Too Much Blood

by Jane Bennett Munro

  “That’s how they met,” Rebecca said. “She went to work there, and they got married, and she kept working until she got pregnant.”

  “How many kids did they have?

  “Four. The youngest one is six,” Rebecca said.

  “So, what happened to Jay? Where did he go?” I asked.

  Dead silence.

  “You don’t know?” I persisted.

  Rebecca cleared her throat. “No. Tiffany doesn’t even know.”

  Now that was interesting. “You mean he didn’t take Tiffany with him?”

  “No, and Kathleen said she was really pissed off about it too.”

  “You mean Kathleen actually talks to Tiffany?” I asked. “I should think she’d be more likely to rip her face off.”

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” said Rebecca. “His running off like that brought them together. Tiffany moved in with Kathleen, and Kathleen treats her like a daughter. They comfort each other. Tiffany helps with the kids. It’s really kind of sweet, you know?”

  Sweet? That’s not the word I’d have used. If Hal was having an affair with a college student, I sure as hell wouldn’t be treating the girl like a daughter. And having her move in with me? No way, I decided after a moment of thought. I would rip her face off. Kathleen Burke was obviously a better person than I would ever be.

  “So what’s going to happen to Kathleen?” I asked. “Is she going to have to go back to work now, or has she already?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Rebecca said. “But she’s sold the house and moved out. I think she had to find someplace cheaper because of the bankruptcy.”

  “And how about you?”

  Rebecca glared at me. “What do you mean, what about me?”

  Whoa. Maybe that was a trifle invasive. Maybe I should be more subtle and devious. I tried to appease her. “I mean, how are you doing since you and Jeff lost all that money in Jay’s Ponzi scheme. What did you think I meant?”

  “Oh, nothing.” Rebecca suddenly wasn’t meeting my eyes, and I thought I saw a blush working its way up her neck, but maybe it was a trick of the light. “I think we’re okay. Jeff handles all the finances, so I don’t really know. I mean, if we were in trouble, he’d tell me. Wouldn’t he?”

  Oh, jeez. Did people really still live like that in this day and age? I thought that sort of thing went out with The Donna Reed Show. On the other hand, we were living way out here in the Wild West, the Land Where Time Stood Still.

  I wondered if Rebecca was typical of the doctors’ wives. Were they all that ignorant of their financial situations? Oh hell, why didn’t I just come right out and ask her? Did all their girl talk include household finances?

  “Rebecca, do you know if the other wives have the same financial arrangement with their husbands as you do? I mean, the men take care of the finances so the wives don’t have to worry about them?

  “Certainly. That’s the great thing about being married to a doctor. You never have to worry about money.”

  Yeah, right. Not until they lose it all. “So your husbands all pay the bills and give you allowances for household expenses?”

  “Yes. Why are you asking all these questions, Toni? Is there anything wrong with doing it that way?”

  Oh, dear God, is there anything not wrong with doing it that way? Didn’t she realize that doctors are absolutely clueless when it comes to investing? That’s why they get targeted with every investment scheme that comes down the pike. And because they are busy doctors with no time to read the fine print and ask questions, an alarming number of them get roped in. Maybe I should tell her about all the phone calls I get at work, about investing in oil and gas futures, or diamonds, or fine art, or cattle ranches; and of course they all want me to commit right now, before the price goes up or the loophole closes. The sense of urgency seems to be a common sales tactic with these people.

  I mean, her husband, Jeff, is a decent guy and a good surgeon, but how financially savvy is he? He invested in Jay’s Ponzi scheme; what does that tell you?

  Sure, I could tell her all that, but would it change anything? The damage had already been done. Sure, I could tell Rebecca and her girlfriends why they should learn to handle the finances in their households, to prevent this sort of thing from ever happening again, but all it would do is piss off their husbands, with whom I still had to work.

  But Rebecca had asked me a question, and I hadn’t answered it, because I simply could not think of an answer that wouldn’t be insulting.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with it, Rebecca, but I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable if I didn’t know exactly where Hal and I stand financially.”

  “You mean you think Jeff’s hiding something from me?”

  Christ on a crutch. I just kept digging myself deeper into the hole.

  Yes, that’s precisely what I mean, you innocent babe in the woods. “No, no, of course I don’t mean that.”

  “Oh, I know,” Rebecca said, digging me in even deeper. “It’s because you’re the doctor, and you make more money than Hal does. I get it. So you pay the bills and give him an allowance?”

  Please, God, don’t let Hal come out here and hear this conversation. This is a subject we try not to talk about. “I pay the bills, and we don’t invest without discussing it first.”

  “And that’s okay with Hal?”

  “More than okay. Hal hates paying bills. It makes him cranky.”

  “Hmph,” said Rebecca. “I like our way better.”

  Rebecca and the other wives lived in a world that I simply could not comprehend.

  My mother, who had been left a widow while still only a girl of seventeen and pregnant with me, told me repeatedly as I was growing up that I should take over the family finances when I got married, so that when my husband died, I wouldn’t be a lost soul, not knowing where the money was, or even if there was any money, as she had been. So who had taught her to be so smart? Grandma Day, a woman way ahead of her time. Bless her.

