He chewed the end of his pen thoughtfully. “Maybe…but it’s a big mistake to jump to conclusions. All we have at this point is a bunch of conjecture. There’s something else, too.”
“What?”
“Mike and Cindi Meadows would have as much or more of an interest in seeing that this doesn’t get out.”
I had a brief, satisfying fantasy of Cindi Meadows behind bars before I was forced to relinquish it. “Maybe, but they were ballooning in Burgundy when Eleanor was killed. They didn’t even make it back for the funeral, and Susan told me Barclay was really hurt.” Something he had hinted at earlier was worrying me. “You don’t think anyone else in the firm knew about it, do you?”
He put down the pen and looked at me. “My guess is that it’s the last thing in the world he’d want them to know. The risk might be worth it to Barclay because of what he stood to gain, but I just can’t see it for the rest of them, no matter how big the client is. It could bring down the firm and cost all the partners most of their assets.” He shifted his gaze away from my face, toward the window. “Are you divorced from your husband?”
“Not yet.”
“Legally separated?”
I nodded, but he was still looking away, so I said, “My lawyer is drawing up the papers this week.”
“Sign them soon. Tomorrow, if you can.” He sighed. “It would probably be better if you were divorced.”
“I’m working on it,” I said, trying to smile. His meaning did not escape me. “They’d come after me, too?”
“If your husband knowingly participated in a fraud, his malpractice insurance wouldn’t cover him. In a shareholder suit, they go after everybody.”
I must have looked a little green because he said, “I really don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about. In my business you always have to think about the downside of every action, but I doubt it’s a big risk in this case.” He peered at me. “Still want to go ahead?”
I shut my eyes and tried not to think of living in a run-down studio somewhere far from La Jolla, trying to make it up to the children for having lost the money for their college educations. I punted. “What’s next?” I asked him, without actually making a commitment.
“Have dinner with me Saturday,” he said.
I wish the state of being forty, reasonably intelligent, and of a cynical turn of mind had not chosen that moment to intrude itself upon my notice, but I couldn’t help it. “Are you trying to sweet-talk me into agreeing to let you use the stuff you found out about Naturcare?”
He looked away.
I felt remorseful. What was I doing, driving away the only man who had been nice to be with since my salad days with Steve? It was a rerun of the way I had acted when I’d gone to his lecture. Maybe Rob was right.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I told you once that getting divorced brings out the worst in you. I guess this is one of those times.”
He studied me as if I were a company whose price-earnings ratio was giving off a sell signal. Then he smiled. “Actually, you’re probably right to be suspicious. Sometimes I’m pretty ruthless when I’m conducting my research.”
I had enough sense not to ask him what he was researching now.
“So, first,” he went on, apparently deciding to abandon any plans for socializing after all, “the important thing to remember is not to tell anyone about this. Nobody. Rumors could wreck everything. You told your husband you threw away the contents of the box, right? That was smart thinking. We can probably count on his mentioning it to Barclay.” We probably could, but I shivered a little anyway to think of what Barclay would do if he knew what I had.
“We don’t want anybody to know you have this,” David continued. He frowned. “It would be nice to know if an original of this side letter exists somewhere in some legal file, but my guess is that if it does, it’s in a place where we might not ever find it. Why don’t you just sit tight and let me do some investigating on my own? I’ll put some of my people on it, and we’ll go over Naturcare with a fine-tooth comb. That might turn up something.”
“If you had any subtlety, you wouldn’t do the ‘let-me-relieve-the-little-woman-of-her-great-big-burden’ routine,” I told him.
“Is this another manifestation of the ‘worst’ we can blame on getting divorced?” he asked, looking amused.
“Certainly not,” I said. “This is you trying to shut me out.”
“I’m not. Really. If I could think of anything for you to do right now, I’d suggest it.” He crossed his heart and grinned. “Honest.”
“Good, because I feel dumb enough already.”
He seemed surprised. “Why?”
