On the other hand, David had reminded me that threatened people are dangerous, and Barclay was definitely threatened by what I knew. He wouldn’t have called me if something weren’t up, and it was important to keep my guard up, whether Kenny was there or not.
Eleven thirty. Only an hour and a half to go.
I tried out various wardrobe articles for their efficacy in concealing recording devices and finally settled on a sweatshirt with front pockets over the stomach so I could slip my hands in and out without arousing attention. The sweatshirt was navy blue with a gold anchor logo, so I rounded out the nautical look with white pants and tennis shoes. It looked jaunty, and okay for the Shorebird Café.
Eleven forty-five. The phone rang. Kenny had promised to call to check in before we left so we could “synchronize our watches.” I picked up the receiver. “Hi,” I said. “I’m all set.”
“Caroline?”
Not Kenny. “Yes?” I said impatiently.
“This is Henry Eastman. I’m afraid I’ve caught you at a bad time.”
He caught me off balance. “Well, actually, I was just about to leave the house,” I told him.
“I’m sorry. If you can spare me a few minutes, this won’t take long.”
I sat down on the chair, holding the phone gingerly. I felt as if I’d been caught by the principal. “Okay,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as guilty as I felt.
“We didn’t finish our conversation the other night.” His voice was neutral, but my heart sank. The reckoning had come.
“I didn’t realize—” I began lamely.
“I invited you to tell me if something was bothering you, and I haven’t heard from you.”
I hadn’t realized it was a command performance. “There really isn’t anything…”
“Caroline, I accepted your explanation the other night because you were obviously embarrassed at having been caught in Steve’s office after hours, and I didn’t want to make an issue of it in front of Barclay and Jeff. However, both of us know there was more to it than that, and I really must insist on an explanation. I’ve discussed the matter with Steve, and he seems to feel you might have been searching his office for documents or something of that nature.” He lowered his voice to a serious whisper that was far more effective than a shout. “Your husband thinks it might have something to do with something Eleanor Hampton told you before she died.”
“You—you talked to Steve?” was all I could manage to ask. I hadn’t realized it till that moment: I’d had an absurd hope that somehow he wouldn’t find out.
“Yes, and he was rather upset, as you can imagine. But don’t worry, Caroline, I’ve calmed him down. I’ve told him I will handle it. But you must see that I have to get to the bottom of this, now.”
As a matter of fact, I did see. The thing was, what was I going to tell him? I wondered if he had learned about the side letter and wanted to discover if I knew about it, too, if that was what this was really all about. I’d toyed once with the idea of telling him about it anyway, but it was my ace in the hole, and as long as I didn’t know who was guilty of what, there was no point in tipping my hand. On the other hand, he clearly wasn’t buying my story about my visit being a nostalgia excursion—Steve had seen to that—so I was going to have to tell him something. I took a deep breath.
“Henry, I swear to you—I swear—that all I did in Steve’s office was look for a picture of us that used to be on his desk.” Thank God that much at least was perfectly true. I fetched up a regretful little sigh. “But you’re right; there is more to it than that.”
“Go on,” he said.
“I’m not sure where to start,” I told him.
“Take your time,” he said kindly, “but the beginning is usually best.”
I drew a breath. “I know you are aware that Eleanor thought that Barclay was”—I almost said “screwing,” but it seemed a little too crude for Henry—“mistreating her financially, with the connivance of the firm. She was certain that the amount of his compensation was artificially lowered so that the formula used to calculate his support payments to her and the children would be reduced. You probably realize she got more and more obsessed with the idea of lawyers and how they sc—mistreat their spouses in general.”
“Oh, yes. She certainly made no secret of her feelings,” Henry said.
“No, she didn’t. And I met her—entirely by accident—at the end of the summer, and she seemed to feel that…well, that I might share those feelings. Steve and I had recently split up, and I think she wanted to warn me that what happened to her could happen to me, too.” I shrugged, a little embarrassed. “I think what she really wanted was to convert me to her point of view.”
“And did she?”
I hesitated. “Not entirely. She became so obsessed that she clearly lost perspective. But I have to tell you, Henry, I’ve learned a lot since I started looking into this, and one of the things I’ve learned is that she wasn’t completely wrong, either. People who have an edge—and you definitely have the edge if you make the money and you know how to tweak the system to get what you want—can’t always be trusted not to use that advantage unfairly.”
“You’re probably right,” he admitted sadly.
“Anyway,” I continued, “she sent me a whole box of materials documenting what she perceived were Barclay’s injustices. She wanted me to write it up somehow, maybe as a warning to other women in the same situation. Quite honestly, I really didn’t want to get involved in anything like that at all. It made me very uncomfortable. I’d tried to put her off, but in a few days the box arrived anyway. I didn’t even open it until after she died.” I looked at my watch. It was noon. I was going to have to hurry this up.
“I take it you found something in this box that caused you some concern?” Henry asked gently.
