

            “You know we’re having a board meeting next Saturday.” Hallinan stood in front of him, hands on his desk.

            Towers nodded, nervous. “Yeah. The rebranding, right? I’m getting all the numbers together, they’re looking pretty good, all things considered. Fretter Lumber is on board for a partnership—”

            “That’s fine, Frank.” Hallinan smiled. “This is something else. Something important.”

            “Okay.” He swallow, bracing for the bad news. “What is it?”

            Hallinan gazed down at Towers. “We need . . .” He took a deep breath. “A sacrifice.”

            “A s-sacrifice?” What the hell was he talking about. “What kind of sacrifice?”

            Hallinan stepped back and crossed his arms. “You.”

            No one outside the office heard anything. No one saw the two executives leave 15 minutes later. No one saw Towers slumped behind his desk. No longer breathing.

 

 

Cathy Linden, senior marketing manager at a company called Hallinan Furniture, was looking at me through her glasses with sharp dark eyes. “My husband is dead. He died at the office last Thursday, but there was no reason. They said it was heart failure but that doesn’t make sense, Frank was in great shape. He worked out, didn’t drink, ate right, lots of, uh, energy.” She bit her lip. “It just doesn’t make sense that he’d just drop dead at his desk.”

            We were sitting at an Evanston McDonald’s. Cathy was in her 40s, with silvery blond hair, wearing a blue business suit that looked better than any business suit I owned. It was her lunch hour, apparently.

            I hesitated. “So what can I do for you? Specifically?”

            Sometimes people hire private detectives with only a vague idea of what we can do. I’ve had people ask me to find lost pets, dig up dirt on celebrities, penetrate the CIA, prove the existence of aliens, and all kinds of impossible assignments. Okay, I’ve met some aliens—along with vampires and other mysterious creatures, but proving their existence to a skeptical world? Not so easy. 

            “Frank was in charge of supplies—the wood and fabric and everything else that goes into making furniture. His title was VP of Construction Elements.” She sighed. “It’s an area where there’s potential for cheating. Kickbacks for ordering from certain suppliers, or switching in low-quality stuff and keeping the difference. I don’t know that he found anything about anybody, but I know he was talking to the CFO about it. I’m not saying—well, this is the last text he sent me.” Linden tapped on her phone. 

            Last-minute meeting, the text read. Sean. Not sure how long, maybe late. Love you. It had been sent at 7:32 on Wednesday of last week.

            “That’s Sean Plunkett, the CFO. And there’s a big rebranding effort coming up,” Linden said. “Everyone’s involved. Same name, but new tagline, new logo, website redesign, everything. There’s a board meeting about it this Saturday. So everything is kind of crazy right now. But I don’t know why Sean would have wanted to meet with Frank last Thursday after work.” Linden sighed. “I asked him, and he said there wasn’t any meeting. And he looked at me like—well, I know Frank wasn’t having an affair. He didn’t want to say it, but that’s not it, I just know. But even if he was and they’re covering it up? I don’t care. I just have to know.”

            So was I looking for financial fraud, infidelity, or something else? It’s easy to feel sorry for what clients are going through, but it’s still hard to help them sometimes. “I think it would be impossible for me to just walk in and start asking questions—”

            “Oh, I can arrange that,” she said quickly. “That’s not a problem.”

            Okay . . . “How?”

            “I’m a senior marketing manager there. I can have you come in as, uh, a consultant or something. You can poke around and ask all the questions you want.”

            That might work. “Maybe. I probably couldn’t pull it off for very long, but . . .” I did have bills to pay. Plus, I was getting married soon, and even though we weren’t planning an extravaganza, a little extra money for the honeymoon wouldn’t hurt. “Let’s talk this over.”

 

I went home and sent some emails to tie up a few other cases for a couple of days. Then I did some research on Hallinan Furniture.

            The company had been founded in 1922 by Daniel Hallinan and two partners. By 1935 the partners were gone, and then Daniel Hallinan died. His widow, Eleanor Hallinan, took over the company and ran it until 1949, when her son Daniel Jr. became CEO. It was still controlled by the family—a grandson named Bradley was the current CEO, and two cousins were on the company’s board of directors. One was Sean Plunkett, the CFO.

            Business had gone from bad to good many times over the years. The workforce had grown to 400 employees or so by the 1960s, and now had about 200. They didn’t have to post earnings, but their press releases boasted decent profits over the past few years, economic turmoil and all. Although the last two quarters were down from previous years.

            I found Francis Towers’ obituary. B.A., Northwestern University, MBA, University of Chicago. Twenty-three years with Hallinan Furniture, starting in sales and moving up to VP of Vendor Relations until his unexpected heart attack. He was survived by his wife, two children, and some cousins. 

            I went through my cover story, repeating elements of it out loud so I could make it sound natural. Then I started working on dinner.

