What neither of them could have anticipated was me. If, as they’d supposed, Arianna had seen the “killing” at camp Arrowheart as they’d intended, she would have just reported that the guy doing the shooting was a man of medium height and medium build, average enough looking to be unfindable outside of a police lineup. Possibly, not even then. But since Arianna and I had gone to the police and given them everything we had, the authorities knew they were looking for Paul, as well. And they also figured that, when they found Paul, Ernie wouldn’t be far away.
So the Coast Guard secured the boat, right there in the water. I can just imagine the scene: Paul, a picture of innocence and thinking no one even knew his name, forking over identification. The Coast Guard running his ID and finding Paul was anything but the vacationing executive he was pretending to be.
They took Paul into custody. And then they searched the boat. No doubt looking for Ernie, but they found other stuff of interest, including Paul’s laptop so jam-packed full of evidence, he would no doubt have thrown it overboard with Ernie if he had even the slightest inkling that their encounter with the Coast Guard would be anything other than a routine check.
Among other incriminating bits of computer evidence, when the electronic investigators got their hands on that laptop, they found passwords and logon information for no less than ten different trading accounts under as many different names and none of them traceable to either Paul or Ernie. They also found e-mail from Marcus Hayles, now deceased. It was an ambiguous note, slightly encoded, but it seemed to be asking for more money for services not specified. Another couple of pegs fell into place.
When the Coast Guard apprehended Paul, he didn’t mention his partner in the water. He probably would have been hoping that, somehow, Ernie would manage to slip away. Even with one of them in jail, if the other was free, there would be a chance to complete the trades and cash in on their Langton scam. And, even if the accounts got blocked, Ernie had access to the kind of money that can buy a lot of happiness when it comes to lawyers and just generally smoothing out legal stuff.
The Coast Guard towed the boat back into port, secured the vessel and handed Paul over to the police. Still nothing about Ernie and, in fact, the earliest news reports didn’t mention him either.
Arianna had a couple of bad days around Ernie’s disappearance. She was completely freaked he’d show up at their house in the middle of the night and, from her perspective, he wasn’t her husband anymore. In her mind, he’d turned into some kind of monster. I couldn’t blame her.
She could have stayed at a hotel, but it just seemed right to invite her to stay at my place. I seriously don’t have room for houseguests, but we borrowed a futon from Tyler and turned it into a three-day slumber party. I think it was healing for both of us. Not that surprisingly and with everything considered, we discovered that we had a lot in common. Secret sisters, in a sense, both having survived a close encounter with, as Alex Montoya would have said, a corporate psychopath.
A vacationing family in a charter boat fished Ernie out of the water three days later, still floating in his lifejacket. The coroner’s report said he didn’t drown, but had been killed by a “sharp blow to his skull” as would happen, for instance, if you were floating around in the water at night very carefully, very stealthily, and a Coast Guard vessel — or maybe even your own boat — suddenly moved quickly, or you were lifted against another boat’s wake, hit with a blunt object and jettisoned overboard or… well, we’ll never really know and speculation is pointless. Ernie was dead. I mean, this time he was really dead. They didn’t even dick around with visual identification this time, but went straight to DNA testing.
Arianna said she felt oddly empty, but that it was time for her to head back to Brentwood and figure out how to fill up the rest of her life. I couldn’t blame her: there was a sudden and unexpected hole where her husband was supposed to be even though, truly, that had happened long before he got himself dead.
Aside from the things that I had told the sheriff in San Bernardino — and how relevant was any of that, when you thought about it? — there was nothing to suggest Ernie had been involved in the whole kidnap/shortsell/murder scenario in any way except as a victim. The FedEx pack Sarah sent me burns with its own weight in the file drawer in my desk. The material Jackson accumulated would be a damning cap on everything; would cast its own kind of shadow. I think about it sometimes, about what it would mean, how it would change things. But ruining a dead man’s reputation would do nothing but hurt his widow and maybe even make things easier on Paul. I don’t want any part of either of those things.
Of course, as soon as he heard they’d found Ernie’s body, Paul tried to pin everything on Ernie — who, as a dead person, couldn’t defend himself — but there was simply no corroboration from anywhere: the two of them had done that good a job covering their tracks.