“Well, yes. Mostly there were embarrassing letters to and from Eleanor and Barclay and their respective lawyers, but some of the documents had to do with his compensation and his bonus.” I waited to see if he would react, but he didn’t say anything. I could not shake the suspicion that he was not hearing all this for the first time. I cleared my throat. “What I believe is, Eleanor was right about what Barclay had done.” I lowered my voice conspiratorially. “Henry, she had private investigator reports.”
There was a long silence. “That is outrageous,” he said finally.
“You mean—”
“I can’t be sure until I examine the documents myself, but if what you say is true, it’s despicable.” He sounded genuinely disgusted. “No wonder you were so angry at her funeral.”
I hadn’t known it showed that much. Now that he was somewhat more sympathetic, it was time to segue into my nocturnal ramblings at Eastman, Bartels. “Well, it’s too late for Eleanor of course. But the thing is, Henry, you can see how I might worry that the same thing could happen to me. Other women warned me, too. So when Susan said she had to stop in at the firm that night, I thought maybe I could find something in Steve’s files about his bonus or…” I sniffed a little. “I’m so embarrassed, Henry. I was thinking about going through his drawers. But I promise you I didn’t do it.” I let out a breath of relief. Everything I had told him was more or less true, and I hoped the story would be enough to satisfy him.
“I’m very glad you told me, Caroline,” he said in a much more friendly tone. “You can see that I had to find out the truth.”
“Yes, of course,” I told him.
“And I can see how you might have been worried,” he conceded. “Naturally I don’t wish to interfere in your personal relationship with Steve, but if you will trust me to handle certain things for you, as he has done, I think I can guarantee that what appears to have happened to Eleanor will not happen to you. I’ve tried to say as much to you before, but I can see now that you might have had cause not to believe me. I’m very sorry about that.”
“Thank you, Henry. That’s very kind of you. If it’s all right with my lawyer, it’s all right with me.”
“There wouldn’t be much point, would there?” I countered.
“None whatsoever,” he said firmly.
I glanced at my watch again and discovered I was going to be late for my meeting with Barclay if I didn’t leave in the next thirty seconds. “I’m so sorry, Henry, but I really have to run. I’m already late as it is.”
“Lunch date?” He sounded amused.
“Something like that,” I told him.
When he had hung up, I dialed Kenny. “Sorry. I got tied up. I’m out the door.”
“Okay,” he said calmly. “No problem. I’m leaving right now.” He paused. “Relax, Caroline. You’re breathing so hard I can hear it over the phone. It’s not too late to change your mind.”
I shook my head, then realized he couldn’t see me. “No, I want to go,” I told him.
“Right. Meet you there.”
As I was stepping out, the phone rang again. I hesitated, then shrugged. “Screw it,” I said and closed the door.
21
The Shorebird Café was funky and unpretentious, with a world-class view of the yacht harbor and the open water. The food was nothing special, standard fare for restaurants where people come more for the atmosphere than the cuisine. Still, on a Sunday afternoon it was a popular lunch spot, and I had to wait ten minutes to get a table. Kenny was more fortunate. He was sitting with his back to the window, facing almost the entire room, a perfect site for surveillance. I could see him from where I sat, studying the menu while the waitress studied him.
By the time I was seated, Barclay was fifteen minutes late. I toyed with a cup of coffee for a while until the frequency of the waitress’s visits to inquire if I was ready to order became impossible to ignore. I ordered a chicken salad, one of the oriental kind with sesame dressing. By the time it came, Barclay was more than a half hour late.
The salad wasn’t bad, but I didn’t feel much like eating. Across the room, Kenny consumed what appeared to be an extra-large club sandwich and french fries, though without my glasses I couldn’t be positive. I twirled my fork around and around on my plate and thought about what I would say to Barclay if he showed up. I doubted if he would oblige me by confessing on tape, but maybe he would let something drop that would help persuade the police or the SEC that they had a case. At least he hadn’t become a judge. There was still enough vestigial respect for the bench that it would have been even harder to convince anyone then.
There was something about the judge business that troubled me. If you thought about it, all the talk about becoming one is what had set Eleanor off in the first place. She was outraged. Judges don’t make as much as big-time corporate attorneys, and Barclay had rubbed her nose in the fact that now she was going to have to accept less in support. That was probably when she started looking for something to use against him, and somehow she got hold of the Naturcare side letter. Maybe she had found it when she searched the firm’s files, but I doubted it. More likely she copied Barclay’s personal files before he moved out, or broke into his new house and stole it from there. I wouldn’t have put anything past her.
Anyway, once she had something to blackmail him with, she must have threatened him with exposing his fraud if he didn’t come up with a significant amount of money. The trouble was, he wouldn’t have a lot of money if he left the practice and took judges’ robes, even if you consider the tidy sum he’d already socked away as a result of Naturcare. He could hardly ask the firm to pony up more without confessing, and he most certainly wouldn’t have wanted to do that. It was clear that his continued prosperity depended on staying in the corporate game, and what troubled me was that I really couldn’t understand why he’d wanted to leave it in the first place. He was Mr. Big Shot at Eastman, Bartels, and Mike and Cindi Meadows weren’t about to blow the whistle on him. More likely they would steer even more business his way.
