Making Waves

by Catherine Todd

  It was Sunday afternoon and the boat docks were crowded. I slipped my key authoritatively into the lock on the gate and joined the rubber-soled throng carrying ice chests and hampers for parties on board. There were a number of boats leaving the dock under power and heading out into the harbor, but the Legiti-mates was still moored in her slip. I scanned the deck for possible occupants, but the boat was empty-looking and quiet. If there was a tryst going on below decks, I would have to take my chance on bluffing it out.

  On the theory that the best way to avoid attracting attention was to avoid slinking along as if I were up to something, I stepped smartly up to the yacht and hoisted myself over the low railing onto the deck. I unlocked the door without difficulty (a Grand Banks is like a Mercedes—everything works) and closed the door behind me, descending the steps into the cabin. It was dark and apparently uninhabited. I let out a big breath of relief. I went to the window on the side away from the dock and pulled back the curtain to let in some light.

  The filing cabinet was at one end of the conference table. It was three legal-sized drawers tall, so with luck I could look through the contents in under half an hour. I didn’t even hesitate. Maybe it was just easier the second time, like sex and murder. I reached for the top drawer and pulled.

  It was locked.

  Damn. So much for Nancy Drew. Forcing it open or picking the lock was out of the question; I lacked the strength or the skill for either. If I couldn’t find the key somewhere on board, I would have to give up. Still, I was not unhopeful. Nobody would want to carry a file key around all the time, so there was a good chance it was someplace close at hand. I put my purse down on one of the chairs and scrutinized the room for possible hiding places. I looked in the drawers, under the cushions, anywhere I could think of. Finally I tipped over a leather pencil holder, spilling a pile of pens and paper clips onto the table surface. Sure enough, a file key was in the bottom.

  The Naturcare documents were right there in the top drawer, stuffed into a brown accordion file that looked thick with possibility. There was a copier on board, too, so I could just look through, copy anything I thought might be helpful, and replace the file. It was going to be easy. My hand closed around the file and pulled it out of the drawer…

  The yacht, unmistakably, moved.

  The dockside portholes and windows were still covered with curtains, so I couldn’t see anything, but the boat’s movement could mean only one thing: Someone had jumped on board. I looked around wildly for someplace to hide, slamming the file drawer shut with my elbow as I turned. I pulled one of the curtains back across the porthole, but I had to leave the other. It was too late to do anything about the unlocked door. The best I could hope for was that it was just the caretaker or someone checking things out.

  The only reasonable hiding place was what—for reasons that are unclear—in nautical parlance is called “the head.” Despite the yacht’s luxurious appointments, it was incredibly cramped. I put the lid down and planted my feet as best I could around the toilet, still clutching the sheaf of Naturcare papers. Fear and proximity made me yearn to use the facilities, but I didn’t dare. I was scarcely breathing as it was.

  Minutes passed, filled with muffled noises. I could feel, as much as hear, someone moving about the boat. After a while I heard the door open, and footsteps descending the steps. I held my breath and shut my eyes, as if that would prevent my being seen. My muscles were knotted and tense with the effort of holding still in my foxhole, but in spite of my efforts my knee started shaking. I opened my eyes and regarded it clinically, like a stranger I had no relation to.

  The footsteps paused and a light switched on. I could see it around the edges of the door. More muffled sounds. The footsteps came closer.

  I breathed a prayer. Don’t let it be Barclay.

  Silence.

  The footsteps retreated. The light went out.

  Relief left me sweating and feeble. I slumped against the bathroom door, taking the pressure off my twitching knees.

  I only had a minute or two to enjoy it. I heard the clink of cable and metal and seconds later the Legiti-mates’s engine came to life. I stood there, trapped, while the boat lifted and settled into a steady thrum of vibration. The yacht was leaving the dock and heading out toward the open sea.

