“You ready?” Bennie asked, as Mary sat down, swiveling her chair to face the front. Mary’s documents, notes, and laptop occupied the east side of the conference table, and Bennie’s documents, notes, and laptop occupied the west. They had decided on the way back to the office that it made sense for them to give each other a progress report on their respective tasks.
“Go for it.” Mary popped the top of her Diet Coke.
“Okay.” Bennie consulted her notes. “I’ll summarize what I learned rather than take you through the Excel spreadsheets and the source data. You can thank me anytime.”
“Thank you.” Mary smiled.
“Obviously, if we were looking at the defense of an employment discrimination action, I would have focused on Simon’s sales performance and that’s what I would be breaking down for you. Suffice it to say that the call logs, purchase orders, andsales figures support what Todd was saying, that Simon didn’t make quota in his last month, which was June. In other words, the documents back up their claim in the employment discrimination case.”
“Which we don’t care about right now.”
“Right.” Bennie consulted her notes. “What I focused on is Todd. I was trying to learn as much as I could about Todd, his sales, and his clients, so we can figure out who or why anybody would want to kill him. I requested department-wide sales figures, which made absolute sense when this was an employment discrimination case, and that includes Todd, who still sells. So we have Todd’s sales figures for the past year.”
“I didn’t realize.” Mary perked up.
“Todd told me during our interview that he kept the big clients, he called them his bread-and-butter. Now that I’ve looked at his sales figures, I know what he meant. OpenSpace manufactures and sells cubicles, and that isn’t a business that gets a lot of reorders from the same customers. Not like a paper company or a company that sells office supplies. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“The only exception to this is Todd’s five top clients, which are growing companies that are opening branches or franchises in the area. So they have the possibility of reorders.” Bennie picked up a Sharpie and began writing on the easel paper as she spoke. “They are: Number one, Hartmann Insurance, an insurance brokerage in Wayne. Number two, Your Next Contractor, a call center in King of Prussia and referral service for area contractors. Number three, Anywhere Office in Jenkintown, which rents cubicles and workspaces to people who can’t afford to rent an office.”
Mary took notes on her laptop.
“Number four, SAT Academy, an SAT prep service out of Devon that’s taking over the Main Line, and number five,Jamison Mackleheeny, LLC, who we both know is a litigation support service that hires contract lawyers for document review in major multidistrict litigation. In other words, a life of indentured servitude.”
“Lawyer hell.”
“Yes.” Bennie nodded. “Now. We learned something very interesting from the guard at the country club today, thanks to you. We learned who golfs in Todd’s regular foursome. I wrote the names in my phone. Mr. Davis, Mr. Cullen, Mr. Nustrall, and previously, Mr. Gallagher.”
“Right.”
“And I looked them up on the way here, while you were on the phone with Detective Lindenhurst. They have LinkedIn accounts and they’re in the white pages, and it turns out that two of them are with Todd’s top clients. With one exception.”
“What’s the exception?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. We’re going to do this in an orderly fashion.” Bennie turned to the poster board and wrote as she spoke. “Rick Davis is the president of Hartmann Insurance, and Brandon Cullen is the owner of Anywhere Office. So who is Mo Nustrall?”
“Who?”
“I looked him up in the white pages online, which gave his last known address as Lansdale, PA. He lives there with his wife, and her maiden name is Linda Matewicz, which is a name you don’t forget.”
“Is she related to Ray Matewicz?”
“I bet she’s his sister. There weren’t any other families with that surname in the area.”
“Whoa.” Mary made a note on her laptop. “So Todd is tight with Ray’s brother-in-law.”
“That’s interesting to me, especially considering that Ray Matewicz is high up at OpenSpace—and also one of the employees claiming that Simon defamed Todd and the company.”
“Me, too.”
“And if you look up Mo Nustrall, you’ll find that he has a LinkedIn account and he’s a VP of Sales at PowerPlus, which is another of Dumbarton’s subsidiaries.”
“Good to know.” Mary nodded as she typed.
“That leaves Mr. Gallagher, whom the guard said used to be in the foursome. I looked him up online, but Gallagher is such a common last name and I don’t know the first name. There were a lot of corporate and management types in the area named Gallagher, but I cross referenced it with Todd’s clients and found Pollstar.” Bennie went around the side of the table to her laptop and hit a few buttons. “I remembered something from the sales reports that didn’t make sense at the time.”
“What?”
