Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money

by Linda L. Richards

  “OK. Agreed. Tonight is not for explanations. Despite our shared history and our present company, tonight can be our first date. So let’s play first date. Tell me the things that aren’t mysterious about Madeline Carter.”

  And so I did. I told him about growing up in Seattle and falling in love with the stockmarket and New York and how I’d finally wound up on the sunny coast. He told me about coming of age in Idaho and moving to LA at 19 to study at the Guitar Institute — he’d wanted to be a bass player — and how he’d wound up at USC studying business instead. “Because of a girl,” he told me with a straight face and I almost, but not quite, believed him. “I needed an MBA to impress a girl.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Naw. Took too long. In the end she left me for a drummer.”

  We had a nice evening. The four of us left the restaurant at — oh, I don’t know, a million o’clock or so — and went back to Emily’s place, got Tycho and took him for a walk. The beach, of course, but he needed to be emptied. And then the guys walked us home and said a sweet and chaste goodnight. As Steve had promised, it truly had been like a first date.

  After they’d left I was subjected to a full half hour of “Tristan said this,” and “Tristan did that,” before Emily finally conceded that the day was sufficiently full and I could now go peacefully off to slumberland on the sofa.

  *

  It felt as though I had barely gotten to sleep when a telephone woke me up. I propped myself up on one elbow in time to see Emily tiptoe into her office, where she didn’t pick up the phone: I could hear a masculine voice while Emily screened but still didn’t pick up. She popped her head out after a couple of minutes, “Madeline, you up?” I nodded, sleepily. “Come here. I think you should hear this.”

  A youthful male voice. “Hey, um, this is Corby Frye. Stacey at The Curl told me to call you. You can get me at,” he left a number and I recognized a Malibu exchange, “I’m not here all the time but the machine will be on.”

  Emily and I looked at each other across the machine. “I know it’s not particularly telling,” she said, “but I thought you’d want to hear the voice.”

  I nodded. “And it’s two o’clock in the morning. Who leaves messages at that time?”

  Emily shrugged, “Surfer dudes, I guess. A’it?”

  “I guess. So now what do I do?”

  “You think it’s possible he’s involved?” Emily looked thoughtful.

  “Sure. But it’s possible he’s not, too. But if she was behind it herself, it would make sense she’d have her boyfriend involved or that he’d at least know where she was.”

  “But I just don’t get it, Madeline. Jennifer seems like such a nice kid. And we really did have fun at the movies that time.”

  “Yeah, we did. But it’s not about us. It’s about her dad, I think. And Tasya.”

  “One of those classic cries for attention?” Emily shook her head. “I just don’t buy it, this is pretty extreme.”

  “For you and me, maybe. But in this world,” I shrugged. “Think about it, your whole life is around making movies since you were a kid. And sometimes what you want and need is bumped back or overlooked because of something that is, essentially, make believe. And then your parents split up and, not long after, your dad goes to Ibiza to make a movie, and comes back with a beautiful new wife young enough to be your sister.”

  “Ibiza?” Emily echoed.

  “Yeah, I know. See, it’s sort of bizarre. And if all of that is your reality, maybe you do some weird things for attention.”

  “Or,” Emily said thoughtfully, “for money.”

  “Money? They have lots of money.”

  Emily shook her head, “No, he has lots of money. She’s a kid. She probably gets an allowance or something. And remember,” Emily said excitedly, warming to her theory, “she told us she wants to go to acting school but that Tyler was against it. Maybe she knew she was getting kicked out of school and it moved her personal deadline up.”

  “But ten grand,” I shook my head. “Where would that get you?”

  “From her perspective, remember, it would get you to New York.”

  We were both quiet for a couple of beats, thinking our own thoughts. Finally, I said, “I think I have a plan.”

  Emily said, “Uh-oh.”

  “I don’t even think it’s dangerous. Tyler said he has to make his cash drop tomorrow night at eleven. I want you to call boyfriend person first thing in the morning and tell him you want to audition him for a role in a surfer movie you’re doing.”

