Making Waves

by Catherine Todd

  “Just present you with a fait accompli, you mean?” I asked her.

  “If you can. Trust me; there is nothing you could do that would be more beneficial to yourself or your children than to settle it without a fight.” It was the same advice, in essence, that I had gotten from Patrick Dunn, but it sounded better coming from her.

  I looked at the picture in a little silver frame on the desk. Two kids, a little younger than Jason and Megan, with their arms around a pleasant-looking dark-haired man in a Hawaiian shirt at the beach. “I believe you,” I told her. I just wasn’t sure I could do it. I wondered how anyone could stay unscathed and sane dealing with matrimonial law all the time. I didn’t see how you could avoid getting singed by all the anger and disappointment, but I didn’t know her well enough to ask, and I didn’t want her to think I expected her to function as my psychiatrist as well as my lawyer. “The only thing is, what about the house, then? He’s trying to sell it out from under me, and if he’s using the kids as a negotiating tactic…”

  She frowned. “When I see the list of total assets, I’ll have a better idea how to advise you. I can probably get you the house, but you’ll have to give up something in exchange. And I can’t promise you won’t have to sell it eventually.”

  “I can live with that,” I told her. And, surprisingly, it was true. I remembered Christine Fletcher’s tales of constant renegotiation and blackmail and decided I would rather give up everything than live like that. It might have been stupid, but it was very liberating.

  She glanced at her watch and stood up. “Good. The worst thing that could happen would be not to be able to come to any kind of agreement, so that your husband can press for a bifurcated divorce. In that case, he would get his freedom before you settle your finances, and we would lose a lot of leverage. Trust me, you don’t want that. So if you’ll put together that information for me, we can get the ball rolling.” She looked down at the paper on her desk, then up at me. “Do you want me to go ahead and get a date for a temporary support hearing, even if your husband and Jay Thompson haven’t initiated any action?”

  My fingernails were probably making indelible marks in my palms, but I held her gaze. “Yes.”

  “Okay. The legal separation and the temporary support are usually pretty straightforward. It’s the divorce that can get sticky.” She looked at me assessingly. “You know, I can’t promise you this won’t be a grueling ordeal. You can split up the money, but the legal system still has to work out problems it was never designed to solve. It can be pretty tough.”

  I took her outstretched hand and shook it. “You mean like the fact that somebody once promised to love you and doesn’t anymore?”

  “Yes,” she said sadly. “Like that.”

  “Tell me some bad things about New York,” Susan said when I called her at home. “Hurry.”

  “Susan, you lived there. I didn’t,” I protested. “All I know is the basic stuff I read in the papers. Donald Trump. Muggings. Things like that.”

  “Okay, then tell me some of the things I’ve told you over the years. And after that, tell me some good things about La Jolla. Think. I really need this.”

  I searched my brain. “All right. In New York they have to buzz you into the exclusive stores, and you can’t get in unless you’re white.”

  “Good one,” she said. “Nobody has to get buzzed into surf shops. Keep going.”

  “Okay, didn’t you tell me that when women go to Mass at St. Patrick’s, they clutch their purses when they kneel so no one can lean over the pews and steal them? What kind of a place is that?”

  “I didn’t tell you that; you must have read it somewhere. How would I know? It was a stretch just to go into the place, and when I did, my eyes were on the stained glass. Chalk up another one for San Diego, though; after you’ve testified in New York, this is where they relocate you on the Witness Protection Program.”

  “How about this one, then? ‘Southern California is where people get to do what they’re too inhibited to do in Manhattan.’”

  “That won’t work,” she said, sounding regretful. “Nothing’s too outrageous for Manhattan.”

  “I give up,” I told her. “I can’t think of anything beyond the obvious, like the climate and crime. I mean, we can’t compete on a cultural basis. All La Jolla had was Dr. Seuss, and he’s dead.”

  “It’s true,” she said mournfully. “Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, E. L. Doctorow…”

  “And you haven’t even touched art, architecture, or music,” I added. “Not to mention bookstores. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me why we’re playing, would you?”

  “The Surfing Gynecologist asked me out.”

  “Oh, God.” The Surfing Gynecologist was a minor media star, a local doctor who had held on to his surfboard more successfully than his youth and managed to appear in local publications once or twice a year framed against the sunset and purportedly exemplifying all the virtues of the La Jolla good life. The publicity had apparently made him the big kahuna of local gynecology and led to all sorts of speculation as to whether he really uttered “Cowabunga” when he slipped a gloved finger into an exposed orifice. “Are you going to go?” I asked her, although I already knew the answer.

  “Of course not,” she snapped. “Boogie boards for two is hardly my cup of tea. But it’s a bad omen. There’s something else, too…”

  “What?”

  “I got this really terrific job offer today from a law firm in New York. A big firm. Casey and McDonald. And a big salary to match.”

  “Wow.” It was all I could think of to say. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. They want to fly me back to talk about it. I was hoping you’d talk me out of going.”

