Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money

by Linda L. Richards

  I had to admit that I liked Arianna. Aside from being stunning (which I could forgive her, if I put some energy into it) she also seemed bright and open. Forthright. I’d wager that, under the right circumstances, she could even be vivacious.

  But as sincerely as she’d imparted everything, some of what she’d said rang hollow, or at least a little off. She’d painted an attractive, believable picture: the happy — albeit insanely well-to-do — couple moving out from the East, looking forward to fixing up their little nest together and spending “quality” time before duties called. She had said Ernie called it an adventure. But I knew Ernie or, at least, I’d known the Ernie he’d been more than a dozen years before. That Ernie would have been as likely to pick tapestries for the foyer as… well… as he would have to strap on wax wings and fly to the sun. No Icarus, that Ernie. Solid, practical and always cognizant of the inside track.

  Which led me to the other part of what she’d told me: that she believed he’d engineered the whole kidnapping. A fact that the neat columns of calculations — as precise as any ledger — seemed to confirm. Which kind of brought me back to the beginning again: why had she told me?

  And then there was Paul Westbrook, someone I hadn’t thought of in years. Ernie’s shadow when we were at Harvard. His evil twin — it had been a joke between them, though: deciding just which one was the evil twin would have been quite a chore.

  When Ernie and I were together, wherever Ernie went, there was Paul. Increasingly, in the time I’d known them, they’d been two halves of the same whole. It hadn’t been pretty, even from the sidelines.

  The last few months had gotten more and more unbearable, until suddenly things weren’t bearable at all anymore. I’d known that part of this had to do with Paul. For a lot of reasons, but mainly due to his presence in our lives and the way that Ernie and Paul were together.

  Paul wasn’t physically unattractive yet, from the beginning, something about him repelled me. The wispy goatee he was always trying to cultivate, his neatly trimmed yet slightly greasy hair but, most of all, the way his ice blue gaze would never actually seem to look right at you when he spoke to you, fixing instead on a point just above your head or, in certain moods, on your chest. Being around him was always unpleasant for me.

  I couldn’t have put a name to what Paul and Ernie shared though, from the beginning, it didn’t seem healthy. On one level, it was like the classic competitive boys one-upmanship thing. But it was more, as well. And perhaps less. Small stuff at first, but rising — inevitably, it seemed — to higher levels. Ernie to Paul: Professor Wannamakker is an asshole. I’d love to see someone take him out. And Paul flattens the tires of Wannamakker’s car. Paul to Ernie: I completely feel like getting stoned. And Ernie scores Paul some coke. Ernie to Paul: The neighbor’s cat is driving me crazy at night. And Paul kills the cat. This last one I didn’t know for sure, but I had strong reasons to suspect it. That was very near the end.

  Paul was at our place and Ernie was bitching about the cat. I was the one that found the cat — dead and stiffening — outside his owner’s apartment door the next day.

  “Paul killed the Johnson’s cat,” I said to Ernie that night.

  A smirk. “How’d you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “Is the cat dead?”

  “The cat is dead. I saw it myself today.”

  “That doesn’t mean Paul poisoned it.”

  It took me a whole day to realize that Ernie was the only one that had mentioned poison in that conversation. And the cat had indeed been poisoned. I should have packed and left then but I was young and stupid. Sometimes at the age I was you need someone to draw you a picture. That was still to come.

  Paul had wanted me then, I’d always known that. And I hadn’t found it flattering, even from the vantage point of my twenty-two years when almost everything is flattering. Because I’d known that it wasn’t so much me — Madeline Carter — that Paul wanted, it was me — Ernie Billing’s girlfriend — that Paul desired. And, for a while near the end of our relationship, Paul made it into a full-time campaign.

  It finally happened at the end of finals week in our graduate year. There had been a party at Paul’s frat house. I’d enjoyed myself for a while. I wasn’t aware of drinking much, I know I didn’t do any drugs, but in the morning I woke up in Paul’s bed with Paul beside me, and both of us unclothed. We were naked and I was damp where there was no cause for dampness to be. My clothes, when I found them on Paul’s floor, were damaged, as though they’d been ripped from me. I was aware of some bruises, nothing serious but alarming, nonetheless, on my back and arms and sides.