  “Pre-screen,” Emily said matter-of-factly.

  “Pardon?”

  “For commercial roles, the first meeting is called an audition. For film work it’s a pre-screen.”

  I looked at Emily steadily for a moment, trying to determine if she was kidding or not. She wasn’t.

  “Well, actually,” she said thoughtfully, continuing the thread, “for a pre-screen there has to be sides,” I was just looking at her. “You know. Sides of dialog. Some kind of little script, even if it’s short. And we won’t have that.”

  I looked at her levelly. “I don’t think it matters.”

  “Well, it should be accurate, you know. What I tell him should be right.”

  “Whatever. Just call him, OK? We’re talking about a surfing instructor. If you tell him to meet you at a car wash on Sepulveda he’ll be there, as long as he knows its something to do with his being in a movie.”

  Emily nodded, resigned. But I knew that, whatever she ended up telling him, it would probably be something technically correct. “Why me?”

  “Well, it won’t make much difference which of us calls, but you know movie lingo. Like all this pre-screen, side business for instance. If he asks you something tricky, you’ll know how to answer it.”

  “True. OK, where is this fictional pre-screen going to take place?”

  “Malibu Center Mall. The coffee place there.”

  “Auditions don’t work that way. Or pre-screens. They never take place in public like that.”

  “Do you think he’d want to take the chance?”

  “Good point,” Emily said. “Am I actually going to audition him for something? Because I can, you know. I’ve been through that process before.”

  “No,” I said thoughtfully, riffing as I went along, “because you’re not going to go. Neither am I. He’s going to be stood up. Then when he storms off home in a huff, I’m going to follow him.”

  “And you think that’s where Jennifer will be?”

  “Sure,” I said, with more confidence than I felt at that moment. “He’s a surfer. I don’t think it’ll be a sophisticated operation.”

  “But then what? Do we just storm in and grab her.”

  “We?”

  Emily looked surprised. “Sure. I’m coming.”

  I looked at her, not saying anything.

  “Duh! I’m coming,” she said again.

  “OK,” I said, finally. “Actually, that could be good. With two of us we could run in and divert him, while the other goes in and grabs Jennifer.”

  “Do you think we should call the police or anything?” Emily asked suddenly, as though she’d just thought of it.

  “Oh, probably.”

  “But we’re not going to, are we?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  *

  When Emily and I finally quit yakking and I got back to sleep, I dreamed of Paul. Paul Westbrook. A blood red dream. Not of him chasing me through the wilds of the San Bernardino Forest, but Paul as I’d last seen him, in college: on his knees on the bed, his face contorted with cruel laughter.

  I woke in the half dark that is the best that Huntington Beach, at the beach, can provide. The dream didn’t wake me, but Tycho’s big wet tongue on my face did. He was doing his Tycho-best to comfort me. I must have cried out.

  “S’OK boy. I’m OK. Go back to sleep.” He snuffled my face closely as though reassuring himself I was, in fact, all right, then padded bac
k to the position he’d taken up on a small rug between me and the door. I think he was asleep as soon as he tucked his nose under his tail. I wasn’t so lucky.

  Paul Westbrook. I hadn’t expected to see him again. Ever. And certainly not in such weird circumstances. Though I wasn’t totally certain it had been him, in my heart, there was little doubt. Like when you see a stranger — in a mall or at a restaurant — and you think: Could that be so and so? You doubt and, inevitably, it turns out not to be them at all. But when you do recognize someone, you might still doubt, but on another level you’re sure from the first moment. That’s how I felt about this Paul sighting. I didn’t want it to be, yet I felt that it was.

  I had little doubt that the Paul Westbrook on the business card Arianna had shown me was the Paul I’d known. And the significance of that name in Arianna — and formerly Ernie’s — possession was now fairly clear. Paul had been a part of this all along. I felt I should have known that. Time passes, you change and you think everyone around you has changed, as well. And, in this case, it looks like they had. But the thing between Paul and Ernie seemed to have deepened, not been outgrown.