“Because I missed the big picture. I was so sure this was all about something Barclay was doing to Eleanor, I didn’t even look for anything else,” I confessed. “I personalized everything too much.”
To my relief, he didn’t ask me to explain further. “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” he told me. “You know what they say about a prophet without honor. And anyway, look what you’ve uncovered so far.”
“What if you don’t find anything?” I asked him, somewhat mollified.
“Then at least we have a motive. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? If nothing else, we can always start from there.”
Before I could think of anything to say, he picked up his cup and saucer and took them over to the sink, the perfect guest. Then he picked up the mammoth briefcase and headed toward the door. “I’ll talk to you soon,” he said.
“Fine.” I paused. “Thank you, David. I really mean that.”
I walked him to the door and opened it. He reached out and touched my cheek with his free hand. His fingers were warm. “I don’t want to rush you, Caroline,” he said. “I can wait.”
17
“I can’t believe you just asked me what I think you asked me,” Susan said, eyeing me over her second glass of wine. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear it.”
We were having lunch at Gregory’s at the Bay, and the food was so perfect, the view so breathtaking, that I felt guilty for spoiling it. Besides, I’d asked her to lunch under false pretenses. She was leaving for her interview in New York in two days, and I had to move fast. I took another sip of wine.
“Look, I know you think this is some demented psychological obsession—” I began.
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“Fine. But can’t you just accept that this is important to me? I need your help.”
She pushed a radicchio leaf around her plate. “Sure, I can accept that it’s important to you, even if I think it’s for the wrong reasons. What I can’t accept is that you want me to do something that is a breach of every ethical duty I owe the firm, and you can’t even tell me what you’re looking for.”
“Susan, you don’t have to do anything. Just let me in and show me where the files are, and I’ll do the rest.”
“Is that what you call not doing anything?”
“Don’t make me beg,” I said. “Don’t you want to see Barclay punished if he had anything to do with Eleanor’s death?”
“I’m more interested in seeing him punished for the way he lords it over the office staff,” she reflected.
“Well, then?”
“This is starting to sound like 9 to 5,” she said with a smile. “But seriously, Caroline, whatever this mysterious document is that you’re looking for, your chances of finding it without a reference number are close to zero. For some of the clients, there are literally hundreds of pieces of paper, not to mention what’s in the computers.”
I took a spoonful of black bean soup. It was delicious. “I know,” I conceded. “But I have to try.”
“And you won’t even give me a hint as to what’s in it?” she persisted.
I looked at my plate. “I can’t,” I told her. “I promised I wouldn’t reveal anything about it.”
She wiped her lips delicately with her napkin. “My, this is getting interesting. Who
did you promise?”
“David Sanchez. He’s a money manager up in Newport Beach. He’s been…helping me.”
“Is he managing more than your money?”
“Susan!”
“Sorry, but if you’re trying to hide it, you really shouldn’t blush and twist your wedding ring whenever a man’s name comes up.”
I looked down at my hand. “I didn’t realize I was still wearing it. I suppose I ought to make some really dramatic gesture like throwing it into the ocean or burying it in the backyard at midnight, but I’ll probably just put it away in a box,” I said.
“And David Sanchez?” she prompted.
They don’t say “in vino veritas” for nothing. “I think I want to have an affair with him, and it’s scaring me to death.”
She laughed. “Caroline, you’re such a Calvinist. It isn’t an affair if you’re not still married. What you’re looking for is a relationship.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “I think I want to have a ‘relationship’ with him, a relationship with sex in it.”
She settled back into her chair. “Well, thank God for that. That’s the healthiest thing I’ve heard you say in a long time. What are you scared about?”
Without thinking, I reached down and pinched a fold of skin just below my waist. My fingers were a long way from meeting.
Susan saw me doing it and grinned. “Relax,” she said. “You look great. Really. Especially since your Svengali from Naturcare got a hold of you and put a little cha-cha in your cucaracha. You used to dress like Hester Prynne, you know.”
