Me, too, Felicity thought with a faint stab of regret. Me, too.
CHAPTER 10
Mint Condition
Charles Stone looked like one of those swaggering ex-high school football stars who hadn’t realized he’d gone to seed. His handsome face, framed by thinning blond hair, was flecked with faint red blood vessels—a sure sign his party-boy image was well earned. Broad shoulders gave way to a beer gut that puckered the buttons on his expensive-looking blue-and-gray business shirt.
With a smile he no doubt thought was charming, Charles rocked back in a black leather chair that was too big for his office at Charles Stone Sporting Goods. Some ego, naming a store after yourself when it was your sister who’d bought it for you to run.
His office was lined with shelves of collectibles. Baseball wasn’t Felicity’s thing, but she knew enough from her sister to recognize a few famous players. Heather had displayed posters of her favorite players in her room for years before discovering new-age men with earrings, VW buses, and weed.
Charles followed her eye. “You like baseball?” he asked, looking enthused.
“No.” Felicity folded her arms.
He didn’t seem to know how to answer that. After a moment, he eyed her up and down. “So my secretary tells me you’re a fancy lawyer high up the greasy pole at Bartell Corp. Darlene left out the bit where you look like a movie star. Is that something you do on the side? Make movies?” He smiled and leaned over his desk toward her, as subtle as a rutting bull.
Felicity forced herself not to move an inch. “I have no time to do anything on the side when I’m so busy taking over newspapers and magazines with my boss and stripping them for assets. Think of me like a legal vulture, Mr. Stone, tearing flesh from bone.” She gave him a cold hard smile to sell her bullshit. “Occasionally, I even let some companies keep their entrails.”
The man’s shudder was almost visceral. “I…see.” Charles cautiously leaned back again and cupped his hands over his lap. “So what can I do for you?”
Felicity drew in a breath. “I’ve been talking to your brother-in-law, Harvey Clifford.”
“Okay.” He looked puzzled. “And?”
“And I know about Harvey’s extensive merchandise orders with Shenzhen Industries. The same company you use for your collectibles, I understand. You even recommended them to him.”
“Sure I did. Why wouldn’t I? They do some great merchandise.”
Guess confirmed. A thrill shot through Felicity.
Charles’s expression was shuttered. “And your interest in his merchandising is…?”
“I’m investigating what happened to a sizable donation made to Living Ruff—$1.4 million.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Harvey mentioned an investment that size came in last year. So that came from your company?”
“I never said that.”
“Why would you be investigating it otherwise?”
Well, he had her there. “Fine. Yes, it was my boss’s money, but she’d rather it wasn’t commonly known.”
“All right.” Charles gestured her to go on.
“And since her donation apparently ended up in China with nothing I can see to show for it, I’d like to know more. I’m talking to you because Shenzhen Industries is the company that you convinced Harvey to use.”
Charles regarded her for a long moment, then said dryly, “Harvey doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, for a start, he’d have explained what happened. He might have, oh, I don’t know, mentioned the landslide that wiped out half of Shenzhen Industries’ infrastructure causing a huge backlog on jobs while the factory is being repaired.”
“A…landslide.” Felicity eyed him in astonishment.
“A big one. Four lives lost along with plenty of homes and thousands of jobs washed away in mud and rock overnight.” Charles rummaged around in his desk, drew out a folder marked Shenzhen, and flipped through it. Pausing, he withdrew a news article written in Chinese and placed it in front of Felicity. The photo showed what looked like half a hill had landed on a factory.
He prodded the picture. “Shenzhen Industries had a major setback, no denying it, but the manager told me orders will resume once rebuilding is finished. In fact, Harvey placed a few more orders to help kick things along. The rebuild’s ahead of schedule. All the goods ordered, including mine, will start arriving soon, and Harvey is well aware of all this. My question is, if you’ve been talking to Harvey, why don’t you know all this?”
“You’re saying my boss’s donation is financing part of Shenzhen Industries’ reconstruction? She didn’t sign up for that.”
“No, Ms. Bartell made a donation to a charitable foundation.” Charles looked unfazed by the steel in her tone. “And that donation was invested in products that will yield a return for Living Ruff when they arrive. Didn’t Harvey tell you any of this?”
“Actually, he’s been cagey. That arouses suspicion, so here I am, trying to understand what went on.”
“Ah. Okay. I get it now.” Charles supplied a confident smile. He leaned even farther back in his chair. “That’s just Harvey being Harvey. He’s probably worried you’d tell his staff about his grand plans, and they’d make fun of him again about ugly toy animals.”
“You mean the orange dog on his desk?”
“That’s the one. He can be quite sensitive.”
“Please tell me he didn’t order thousands of those.”
“What?” Charles burst into laughter. “Oh God, no. Shenzhen makes quality merchandise, not crap. You want to see what he did order? I have some of the prototypes around here somewhere. They came in bundled with one of my orders to save shipping costs. Harvey didn’t take all his samples.”
Charles rose and led Felicity through the back of the shop into a storeroom. He stopped in front of a shelf that held a small cardboard box. He opened the flaps. “Okay, remember these are just prototypes. The finished ones will be branded with Living Ruff, but you get the concept.”
He plunged his hand into the box. “The idea is, he sells them at all sorts of fundraisers, charity events, schools, you name it, and it’s a constant source of income for the charity. Between me and you, old Harvey’s a little self-conscious about the fact that almost all his donations tend to come from my sister’s fancy fundraising parties.”
Charles dumped a pile of plastic shapes in front of her. “He’d like to be more self-sufficient than relying on his wife. It’s a dream for him, fulfilling this project. Harvey has plans when the shipment lands to get the media involved, too.”
Felicity studied the cartoon-shaped plastic dogs, cats, and fish in front of her. The quality was extremely good, and the animals were certainly eye-catching enough to work as fundraising items. “Will he ever be able to sell enough of these to get Living Ruff’s money back?”
“That’s where I come in. Merchandising is something I specialize in. I’m already set up for it, which is why he came to me in the first place for advice. And until that landslide, Shenzhen was rock-solid reliable with fantastic quality. I speak from personal experience.”
He moved to a different box, this one huge with crisp, clean flaps. “See?” Inside were more figurines of baseball players. He pulled a couple out. “This was my last order from Shenzhen six months ago. I’m almost sold out—can barely keep these babies in stock.”
Up close, she could see that the attention to detail on the players’ faces was intricate and lifelike.
“The quality isn’t something those cheap cowboy collectible manufacturers can reproduce.” His thumb ran lovingly over one of the figures. “And any time some major league player comes in, I get him to sign a couple in his likeness, auction them off, and donate funds to a junior sporting charity. It’s a really good system.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Harvey has seen me do this for years and wanted to know how to get into merchandising, too. When he asked me for advice the first time a few years ago, I tried to talk him out of it. You really only make a mint when you can do a vast production run. That means Harvey would buy his animals for a dime each and sell them for ten bucks. You need the capital to do economies of scale, and he didn’t have it. He dropped it after that.”
“But isn’t he rich?” Felicity asked.
“His wife is.” Charles chuckled. “But he’s hardly going to ask my sister for money when the whole point of the exercise was proving he could make money on his own. Harvey’s got too much pride for that. He wants to show her and everyone else that he’s good at this. Worthy. She got him the director job. Did you know that?”
