Exit Strategies

by Catherine Todd

She shook her head.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ll think of something.”

  Mark’s phone call caught me just as I arrived at the office. I was late after my visit to Dunewood—not the best image for an associate on the make—but I was too tired and worried to care. Mark’s voice acted on me like a tonic.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m glad you caught me. I just got in.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” he asked. “I’ve been a little concerned. How did the weekend go?”

  I gave him a capsule summary, skipping some of the more colorful details, such as my rapprochement with Melissa and the whole trust issue. I ended up with Clarissa Harlowe’s untimely departure.

  “Clarissa Harlowe?” he asked with a laugh. “Isn’t that a character in the most boring novel ever written?”

  “Bingo,” I told him, impressed. “Although I think Finnegans Wake gives it a run for the money.”

  “Philistine,” he said.

  “So what do you think it could have been?” I asked him.

  “Sorry?”

  “That made her sick? I mean, if anything Bobbie gave her was responsible.”

  “I don’t know. What was Bobbie handing out?”

  “People were getting shots of human growth hormone. Everyone there seemed really into them.”

  “That wouldn’t cause arrhythmia,” he said.

  “There were pills too,” I said.

  “What did she say was in them?”

  “She didn’t. And after I heard about the incident, I couldn’t find her to pin her down. I’m really worried about this, Mark. I didn’t feel comfortable with what I saw down there.”

  “What will it take for you to get comfortable?” he asked softly.

  “The truth,” I told him.

  “Whatever it costs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then put it to her,” he said. “Tell her you have to know. Did anybody else show any unusual reactions?”

  “I don’t think so. There was a whole group of people there—some of them people you’d recognize—clamoring for treatments.” I described the opening night reception, exaggerating a bit, but only a little.

  “It sounds like the bar scene in Star Wars,” he said. “All kinds of aliens under one roof.”

  “True,” I said. “But I don’t think any of them woke up twenty again, whatever they might have taken.”

  “God forbid,” he said.

  “I liked being twenty,” I told him. “It was what came later that wasn’t as much fun.”

  “I was a geeky premed,” he said. “All I knew how to do was study.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I told him. I didn’t. He had always seemed so balanced, so fully developed, even when I knew next to nothing about him.

  “I assure you,” he said. “My parents didn’t want me to be a doctor, and I was determined to prove them wrong.”

  I laughed. “You must have had the only parents in America who didn’t want their son to be a doctor,” I told him. “Did they object for religious reasons or something like that?”

  “No, they wanted me to go into the family business instead.”

  “Wow. What was it?”

  He sounded uncomfortable. “Oh, just business,” he said. The way he said it, I wondered if it had been cement. He clearly didn’t want to discuss it further. “And speaking of family, how is your mother doing?”

  I explained—with some reluctance, since he’d been the one to suggest Dunewood—about my mother’s problem, which naturally led to my concern about what was I going to do if she couldn’t stay there when they wouldn’t let her live with me and I couldn’t afford nursing-home care. By the end, my eyes were watering slightly. I was glad he couldn’t see me.

  “Sorry,” I said ruefully when I had finished my tale of woe. “I guess there’s something about talking to you that brings out the confessions.” Another minute and I would have divulged the entire sordid trust story too, and the probability that I would be jobless before long. I thought our fledgling personal relationship was still a bit too tender for that. Besides, there were some things I needed to take care of by myself.

  “It’s the couch,” he said. “It’s too comfortable. Everybody says so.”

  “I’m not on your couch,” I pointed out. “I’m at my desk, in my office.”

  “The figurative couch,” he said. He paused. “Could you bring your mother into the hospital day after tomorrow?”

  “I guess so. Sure.”

  He gave me a name. “I’ll get you an appointment with this woman. She’s the tops in orthopedics. I’ll call you back with the time as soon as I talk to her.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “What are we looking for? She was checked out pretty thoroughly after her fall, and they said there was nothing physical other than the TIA.”