  “Well, if you don’t want to go…”

  “I’m not sure how I feel. I left…all that…a long time ago, and I promised myself I would never go back. I’ve made a new life here, and for the most part I like it. But the truth is, I miss New York. Sometimes I think that if I hear the term ‘laid-back’ one more time I’ll scream. I hate the whole concept of laid-back. New York is not laid-back,” she said wistfully. “And it is a very good offer.”

  “Then I think you should at least talk to them,” I said firmly, although I couldn’t imagine what I would do if she moved away. “How did they hear about you, anyway?”

  “I have a friend who’s a headhunter and thought I’d be just perfect for the job,” she said, as mournfully as if she’d just been told she’d lost her savings in the latest S&L scandal.

  “Well, you don’t have to sound as if you’ve been invited to a morticians’ convention just because somebody’s recognized your excellence,” I said with a laugh. “Go to the city. Have fun. Get buzzed into boutiques. Hold on to your purse in the synagogue.”

  “If I do go…” She paused. “Would you be interested in coming with me? New York is great in the fall. I mean, if you can survive to enjoy it, it is a kind of secular nirvana.”

  “Thanks,” I told her sincerely. “But I’m not sure I should spend the money. And I’ve got a lot going on right now. As a matter of fact, I—”

  “Well, I just thought you might be needing a change.”

  There is little point to friendship if you can’t read between the lines. Such cautious, kid-glove solicitude was as unlike her as interrupting me. “Susan,” I said firmly, “what is it you’re not saying?”

  She sighed so gustily I could hear it through the receiver. “Okay. There’s talk at the firm.”

  Then I knew what she hadn’t yet told me. “Why don’t you just ask me how I could have been so stupid?” I said.

  “Oh, shit,” she said. “Did you really go out with Jeff Grayson? I was hoping it wasn’t true. How could you have been so stupid?”

  “He asked me,” I told her. “I know it’s lame, but that’s the truth. He asked me, and at the moment I couldn’t think of a good reason why not.”

  “Caroline, if you can’t say ‘no’ to anybody, y
ou’re going to have a very interesting life after your divorce. It might also be very short.” She made a small gagging noise. “Jeff Grayson is even worse than the Surfing Gynecologist.”

  “Nothing happened,” I said somewhat defensively and inaccurately. “Well, not much, anyway. We just had a drink at his house.”

  “You’re not interested or dazzled or anything else, by chance, are you?”

  “No.” I shuddered a little at the memory of hiding out in his bathroom, at best a highly inauspicious reentry into the Dating Scene.

  “Good. Jeff Grayson is a decent lawyer, and I’ll grant you a certain measure of charm if you go for the dissipated type. But he’s the kind of guy who’d like to go around with his dick hanging out of his pants, just so everybody would get the message about what a big stud he is.”

  I couldn’t resist. “It wasn’t that big.”

  She let out a whoop of laughter. “I thought you said nothing happened.”

  “It was a near miss,” I said.

  “Well, you’d better be prepared for a certain amount of snickering. I mean, this is a guy who sent ‘Mission Accomplished’ telegrams to the other partners on his honeymoon.”

  “Christ. How do you know that?”

  “Caroline, I am the office manager. The secretaries know everything. They type the letters. They take phone calls. They sign for telegrams.” She sighed. “Quite frankly, sometimes they snoop. That’s what I’m trying to warn you about.”

  “I’ve learned my lesson; I promise. Is it really so bad I have to leave town?”

  She laughed. “Maybe not, but I think you should come anyway. It would do you good to get away from the pressure of deciding your future for a while. Besides, you’ve handed your husband a—well, not a weapon, maybe, but at least a water balloon to use against you, and you might as well let him cool down first.”

  “I can’t, Susan. I’m on a quest.”

  “For what?”

  “You won’t like it.”

  “I already don’t. Still, I admit I’m intrigued. What could be more important than swimming in the au courant on Madison Avenue in a stream of people who haven’t been seriously outdoors since they went away to camp? Just think, you could lose your healthy tan and acquire an all black wardrobe to wear while waiting to expire from terminal despair.”

  “I thought you missed it,” I told her.

  “I do. And you’re avoiding the question.”

  “All right. But first you have to tell me how you feel about snooping.”

  “You mean, other than the fact that it is entirely inconsistent with my position at the law firm and could result in my losing my job?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m opposed to it in something a bit more than principle.”

  I was not dissatisfied with this answer. Her primmest language was reserved for cases when she wanted to leave herself an out, as if the formality alone would entice the listener into failing to examine the small print.

  “I want to ask you a hypothetical question,” I told her. “What if somebody says he was at the office at a certain time when something else was taking place? Is there any way to tell for sure if he was really at the firm or not? I mean, could somebody sneak out without anyone knowing?”

  “Is this your quest?” she asked, all seriousness now.

  I took a breath. “I want to know what really happened to Eleanor Hampton.”

  “You mean you want to pin it on Barclay.” She had accurately deciphered the import of my questions.