  What must it be like to be so protected? I felt surreal, like Dorothy in the land of Oz, as if I’d inadvertently entered a fairy-tale world where, yes, Virginia, money really did grow on trees, magically appearing whenever one needed it, without having to deal with the down-and-dirty business of actually earning it and making it stretch until the end of the pay period. So Cinderella married the prince and they lived happily ever after—at least until he left her for his secretary when the kingdom’s economy was in the toilet. Only this particular prince had left his secretary too.

  “Did Tiffany lose her job when Jay died?” I asked.

  “I think she still works there,” Rebecca said. “She’s Lance’s secretary too; with just the two of them, they only needed one. She has to clean up Jay’s affairs, transfer his cases to other lawyers, box up his old files for storage, and clean out his office in case Lance wants to take on another partner.”

  “Lance? Who’s Lance?” I asked.

  “Jay’s partner,” said Rebecca. “You didn’t know he had a partner?”

  I shook my head.

  “Oh, well, he didn’t get much exposure,” Rebecca said. “Jay was such a public figure that poor Lance was completely overlooked. But he’s still there, and so is Tiffany.”

  At that point, the guys started drifting out of the family room. Apparently the football game was over. Jeff came over to us. “What are you girls so deep in conversation about? Solving the problems of the world?”

  “We were talking about Jay Braithwaite Burke,” I said.

  “Join the club,” Jeff said. “We were too. Seems like that’s all we ever talk about these days.”

  Jack Allen joined us. He seemed to have had a trifle too much to drink. Weaving slightly, he thrust his flushed face into mine. “I want to know why you never said anything about this.
”

  I recoiled from his alcoholic breath. “What ‘this’ would that be, Jack?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Toni,” Jack said. “You two were the only ones who didn’t get into this. You knew something that the rest of us didn’t. Why didn’t you tell us at the time?”

  “If you’re talking about Jay Braithwaite Burke,” I said, “Hal and I got the same information you did. Don’t put this all on me.”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed and his face grew redder. “Then how do you explain why you didn’t invest in this fund along with the rest of us?”

  I looked up to see Hal come up behind Jack. “Just plain old common sense,” he said.

  Startled, Jack whirled. I thought I saw tiny streams of smoke emanating from his ears, but it might have been my imagination. “You can’t talk to me like that, Shapiro. Just who the hell do you think you are?”

  Eager to avoid the onset of fisticuffs and probable severe injury to Jack, since Hal had six inches and at least fifty pounds on him, I intervened. “We checked with our broker and accountant. Didn’t you?”

  Jack shook his head, speechless at last.

  “We followed their advice,” I continued.

  Jack now seemed near tears. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  I shrugged. “I did. You didn’t listen. You said I could roll over and play dead if I wanted to, but you weren’t going to. Remember?”

  Jack’s shoulders sagged. His face, no longer red with anger, now just looked gray. Slowly, he turned and walked away. I watched him go. Sometime during the conversation, Jeff and Rebecca had left too.

  I sighed. “Such drama,” I said lightly.

  Hal put his arm around me. “You’re shaking,” he said.

  I turned my face into his chest. “Jack isn’t usually like that,” I said.

  “He’s drunk,” Hal said. “You should have heard him in there. If I never hear anyone mention Jay Braithwaite Burke again, it’ll be too soon.”

  I shared the sentiment, but I didn’t give two cents for the chance of that happening.

  Chapter 5

  O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!

  It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock

  The meat it feeds on.

  —Shakespeare, Othello

  After everybody left, Hal and I stayed to help clean up.

  “Toni,” Leezie said as she loaded the dishwasher, “just who is this Jay Braithwaite Burke person everybody’s talking about? I didn’t want to ask and look stupid.”

  “He was a lawyer,” I said, “whose specialty was to create ways for people with a lot of money to avoid paying taxes. He set up this hedge fund that was guaranteed to pay ten percent per year and not to drop more than one percent no matter what the market did.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Mike said. “How the hell did he manage that?”

  “He wouldn’t tell us,” I said. “He said it was proprietary and had to be kept secret to preserve a competitive edge.”

  “That sounds like a bunch of bull,” Mike said, “I tell you what.”

  “I don’t understand,” Leezie said. “How does that avoid taxes?”

  “He set it up so that our distributions or salaries would go directly into this hedge fund via an offshore leasing company.”

  “Leasing company?” said Leezie. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a gimmick,” Hal said. “It’s intended to create an arm’s length between the doctor and his salary by having the hospital pay the leasing company and the leasing company pay the doctors.”

  “Except that instead of paying the doctors, the money went right into the hedge fund,” I said.

  “Well, then, how were you supposed to get paid?” Leezie demanded.

  “We were supposed to take out ‘loans’ instead of salary,” I said, “and loans aren’t taxable.”

