“A trial would drag this thing out,” I said to Beth, “but maybe that’s for the best. The public has a short attention span these days.”
The door opened then, and Sean McKnight walked in without comment. He strode to the head of the conference table. “Well?” he said. He took a seat at least five places away from where Beth and I were.
Beth ducked her head as if trying to stay out of the line of fire.
“Well, what?” I said. I hated this guy more and more by the minute.
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure what you’re referring to, but if you’re talking about the judgment, it’s exactly what I told you to expect. Arbitrators often find for the plaintiff and award an amount they think the defendant can afford in order to get rid of a case. With Gary’s testimony, we knew this would probably happen, and I advised you of that on Friday.”
There was silence at the table, one I refused to break, so McKnight and I sat staring at each other until he opened his mouth again.
“And so what shall we do now, Hailey?” It was the first time he’d used my name, and a chill went through my shoulders.
“If the award won’t hurt your reputation too badly, you could pay it and be done with it. You’d have to change the Web site, too, of course.”
“Well, the award would hurt our reputation, and I don’t think our stockholders would be happy. So trial is the other option?”
“That’s right.” I pulled my gaze away from his odd stare and snuck another look at my watch. Only an hour and fifteen minutes until the flight left.
“What makes you think you could win at trial, when you couldn’t win at an arbitration?” McKnight shifted his weight back in his chair and crossed his leg, his dove-gray pants barely creasing with the movement.
I swallowed a lump of anger that rose in my throat like bile. “We’d do a few things differently at trial.”
“Like what? Gary is still a liability.”
“As I said, he’ll never be a good witness, but I’ll work on him some more. I’d also like to hire a trial consultant to work with him.”
“Anything else?” McKnight crossed his arms, and I was scared suddenly that he would fire me. I despised the guy, but I couldn’t lose his business, not now.
I decided to give him exactly what he wanted to hear. “Yes, there’s something else.”
He cocked his head as if to say, “Continue.”
“We start playing hardball,” I said. I went on to describe investigations we would undertake into Kingston’s own history to try to ward off any reminder of the Fieldings allegations. And I described the exhaustive research we’d conduct to find other Web sites with similar marks and technology to prove that Kingston wasn’t so unique in its own site.
“I like it, Hailey,” he said when I had finished, and again, his use of my first name made me nearly cringe. “Why didn’t we do this before?”
“We decided to keep costs down and see if we could win at the arbitration level.”
McKnight looked to Beth Halverson, who nodded to confirm that this had been the plan. Then he returned his gaze to me.
“This will be a much more expensive route,” I continued. “Trial consultants and investigators cost a lot of money. Plus, I’ll have to put at least one or two associates on the case to research the trademark and technology issues. As you may know, we bill at an average of three hundred and fifty dollars an hour. So it’s partly an economic decision. Are you willing to pay to get the dirt?”
McKnight gave me a cold smile. “I’d like a budget plan. As well as a letter from you analyzing our trial strategy.”
I didn’t even blink. “Fine.”
“Fine.” Another silence descended over the table.
What is his goddamn problem? I wondered again. I didn’t let myself linger on the question for long, though, since I saw that the time was now advancing on twelve o’clock.
“I’ll call the arbitrators and Evan Lamey to notify them of our decision, and Beth will file the rejection of the award when she attends the status conference in court today.” I looked to Beth, who nodded again.
McKnight exhaled, as if tired of the conversation. “I want that budget plan and analysis within the next few days.” He rose from his chair and headed for the door.
I held myself back from making a comment about the fact that I had other clients, that I had a life. “Fine,” I said one more time.
He stood at the door, looking at me as if he might speak again. Beth and I both waited for whatever he would say. But he was silent, and for what seemed like a full minute, his gaze never left mine. Then without another word, he turned and left.
As soon as he closed the door, I looked at Beth.
“He’s a freak,” she said. “Don’t let him get to you.”
“You’re right.” I shoved my papers and laptop into my briefcase. “Look, I’ve got a plane to catch. I’ll call the arbitrators and Evan from the cab. You can handle the status conference, right?”
“No problem.” She shrugged her arms into a suit coat. “And just so you know, I think you did a great job at the arb.”
“At least someone around here does.”
Beth groaned. “I know. I wish I could make an excuse for him.”
“There’s no excuse for someone like that.”
I made it to the airport with only thirty minutes to spare. I rushed to the front of the security line, begging the agents to let me cut in, then ran to the gate and was rewarded with a nearly empty flight and an upgrade to first class because of all the miles I had. I tried to relax once the flight took off, letting the layer of white clouds outside my window block out whatever lay below, but there were too many tasks, too many nagging voices in my head.