  “Anything. Who knows? You can’t be too careful. Something might have been overlooked. If we can’t find anything, we can get a psychological evaluation.”

  I was grateful, and I was impressed at his confidence about getting an appointment, but I wanted to ask him if the insurance would cover it. It seemed crass, so I let it go.

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s covered,” he said.

  A mind reader, in addition to his other attributes. “Thanks,” I said again. I looked at my watch. “I should be going,” I told him. “I have a lot of work to do. I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am, Mark. You’ve done so much for me. I really appreciate it. I mean it.”

  “Please, don’t, Becky.”

  “But—”

  “Please.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “So, are we on for this weekend? Saturday?” he asked lightly.

  “Sure,” I said. After my longevity weekend, I’d almost forgotten. I was glad he hadn’t. “When?”

  “Saturday? About four-thirty?”

  “Great,” I said. “That will give me time to check in on my mother beforehand.”

  I could hear the smile in his voice. “Four-thirty A.M., Becky.”

  My jaw might not have dropped, but it loosened a little. Dawn was a time to be spent in bed, with REM up and eyelids down. “Your favorite activity takes place at four-thirty in the morning?”

  He laughed. “Trust me,” he said. “You wanted to be surprised, remember?”

  I did and I had, but still. “What should I wear?” I bleated.

  “Layers,” he said firmly. “And sensible shoes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It was only ten o’clock, but I already felt as if I’d been in the office half a lifetime, and I hadn’t even started any work. There were so many other things going on in my life—the trust, my mother’s health problems, my future at RTA—that it was hard to focus on actual legal work. I looked at the pile on my desk with dismay. If I was going to be looking for another job, it wouldn’t help matters to look as if I was slacking off in the one I already had.

  I took the top envelope off the pile, the envelope handed to me by Bobbie’s minion at Casa Alegría. I’d assumed it contained copies of some lease agreements she’d wanted me to look at—a pro forma exercise, since Jamison Roth, the real estate expert, had already signed off on them. All I needed to do was check them over to make sure they conformed to the agreed-upon terms.

  I slit the envelope with my letter opener without any sense of premonition.

  So much for ESP.

  The documents in the envelope were not lease agreements. They were bank statements, confirming two accounts in the Cayman Islands. One, a new account, was in the name of Bobbie Crystol, with an initial deposit of $1,624,987. The other showed the transfer of $50,000 from the Crystol account to another Cayman Island account.

  The name of the second account holder was Taylor Anderson.

  I sat back in my chair (a cheap one, which creaked) to consider the implications. The documents were pretty clearly meant for Taylor. “Dr. Crystol instructed me to give this to her lawyer,” the man had said.


  Not me, obviously.

  I wondered what to do next. I couldn’t just give Taylor the documents and leave it at that. I mean, there might not be anything illegal per se about Cayman Island accounts, but the transfer of money to Taylor—which looked an awful lot like an off-the-books payment of some sort—smelled to high heaven, to say the least.

  Res ipsa loquitur. The rat in the soft drink bottle. The thing speaks for itself.

  Not only that, but Taylor had told me to my face he’d had nothing to do with Carole’s Cayman Island investments. The coincidence was too great to ignore.

  The question was, what to do about it? I had to have help—I needed to know more than I knew before I could proceed. But whom to ask? Lauren? Melissa? Whom could I trust to help me uncover the dirt on Taylor? Somebody who loved the law firm, or somebody who loved Taylor?

  Or had, anyway.

  I dialed the extension number. “Are you alone?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” Melissa snapped. “I’m here with Ryan. We’re going over some things. Why do you ask?”

  I took a breath. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I think I may have screwed something up on Jason Krill’s financing.”

  “What?”

  “I was wondering if you could help me with it when you get some time,” I said.

  “Christ!” She mumbled something—presumably to Ryan—that I couldn’t hear. “I’ll be right there,” she said.