I didn’t buy the story about wanting to spend more time with Tricia and the kids, either. Tricia was admittedly a pretty luscious type to spend time with, but Barclay just wasn’t a hearth-and-home kind of guy. Over the years I’d heard a lot of male lawyers complain about not having enough time to be with their families, but it seemed more like a mantra than an expression of true regret. If Barclay had had more time off, ten to one he would have spent it on the tennis court. It was the life he was meant to live. But I just couldn’t see him consorting with felons and scofflaws, even from the right side of the bench.
I didn’t have the answer. I looked at my watch. Barclay was almost an hour late. The waitress came and cleared my plate away, along with the extra place setting. She gave me a pitying look and asked if she should bring the check. I nodded. It was bad enough to be stood up, but being stood up by a murderer had to be some kind of lifetime low.
I suppose I should have been grateful, but what I really felt was depressed. I’d been sure this was a break, a chance to get something on tape that would help my case. Even a threat would have done nicely. Now I was back to where I was before Barclay called: wondering what to do.
I paid the bill and went out into the parking lot. Kenny was already there. “Sorry,” I told him. “I wasted your time.”
He smiled. “No problem. It was a great sandwich.”
I fished into my purse and handed him fifteen dollars. “Will that cover it?” I asked him.
He put up his hand. “No, really, Caroline, I don’t want it.”
“I insist,” I told him glumly. “My treat.”
“Don’t take it so hard,” he said soothingly. “If you’re going to play detective, you have to be prepared for disappointments like this.” He put his hands in his pockets. “To tell you the truth, I’m sort of relieved. I didn’t much like the idea anyway.” He pulled out his keys. “Is there anything more you want me to do?”
“No, that’s it. I appreciate this, Kenny; I really do.”
“Right. I’ll take off, then, if you don’t mind. I got a call to come in this afternoon after all, so I have to get going.”
“Okay. Thanks,” I told him.
He opened the car door. “Caroline?”
“What?”
“Go straight home, okay?”
“In case Barclay’s really lurking around like Dracula with a defective watch?”
He didn’t smile. “Just…in case. It would make me feel better.”
I made an X over my chest with my finger. “Cross my heart and hope to—” I laughed. “Well, anyway, I’m going,” I said.
I meant to go straight home; I really did. I didn’t think Barclay was going to show up an hour and a half late, but I wasn’t about to court disaster, either. Or at least I didn’t plan to. But I was walking toward my car, keys in hand, when it occurred to me that the Shorebird Café wasn’t more than a few hundred feet from where the firm yacht was moored. And the firm yacht had a very large filing cabinet.
The Legiti-mates (I know, I know. It’s corny, but it’s better than Counselors-at-Sea or Sea-Legals, or some of the other candidates. In general, though, I react to boat names like personalized license plates: When people are most convinced they’re being cute, they usually aren’t.) was ostensibly for entertaining clients in luxury and privacy, like a private club. It was fitted out with all the appurtenances of the office—fax, phones, computers, and a little bunk area for the secretaries—as well as the usually yachtish things like a nice galley and a lot of gorgeous wood. The main enclosed area had been made into a conference room with a scaled-down table and chairs.
Most of the “business” conducted on board seemed to be done with wine glasses and hors d’oeuvres in hand. Like other notable law firm business meetings—the Acapulco cruise, for example, or the Aspen ski weekend—the work agenda seemed to be dispensed with rather quickly, although, for tax p
urposes, the ritual was always diligently observed. The pure entertainment functions, the partners insisted, really saved the firm time and money over expensive and unpredictable restaurants and hotels. I had always suspected that a certain amount of extramarital hanky-panky occurred on board as well, but I couldn’t prove it.
The truth is, I didn’t want to go anywhere near the Legiti-mates, but I knew I would despise myself as a coward if I didn’t. Nobody was going to want to act on my story without some hard evidence, no matter how suggestive the circumstances or enticing my theory. David might be able to convince the SEC to look into things, and that was certainly a plus, but I didn’t really think much beyond that would happen without something more than what I already had on Barclay. I wasn’t sure what the likelihood would be of finding anything worthwhile in a place so accessible to all the partners in the firm, but I didn’t have anything else going in the investigation department, and I was frustrated by my inability to get the goods on Barclay at lunch. Besides, if you wanted to meet with a client clandestinely, the yacht was the perfect spot.
For my purposes, the best thing about it was that I wouldn’t even have to break and enter, at least not until I got to the files. Henry and Pamela Eastman mostly used it as their private yacht, but in the name of, if not democracy, oligarchy at least, all the partners had keys. Said key was still reposing on my key ring, the relict of happier times. So I could just slip on board and peruse the files for anything Barclay and the Meadowses might have cooked up on Naturcare, particularly something that tied him more definitively to the side letter. It would take ten minutes, max. My nerves were shouting “flight” again, but I had to at least try it.
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