  Unlike Steve, Paul didn’t have the good sense to stay sleeping while I got out of his room. I wish he had. But he woke up, saw my obvious discomfort. And he laughed.

  “What is it like to have a real man, Maddy?” he said, watching me from the bed as I collected my belongings as hurriedly as I could. The shirt I had been wearing was shredded: there was no way I could wear it in public, and I pawed through the mess looking for something to cover it with, ignoring Paul, trying to block him out. “I know you’ve been wanting me, baby. I’ve been seeing it in your eyes.” He slithered up from the bed on his knees, I could see that his cock was hard. “Come here and give me more of what you gave me last night.”

  At twenty-two, most of us are not yet gifted with sleek tongues. Sometimes the words line up nicely in our minds, but they don’t come out as elegantly as they should. That comes with practice, experience, years. I just know that, having found a T-shirt to pull over the fragments of my own blouse and skirt, and having secured my purse and only managing to find one shoe, I headed for the door, stopping only to scream at the top of my lungs, “You are an asshole Paul Westbrook. I’ll fucking hate you until the fucking day I die. And when I tell Ernie what you’ve done he is going to fucking kill you.” As I ran towards the door, all I could hear was Paul’s laughter.

  It was apparent to me, loathing him as I mostly always had, that there was no way I would have gone to bed with Paul of my own choice. I didn’t even like the guy and there was no amount of drink that would have made me want to sleep with him. Plus, I am by choice and nature a loyal person. I don’t make commitments lightly or easily. When I do I honor them. I was like that at fourteen and I’m like that now. And that was certainly my headspace when I was with Ernie. By then our relationship was no picnic, but it’s simply not my style to sleep with boyfriend’s friends. Especially when I loathe them. And I loathed Paul, even before he raped me.

  And, though courts of law can be wishy washy about proving this kind of rape, there is no doubt in my mind that that is exactly what Paul did to me. I don’t know for sure if he’d drugged me. But I know what was in my heart and the revulsion I’d always felt at the thought of Paul’s touch.

  In retrospect, all of this might have had a different ending if I’d done the right thing: instead of heading back — to my and Ernie’s then home — bruised and emotionally bleeding, I should have gone to the police. Or, at the very least, some school counselor: campuses are always crawling with them, my tuition paying their salaries. Why didn’t I? I’d been violated and I felt as low as I ever had in my life. But I was young and stupid. I wasn’t even confident that what Paul had done was illegal, especially since I couldn’t say for sure what it was he had done.

  So I went home. Luckily I had a couple of dollars in my purse, and I caught the bus. Trudged up the stairs of our third story walkup just focusing on what I’d say. How I’d explain things to Ernie and how angry he’d be. At Paul.

  I knew the instant the door opened to my key that something was wrong. And then I heard the laughter from the bedroom: his low and lusty; hers high and sweet. I felt like running away, hiding. But I was home: there was no place to go. And curiosity was a component of my personality, even then.

  I didn’t think a lot about what I was doing. Didn’t hem or haw, just pushed through into the bedroom and stood there — mute until t
hey became aware of me. And it was clear from the little I saw that this girl had not been raped. I knew her. I could never be positive, but I suspected Ernie made sure of that. She was teeny, yet voluptuous, bubbly and vivacious. Everything that, in my mind, I was not.

  I expected — wanted — the classic television reaction. Ernie becoming aware of me and throwing the naked and exceedingly beautiful girl off of him, rushing to me, taking me in his arms and begging my forgiveness. I hope I would not have forgiven him, but it didn’t matter. He did none of that.

  “So how was it with Paul, baby?” He was naked, lying on his side, his leg entwined with the girl’s, his hand stroking her thigh. “He always says he’s hung. Was he hung like a pony?”

