The next morning, after bickering with Rachel about wedding plans over breakfast, I tracked down Calvin Riley through his LinkedIn page. He’d taken a management job in Skokie at a plant manufacturing different kinds of gaskets and similar products. I got him on the phone, but he couldn’t talk right away—“I’ve got a meeting in five minutes”—but he agreed to a call in the afternoon.
I got the feeling he didn’t want people at his new job overhearing him talk about his old job. But I tried not to think about it.
Rachel was working from home—her job was only three days a week, so she was keeping some of her graphic design clients—so I kissed her goodbye before I left her to head up to Evanston again.
Then I drove to the Hallinan “Workshop”—a warehouse sized building on the west side of Evanston. I parked in the lot in back, walked around to the front door, and was immediately intercepted by a young man in jeans, heavy work boots, and a clipboard. “Can I help you?”
“Tom Jurgen.” I offered a hand. “I’m a consultant, I’m doing a project for Cathy Linden in marketing? I just happened to be in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d stop in and take a look at your operation here. I’m studying leadership techniques. I was hoping to talk to Joe Hannish.”
Aside from my name, pretty much every part of that sentence was a lie, but the man—Victor—seemed to accept it. He made a quick phone call; Joe Hannish wasn’t available to talk to me, but Victor offered to show me around and let me ask a few questions to the men and women working on building furniture.
The main room at the front, as wide as an aircraft hangar. was filled with dozens if not hundreds of varieties of wood and fabric—teak, chestnut, oak, mahogany, and more, as well as huge hanging spools of leather, suede, damask, tweed, velvet and more, in patterns and shades and textures that were soft, firm, soothing, dazzling, or whatever the customer wanted.
Beyond that big room lay a cluster of workshops. I heard table saws grinding boards, and hammers slamming nails as the Hallinan employees—mostly men but more than a few women—assembled their products: big sectional sofas, plush reclining armchairs, long dining room tables and stout chairs to match, dressers taller than me, kitchen cabinets with thick glass doors, and everything else that a well-stocked home needed. A large freight elevator sat in the back of the building. “We do some work upstairs,” Victor explained, “though most of it’s down here. Upstairs is mostly files and meeting rooms.”
I made some notes, mostly about what pieces I wanted to buy if I could ever afford it, but I remembered my cover story and managed to get some information on Hannish’s management style: straightforward, patient, focused on quality, and the like.
Victor pointed him out as we were walking past a workshop for tables. “That’s him.” Hannish was tall, in a loosened necktie, sleeves rolled up. He had a thin face and bony arms, and he was smiling as he talked to a group of workers standing around a row of half-assembled kitchen cabinets. “I’m afraid you can’t interrupt him right now—”
“That’s fine. I heard he had a heart attack last year. Is he doing okay?”
“Yeah, I guess it was pretty mild.” Victor stared at him. “He even made it to the board meeting the next week. Came out of in better shape than before, and a little, well, tougher.” He grimaced. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”
“Not at all,” I assured him. Then I stopped, peering at a small shop at the corner of the building. “Are those—”
“Yeah.” Victor nodded. “We do make coffins.”
A woman was sanding the lid of a dark mahogany casket, ignoring me as I looked back and forth. Six coffins, most of them unfinished, sat across the room, waiting for lids, or stain, or polish, or a body. One in the corner was complete—shiny and dark, lying on a long table, lid closed tight.
The woman looked up at me. I nodded, and she went back to work without any acknowledgement.
I let Victor lead me back to the front. An office with a big glass window stood beside it, door shut and blinds down. A wooden staircase ran up to a second floor. Files, Victor told me, and meeting rooms, not that they held a lot of formal staff meetings. “They hold the board meetings here,” he told me.”
“Why here?”
“Uh, tradition, I think.” He rolled his eyes, as tradition was ridiculous. “Eleanor Hallinan started it back when this was the main corporate HQ.” He forced a smile. “Well, if you don’t have any more questions—"
I thanked him for his time. He seemed relieved that I was going, and fortunately he didn’t ask me any questions about what I was doing there before I could leave.
I got to Hallinan’s corporate office at 10:30 and went looking for Celia Mueller, director of communications.
In her 50s, she wore thick glasses and a slender gold bracelet, and she smiled cheerfully when I introduced myself. “Cathy told me you’d be coming.”
“I just need to access your employee communications,” I told her. “Newsletters, the intranet, anything like that. Northing confidential.”
“Of course.” She set me up with a temporary account and password and a company email. I took out my laptop and logged onto the network so she could show me how to find what I needed.
“Great, thanks.” I skimmed through the latest intranet posts. “So let me ask, you, how do you handle things like employees leaving? Or deaths? Are there any announcements?”
The word “death” made her flinch. “Poor Frank. Yes, well, when it happens—not often, thank God—we usually post an appreciation on the site, unless the family asks us not to. We always contact the family first. If someone leaves, well, we might offer some good wishes, but the news doesn’t always get to us here in comms. And we don’t want to spotlight some employees and leave out others.” She shrugged. “If it’s a high-level leader, we’ll usually thank them for their service here and wish them good luck. And if they’re fired, well, we don’t have anything to do with that. HR handles that.”
I closed up my laptop. “Did you know Frank Towers well?”
“Not so much. Meetings and emails. He seemed nice, and Cathy’s a sweetheart.” She cocked her head. “She’s the one you’re working for, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “But we’ve been talking about this project for a while. Since before her husband died.” I hoped I wasn’t overdoing my cover story. “Okay. Thanks for your help.”