I shook my head. “Susan, your Spanish is hopeless. Cucaracha is a cockroach.”
She flicked her fingers dismissively. “Whatever. Linguistic verisimilitude isn’t the issue here, is it?”
“No,” I conceded. “And neither is my weight, although lately I’ve actually been thinking about working out.” I took another spoonful of black bean soup. “It’s either that or a starvation diet.” I put the spoon down. “But…”
“But?”
I looked down at my plate. “It’s the sex thing.”
“My God, Caroline, you sound positively virginal. You were married nearly twenty years.”
“That’s the problem,” I said, casting a furtive look around the restaurant to see if anybody might be listening. Nobody was. “Sex with Steve was…fine, I guess, for most of that time. It was better than fine at the beginning. But it got sort of—you know—perfunctory.” I lowered my voice. “I mean, you read in books about people weeping and scratching each other’s backs with their fingernails. And I’ve never screamed, not once in my whole life.” I toyed with my fork, expanding on my subject. “I’ve always wondered what people meant when they talk about techniques and learning new tricks. I mean, what could you learn that was new? You stick it in, you move up and down, you have an orgasm or you don’t, and out it comes.”
Susan wordlessly extended the wine bottle toward my glass. “I’ve had too much already,” I told her. She poured some anyway. I took a sip.
“What I really think is that people invented this mythical sexual paradise where sex never happens the same way twice and they wear penile rings”—the waiter, pouring water for the couple at the next table, glanced at me oddly, so I lowered my voice again—“or hang from baskets while they explode with no fewer than seven orgasms in a row, just to make everybody else feel inferior. It’s like those stories they used to tell about the incredible ecstasy you would feel if you hit the G-spot, only it turned out the G-spot doesn’t exist.” I put down the spoon resolutely. “That’s what I think. But what if I’m wrong? Besides, my one near-sex experience post-Steve turned out to be a disaster.”
“You mean Jeff Grayson?” Susan said with a delicate snort.
I nodded.
“You shouldn’t count that. The only person Jeff can really get it up for is himself. Anyway, you should hear yourself. ‘Near-sex.’ You make it sound like ‘near-death.’” She raised a finger in the air, and the waiter brought coffee without being asked. “Do you think this David Sanchez is interested in you?” she asked when he had gone.
I shifted my gaze and blushed again. “I don’t know. He might be, but—” I didn’t want to tell her I really feared that my chief appeal might be that I offered access to the Naturcare documents. I shrugged. “He did say that he was willing to wait till I was ready.”
Susan poured half a pitcher of cream and two Equals into her coffee cup. She saw my look. “It’s my indulgence, instead of dessert. Anyway, this Sanchez person sounds reasonably sensitive. I suggest you stop worrying and just see what comes up. Nobody’s going to expect you to be mistress of arcane sexual technique. It doesn’t matter. If it did, Dr. Ruth would be the most sought-after female on earth.”
I laughed. “Thanks,” I told her.
“Let me ask you one thing,” she said when the waiter had brought the check. “Does your wanting to break into the firm’s files have anything to do with David Sanchez?”
“In a way,” I conceded. The truth was, I was so jumpy imagining Barclay lying in ambush around every corner that I just had to do something, but I had to admit, if only to myself, that there was an element of wanting to prove to David Sanchez that I could move things along on my own. “I’m just so tired of waiting for other people to take charge. I started this, and I want to see it through to the end myself.”
“Did he ask you to do it?” she said.
“Oh, no,” I told her, surprised at the question. “He’d be horrified if he knew.”
“Good.” She sighed. “Could we possibly postpone all this till I get back from New York?”
“It’s urgent,” I pleaded.
She waved aside my bills and put her Gold Card on the plate. “I certainly hope they still want me for the job, then. I could be needing it.”