  “No, I just want the truth.” At least that’s all I hoped I wanted.

  “You’re right. I don’t like it. This could be incredibly self-destructive.”

  “Do you think I should see a psychiatrist and get my priorities straight?” I said it with a laugh, but I seriously wanted her opinion.

  “Cut the crap, Caroline. I mean, if it gets out that you’re doing a Samantha Spade number on Barclay, the whole firm will be out for your blood. And that could mean problems when you go for your settlement. I tried to warn you about that before.”

  “This is really important to me, Susan.”

  “Do you actually believe he had a hand in Eleanor’s death?”

  “There was something strange going on, and I want to find out what it is. And I promise to be very careful about throwing accusations around.”

  “You’re sure I can’t talk you into a culture orgy in New York?”

  I said nothing.

  “Okay.” She sighed. “Then here’s the answer to your question. If it’s nighttime, people come and go with their keys as they please, but we’re supposed to know where the lawyers are during office hours. If they leave for lunch or a board meeting or whatever, they’re supposed to let someone know in case there’s an important call. Then there are the phone slips and the record each attorney keeps of his or her billable hours. If someone says he was here, there could be an incredible paper trail to substantiate it.”

  “But? I heard a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”

  “Well,” she conceded, “it’s just that it all depends on the lawyer supplying his or her own record. It’s not like they punch time cards. Nobody questions them. Well, sometimes partners write down—reduce—some associates’ billable hours, but that’s not what I mean. You can walk into a lawyer’s office and if he’s not there, he could be anywhere: the bathroom, getting some coffee, in another lawyer’s office. The place is huge, so unless you think you know where he might be, you wouldn’t go looking.”

  “So nobody could really prove he was in the office during a certain period of time?”

  “Well, sure he could, if he was in a meeting during that time or attending a deposition or something like that. All you need are witnesses.”

  “Did Barclay have witnesses?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she said carefully.

  “Can you check?”

  “I could access his calendar and phone log and billing records and make some guesses, but that’s about all. I can’t go around asking people if they were with Barclay on the afternoon and evening his wife was killed, not even for you.”

  “Will you do what you can, then?” I asked, not wanting to pressure her but wondering what I would do if she refused to help me.

  “I can get you that information,” she said slowly, “but I’m having a little trouble with the ethics here. I’m not sure how much more I can do unless you come up with a very convincing case.”

  “I won’t ask you to do anything unless it’s really important,” I promised her.

  “Good. Getting fired might be a little hard to paper over when I talk to Casey and McDonald.”

  “Cowabunga,” she said the next morning when she called me back.

  “Is that the password?”

  “I thought it not inappropriate to your up-the-establishment project. I got the information you wanted.”

  “Can you tell me now?” I said, lowering my voice conspiratorially.

  “I don’t imagine the phones are tapped, so I don’t see why not.” She sounded amused. “Here’s what I found out. Barclay billed ten hours to Naturcare on the day Eleanor died. That’s a lot, so it probably means he worked into the evening. He didn’t have any meetings scheduled. There were a number of phone calls, all of them billed to the same account.”

  “So it means he might have been there, and he might not have. There’s nothing conclusive.”

  “Well, I checked with his secretary—very discreetly, of course—and—”

  “You did it! You really asked!”

  “Would you like to hear what she had to say?” she asked calmly.

  “Sorry,” I told her. “Shoot.”

  “Well, Martha and I were just commiserating about how hard things have been for poor Mr. Hampton lately, and I asked her what she might have remembered about his schedule that day, in case he had been so upset later he had forgotten to record all his billings. Nobody would think twice about worrying about that; it’s all anyone
thinks about around here. Anyway, she said that Mr. Hampton was in his office all afternoon working, but that he said she could go home early because her son had an orthodontist’s appointment, so she wasn’t there after about four o’clock.”

  “That’s great,” I told her. “It means his alibi is shaky. It means he might have had opportunity.”

  “It could mean that,” she agreed, “if you concede there was a homicide in the first place.”

  “I’m working on that,” I told her.

  “My, you’re sounding more like Nancy Drew by the minute. What’s next in the investigation?”

  “Motive,” I told her in my best Samantha Spade growl.

  13

  David Sanchez greeted me with that little start of unpleasant recognition, quickly masked over, that I had once encountered in the maître d’ of a three-star French restaurant who couldn’t find the transatlantic reservation we had made weeks before at great expense and even greater effort. Immediately afterward, he had recovered himself sufficiently to lead us to the Gallic equivalent of Siberia, but that instant had been enough.

  David Sanchez, however, did not have the option of seating me next to the kitchen door or the men’s room and then abandoning me to my fate, so he schooled his expression into politeness and waited for me to explain my invasion of his turf.

  To counteract the impression of our last meeting, I had rejected the black-clad “you touch me, you’ll be sorry” look in favor of something softer and more colorful. Signor Eduardo would have approved of my turquoise and green pleated skirt; it had the added advantage of not wrinkling in the course of the hour-plus drive to Newport Beach.