Question of Trust

by Laura Caldwell

  The judge nodded, looked stern.

  “We’ve seen people kill themselves,” Maggie continued, “because of them.” It was true. At least that was the word on the street and in the papers. The public and the press were getting louder and louder about the audacious, reckless and expensive prosecutions of someone low on the totem pole in order to get the big dogs, politically or otherwise. They’d been doing it in Chicago forever, but with news of defendant suicides and rampant costs hitting the press, there was some indication that the tide could be turning for the government, that they might not be able to get away with such tactics unscathed.

  “Your Honor!” Anish said, indignant and loud.

  “That’s enough speculation and rumor, Counsel,” the judge said, looking at Maggie.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Maggie said, as if she hadn’t just been admonished. “At this point, defendant not only moves to remove travel restrictions from Mr. Jameson’s bond, we move to dismiss the charges.”

  “We are not dismissing, your Honor!” Anish went through his argument again but the judge’s questions showed she might be leaning toward Maggie’s argument, at least about travel.

  “Given the government’s apparent indecision about prosecuting Mr. Jameson, the travel restrictions on his bond are lifted. Counsel,” she said, looking at Anish, “you’ve got two weeks to decide what you’re doing.”

  Maggie shot Theo and me one of those delighted looks that only Maggie can get from being in the courtroom. “You’re out of here,” she said to Theo.

  59

  The airport wasn’t like any he’d been in before. And Theo Jameson had been in many. But lately, his experience was with private planes, landing in a small airport, greeted by a smiling employee who put them into a car or dropped them at their beach hut, their ski cabin, whatever.

  But here, in Rarotonga, (he was still having trouble pronouncing it—ra-roh-tong-ga) there was a man playing a little guitar. Izzy clapped her hands at the sight, then gave him a chagrined glance as if she’d just realized her reaction wasn’t appropriate to their situation. He hugged her. Thank God for Izzy.

  There were women at the Rarotonga airport, too—smiling women with shiny black hair—advancing toward them, their arms filled with fragrant flowers of white and purple. They were holding, he realized, necklaces of flowers, and they were placing them around the necks of deplaning passengers.

  He drew back a little. It seemed like a vacation thing to do. And they weren’t on vacation. They were here to find his dad. His deadbeat, goddamned, steal-all-his-money, make-his-friend-try- to-kill-himself-and-disappear dad. But Theo was confused. And maybe because of that confusion, he still loved his dad a little. Wanted more than anything to find out what had happened, what was still happening.

  Izzy wore a yellow dress. It looked hot on her, but then everything did, just as wearing nothing looked hot on her, too. Despite the situation, the thought of Izzy naked, red curls hanging down over her smooth, white shoulders, made him erect. He pushed the thought away, watched as a flower woman advanced on Izzy, a necklace of mostly purple outstretched. Izzy didn’t seem to care if wearing the thing would make her look like a tourist. She closed her eyes in a—what was the word?—beatific kind of way and bowed her head. The woman slipped the flowers around her neck, framing those orange-red coils of hair, and then Izzy raised her face, smiling at the woman, who smiled back silently. The two held the moment. Izzy had that kind of mesmerizing effect on people, he’d noticed. The funny thing was she didn’t notice, not really. But he noticed, and the scene in front of him made him love her all the more.

  He did. He loved her. Sometimes she wondered about that, he could tell. She thought maybe he was too young to know about such a thing, to know love.

  She wasn’t wrong often, but she was wrong about that one.

  60

  The bellman at our beachfront room on Rarotonga swung open French doors and pointed across the beach. That sand was fine and white and had a bit of sparkle lifted from the sun. Beyond the beach was a calm ring of light blue water. Maybe five hundred feet out, the water darkened at the edges and navy blue waves crashed.

  “That is an atoll,” the bellman said. He was a big, smiling man. He wore a flower behind his ear, oddly without femininity. “You understand?”