  “Jesus, Becky, I was just talking to Jason,” she said, blowing into my office like a dust devil. “What’s the problem here?”

  I knew I could count on her. “Would you mind closing the door?” I asked mildly.

  She looked momentarily taken aback. “Yes, sure,” she said, closing it behind her. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. I know we all make mistakes, but—”

  I raised my hand to stop her. “Relax,” I said. “I haven’t screwed anything up, at least not that I know of.”

  “That’s good,” she said, “because Jason is very interested in hiring one or both of us.” She looked at me. “So why did you tell me that?”

  “Because I needed to get you in here with the door closed without arousing anyone’s suspicions,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “And you could predict my reaction?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Well, never mind. What’s up?”

  “Does anyone at the firm set up offshore accounts?” I asked her. “Is that part of our practice?”

  “Not that I know of,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  I handed her the documents.

  She looked at them and raised her eyebrows. “Where did you get these?”

  I explained about the mix-up.

  She frowned. “This doesn’t look right. Why should Taylor be getting a fifty thousand dollar fee transferred into some private offshore account? That’s not how our legal fees are collected.” She handed the papers back to me with a shrewd look. “So what do you want from me?” she asked. “I’m out of here just as soon as I get another job.”

  “Advice,” I said.

  “Okay. Before you say another word, here it is: Let it go. Let me help you find another job. Let Taylor twist in the wind, and if he’s up to anything he shouldn’t be, let it come out in the course of time. The world does not reward a whistle-blower, and there isn’t enough here to blow the whistle on anyway.”

  “Bobbie Crystol’s my client, or at least she was,” I reminded her. “If she’s up to something illegal, people might think I’m in on it.”

  She shook her head. “Not likely. You’re too low-level.” She looked at me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it quite that way. But it’s true.”

  By now I was getting used to Melissa’s habit of speaking her mind. “I’m not offended,” I told her. “You’re right. But I am the attorney of record. Besides…”

  “Besides?”

  I explained to her about the offshore investments that had drained the Pratt trust of a good chunk of its principal. “It’s a recent thing,” I said, “and I can’t help wondering if there isn’t some connection. What if Taylor is helping Carole and Bobbie hide some assets in Cayman Island accounts? The accountant told me it’s virtually impossible to penetrate the accounts because of the islands’ privacy laws. I’m not some vigilante Clytemnestra, but if there’s something like that going on with the trust, I want to know about it.”

  She looked at me and sighed. I could tell that the specter of Carole had kindled her enthusiasm for helping me. “I’ve got to meet this woman,” she said.

  “I’m sure it can be arranged,” I told her.

  “Okay, Plan B, then.” She picked up the documents again. “First, we make copies of these bank statements.” She tapped the envelope with a perfectly manicured nail. “Then we get a new envelope, seal it up, address it to Taylor, and sneak it into his in box. If he asks about it, I’ll tell him Bobbie gave it to me to give to him. Under the circumstances, you don’t want him to know you know anything about it.”

  “Definitely not,” I agreed.

  “I’m sure it goes without saying that it would be highly unethical, not to mention unwise, to say anything about this to anyone,” she cautioned.

  “I agree. What next?”

  “Next we go looking through the chron files,” she said. “Just to see what turns up.”

  The chron files were the firm’s daily files of all the work done by its lawyers, filed by date. “You mean, to see if there are any offshore account billings or anything like that? Do you think there will be anything there?”

  “That depends on whether it’s legitimate work undertaken by the firm,” she said. “We’ll see.” She smiled. “And after that…”

  “After that?”

  “We’ll see what Daddy has to say about it.”

  The chron files were essentially a backup to the firm’s files for each client. Their advantage for sleuthing was that the secretaries usually did the filing, while the lawyers sometimes kept their own client files. Secretaries, for obvious reasons, made much better filers than lawyers.