  That was when I understood that Ernie had known. Had perhaps even helped make it happen. Maybe because Paul had wanted to, or maybe because Ernie himself had wanted the coast clear to be with the girl now sprawled on my bed.

  For all the things I didn’t do with this entire situation, I did one right thing: I got the hell out of there. For good. While Ernie watched, I grabbed a laundry bag and stuffed in everything of mine I could lay my hands on. When the bag was full, I grabbed his wallet and relieved it of the fifty-odd bucks he was holding. He didn’t try to stop me. Maybe he’d ceased watching.

  I used the money to get as far from Cambridge as I could. When the money was gone, which wasn’t very many hours, I called my mother and sat in a Greyhound station waiting for the cash she wired to get to me. And then I went home.

  Seattle is a long, long way from Boston if you’re on a bus. When I think back on it, the trip seemed to take about a month, though in fact, it couldn’t have been more than five days. But the miles soothed my soul. Soothed the part of me that Paul had violated. And the part that still couldn’t believe that Ernie hadn’t followed me. That, in fact, at any stop the Greyhound made, he’d be waiting for me when the doors opened and I went out to stretch my legs. I wouldn’t have taken him back at that point, but I would have loved the chance to tell him so to his face. It didn’t come up.

  And that was the last time I’d seen Boston. Or Paul. Or Ernie. Until this week, that is. I didn’t even go back for graduation. And my mom — whom I did tell everything to — backed me up by contacting the university and telling them I’d developed Thalaxian flu or Altzheimers or something else really cool-sounding so that, ultimately, they just shipped my diploma out to me in Seattle. Which, inadvertently, was how I fell into the stock market. But that’s a different story.

  The Safeway sign at PCH brought me into the present. It reminded me of the empty cupboards at home and that I was hungry again and should probably stop for provisions. I glanced at my watch as I pulled into the parking lot. It was six o’clock. And then I remembered.

  “Shit,” I said it aloud. And then I said it again as I turned my car around and headed for the exit in the direction that would take me back the way I’d come. “Shit.” Because I’d told Steve I’d meet him at five-thirty. And I had a hunch he would have been on time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Finally getting home was like a replay of the morning. Tycho happy and reproachful — he’d spent the day without a run, without happy petting, without me – the light on the phone that alerted me to voicemail blinking at me mindlessly and the feeling of things not done — or done badly — nagging at the center of my gut. Part of this feeling, of course, was Steve. I’d finished meeting with Arianna in plenty of time to make it to the restaurant by the five-thirty he and I had agreed upon. By the time I’d remembered and raced back there, he was gone, though the hostess had reported that a cheerful young man who fit his description had come in a little after five and had grown slowly less cheerful until he’d left glowering — and apparently stood up — at six-fifteen.

  “If he comes back, tell him I was here,” I told her. She nodded her agreement, somehow managing to look skeptical and disapproving at the same time. Or so I thought. Not that it mattered. I’d told him I’d be there and that I’d explain things at five-thirty. I hadn’t shown up. And we hadn’t exchanged phone numbers. I simply had no way to reach him tonight.

  I felt badly. And like I’d proven his earlier opinion of me to be correct. Maybe he was right: maybe I was using him. Could you use someone subconsciously? The thought made me feel hollow inside.

  And then there was Jennifer and all I’d learned at the Hestman School. I quickly changed out of my quasi-ladies-who-lunch duds, pulled on some track pants and a T-shirt, grabbed the bag Bruce had given me at the school and headed upstairs to talk to Tyler, something I wasn’t looking forward to at all.

  Tasya opened the kitchen door at my knock. She looked as drawn as her husband had earlier in the day.

  “Have you heard from Jennifer?” I asked needlessly. The answer was written on Tasya’s face.

  “No. Not exactly,” she called out to Tyler over her shoulder. “Madeline’s here. Do you want her to come in?”