  I nodded and I said a silent thank-you to Q, because not only had he booked our travel, but he’d also run to three bookstores to find guides about the Cook Islands so Theo and I could pore over them (and then sleep over them on the fifteen-hour flight). Because of those books, I knew that I was in the Cook Islands, roughly somewhere in between Hawaii and New Zealand on the main island of Rarotonga, which had a natural breakwater around it. More important, I knew the Cook Islands was an international banking hub that saw more business than Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.

  “During low tide you may walk out there.” The bellman pointed to the waves.

  “Is there surfing?” I asked for Theo. I’d allowed myself to occasionally envision taking a vacation with him, and that was always something I imagined him doing. I wasn’t much of a water girl, but maybe he’d teach me. It would be a true vacation, unlike the time we’d been to Italy together, which definitely wasn’t a pleasure trip. But hell, as Theo and I had discussed, we weren’t on vacation now, either.

  “Yes,” the bellman answered, “but it’s not so good.” He clapped his hands. “Wait! There is a tour. You get a bus....” He gently grabbed my arm, pulling me through our room, to the main lobby and down the dusty drive to the street.

  “You see?” He pointed to a sign in an upstairs apartment across the street that read Scuba Tours & Surf Tours. “See?”

  “Yes, I see, thank you.”

  “You go there for tours.”

  “Okay, will do.” I wished, desperately, that I were just a tourist, flip-flops smacking against my feet as I walked across the road and signed up for a scuba lesson.

  Instead, I thanked him, turned and headed back.

  When I got to the room, Theo was standing at the threshold between the tiled floors of the villa to a slate patio outside. He was silent, staring at the water.

  I put my hands on Theo’s waist, just to let him know I was there, both physically and otherwise. The only upside to seeing Theo go through this was that my belief in him had begun to grow again.

  He turned and put his hands on either side of my face. “Iz, thank you for being here.”

  I hugged him, standing on my toes. Over his shoulder, I took in the tall, shading palm trees, thatched hut roofs, orange-and-white cats coolly watching us from low, white stucco walls.

  But then, for some reason, the iconic beach images slid to the side. What was that feeling? I’d had it before, many times over the past year. You’re being watched, Iz. I kept my eyes open, scanning the beach, feeling like something was coming more and more into focus. And that’s when I noticed the man.

  61

  “Whoa,” I said. A bristle of fear ran up my body. I suddenly felt like one of the cats that were all over the island, but instead of being slow and lazy, it was as if the cat’s back arched and its hairs all stood up.

  “What?” Theo said. He turned and I felt him following my gaze to a guy thirty feet away, sitting on a wood-backed beach chair. There were other people on the beach, too, but…

  “That guy,” I said, my eyes narrowed.

  Then I couldn’t stop myself. I launched into action and started stomping through the sand toward the guy. I didn’t care if the wind lifted my yellow dress or if I looked like a crazed woman with wild orange hair, barreling her way toward a man who was fully dressed—red shorts and a black T-shirt and longish black hair.

  He was one of the islanders, you could tell from his brown skin, and as he turned, I saw he had the round, brown eyes a lot of the guys had—eyes that seemed really nice, really kind, but sort of like they’d seen a lot, too.

  The man’s eyes got a little bigger when he saw me stomping toward him. I hea
rd Theo hurrying after me.

  “Kia Orana,” I said. That was the way to say hello in the Cook Islands and I had practiced it under my breath on the plane. But the way I said it now was pretty demanding.

  The man repeated my words. He sounded nicer, and not surprised that I was in front of him. But his eyes weren’t on me, I realized.

  Instead, the man’s eyes had strayed past me and looked right at Theo.

  “Bradley would like to see you,” the man said.

  He was looking at Theo, not me, but I almost wanted to say, Ha! I knew it.

  I’d known he was looking at us. I’d known, somehow, that he was on that beach because of us.

  But my triumph at my intuition faded when I saw Theo’s face. The face of a sweet, young boy who had been hurt, and now the reminder of that hurt had pained him all over again.