Back at my cubicle I dived into Hallinan’s intranet, dubbed “Hallinan Happenings.” The search function helped me find the official notice about Towers, expressing sadness and shock about his death, along with appreciation for his years with the company and sympathy for his wife, complete with funeral information and a link for charitable donations in his name. I found a few other posts about Towers, but dealing with suppliers wasn’t a very flashy topic compared to big marketing campaigns, new hires, the company holiday party, and other news.
I found more about Ryan Foster, the Design team leader who’d died. Design was a little sexier, apparently, at least because it had lots of pictures of tables and sofas and other new products Hallinan Furniture was trying to hype. Foster was a young guy in his 30s, good-looking with blonde hair and a cheery smile, and he was captain of the company softball team in the summer. His death got a longer post than Towers, with more pictures, and a link the college fund for his infant daughter.
The CEO before Brad Hallinan got a much bigger write-up, naturally. His name was Kenneth Ericson, he’d been 63, with the company for 14 years, and left behind a wife and four adult children. Bradley Hallinan was appointed interim CEO in the immediate wake of his death so he could manage an upcoming meeting of the company’s “Board of Leadership.”
Board meeting . . . I looked into the Board of Leadership and discovered that it functioned like a board of directors in a publicly held corporation, with all the high-level VPs and C-level types, held on an irregular schedule whenever the CEO called one. I checked through the system and saw that one was happening this coming Saturday. I remembered Linden mentioning it at the meeting where she’d introduced me.
Huh. I got up and made my way to Linden’s office, nodding to Hugo and Valerie at their cubicles. She looked up when I entered, nodded, and ended a phone call. “What’s up?”
I closed the door and sat down. “What can you tell me about the Board of Leadership?”
She leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “It’s a big deal. The senior VPs, and Donald, the COO, and Sean, the CFO, and Brad of course, they hold this kind of conclave every year or so. Eleanor Hallinan started it up in the 1950s, I think. I don’t know what goes on there, I’m not invited, but they always come out with big plans and new campaigns, and the rest of us have to put them into action. And things usually just get better somehow.” She picked up a coffee mug, looked inside, and set it back down. “Why?”
“I don’t know if it means anything, but it looks like at least three times, an executive has died shortly before one of those meetings. And Joe Hannish almost died of a heart attack before one.”
She blinked. “Really?”
I told her about Ericson, and Foster. She stared at the top of her desk, thinking. “Does it mean anything?”
“I have no idea. There’s no sign of foul play. But it’s an interesting coincidence.”
“I guess.” Linden frowned. “I was ready to give up just now, but maybe—is there anything else?”
“I’m going to talk to Calvin Riley later.” I stood up. “I’ll tell you what I find out. Then you can decide if you want to keep going ahead.”
Linden nodded. “Okay. I hope—I don’t know what I hope, really. Just let me know.”
“Sure thing. If you want to let it alone, that’s fine.” I didn’t want her to think I was trying to milk her for money.
“Thanks.” She picked up her phone. “Back to work?”
“Right.” I made my way back to my cubicle and spent a half hour looking for deaths in the company. I found a few over the years, only a few of them right before any board meetings. I’d need a course in statistics to figure out if they were just coincidental or significant. I read up on Hallinan history, using the intranet and also outside sources. The business had its ups and down over the years. Nothing unusual for the industry, as far as I could tell.
Then I went wandering, looking for people to talk to. Most were agreeable, for at least a few minutes, and I asked about management practices, morale, job satisfaction, and the like, slipping in some questions about the Board of Leadership, mentioning Towers’ death, and trying to find anything unusual that might point to a reason behind the other deaths.
I found out more about who the good managers were, how much people like Frank Towers and how little they understood the workings of the Board. I also got a few vague rumors—affairs, petty theft, people who didn’t flush—but nothing that helped me investigation.
I was ready for lunch when my phone buzzed with a text. My client. Come to my office right now.
Okay. That seemed unusual. I made my way through the maze. A man walking past Linden’s door saw me and stopped. “You’re the consultant, right? Tom, uh—”
“Jurgen, yeah. I was just on my way to see Ms. Linden.”
“That’s fine.” He nodded. He was in his 60s, balding, with a tight necktie and long arms. “Sean Plunkett. Finance. Let’s talk later. I’d like to help.”
“Sure thing. Thanks.” I moved aside to let him pass, then stopped at Linden’s door. I knocked. Nothing. But she’d told me to come right away, so I opened the door—
Cathy Linden lay on the carpet, her body twitching as if she was having a seizure. She’d hit her head on her desk, and blood was dripping down her temple.
“Help!” I shouted, dropping to the floor. “Call 911!”
She looked up at me, blinking. Her legs kicked. I grabbed her shoulders to roll her on her side, but she was shuddering too hard. She lifted her head toward me, her eyes wide. Her mouth moved.
“Sack—” she whispered. “S-s-sack, sack, sack—”
“Okay, don’t worry about that now,” I told her. I looked over my shoulder and saw Valerie Kim, her phone at her ear, staring at Linden. Then Hugo Peterson was next to her, his mouth open in shock.
I leaned down, trying to hold her still as she jerked, spit running down her cheek. Then her body went limp.
I started CPR, frantically, my own heart pounding, and I kept it up for what seemed like hours until the paramedics arrived and took over. But it was too late.
My client was dead.
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