  Just seeing Paul again had brought back a lot of things that I thought I’d buried pretty efficiently. Paul and Ernie. Ernie and Paul. In the quiet of the early morning hours, with a little sleep behind me, things were beginning to make sense. And then there was Anne Rand. What had that been about? I knew I had to see Arianna. And that meant I had to find her. But first, there were some things I needed to do.

  I looked at the clock. Six-thirty. Too early to call the sheriff’s office to discover what they’d found back at Camp Arrowheart: that would have to wait until later. But early meant that traffic would be light and I could probably make it home in under an hour. I pulled Emily’s sundress and sandals back on, balled my crusty clothes up and stuffed them into a plastic shopping bag I found under the sink (only half kidding when I thought I should probably just go ahead and burn them), left a note thanking Emily for her shelter, clothes and friendship and reminding her to call me as soon as she’d talked to Corby. And then, with a single and predictable stop at Starbucks for a latté to go, Tycho and I were back on the road.

  Chapter Twenty

  I was surprised to see the FedEx package stuffed into my door when I came home. I flipped it over as I unlocked the door: the sender was listed as S. Shoenberger, Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Sarah.

  I couldn’t imagine what Sarah might be sending me, but I steeled myself before I ripped the package open, anticipating something that would make me sob. Pictures, maybe, of me and Jackson. Or even a nice portrait of Jack. Or Jack and Sarah. The kids.

  I plopped the unopened FedEx pack in the middle of the living room floor and circled it uneasily while I went about getting myself together: putting my forest-stained clothes from the day before into the laundry basket, getting the coffee machine ready for the day. When I got out of the shower, fresh-brewed coffee perfuming the air, the FedEx pack glinted at me evilly from where I’d left it.

  “Oh this is stupid,” I said aloud. Tycho thumped his tail at me, mutely agreeing. I hunkered down next to the package, ripped it open, then sat staring at the contents. I knew what I was looking at, but not why Sarah would be sending it to me.

  Then a note in Sarah’s neat, schoolteachery handwriting, caught my eye. Her tone was formal, but I understood that.

  Dear Madeline,

  I can imagine that this package will come as a surprise to you. When you mentioned the name on the phone, it was unexpected and, even then, I couldn’t be sure. It seemed like too much of a coincidence to believe. I had to go and check.

  And now you have everything in your hand. Jackson’s “weekend project,” as he liked to call it. You’ll see he had his eye on your old friend for quite some time. You’ll note from the clippings I’ve added (the most recent ones) that he might even have indirectly had a hand in what happened to Jack.

  Madeline, this was Jackson’s pet project for so long, I almost couldn’t stand to let it go. But it sounds like it will be more useful to you than the emotional flaying is doing for me.

  I hope you’re well. Come see us soon. Failing that you might have the three of land on your doorstep one day soon. We’ll make you take us to Disneyland.

  Love…

  Sarah

  Jackson’s pet project floored me. A regular FedEx envelope filled almost to bursting with company stats, newspaper and magazine clippings and SEC filings. These last were the most interesting, mainly SEC exemptions that several of the companies that Ernie had been involved with had applied for and mostly gotten: Exemptions that had been draped in innocent language that, if viewed a certain way, might have had far-reaching effects for the companies involved and their shareholders.

  From the look of the paperwork that spilled out of that FedEx package, Jackson had been following Ernie’s career and the trades related to it for at least five years and, from the type of stuff he’d been collecting, he’d been doing it in order to prepare a case for the SEC.

  I knew I hadn’t mentioned Ernie to Jack for years: almost a decade. When the two of us had started at Merriwether Bailey we’d both been so young and my Ernie wounds were still relatively fresh. I thought Jack had forgotten all about it, the way you forget someone else’s bad headache. I touched the papers again, almost reverently, feeling Jack in the sharp edge of every page.