Rachel got home at 6:30. My girlfriend—actually, my fiancée, as of a few weeks ago. I heard her lock the door and drop her laptop case. “Gonna change!” she shouted, and went into the bedroom.

She’s got red hair, hazelnut eyes, and slightly psychic powers. She’d just finished grad school with a psychology degree, and was in her first few weeks at a job in a counseling office where she saw patients and helped with paperwork. As long as I’ve known her she’s been a freelance graphic designer, and her usual wardrobe was jeans and T-shirts. She’d spent a few hundred dollars on “professional” clothes to wear to work.

Rachel came into the kitchen a few minutes later in shorts and a sweatshirt. “How was work, dear?” I asked as she opened the refrigerator for a beer.

“These people are crazy.” She took a long swallow and sighed. “I mean the partners. The patients are great. I mean, they’re only assigning me the easy cases. They’re keeping the serial killers and conspiracy theorists to themselves.”

“Selfish bastards.”

“What about your day? What’s for dinner? Answer the second question first.” She sat down at the table.

“Tacos. Beans, cheese, avocado, rice, everything but kale, and I can put that in if you want.” I stirred some refried beans warming up in a pot. “And I’m going undercover.”

            Rachel snorted. “Undercover? You? What is it, terrorists with a nuke? Drug dealers holding the mayor’s son hostage? Or literally under covers in a cheap motel looking for cheaters?”

            “All those sound good. I’m actually a consultant infiltrating a furniture company. Very James Bond.”

            “Furniture? See if you can get a discount on a new kitchen table.” She rapped her knuckles on the tablecloth. “We’re getting married, we deserve new stuff.”

            “I’ll ask the client. Ready to set a date yet?”

            “I don’t know.” She stared at her empty plate. “Maybe after dinner.”

            “I don’t know if I can get a minister here that fast—”

            “Shut up, jerk.” She finished her beer. “We just have to make sure my mom doesn’t find out and show up.”

            I’d never met Rachel’s mother, for reasons she only hinted at. The fact was, we were both still getting our heads around the idea of marriage. We’d been dating for a long time, living together for years, but we’d been gun-shy about marriage for as long as I could remember. I’m not sure what made me propose. Maybe the thought of getting health insurance now that she had a job with benefits. And the fact that she looks good in shorts.

            “So why are you going undercover?” She started putting together a taco.

            “Unexpected death at the company. Suspicious widow. Possible financial fraud. Probably nothing, but can you quiz me on my cover after dinner> I’m using my own name, but I want to make sure I get everything straight.”

            “Hmm . . .” Rachel grinned. “Could we do a role play?”

            “Uh, sure.” Yeah, we like to play games. “Got to be ready for anything in my new job.”

 

 

“And for the last bit of business, I want to introduce all of you to this guy.” Cathy Linden pointed to me. “He’s a consultant doing a project for me, a benchmarking thing on management practices here at Hallinan. Stand up, Tom? Guys, this is Tom Jurgen.”

            I stood up, feeling awkward. The six employees stared at me. Two nodded. A woman smiled. A man shrugged. The other two just sipped their drinks—a bottle of water and a can of Pepsi. I gave a small wave.

            “Hi, I’m just here for a few days, looking at best practices in leadership and management.” I smiled. “I’ll stay out of your way. Just asking questions here and there.”

            More nods. 

            “Okay,” Linden said. “Remember I need all your numbers for the board meeting at the end of the week. That’s all.”

Then the meeting was over. Everyone started picking up their drinks and laptops to head back to work. 

            I knew their names, so I followed the nearest man, Phil Gravick. “Hi.” 

            Gravick was in his 20s, Black, with a nearly shaven scalp and a thin beard. “Hi. Consultant, huh? Who do you work for?”

            “Dunn and Associates. We’re small. Boutique. So I hear the company is recruiting a new VP of vendor relations.”

            “Yeah.“ He walked down an aisle separating rows of gray cubicles. “Frank just—well, he died. Right here in his office. Weird. Didn’t Cathy tell you that?”

            “Yes, she did. I didn’t want to push too hard. I’m interested in recruiting, among other things.”

            “Yeah, you want to talk to HR about that. Leticia Waters.”

            “I’ll do that. What was Frank Towers like?”

            Gravick came to his cubicle and turned to face me. “Uh, he was fine. Didn’t talk to him much. Nice guy. I mean, married to my boss, right? But he was all right. Far as I know, everyone liked him.”

            “Funny that he died so suddenly.”

            “Yeah.” Gravick sat down. “Well, I got work to do, so . . .”

            “Yeah, thanks.” I left him alone.

            Linden had assigned me to a cubicle. I sat down, opened my laptop, and made a few notes. Then I started walking around and asking questions.

