This story is the eleventh in a series. This installment is less erotica than usual but is necessary, in the author's view, to move the overall story along. Hopefully, it is still an entertaining read.
*****
I have to admit that it isn't often to my experience that you meet a girl's parents while you are standing naked with her after having just publicly fucked her for over an hour. Notwithstanding the atypical circumstances of our meeting, Erin's parents, Greg and Brenda, turned out to be good, broad-minded people. They play roles in stories yet to be told.
On balance, life seemed fairly good. The public sex with Erin was the beginning of her becoming a complete part of our family; although we still required her to wear clothes at work. I was inexplicably fortunate to be surrounded by three ladies as intelligent, personable, and incredibly beautiful as Sarah, Carla, and Erin.
With Sarah taking over the transactional part of our practice after Mala's departure, Carla teamed up with me on the "Sinking Hillside Condo" case. We took another trip to Munich to prepare our German engineer/expert witness for his deposition. This allowed me to introduce Carla to Ute, the fun of a German nude coed spa, and the joy of lying naked in the Englischer Garten. Using me as a teaching tool, Ute introduced Carla to the art of prostate massage. The reaction this produced convinced Carla that she needed to practice her new skill frequently. I didn't dissuade her.
Following a very strong deposition given by our expert and a poor deposition given by the man who had been the defendant's lead engineer on our clients' project, we got a settlement. While our clients did not recover their full anticipated profit from the condo building that slid down the hill, they did net a couple million dollars. They were happy.
Life seemed pretty decent that morning when Sarah suddenly appeared in my office door. Ordinarily, the sight of Sarah's stunningly beautiful nude body in my door would raise my spirits further. However, the look on her face told me that something was very wrong. She reinforced that foreboding by closing my office door behind her. We never closed doors in our offices.
"Harry, we've got a problem. Last evening, I was looking for some older information about the contemporary dance troop. When I couldn't find it in the paper files Mala left, I looked in her computer. You know, none of us have gone through what's on Mala's computer since she left. Anyway, I found this." Sarah handed me a string of e-mail which she had printed out.
Reading them in chronological order, I saw a message from Mala to Claire Richardson about 18 months ago asking about something in the dance troop's corporate records that had Mala confused. Claire's response was chilling. Claire had very openly admitted to approving payment of bogus invoices submitted to the dance troop and several of the other non-profits which she led and admitted to pocketing the money.
Mala's response to Claire showed someone trying to alert their client to a serious problem without irritating the client sufficiently that the client tuned them out. Mala did not tell Claire outright that she had committed theft. Rather, Mala's reply used phrases like "aggressive prosecutor" and "could." Mercifully, Mala had avoided giving Claire any advice for going forward so there was nothing documented that could be construed as Mala advising Claire on how to cover her tracks. When I finished reading, I looked up at Sarah questioningly.
Sarah was agitated. "Harry, Mala never told anyone."
"Well," I said, "Claire is a client and this was in confidence. I'm not sure Mala could disclose this."
"Harry," Sarah shrieked, "those non-profits were also clients. Don't you think Mala had some duty to inform them that Claire was stealing from them? Also, you know as well as I that, once someone starts this sort of thing, they usually keep on. Professional Conduct Rule 4.1 requires us to disclose information necessary to avoid assisting a client to commit an illegal act. We still need to report this."
"Ok," I said, "You may be right, but we're not making that call by ourselves. I at least want an opinion from an outside lawyer that we are obligated to disclose this."
The best white-collar criminal defense lawyer in town worked at the large form where I used to work. He had been the Chief Assistant US Attorney for the Criminal Division in our district. I had worked the civil side of a few of his cases once he came to my old firm. We got along well and I respected his judgment. I gave Ron a call.
After hearing the situation, Ron said, "Harry, I think that you need to disclose this and I'm worried about complicity exposure if you don't. But, I want another opinion on the ethics issue. Sorry my friend, but this is going to cost you some coin. I'm calling" and then he named the leading professional ethics lawyer in the state.
Ron was able to get the ethics specialist on the phone. That lawyer confirmed that we had reason to believe that Claire's thefts were ongoing and that we were, at least, ethically permitted to report what we knew. He also advised that we had to stop representing Claire and all of her non-profits immediately. There went 95% of Sarah's work.
A few days later, Sarah, Carla, and I were sitting, uncomfortably clothed, in Ron's office explaining what we knew to a couple of Assistant US Attorneys. That was soon followed by the empanelling of a federal grand jury. The grand jury subpoenas included all data and every computer in our offices. Sarah, Carla, and I were all subpoenaed to testify. Confident that we had done nothing wrong, we decided, with Ron's advice, to testify rather than invoking the Fifth Amendment. Carla and I had never worked on any of Claire's matters. Fortunately, the USAs either didn't know or didn't care about our social activities with Claire and Rick. Carla and I were each out in a few hours.
Sarah was a different story. Next to Claire, who was staying silent, Sarah knew more about the operations of the non-profits than anyone else in town. Claire had been a major contributor and the procurer of most of the other major contributors. Her fellow board members were completely happy to enjoy the prestige while letting Claire run the show. Mala, of course, knew a lot more than Sarah. However, no one could get a hold of Mala in India. As much as I love Mala, even I had to concede that the timing of her move looked suspicious. Consequently, Sarah spent several grueling days in front of the grand jury. A "little bird" told us that the lead USA on the case was trying to build a case against Sarah and Mala.
A couple of things, I think, saved Sarah. First, a thorough review of all the records disclosed no evidence that Claire had taken any money from any of the non-profits after Mala's e-mail warning Claire that what she was doing "could" be considered criminal. Second, the dance troop and the other non-profits all used the same outside accounting firm. Considerable digging revealed that Claire had bought a Mercedes and given it to one of that firm's partners and had paid for a number of very expensive trips for him and his wife. That gave the USAs a professional target against whom they had a much better case than against Sarah.
Finally, word came down that the federal grand jury was being dismissed. While there may have been federal crimes, the USAs had decided that the primary crimes were local and that this should be prosecuted at the state level. They were turning their investigatory files over to our county prosecutor.
I groaned inwardly upon learning that. Prosecutors in our state are elected and the one in our county was always happy to grandstand to keep his name and "tough on crime" image in front of the voters. More specifically, he was very sensitive to the local media. Our daily newspaper, which is way to the right of conservative, had already said in almost these words that any lawyers who worked naked must be involved in these thefts and other heinous conduct besides. I feared that the Prosecutor would take a run at us to placate the paper.