I pulled out my laptop and went to work on the ludicrous essay on why I wanted to be a partner. I was tempted to write, “For the money, of course,” but instead I went on about how I wanted to be a permanent part of a firm that was a bastion of excellent legal skills and about the way the cyber-law department had increased the firm’s revenues. And then I put my fingers to the keyboard, ready to write about my father and how I wanted to follow his legacy, but suddenly I couldn’t get my hands to type the words. I’d planned this part of the essay for weeks, figuring it would play on the sentiment of the election committee while reminding them that my father had helped put the firm on the map. Yet, although I wanted the partnership more than anything, I felt unsure now whether I wanted to follow the path my dad had walked in life.
I turned off my computer and called Beth Halverson from the plane phone to see how the status conference had gone. I hadn’t been able to reach Evan Lamey from the cab, and I wanted to see how he’d taken the news.
Beth answered on the first ring. “Oh, Hailey,” she said, “I’ve left two messages for you on your cell phone. You are not going to believe this.”
I felt a prickling on the back of my neck. “What is it?”
“The judge expedited the trial. We’ve got four weeks.”
“Are you kidding me?” My voice was so loud I drew a sharp look from a flight attendant making her way down the aisle.
“Unfortunately, no. He’s sick of the press and said there’s no reason to wait since we’re done with most of our discovery.”
“But we’re not. We’ve got all sorts of new discovery we want to do now.”
“I told him that, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He said he had cleared his schedule, and we need to finish everything up within the month.”
“Jesus.” I rapped my knuckles on my closed computer, ticking off in my mind everything we would need to accomplish. “I’ll get some associates researching the marks and stuff. Can you make a few calls?”
I gave Beth the names of two investigators to look into Kingston’s background. I couldn’t help thinking about everything I’d have to put on the back burner, namely my investigation into my mother’s death. I should probably get a flight to New York as soon as I landed. B
ut I knew I wouldn’t. I was too close to Caroline.
13
Once in the rental car, I made a distress call to Amy and fired a million directions at her about the McKnight trial. Next, I reached two associates who were free and asked them if they could drop everything in favor of some initial research into Kingston’s technology. When I got back, I would decide who to officially appoint to the case.
It began to rain. Sparkling droplets cut through the sheet-gray sky to splash on the windshield. Instead of depressing me, as rain often did, I found it soothing, so I didn’t close the window. I let the mist inside the car. It sprayed my face; it cleansed me. Every lawn I passed, every landscaped park, was lushly green with soaring trees and bursting shrubs.
I drove for twenty minutes, following the directions that Matt had given me. Finally, I found Northeast Jarrett Street, where Caroline and Matt lived. It was a residential street lined with small, trim houses. I slowed and craned my neck to see the addresses, wondering if this had been a good idea. For all I knew, Matt was lying. He could have harmed my sister or pulled a cruel trick as part of a divorce. What did I know about their marriage or their lives? Nothing. I knew nothing about my own sister and that was exactly why I was here.
Fear wouldn’t make me turn a blind eye anymore.
I pulled into Caroline’s short driveway, which led to a brick bungalow with a white roof. The wind caused blossoms to drop from an apple tree onto the front lawn. A row of bushes protected the house, and a wind chime hung from the front door, tinkling softly. The chime made the house seem calm, a place friends would want to visit, but I knew from talking to Matt that this spot had been anything but calm for the last few weeks.
A pang of nervousness hit my stomach as I made my way up the curved concrete walk to the door. I hadn’t gotten over my fantasies that this search would lead to a happy ending. We would all be a family again. In the future, Matt and I would drink too much eggnog on Christmas Eve, exchange funny e-mails from work.
I rapped on the door with my fist. It opened immediately.
Matt Ramsey looked like the picture he had taken with Caroline on their wedding day—slightly long brown hair, bronzed-wire glasses—but beneath the glasses his eyes appeared red, the skin below them bruised.
“You look like her,” he said without introducing himself. “Your eyes are different, but the hair…” He trailed off.
I nodded. “Can I come in?”
“Oh yeah, sure. Sorry.” He raised his hands, a helpless gesture, before he backed away from the door.
This is where she lives, I thought. Caroline must have picked out that tan-and-white-striped couch, and she probably made the quilt thrown over it. She might have painted the bricks of the fireplace yellow, and those daisies long dead in a vase—she bought those, or maybe she’d gone out in her backyard and picked them.
“Sorry about the mess,” I heard Matt say behind me, and it was then I noticed the layer of dust over everything in the room and the restaurant carryout boxes stacked on the coffee table.
“No problem.”
“Sit down, please. Can I get you something to drink? I really only have water, but I could make some tea. Or if you’re hungry I could make you soup, something.”
I sat on the couch and shook my head no, smiling a little at Matt’s sweetness, at his desire to make me feel comfortable when his wife was missing.
“This is a great house,” I said.
He looked around. “Yeah. It’s small, but we love it. We bought it right after we got married. As soon as we saw it, we knew it was home. You know what I mean?”
“Sure,” I said, but I didn’t know.