The newspapers have been enjoying that aspect of the story, as well. All of a sudden, Ernie is the deceased hero CEO who “lost his life attempting to escape from his captor, a man who had been jealous of Billings since they were together at Harvard.”
And, no: I didn’t almost lose my lunch when I read that. Because it doesn’t really matter anymore. In some regards, it’s better this way. For one thing, Wall Street just doesn’t need another insider scandal: this one would be even juicier than the guy who used bail-out money to buy an eight thousand dollar toilet paper roll holder. Also, since the trading damage — all that manipulative short selling — had come from outside of the company, Langton’s damage control is somewhat easier than it would have been if Ernie’s involvement had come to light. And, since that will ultimately result in the stock price recovering more quickly, I’m all for that. And I know my mom would certainly feel the same way.
It would all have been different if Ernie had lived. I would have happily done everything I could to bury him then. But he’s dead and, like I said before, dead is dead. He’s already buried.
I would have thought that, with all that’s happened, I would have been glad that Ernie was gone. Relieved. And, I won’t lie, part of me is relieved: he got very scary, there at the end. But another part of me is surprisingly sad. Maybe not so sad for the Ernie he became, but perhaps the one he could have been had he taken different roads, made other choices. It’s hard not to grieve a little bit for that Ernie.
That Wednesday when we knew Ernie was dead and Arianna went home, I called Steve and he drove up to Malibu. He brought a pizza and I opened a bottle of wine and we sat out on the deck together and I finally told him everything — everything — while the sun set over the Pacific. It felt good — cleansing — to be able to spill it all at his feet in a big messy heap. I realized I was crying about the same time as I realized he was cupping the back of my head in one hand, very gently. A reassuring gesture and, somehow, an intimate one. And I hadn’t even known I wanted to — needed to — cry.
We were still sitting there like that when Jennifer, Tyler and Tasya came back from some family outing. We heard them, before we saw them, shared laughter announcing their arrival like some joyous wave. My tears were gone by then and they smiled when they saw us. I caught Jennifer’s approving look as I introduced them all to Steve.
Jennifer looks so healthy now, though it’s only been a short time. It seems to me she glows with some internal light that wasn’t there before. Finding love can do that. It doesn’t matter that the love she’s found was there for her all along. That kind of love doesn’t do you any good if you don’t know how to access it. It’s like having a key but not knowing what door it opens.
She’s seeing a psychologist, getting regular Reikki treatments and Tasya said she’d signed her up for some kind of aromatherapy empowerment workshop. Being the kind of skeptic I am, I guess I figure the real power in all of that is discovering how loved and cared about she is. These crazy film people that she’s forced to call her family — as self-involved as they can be — will go to any lengths, no matter how whacko, to help her p
ut herself back together again. Don’t kid yourself, there’s power in that.
Just as importantly, I think, Jennifer has found some things inside herself that she thought she’d lost and some others she never knew she had. She’s reconnected with her father and has discovered that Tasya is an ally and a friend, not the enemy and rival she had feared.
After the doctor had examined Jennifer and announced that all she needed was to sleep it off, Tyler went raging down to The Curl to have a talk with Corby. Tasya said Tyler came back deflated and looking ten years older. Corby had told him he had nothing to do with any of it. He said he didn’t even know anything about a kidnapping; just that Jennifer was having trouble at home. “He told me,” Tyler said, his voice quiet but edged with pain, “that Jennifer had said that her father didn’t care what happened to her. What did I do to make her feel that way?”
I told Tyler that, at some level, it doesn’t really matter. The paths we take to get places can be even or convoluted but, in the end, it makes no difference. As long as we get where we’re intended to go. And Tasya has put her foot down: Jennifer has to work very hard now to make up for the schooling she’d lost but, provided she finishes the year with adequate marks at a new school, Tasya has insisted Tyler help Jennifer with her goal to become an actress. Her first year of study will be in LA and, provided that all goes according to plan, she can go to New York the following year. Tasya confided in me that this will give them another whole year with Jennifer, to make sure she’s stable and strong and ready for such a big step. But, from Jennifer’s perspective, she’ll get the chance to make her dreams come true. And Tyler and Tasya will watch her do it, from very close by.