  “Where is he?” Theo asked.

  “I’ll take you.”

  In a small, old, tan, beat-up car that we would never have entered with a stranger if we were in Chicago, Theo turned to me. We were both in the back, which made me feel out-of-control, but the man had insisted. In a very kind way. He seemed a good guy, like most of the other locals on the island. But what did I know about a scrap of island in the middle of the South Pacific? And what were we doing?

  Theo looked at me. I waited for whatever it was he had to say.

  “I’ve never heard him called Bradley,” he said.

  I looked out the front window, over our driver’s shoulder, where the two-lane road made me dizzy because we were driving on the left lane. I patted Theo’s leg, feeling the uselessness of the gesture. Through the front window I saw a small, hand-painted sign stuck in the roadside dirt that read Jesus is our God! Not money!

  “It’s okay,” I said, turning back to him. “It’s going to be okay.”

  62

  Theo laughed, harshly, when he saw the house, a small shack that couldn’t have been more than one room. The outside walls had once been painted a light purple it seemed. It made me think of the color of an Easter egg.

  “Faded houses make me sad,” Theo said, under his breath.

  “Really?” I’d never heard him say anything like that.

  “Yeah. It’s like somebody once cared, but now they don’t at all.” Silence. Then I heard him speak, but only barely. “I wondered if that’s how my dad feels about me.” He looked at the house. “Everything must be gone. All our clients’ money, everything.”

  The driver pulled up the emergency brake and pointed at the house. “One of the nicest on the island.”

  I squeezed Theo’s leg. “Ready?”

  He looked as if he was having a hard time swallowing, as if he felt a clog of tears lodge in his throat.

  “Go ahead if you need to cry,” I whispered.

  Theo kept looking at the house. “I’m ready.”

  I held his hand as we walked across the yard. We were nearly there when a black-and-red rooster climbed onto the single cement front stoop, standing there.

  “My dad lives with a rooster,” Theo said.

  I burst into giggles, and when I immediately tried to stop them, that made him laugh, too. We looked at each other, laughing, me covering my mouth.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “Inappropriate laughter.”

  “I know.”

  We recovered somewhat. Theo’s face lightened a little, and we took another step toward the front door. Then another few steps.

  The rooster jutted away. Theo reached for the door, when it opened.

  63

  He’s bigger than he used to be, I thought. More…menacing.

  Theo, I think, noticed it, too, because I felt a pause, a stillness take over his body. He got that way only two times that I’d noticed—right after sex, when it seemed he wanted to hold the moment inside himself as long as possible, and also when he was scared but he didn’t want to admit it.

  Brad’s face had been bland, but now he smiled, a smile of relief. He looked so happy to see Theo that I forgot for a second how much I’d hated him.

  He wore khaki shorts and a black golf-style shirt that read Muri Beach on the left side. He’d grown a belly, where just last week he had been lean. His face was puffy-looking, as if he’d eaten too much salt or drank too much alcohol or maybe both.

  He took a step down and started to open his arms, as if to hug us, but Theo drew back, and he dropped his arms.

  “I know, Dad,” Theo said. “I know you stole the money from HeadFirst.”

  Brad opened his mouth. “I didn’t…” But he seemed to think better of it.

  “Please,” he said, gesturing to the house.

  Inside, the place was much nicer than it looked from the outside. The first part of the large room was a kitchen with decent appliances and a table. The table was beautifully designed, the legs made from tree branches and polished to a high sheen. The table itself was a huge wooden bowl filled with coral and covered with glass.

  I looked around the rest of the place—brightly colored art that appeared Polynesian hung on the walls. A thin, vivid rug with intricate patterns of blue and pink and yellow covered the floor.

  “So, this is where it all happens,” Theo said, sarcastic. When no one said anything, Theo spoke again. “You stole all that money from HeadFirst.”

  Brad Jameson sighed. “Let’s discuss this. I helped you raise money.”