There had never been a place in my life that was home. Well, maybe the house in Woodland Dunes had felt like that once, but I had only been a child, and I had tried for so long to forget that part of my life that it didn’t resonate anymore. My father was the only symbol of home for me.
“I saw your wedding picture,” I said, desperate for safe conversation. “You both looked so happy.”
“That one?” Matt gestured to a wood-framed photo on the mantel, the same photo I had in my briefcase.
“That’s it.”
“Where’d you get it?” He looked confused and, for the first time, mistrustful. “We didn’t send many of those out.”
“Oh, I…” I stumbled with my words, feeling guilty that I had read Della’s letters, that I had been prying in someone’s life.
“Did you get it from your father?”
“No,” I answered immediately. And then the next logical question occurred to me. “Does he have that picture?”
Matt sat in a wood chair to my right, but then he pushed it back a little as if afraid to come too close. “I don’t know. If Caroline sent him an announcement, she didn’t tell me, but then Caroline never really talked about her family. When we first met, she told me that her mom had died when she was about to start high school, and that she didn’t get along with her father. She only told me about you after she started making that last quilt, the one she wanted to give you, but I know that she’s had some contact with your father since we’ve been married.”
“She told you that?”
Matt shook his head. “When we first started dating, she said she hated Will. She always called him by his first name. Said she never talked to him, that she didn’t want to ever see him, didn’t want to invite him to the wedding. She seemed fine about it, and I never pushed her. But one day a few years ago, I came home from work and heard her talking on the phone. Her voice was strange, really tight and controlled. I don’t know how else to describe it. She was talking very formal, saying she was fine and yes, she was happy. She got off quick when she saw that I was in the house, and when I asked her who she was talking to, she said no one. She left the house then and went for a walk.”
Matt stopped for a moment, removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. I heard the wind chime trill from the front door again, making me aware of how silent everything else was.
“What happened then?” I said. I couldn’t bear the quiet.
Matt slid his glasses back onto his face. “I checked the caller ID when she left. The name listed there was W. Sutter, and it said, ‘cellular call.’ I confronted Caroline when she came back. I was probably too harsh on her, but I felt like she’d been holding something back from me. Finally, she told me that her father kept tabs on her.”
“Were those the words she used?” I asked. “Kept tabs?” How odd that sounded, not at all like a normal father-daughter relationship, but more like a warden and a paroled prisoner.
“Yeah. She told me that she’d tried to stay away from him because that’s what he told her he wanted. But he always found her, so she’d given up hiding from him. She talked to him every once in a while to make him go away again.”
I sat back and rested my head against the sofa.
“I take it you didn’t know any of this?” Matt said.
“No.” I raised my head. “I haven’t seen Caroline since I was little, and my dad and I don’t really talk about her. Do you know why she didn’t want to see him or why she thought he didn’t want to see her?”
“She refused to tell me about it. I finally accepted that it was the one part of her life she wouldn’t let me into.”
“That must have been hard.”
“I hated it.” Matt shifted his gaze away momentarily. “I hated the thought that we would have any secrets from each other. And it scared me, because she always acted so strange whenever the subject came up. But I had to get over it. I thought it was for the best. Now I wish I’d made her tell me about your dad. She might still be here.”
“Why do you think my dad had anything to do with Caroline taking off? Isn’t it possible that she has other problems or issues that might have made her leave?”
A look of annoyance took over Matt’s face. “Like what?”
Should I mention Crestwood Home? Maybe my sister hadn’t told Matt about that either. Mayb
e she wouldn’t want him to know. For all I knew, it could have been Caroline who’d caused my mother’s death.
“Depression, maybe?” I said.
“If you haven’t seen or talked to Caroline since you were seven, what are you getting at?”
I was silent, then I felt my face grow pink. I didn’t want to be evasive, but I didn’t want to betray my sister.
“Look, Hailey, I need to find my wife. I need to know she’s safe,” Matt said. “I’m doing most of the talking here, and yet I don’t know anything about you. I get the feeling we both care for Caroline and both want what’s good for her, but you’re going to have to tell me what you know. Anything might help.”
His face fell as he spoke the last sentence, and I knew he was right. I couldn’t expect him to contribute everything.
“I don’t know much,” I said, “but I’ve been looking into how my mom died.” Look closely. “So I’ve been asking around, trying to find out what happened and where my brother and sister are.”
“Why not ask dear old dad?”
I shot him a cool look. “Because it upsets him too much.”
“Oh, I bet.” Matt’s voice rang with sarcasm.
“What is it with you and my father?” My voice rose a little despite myself. “So what if your wife had a bad relationship with him? So what if she talks to him once in a while?” As I asked these questions, my mind echoed with another: Why didn’t my father tell me he kept in touch with Caroline?
Matt leaned forward, his eyes awake now, hard. “Will Sutter clearly terrified Caroline. That was obvious every time I found her speaking to him. But I could live with that. What I can’t live with is my wife disappearing. I have good reason to believe your father was the cause of that.”
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