  Tyler called out in the affirmative from somewhere deeper in the house and Tasya indicated that I should follow her. As we left the Sub-Zero appliances behind us, I realized that I’d never seen any room besides the kitchen in Tasya and Tyler’s part of the house. Usually I would have enjoyed this glimpse inside the real lifestyles of the rich and famous but at that moment I had two things on my mind: Jennifer’s whereabouts and the identity of the owner of the masculine voice I could hear that clearly wasn’t Tyler’s.

  I followed Tasya into a large living room that looked, in some respects, like a grown up version of mine. The view was the same, as well as the floor-to-ceiling windows, but opposite ends of the room were dominated by a fieldstone fireplace and a baby grand piano. The terra cotta tile floors — the same as the ones in the kitchen and covering the decks — gleamed dully under my feet and, combined with large potted plants, gave the impression that indoors was outdoors and vice versa. It was a beautiful home. But I noticed it all in a peripheral way. What dominated my attention were two uniformed policemen standing in Tyler’s living room. My first thought was panic: they were here for me. I realized quickly, however, that they were there to talk about Jennifer.

  When he saw me, Tyler broke off talking with the policemen and explained to me, “I wanted you here now in case you were able to turn up anything at the school. Were you?”

  I shook my head in the negative. “She wasn’t there.”

  I thought it would be better if I told Tyler what I’d learned at the school in private. After that, if he wanted the police to know, he could tell them himself. Also, I wanted to draw as little attention to myself as possible. While it didn’t seem likely the cops would make the connection between Tyler Beckett’s tenant and the person on the LRG surveillance video, I didn’t feel like taking any chances.

  Tyler indicated I should sit on the overstuffed sofa while he finished making the report on his missing daughter. I sat and tried to fade into the background as much as possible while examining my surroundings.

  It was a good room. The setting was grand and many of the appointments were obviously expensive, but it looked like a place where people lived, not just a room to show to company. I focused on a photograph-covered wall near me, examining photos from Tyler and Tasya’s wedding, some images of Tyler that had obviously been taken on the set of various films, plus photos of Jennifer — riding a horse, acting in a school play, at the beach with a woman unfamiliar to me who I took to be her mother — at various ages.

  “I have a bad feeling,” Tyler said to me as soon as the police were gone. Tasya went to him, rubbing his shoulder while sitting on the edge of his chair. “A very bad feeling.” Then to me, “nothing at the school, huh?”

  “Well, they didn’t know where she was. But they told me some stuff you should know.”

  Tyler and Tasya seemed ever more deflated when I relayed what Dr. Alder had told me: about Jennifer’s increasing truancy, her slipping grades, the reported surliness and, finally, her expulsion the previous day.

  “S
he said it started after the winter holiday?” Tasya asked finally.

  I nodded and Tasya started to cry. “Tyler,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”

  “C’mon babe. It’s not that,” Tyler was now the comforter, Tasya the bereft.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Tasya and I were married last Christmas.”

  “There’s something else, though,” I said, finding myself reluctant to bring up the matter of Dr. Alder’s unreturned phone calls.

  And rightly so. Tyler exploded, “But that’s ridiculous. I’ve always been so accessible for anything to do with Jen.” Then he subsided, looking broken and adding quietly, “but we’ve been out of town a lot this year. And she’s always been so strong. I thought I was past the point where I needed to worry about her. She took care of me after her mother and I split.”

  My own mother’s voice came to me, how she had always said we’d never be too old to worry about. I understood the words more fully now.

  “What about the boyfriend? Have you tried him?”

  “What boyfriend?” They practically said it together.

  It was inconceivable to me that they didn’t know him. “I met him here. At your barbecue. A gangly-looking redhead with a lot of product in his hair?”

  They continued looking blank and I thought back carefully to what Jennifer had said to me about him. “That’s what she called him: the ‘boyfriend person.’ Cody I think his name was. No. Something even more nonsensical.” A beat and then I remembered. “Corby.”

  Tyler and Tasya looked at each other in a way that told me plainly they’d never heard Corby’s name before and I wished there was some way I could change things: fix it so I wasn’t the one that had to break that to them. I remembered the white bag. “And the school gave me this,” I told them handing it over.