  22

  I felt so incredibly dumb, like one of those heroines in Gothic novels who get themselves into idiotic situations because of their failure to heed the warning signs. Think, I told myself, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t decide whether to make a break for it and jump over the side while we were still close to shore, stay in the head and hope nobody on board consumed too much Chardonnay or soft drinks, or emerge and try somehow to brazen it out. I wasn’t pleased by any of the scenarios. Barclay Hampton topped the list of people I didn’t want to find myself on the boat with, but I couldn’t imagine encountering a single individual from Eastman, Bartels—even someone presumably more favorably disposed toward my person—without the most hideous embarrassment. What was I going to say, that I had had a sudden yearning for one more spin around the harbor on the firm yacht?

  On the other hand, as big as it was, the Legiti-mates wasn’t exactly the QE2, and I doubted I could just slip off the stern undetected. Besides, every minute I hesitated made that a less attractive option. But if I stayed, sooner or later, he (or she) might need to use the head…

  The air was definitely getting stale inside my water closet, and my muscles were screaming for relief. I began to realize that it might not be possible to last out an entire cruise in my hiding place, whatever else might happen. After a few more minutes, I was sure of it. I might pass out if I stayed there much longer.

  I heard a faint voice calling my name.

  It seemed too early for an angelic summons, but hallucinations were definitely in the realm of possibility. I decided to open the door and get some air, no matter what greeted me on the outside.

  I lifted the handle and pushed it open about six inches. I heard it again: Come out, Caroline.

  No hallucination. The jig, as they say, was definitely up. For good measure, I closed the door again and used the toilet. I wasn’t sure about flushing it inside the harbor, so I put the lid down and left it.

  I still had the Naturcare documents in my hand, but when I tried to put them away, the cabinet was locked again. I almost left the file on top, but then I took it topside with me. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  Henry Eastman was standing behind the wheel, holding my wallet in his hand. I let out my breath. Bad enough, but not as bad as Barclay. My heart slowed down a little. My purse, whose existence I had forgotten until that moment, was open beside him on the seat.

  “I’m sorry to have gone through your purse, Caroline, but you left it on one of the conference chairs down below,” he said levelly, without apparent irony. He dropped the wallet into the purse and handed it to me.

  I considered answering him with some kind of ghastly archness, but I opted for simple shame instead. “Henry, I don’t know what to say. I’m so embarrassed—”

  He held up his hand to stop me and then extended it for the file. I passed it to him wordlessly. He glanced at it and then put the whole thing into a wooden locker at his feet. “Sit down, Caroline,” he said politely.

  The shore was getting farther away. “And now I’ve ruined your afternoon cruise as well,” I said as brightly as I could manage. “After this, you certainly won’t want me anywhere near you. I’m afraid you’ll have to take me home.” I was close to babbling, but the entire situation made me too nervous for fluency.

  “On the contrary, I’m delighted you’re here. It gives us an opportunity to talk, and I’m sure you’ll agree there are some things we need to discuss.” He didn’t sound angry or sorrowful. In fact, he sounded vaguely amused.

  “Henry, I—”

  “Not now, Caroline,” he said firmly. “And do, please, sit down.”

  I sat. This was his show, and I really didn’t have any choice but t
o let him conduct it the way he wanted to.

  “I’ve always loved boats,” he said, looking out over the water. “When I was a young associate at a firm in New York, I used to get away to the island whenever I could so I could take one out. Anything, from Sunfish on up. There was a little place that would rent them by the half or whole day.” He laughed. “I could only afford half-day, but I made the most of it.” He looked at me. “I used to dream about two things: having my own boat and having my own law firm. Not necessarily in that order.”

  He seemed to expect me to say, “And now you’ve got both,” so I did.

  He smiled. “Well, technically the yacht belongs to the firm, but I suppose that’s only fitting. In most of the ways that are important, I am the firm, or I should say that the firm is me. I don’t mean that in some monomaniacal sense, that other people aren’t vital to Eastman, Bartels, too. We all contribute. But when you put as much of your life and hopes as I have into something, it can’t help but start to define you.”