  “These so-called ‘loans’ were at a really high interest rate,” Hal said, “which we could then pay back, to ourselves, and the interest was deductible too.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mike said. “Just how the hell were you supposed to pay back these loans if all your money went into the hedge fund?”

  “That’s what our accountant wanted to know,” Hal said.

  “Why couldn’t you just have your paycheck direct-deposited into your own offshore bank account?” asked Leezie. “It sounds much simpler.”

  “Our accountant said that too,” said Hal.

  “The beauty of the leasing company concept,” I explained, “is that the leasing company would manage the pension plans and withhold taxes like any other employer, and they would pay many of the physicians’ personal expenses that were normally not deductible by an ordinary taxpayer but were deductible by the leasing company as a business expense.”

  “And then the money saved went right into the pension plans, which were invested in the hedge fund,” Hal said.

  Mike looked thoughtful. “Well, I tell you what,” he said. “I got me an earful just now from the other guys. It sounded good. If I’d been here back then, I probably would have gone into it right along with everybody else.”

  “Then I’m glad we weren’t here,” Leezie said tartly.

  “What made y’all decide not to?” Mike asked. “If y’all don’t mind my askin’.”

  I shrugged. “We talked to our accountant and our broker, and they advised against it. They both said there was no single fund that could guarantee a ten percent return no matter what the market did and to stay away from anything that was proprietary. To avoid taxes in IRAs and 401Ks, we could invest in offshore funds on our own, if we wanted to, but we’d still have to pay tax on whatever we brought back into the US.”

  “So why did everybody have to pay taxes on all the money they lost?” asked Leezie.

  “Because they invested it offshore to hide it from taxes,” Hal said, “so they couldn’t very well claim a loss on money the IRS wasn’t supposed to know they had, could they?”

  “Besides,” I said, “they had their pay go directly offshore to avoid taxes, which is apparently illegal, and some of them had been doing that for ten years or more. So now they owe gazillions in back taxes and interest and penalties.”

  “Leasing companies are illegal too,” Hal added. “As it turns out.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Leezie. “If you two could see it, why couldn’t the rest of them see it?”

  “Hal couldn’t see it either,” I said. “It sounded good to him too.”

  “Don’t put it all on me,” Hal retorted. “You would have gone along too if it hadn’t been for Fred and Lorraine.”

  Defiantly, I put my hands on my hips. “And whose idea was it to check with them?”

  Hal thrust his head forward so that he was practically nose to nose with me. “All right, already, you think you’re so smart. So whose idea was it to go for that personal corporation thing? I tried to talk you out of that, but oh, no, you just went ahead and did it without me, and look what happened.”

  I pushed back. “You know perfectly well they were legal at the time. How was I supposed to know they were going to change the tax law before the ink was even dry?”

  Hal threw up his hands. “We had to pay five quarters worth of income tax that year! Count ’em. Five!”

  Mike inserted himself between us. “Guys, guys, back off! We weren’t trying to start a fight. Jesus H. Christ, I tell you what.”

  We backed off.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Me too,” Hal said, giving me a poisonous glare. “Toni’s got to learn not to air dirty laundry in public.”

  Furious, I turned on him. “Who aired dirty laundry here? Who mentioned personal corporations?”

  Leezie grabbed my arm and pulled me away from Hal before I could get my hands on him. “Stop it,
you two! What’s the matter with you? Do you both need a time-out?”

  I sighed. “Sorry. I’ll stop if Hal will.”

  Hal clutched his head in both hands and turned his back on me. “Oy gevalt!”

  Contrite, I turned to Mike and Leezie. “I really am sorry. We better go. We’re cranky. I think we both need naps.”

  “It’s quite all right,” Leezie assured me. “Mike told me what a crazy day you guys had. You must be exhausted.”

  “I heard something about settin’ up another profit-sharing plan,” Mike said.

  “That’s true,” I said. “You and I can start investing right away. But the other guys can’t start putting anything in until they’ve paid off the IRS. That could take years.”

  Leezie shook her head. “Sounds to me like this Jay Braithwaite Burke has hurt a lot of people in more ways than one,” she said.

  I agreed. But Hal walked out without saying another word.

  Chapter 6

  Every woman should marry … and no man.

  —Benjamin Disraeli

  We weren’t done, apparently. As we walked out to the car, we didn’t speak. All the way home, we didn’t speak. Once we got inside the house, Hal headed up the stairs, still not speaking. In the bedroom, I decided I’d had quite enough silent treatment.

  “Hal.”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Toni. I don’t want to discuss Jay Braithwaite Burke anymore.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Hal turned and looked at me for the first time. “Then what do you want to talk about that can’t wait till tomorrow after we’ve had some sleep?”

  I took hold of his hands. He didn’t pull away. Encouraged, I said, “I don’t want us to go to bed mad. I want to apologize.”

  He shrugged. “So apologize, already.”

  I let go of his hands and walked away and then turned back to look at him. He didn’t move. “Well?” he said.

  I sighed. “I started that argument by saying that you wanted to invest in that scheme and it was my idea to check with Fred and Lorraine. I’m sorry I did that.”