            Vickie Addison didn’t know Towers at all. “I just stick to my work,” she said, tapping a pen on the edge of her desk. “I think I met Brad once. Bradley, the CEO. He seems okay, but I don’t—” She lowered her voice. “I don’t trust people on top that much. My father—anyway, I only hang out with people in the department. But Hugh knows a lot of them, I think.”

            Hugo Peterson had a wide smile and lots of energy. And opinions. “Brad is focused on the bottom line like a shark,” he told me as we were getting coffee. “But he’s—” He leaned toward me. “Doesn’t connect with people on the front lines, you know? Always talking about ‘sacrifice,’ but he makes a million dollars a year. No, the best guy is Sean. He’s the CFO. He’s brutally honest, but in a good way, you know? He doesn’t waste time telling you what’s wrong—or what you’re doing right, to be fair.” He grinned. “Well, anyway, there’s Sean, and Celia, she’s in Communication, they’re both great with people, really good teams.” He poured some cream into his cup. “This is all confidential, you said, right?”

            “Absolutely.” I’d agreed with Linden that I’d only report on what people told me about her husband and his death. “What are their specific management strengths?” I had to make this good.

            He told me that Sean Plunkett was blunt but crystal clear about what he expected. Celia Mueller, head of communications, listened to her people and had a strong sense of empathy—plus, she could put complex ideas and issues into simple language. I heard about Jared Robbins, a woman named Natalie, and others, ending with Joe Hannish, senior VP of Manufacturing.

            “He’s out at the Workshop—that’s what we call it, where everything gets built. It’s bigger than a workshop, you know, but they like to call it that, makes it feel homey. Joe knows everything about how to build stuff, and he’s a great teacher. I was out there for a few days last spring, working on a promotion with an ‘inside the company’ kind of thing. Real friendly, shares everything, and they all seem to love him. Delegates a lot of decisions and responsibility, especially since he had a heart attack last year.”

            “Heart attack?”

“Yeah, but he’s fine now, and everything’s humming along there.”

            “Maybe I’ll talk to him.” I made a note of the name, with Heart Attack? next to it. 

            After talking to Peterson it was lunchtime. I ate a sandwich in my assigned cubicle, and in the afternoon I talked to the rest of the team, finding out a lot about the management structure at Hallinan Furniture, the different leaders and their styles, the coffee in the break room, which restrooms were the cleanest, how the tables and chairs were priced, and which marketing campaigns had succeeded and which had tanked.

            By 3:00 I’d learned more about the furniture business than I’d ever wanted to know, and gotten a few pieces of possibly relevant information: Bradley Hallinan was aloof, rarely mixing with employees below the executive level. His emails were cold and impersonal. But everyone agreed that Sean Plunkett was friendly but firm, without wasting words when something wasn’t up to standards. He could be generous, though—he once hosted an employee party at his house, a mansion in Arlington Heights with a tennis court and a hot tub. 

Everyone liked Frank Towers. “Nice” was the word most people used, but Hugo Peterson said Towers seemed worried a lot. 

            I finally hit the last person on the team: Valerie Kim, in her 30s, who’d been at Hallinan for more than a decade. I asked her how the culture had changed, and she thought for a long time, arms crossed, staring at the floor of her cubicle.

            “They made Brad CEO eight years ago,” she said. “Before that he was in finance, I think. The CEO before him died. He had a stroke, and they found him in the parking garage. Business was bad, and Bradley held a big board meeting to figure out what to do. He laid off a bunch of people, but then things turned around, fast. Really fast. He didn’t hire anyone back, so we worked harder, but there was more money, and he did buy a bunch of new equipment. It was just—a big turnaround, and I don’t know how he did it.”

            “So, no insight into his management style?” I had to keep reminding myself why everyone thought I was here.

            “He doesn’t talk to people like me.” Valerie shrugged. “That’s okay. I get it. I just keep thinking about Ryan.”

            “Who’s Ryan?”

            She sighed. “Ryan Foster. He was a director on the design team. He had really good ideas, and they made him VP of Planning, but that was right around the recession, and everything was going down. Things got better for a while. Then they were planning a big board meeting, this was about four years ago, and the day before, Ryan had some kind of seizure in his office, and he hit his head and died. They didn’t even postpone the meeting. He wasn’t a director or anything, but they ignored it. They could have done something, but they didn’t.” Valerie shook her head. “Whatever they did at the meeting, though, it somehow turned things around. It just seemed like they didn’t care about Ryan at all. But I kept my job. That’s what counts, right?” She gave me a sarcastic smile.

            At 4:30 I went to Linden’s office. I waited while she finished up a phone call, then sat down when she motioned me to a chair. 

            “It’s a little crazy.” She rubbed her forehead. “Business is down, and they’re starting to think about layoffs again. And they expect me to turn things around with my brilliant marketing mind, on top of—Frank. Christ.” She straightened up in her chair. “Did you find anything? I know it’s just one day, but is there anything at all? Or am I just crazy?”