  Melissa and I took alternating days from the past week. There was a surprising amount of paper to look through—the firm’s partners and associates accounted for a lot of work every day.

  Melissa proceeded more slowly than I did, pursing her lips and shaking her head over some of the documents she found. It was obviously tough to be smarter than so many of your peers, because your sensibilities were always being outraged. My focus was somewhat different, so I made more progress.

  After about half an hour, Melissa glanced at the clock. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to quit after this bunch and finish later. I left Ryan working on something important, and I don’t want to leave him unsupervised very long. I’ll try to get back to it later this afternoon. I only have one more day to check.”

  “That’s okay,” I told her. “I really appreciate whatever help you can give me. I—”

  “What are you two up to?” inquired Wendy, stepping into the room. She looked taken aback to find us together, as if Sonny and Cher had somehow reunited. “Can I help you find anything?”

  “No, thanks,” Melissa said, returning her glance to the papers she was holding. I remembered why she was not popular with the staff.

  I smiled at Wendy. “We needed some backup on some work Taylor did for Crystol Enterprises,” I said. I prayed that Taylor was not in his office, raising the awkward question of why I didn’t just check with him. At least Bobbie was nominally my client, and anyway, I was pretty sure I could trust Wendy not to get me in trouble.

  Wendy looked surprised. “Well, you won’t find it in there, or at least you shouldn’t.”

  Melissa’s gaze appeared to be riveted on the papers in her hand. She didn’t look up. “Really?” I asked Wendy. “Why not?”

  Wendy gave Melissa a sidelong glance, then looked at me. I nodded. “All the secretaries know. Taylor’s stuff only goes into his personal files. Without exception.” She
lowered her voice. “A few weeks ago one of the temps filed some trust documents in the regular files. He made a huge fuss about it.”

  Melissa did look up at that. “Really? What kind of trust documents?”

  Wendy shrugged. “I don’t know that, Melissa. I didn’t see them. The temp was so embarrassed she refuses to work here anymore. That’s all I do know.”

  I of all people should have remembered the first rule of law firm society—if you want to know anything, talk to the secretaries. They know everything and they’re not unwilling to spill it.

  “Thanks,” I told Wendy. “You’ve saved us a lot of time. If we decide we really need this document, we’ll check with Taylor about getting it. I don’t think we’ll bother him right now.”

  Wendy smiled. “Whatever you say, Becky.”

  “Now, that was interesting,” I said to Melissa when Wendy had gone. “I imagine it means we won’t find anything here.”

  Melissa was still looking at some papers she was holding. She laid a hand on my arm.

  “What is it? Did you find something?”

  She looked at me and raised her eyebrows. “Yes and no. Not what we’re looking for, but something interesting nonetheless. You told me your ex-husband’s name was Richard Pratt, right?”

  I nodded, with a sense of foreboding.

  “Well, guess what eminent San Diego law firm amended the Pratt trust last week to add beneficiaries?”

  “What?”

  She handed me the papers. “There it is in black and white. The attorney was Ryan, and the amendment was made ‘as per client instructions.’”

  My mouth hung open. I’d never suspected that Carole had used RTA. “Are you sure it wasn’t Taylor?” I asked her. “Using Ryan doesn’t make any sense.”

  She pointed out the name of the billing attorney. “Using RTA doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

  “Well, it does, in a way, if you’re Carole,” I said grimly. “She probably wanted to stick it to me with my own firm. I would have found out anyway as soon as I got the official documentation. It’s just an extra thrust of the knife.”

  “I’m sure Ryan didn’t know it was your family trust,” Melissa said. “He’s a twit, but he’s not that cruel. In fact, the way I’m envisioning this is that she didn’t ask Taylor because he would have refused. So she called and asked for a tax or T and E associate. After all, it’s supposed to be something simple. Ryan saw his big chance for independence.” She laughed suddenly. “Of course, you were incredibly lucky that it was Ryan and not Taylor.”