  Under the circumstances I couldn’t think of any reason why he should be cordially unveiling his life’s ambitions, so I examined him closely for signs of tippling. He might be highly competent as a lawyer, but drunk driving in a Grand Banks yacht was not terribly dissimilar to drunk driving in a Bentley. In both cases, I would just as soon walk. His eyes were clear, however, and he looked tanned and alert.

  He saw me scrutinizing him and chuckled. “I used to be in the Coast Guard, you know, before I went to law school. You’ll be perfectly safe. Would you like something to drink? There are beer and soft drinks in the refrigerator. There’s a sandwich, too, if you’d like it. And some pâté and crackers.”

  “No, thanks,” I told him. His politeness was unnerving, as it was no doubt meant to be. I was glad I had worn a sweatshirt. It was cold out on the water. A sea lion swam across the bow and hauled itself up with some effort onto a buoy, displacing a smaller rival from the chosen spot. I watched it, waiting for whatever came next. I knew he was working around to an interrogation. I shivered a little.

  Henry turned the boat slightly so that we were heading directly out of the harbor. I looked at my watch. “I can’t stay out too long, Henry,” I told him. “Steve will be dropping off the children in a couple of hours.”

  He shot me an amused glance but said nothing. Well, it was hardly a normal social occasion, so what could I expect? We sailed along in apparent amity, absorbed in the views of the skyline and the blue horizon. It was a war of nerves and he was winning.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it another second, he asked me, “What were you looking for down below?” His voice was so bland he might have been discussing the color of one of Pamela’s floral centerpieces.

  I shook my head.

  “I think you should know,” he added almost apologetically, before I could say anything at all, “that I had already determined that the Naturcare documents were missing from the file cabinet.”

  I respected his delicacy in letting me know up front that there was no point in lying. I looked at him.

  He met my eyes. “I could have you arrested,” he said, abruptly changing his tone.

  That’s when I realized that Henry was using his litigator tactics on me. He was admittedly a master, but I decided to fight back.

  “Bullshit,” I told him.

  He looked as if he had never heard the word in his life. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me. All the partners have keys, Henry. I might have been stretching it a little to use the one Steve and I have, but I doubt you could get a conviction.”

  He raised his eyebrows expressively. “The file?” he suggested.

  I shrugged. “I found it on the floor. Maybe someone was careless about putting it back. I brought it up to you because I thought you might want it.”

  To my surprise, he threw back his head and laughed. “My dear Caroline, I really do admire your nerve. I wish you would trust me. I’ve tried to tell you several times already that I honestly do have your best interests at heart.”

  “You mean you have the firm’s best interests at heart.”

  “Well, certainly. But in this case it is apparent to me that the two are one and the same.”

  I said nothing.

  “Come, Caroline, it is obvious by now that the late, unmourned Eleanor has bequeathed you something that has you very interested in Naturcare. That is the object of all this…ah…shall we say, ‘amateur sleuthing,’ isn’t it?”

  I still remained silent. I felt as if I was in the witness box, taking the Fifth.

  Henry sighed. “Well, all right, then, Caroline, let’s be honest. The only thing about Naturcare that could possibly be worth all of this interest is the side letter. I take it you’ve stumbled onto that.”

  “You know about it?” I asked. I wondered how long he had known and if he had guessed at the rest of it. If he had, would he protect Barclay?

  “We’ll get to that in a moment,” he said impatiently. “Right now, I really need to know what you know and, more importantly, what you’re going to do about it. I—we—all of us need time to prepare. I’m not sure you realize that doing something drastic could have enormous financial repercussions that could swamp your little boat along with ours. Before you take any action, I think we ought to discuss it; that’s all.”

  I decided to play along, at least a little. “I don’t really know that much about it, Henry,” I told him. “I just know enough to realize that it might get Barclay and Mike and Cindi in big trouble, and it would probably interest the SEC. I take it that’s what you meant by ‘doing something drastic.’”