Eastman, Bartels, and Steed occupied an entire floor of a high-rise building in downtown San Diego. In order to enter off-hours, Susan had to use her identification card and her real name. I considered registering as Elizabeth Bennet, visitor, but she convinced me that if I were seen it would be much harder to invent a story to cover my presence if I were found to have checked in as a Jane Austen character. It was 10:30 at night, so even the most ardent associate would probably have gone home. It was too big a risk, Susan said, to show up much later than that unless you were a litigator. Everybody knew they did odd things at night. If anyone asked, we were on our way home from the theater when Susan remembered something important left undone. My presence was an unavoidable embarrassment.
The reception area was dark and silent, the carpet thick as lawn. The couch and table were Italian and very expensive, probably purchased with Naturcare money. I hadn’t seen them, because they had still been on order when Steve moved out. A large floral arrangement was displayed on a marble end table. I would have liked to look over everything more closely, but this was hardly the time for furniture shopping.
Susan lifted the wastebasket behind the receptionist’s desk and inspected it. “Empty,” she said in a whisper. “That means the cleaning staff has already been through.”
We stepped into the hall leading to the lawyers’ offices and the file room. It was lit. I drew back.
“It’s okay,” Susan told me. “The hall lights are always left on at night.” We reached the file room and she took out her keys and unlocked the door. We stepped inside and turned on the light. The air was metallic and stuffy. The air conditioning went off at seven o’clock. “This is the safest place in the whole firm to hide out,” Susan said with satisfaction. “The lawyers hardly ever come here.”
“Then how do they get things out of the files?” I asked her, surprised. I knew there were file clerks who came around with little carts every half hour or so to put things away, but I hadn’t realized there were so many barriers between a lawyer and his papers.
“They send somebody to pick up what they want. Half of them couldn’t find anything in here anyway. The whole place would collapse wit
hout the staff.” She looked at me. “All right, I’ve told you about the different-colored folders for each client. If you wanted correspondence, for example, that would be in a blue folder under the client’s name and the file number. Documents are filed by date of receipt.”
“Suppose,” I said carefully, “I was looking for documents on Naturcare. I’m not asking, of course, but just for example, where might they be?”
Her eyes widened. She crossed the room and put her palm against the edge of a shelf, patting a series of brown accordion files. “Naturcare, for example, is found in this area,” she said primly. She glanced at her watch. “How long do you need?”
I glanced helplessly at the contents of the room, which probably totaled more than the entire inventory of the Library at Alexandria. “All night,” I told her.
“One hour, okay? I’ll be in my office.” At the door she turned around again. “And please, Caroline, put everything back as you found it. We still have the business to run, and if they can’t find their documents, the lawyers get pissed off and blame the file clerks.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised.
“You know I’m really trusting you on this one, don’t you?” she added grimly.
“I know. I really appreciate it.”
Twenty minutes later, I knew that the side letter was not in the file. I hadn’t thought it would be because it didn’t have a file number, and I didn’t think Barclay would have left it where everyone else in the firm had access. Still, I went through by date and checked, just to be sure. When I was reasonably certain I had been through everything important, I went to the door of the file room and looked out. The corridor was deserted.
What I had to do was get into Barclay’s office and check there. For obvious reasons I had refrained from telling Susan this part of my plan. It was bad enough to go through the firm’s client files—a gross breach of confidentiality—but breaking into a partner’s desk was beyond the limit. They might do worse than fire you for that.
I have to say right now that the confidentiality bit concerned me less than it probably should have. When we were still talking, Steve had shared details of just about every interesting matter he was working on, up to and including a juicy paternity suit against the CEO of a well-known company the firm represented. If you wanted to be really scrupulous about it, he shouldn’t have told me anything, but if he hadn’t, we would have had even less to talk about than before. It’s hard not to share something you’re immersed in eleven hours a day, six days a week. I suspect we weren’t alone, either. Probably the only way to insure complete confidentiality is to engage a law firm of Trappist monks.
Making Waves Page 24