            “I can’t say yet.” I glanced at my notebook. Yes, I still write things down in a notebook. It’s a habit from my days as a reporter. “One thing that’s interesting. The CEO before Bradley died of a stroke, and was found in the garage here, and a VP named Ryan Foster also died unexpectedly here, from a brain injury caused by a seizure—”

            “I remember that.” Linden bit her lip. “I didn’t work with him much, but he seemed like a nice guy, really sharp.  Wait, you don’t think—"

            “At least three people in 10 years have died at this company,” I said. “I don’t know what the actuarial tables would say about that, but it seems a little high. What it means, I couldn’t say right now.” Did they find out that Sean Plunkett was making side deals with employers, like Linden had suggested? And he killed them to keep the secret? But that didn’t make sense—none of them had been murdered. Bad karma?

            “Huh.” She leaned forward. “I didn’t see that, but you’re right. But that doesn’t make sense. I know, I know—” She held up both hands. “I hired you because Frank’s death doesn’t make sense. I just didn’t think . . .” She looked away from me.

            “Is there something else?” My client seemed deep in thought suddenly.

            “Maybe . . .” She blinked. “I didn’t think about this before. But Frank said a few days before he—he died, something about Ryan Foster. He knew Ryan better than I did, they played golf together sometimes. He was at Ryan’s funeral—I didn’t go, because I had to stay with our kids and I didn’t know him very well, really. When he came home, he said he overheard someone say, ‘I hope this is it for now.’ He didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded funny to him.”

            “Who said it?”

            She shook her head. “I don’t know. Not Brad, he wouldn’t have been that close by. Maybe Sean? They talked sometimes.”

            I made a note. “Is there any kind of corporate history I could check for unexplained deaths? An intranet, a newsletter?”

            “Talk to Celia. Celia Mueller. She’s director of communications. She could help you access that. Except—” Linden frowned. “I’ll have to think of something to tell her so you can get full access. Let me call you tomorrow.”

            “Okay.” I looked at my notes. “There’s a Joe Hannish who had a heart attack last year. Do you know about that?”

            Linden rubbed her nose, thinking. “Yeah, I remember that. It was pretty serious, but he seemed to bounce back from it. Do you think . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Are heart attacks contagious? Or is there something in the air? No, he’s out in the Workshop. None of this makes sense. Maybe I’m just going crazy.” She took a deep breath, and then seemed to pull herself together. “No. Forget I said that. I’m not crazy. There’s something going on in this company.”

            “It looks that way,” I agreed. “There’s nothing concrete yet, but I can keep digging. I’ll talk to Hannish tomorrow. Where is the Workshop?”

            She gave me the address. “Thank you. Let me know what he says.”

            “Yeah.” I stood. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

            Out in the hallway, on the way to my cubicle to pack up my laptop, I ran into Phil Gravick again. “How’s it going?” he asked. “Getting lots of good stuff?”

            I shrugged. “It’s a start.” 

            “I was thinking . . .” He motioned me toward the men’s room, standing beside the door. “If you’re really interested in the management here, you might talk to Calvin Riley. He used to be director of one of the manufacturing divisions. He knew a lot of people, and most of them are still working here.”

            The bathroom door opened and an employee came out, straightening his shirt. Gravick stayed silent until he was out of sight. 

            “Why did he leave?” I asked quietly. He obviously didn’t want anybody hearing us.

            “He was fired. Don’t know why, just the usual email: ‘Calvin Riley is no longer associated with or employed by Hallinan Furniture. If you have any questions, go ask HR.’ His office was empty in about two seconds.”

            “Anyone talk to him?”

            “Not that I heard.”

            I nodded. “That might be useful. Thanks.”

            “Didn’t get it from me.” He grinned, then darted into the restroom.

            I grabbed my laptop and took the elevator. In my car, I called my client.

            “Calvin? Yeah, I remember him. He quit a few years ago.”

            “My source says he was fired.”

            “Who told you—okay, never mind, that doesn’t matter. I’ll see what I can remember. When you talk to Celia and get access to the employee news, maybe you can dig up more. Are you going to talk to him?”

            “I can probably track him down. If you want me to.” 

            “Yeah, go ahead. Jesus, I wonder if this is just a waste of time. I’m still—processing everything.”

            She’d been holding it together pretty well when talking to me, but I know losing a spouse is a special kind of nightmare. “How about we decide tomorrow if this is worthwhile. You can pull the plug if you want. For that matter, you can stop right now—”

            “No, not right now.” She took a breath. “Tomorrow is another day. Just like Scarlett O’Hara said.” She laughed. It sounded like her first laugh in a while.

            We hung up. I started the car to head for home. It was Rachel’s turn to make dinner.