  “He didn’t forget,” I said softly, realizing there were tears on my checks. I don’t even know when I’d started crying.

  I could tell the items that Sarah had contributed, because they’d been added after Jackson’s death. One was a photocopy of Jackson’s killer’s final account statement with Merriwether Bailey — I could only guess how Sarah had gotten her hands on that — and it indicated a huge loss on Salt Spring Technologies, the company I knew Ernie had been CEO of about two jobs ago. While SST was rising, the shooter had Jackson buy a huge whack of shares on his behalf, against Jack’s advice. When the stock had started to flag, Jackson had told him again to sell, but the client had him buy still more. I’d probably never know how Jackson had managed to connect Ernie to these shaky deals, the press hadn’t thus far. But it stood to reason that if Jack had, there were likely others who had, as well. That alone might have been a good enough reason for Ernie to want to make himself disappear.

  With shards of Jackson’s handwriting and signs of his deep interest all around me, I could feel his presence very strongly. It was as if he was in the room. I could almost hear his voice: We’ll get him, Carter. I whispered it back to him now: “We’ll get him, Jack.”

  Along with being a fairly complete dossier on at least the top end of Ernest Carmichael Billing’s shady dealings, Jack’s files presented me with possibilities for connections that I’d previously missed.

  I’d been looking at what was apparent and supposing I had the whole picture. Jack’s files made me think about Paul and Ernie, how they’d been when I’d known both of them well. Over this I juxtaposed the snippet of conversation I’d heard between them yesterday. It felt like a metaphor: what I’d heard wasn’t real, just as it was quite possible that what could be seen from the surface over the years between college and now wasn’t what had been happening at all. Layers of deception. Shades of gray. Sleight of hand and weight of air and nothing is what it seems.

  Here’s what could be seen on the surface: Paul and Ernie graduate. Paul goes away and does whatever it is he was supposed to have been doing but — and here’s the salient bit — he does it separate from Ernie. Ernie grows up to become this savvy business dude who saves poor little struggling companies. Boys grow up. After a while you outgrow each other, go separate ways, lead your life. That’s what’s supposed to happen.

  But I had a sudden sense — call it gut, intuition or whatever you want — that what the world saw didn’t, when it came to these two guys, reflect anything real at all.

  In support of the material I now had from Jack-via-Sarah, I did a Web sear
ch on Ernie. Fortunately, his name was not Bill Smith or I would have been out of luck. But there are simply not a lot of Ernest Carmichael Billings running around out there. Every search response I got was relevant. And, with the exception of a few society notices announcing his wedding, engagement and the death of his father-in-law, they were all around his various daring and impressive business exploits. I jotted down the names of the companies as they came up and downloaded whatever data I could find on his techniques as a savior. Then, armed with dates, I went to my market data and started plugging stuff in and — with Jackson’s research filling in a few holes — piecing things together.

  As I had expected, the surface data looked good. Without exception, Ernie had brought each company he signed on with greater glory and faster returns. All lined up, though, that was the weird part. The first company had been just a couple of years after our graduation. Too early, really, to be brought in as a superstar, but there it was.

  Publicly traded, the company made outboard motors and lawnmowers and their paper was in such bad shape when Ernie came on board that they were in danger of being delisted. Then some virtuoso management shuffling, a sharp eye here, a well placed kick there and, within six months, their papers were pristine, the stock exchange was smiling at them again and Ernie’s face was getting plastered in minor business rags as the fledgling wunderkind of the turnaround.

  That was the surface. That’s what you saw at a casual — even careful — glance. But the market data showed a different story. I noted that, without exception, trading volumes went up almost as soon as Ernie took over the CEO’s chair. Most of this new volume didn’t show up as insider action — that is, trades made by officers of the companies in question and filed with EDGAR, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system — which meant that — one way or another, the new volume was coming from outside of the company.