The night of the wine and pizza, Steve didn’t share my bed. To be honest, after he left, I was somewhat disappointed that he didn’t even try. Later, in Ensenada where the bed has become a place where we spend a lot of time, he told me it wasn’t that he didn’t think about it that night.
“I thought about it a lot, in fact. But I would have felt like such a shit that night, Madeline, taking advantage of the vulnerable girl in my arms.” And then he smiled, “And, anyway, I knew there’d be ample opportunity if I bided my time.”
I’m not in love with Steve. I love him — who wouldn’t love a guy who painted their toenails? — but I can’t imagine sharing my life with him. With anyone, for that matter. Not just now. But right this minute, with the prospect of another moonlit evening on the terrace, another walk in the surf, another chat over breakfast, I can’t think of any place I’d rather be. For the moment, that’s enough.
###
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed Mad Money. Look for the next two Madeline Carter novels — The Next Ex and Calculated Loss — to be available in e-book format over the next few months. If you’d like to be notified about future publications, please visit me on the Web at http://lindalrichards.com and scroll down to be added to my e-mail list. Thanks again for spending time in Madeline’s world. And mine!
Fondly,
Linda
More Madeline Carter is Coming Soon in e-book format from Linda L. Richards…
In The Next Ex, former stockbroker-turned-day trader Madeline Carter agrees to teach the indulged wife of an A-list movie producer about the stock market. When said wife turns up dead, Madeline finds herself in the middle of a series of murders while inadvertently opening up a 40-year old cold case.
High finance and haute cuisine equal a recipe for murder in Calculated Loss. Day trader Madeline Carter hightails it to Vancouver when she learns her ex-husband, television chef Braydon Gauthier, has killed himself. What she finds there ends up being so much worse than she ever suspected.
Cover photography and design by David Middleton
http://www.DavidMiddletonCreative.com
Author’s Note
Nothing in my life has ever gone as smoothly as the birth of Madeline Carter. Every aspect of bringing her to Earth went with the sort of clocklike precision generally only found in fiction. It seems that Madeline — like brie and marzipan and ice wine — was simply meant to be. Sometimes I’m not even sure I had a lot to do with it. One day, Madeline simply was.
Thanks to my partner, David Middleton. David is always my first reader and, without him, Madeline would be a much duller girl. David has the sharpest eye for detail and continuity imaginable and, as everyone says: David knows everything. Also — and of course — thanks to David for fostering the bubble of creativity that shelters and inspires us wherever we go. And for the lattes. We’ve discovered it takes a lot of caffeine to write a book.
My son, the actor Michael Karl Richards, has shown me some of the most salient secrets to creative success. I’ll share the most important of these with you now: Want it with every fiber, then give it all you got. Thank you, Mike. You inspire me. Always.
Thanks to Madeline’s Goddess of Compliance, Mary Beck and her consort/husband, Lang Evans, for their expert and loving reading of the Madeline Carter novels. Mary and Lang helped make sure that my representations of Madeline’s trading in particular and of the stock market in general were accurate. If there are errors in this regard, they are mine, but Mary and Lang helped make the good stuff better.
Thank you to Madeline’s earliest readers, my dear friends Michelé Denis, Laura-Jean Kelly and Debbie Warmerdam. Your support was more appreciated than you know, your enthusiasm a happy wave that carried me through the home stretch. Thanks also to Patricia McLean, Betty Middleton, Jackie Leidl, Tami Adams, Andrew Heard and Carolyn Withers. Where would I be without you guys?
Thanks to my brother, Dr. Peter Huber, whose belief in me has been unshakable, always: even at times when I’ve had my own doubts. Your support and input always mean so much. Not to mention, of course, having inadvertently supplied many of the locations in Mad Money.
For this new electronic edition of Mad Money I want to add a thanks to the many readers Madeline has touched sufficiently for them to reach out and write to me… and to her. Your support and encouragement means more to me – to both of us – than you can ever know.
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