  I thought he looked a little pale. “That would definitely qualify,” he said dryly. “I’d like to avoid that, if possible.”

  I just bet he would. “I guess it wouldn’t look very good for the firm if one of its partners got that kind of negative publicity.” The sun went behind a cloud and I shivered again. I put my hands in my sweatshirt pocket. My fingers touched the metal of the little tape recorder. Until that minute, I’d forgotten all about it. What a detective.

  Henry ran his fingers through his hair. “There’s a lot more to it than that.”

  I ran my thumb along the edge, feeling for the switch, just in case. “I’m listening, as long as the solution isn’t that the whole thing just gets dropped.”

  He looked out to sea, where the Coronados, the offshore islands inhabited mainly by goats and crabs, loomed with a startling clarity. They were at least fifteen miles away but looked close enough to swim to. “What if,” he began, in such a quiet, gentle voice that I had to strain to hear him, “this could all be taken care of without involving the SEC? What if, in fact, it has already been taken care of?”

  “What do you mean, ‘taken care of’?” I asked him. I pressed the recorder switch. Okay, maybe it wasn’t strictly ethical, but this could be evidence, and I needed David to help me evaluate it.

  “We are speaking hypothetically, of course.” He looked at me. I didn’t answer. He sighed. “You see, the problem with bringing in the SEC is that the issue could be a bit more complicated than you imagine. What if, for example, there were a particularly zealous young summer associate working on Naturcare matters who discovered the side letter you mentioned? It’s not illegal, you know, to do business that way, so long as one doesn’t get greedy and include these agreements as solid contracts so that it puffs up the asset column when you go public. What if, let us say, this associate, noting the arrangement by which Naturcare’s agreements with department stores are cancelable at any time, in all innocence writes a memo to all the partners describing the way Naturcare does its business? Now, in the event of some”—his face darkened and twisted in a spasm of fury—“asinine attempt to jack around with the Registration Statement, it would appear that the entire partnership was in on the fraud.”

  “Even if no one but Barclay knew anything about that part of it?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Naturally we would protest our i
nnocence. We would point out that the memo did not circulate until after the Registration Statement had been prepared. But malpractice insurance companies, like your friend Eleanor, are notoriously unsympathetic to lawyers, particularly when it’s an issue of millions of dollars in claims.”

  I remembered the memo I had found in Barclay’s file, instructing the partners to purge their files of some unnamed earlier document. Susan had told me that Henry dictated it to her rather than to a secretary, although she hadn’t seen anything in it that would necessitate such privacy. I thought I did, now.

  “You could remove the offending memo from the partners’ files,” I suggested.

  He looked surprised, then pleased, as if he had found me an apt pupil. “You could do that,” he agreed, “but sooner or later it would come out. Too many people in a law firm get their hands on things.” He looked at me speculatively. “Would you like to take the wheel? It’s very easy to steer.”

  “No, thank you. And anyway, we should be turning back soon.”

  “Soon,” he said absently. He drummed his fingers along the teak railing. A seagull flew past, swooping down briefly to see if we were giving any handouts. Disappointed, it sped on. “Do you know what would happen if the hypothetical matter we were discussing were somehow to come to the attention of the SEC?” he asked. “The first thing that would happen is that the stock price of Naturcare would fall, probably disastrously. That would be a shame because the company is very solid, and there is every indication that the contracts with the department stores will not be canceled.”

  He sighed. “The next thing would be a large shareholder suit against the company. People don’t like to see the value of their shares plummet in the best of circumstances, and this would hardly be that. Mike and Cindi could be wiped out, of course. That wouldn’t bother me too much—they probably deserve it—except that we have too much tied up in Naturcare as a client. But what would also happen is a suit against the law firm for malpractice, and if there is any evidence of our knowledge that would suggest collusion, we would never get the insurance company to cover us.” He reached over and touched my wrist, briefly. His hand was very cold. “I’m talking millions, Caroline. It could wipe out everything we had. Not just Barclay, but everyone. Steve. Everybody.”