  “Yes, you helped us raise money—me and Eric. You know Eric tried to kill himself?”

  His dad nodded, his eyes closing for a long time, as if he could not stand to see what was in front of him.

  “He tried to kill himself because of what you did!” Theo said. “Do you get that?”

  “Look, please sit down,” Brad said.

  “I don’t want to sit down! I am sick of the questions and of you making me doubt myself and my partner, when the only person I needed to doubt was you.”

  “It’s complicated,” Brad said.

  “Well, make it easy!” Before I knew what was happening, Theo lunged at his father.

  I pulled Theo back. “Wait, wait, wait!”

  He took a step back, panting.

  A few years ago, I had taken a seminar on mediation. It was time to put those skills to use. “Gentlemen, sit down,” I said, pointing to the couch and chairs at the end of the big room. “Please.”

  Theo looked at me. I saw a flash of gratitude in that glance, and he nodded. Brad Jameson nodded even faster, looked even more grateful.

  When they were seated across from each other, I sat between them and put my hands on the glass coffee table.

  I looked at Theo’s father. “Brad, I think Theo just wants a few answers.”

  “What I want—” Theo began to say, his voice loud.

  I held up my hand. He went silent. “Let me run through some things so we all get on the same page.” I looked at Brad. “Starting from the beginning. You raised money for HeadFirst when Theo and Eric launched the company, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Venture capital funds.”

  Another nod.

  “But you kept some of those funds for your own use.”

  A pause, but then he said, “Yes.”

  “Jesus, Dad!” Theo said, his voice full of accusation and of surprise as if he finally—finally—understood. “I cannot believe you did that!”

  I gave him a stern stare and he clamped his mouth shut.

  “You kept some of those funds in a trust on this island. On Rarotonga.”

  “Yeah,” Brad said.

  I crossed my fingers together and sat a little taller. “You did that to avoid taxation and detection of the funds, right?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought about it, pieces falling into place. “So you kept those funds for your own use.”

  “Money that HeadFirst wasn’t using,” he pointed out.

  “And were you able to pay back investors as planned?”

  “For a while.”

  “Then you got into trouble.” />
  “Well, I didn’t get into trouble.”

  Theo scoffed.

  “Look,” his dad said, seeming to get frustrated for the first time, “I might have been running something on the back end here, but it’s not just me that brought this thing down.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what I came here to find out for sure.” He exhaled a long breath, and looked down. “Listen, we got so much money when we started the company. You and Eric were doing great,” he said, looking at his son. “So I used some of those funds for my own…what would you call it?”

  “Your own greed?” Theo said.

  “Yes,” he answered fast. “I was greedy. But it wasn’t me that caused the whole thing. At some point, the funds started disappearing.” His chest seemed to drop, as if losing muscle tone. “The funds are nearly gone now.”

  I could tell Theo wanted to yell, to question, to cry. I shot him another glance—don’t.

  “See,” Brad said, “a number of trustees were set up on the trust account for different reasons. It’s complicated. I’m still trying to understand it. That’s one of my biggest regrets, not completely understanding the setup.”

  “Oh, that’s your big regret?” Theo barked out a laugh.

  “Please,” I said, my voice low, “keep going.”

  “Some of the trustees were the initial investors in our business. Some…”

  Theo had his eyes closed. Brad sighed, as if weighing his thoughts.

  I wanted him to keep going before Theo exploded again. From my purse, I pulled the contact lists that Theo had sent me from HeadFirst, the ones that the Feds had been interested in seeing. I showed them to Brad. “Are these the people who invested money initially?”

  Brad glanced at it. “Yes.”

  “Are there others who aren’t shown there?”

  He shook his head, looked at it closer.

  I got a clear image of Maggie, and I knew what she’d want me to ask. “Brad, I don’t know if this is all connected, but while I have you here, I have to ask you something or my best friend will kill me. Do you know the Cortaderos?”