Making Waves

by Catherine Todd

  I shuddered. David had warned me, but Henry made it seem much more real.

  “And if by some miracle we could convince the insurance company that it was Barclay’s fraud alone,” he continued relentlessly, “what do you think would happen to the firm anyway? Our reputation would be tarnished forever. We’d look like either villains or fools. Think about it, Caroline. Would you really want that to happen?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t want it to happen,” I told him, “but—”

  “So if the matter could be settled without involving all those complications,” he said, overriding my objection, “I’m sure you see that would be for the best.”

  “You do mean just forget about it,” I said.

  “Certainly not.” He sounded indignant. “Certain…remedies could be taken to insure that the Meadowses would live up to their obligations in the future. An overeager young associate could be found a lucrative partnership at a firm in Honolulu. That sort of thing.”

  “And Barclay?” I asked him.

  His face got red again. I thought he was going to burst a capillary, one already close to the surface from years of vodka tonics. I saw how truly, awesomely angry he was at Barclay for getting the firm into this fix. “Even if the client insists, threatens to take away its business, that is no excuse for—” He broke off suddenly, as if he were appalled by his unrestrained outburst. “Well, Barclay would be dealt with,” he said after a moment. His emotions were once more under control, his voice steady. “Eased out, naturally. There should be an opening on the municipal court bench later in the year, and—”

  “It was your idea to make him a judge?” I asked, almost dumbstruck by this revelation.

  He looked startled. “Well, I couldn’t have him compromising the law firm.” He spoke entirely without irony. He seemed to take my silence for assent. “Look, Caroline, you are an intelligent woman. Reasonable, too. You must see it would not be in your best interest, or that of your children, to start something none of us can stop once it gets going. Why don’t you trust me to set things right, to handle things in the best way? I know that you can expect a generous—no, a very generous—settlement from Steve, and I wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize that. Not bringing up the matter before the SEC would certainly be worth something to the firm.” He paused, to let his simultaneous offer of a bribe and blackmail sink in.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “What is that?” He sounded puzzled.

  “Eleanor is dead.”

  “Ah.” He swept a hand through his beautiful silver hair. “That is regrettable. But I don’t see how it’s germane.”

  I discovered I had a temper, too. “I’ll tell you how it’s germane, Henry,” I said angrily. “I’ll put you a ‘what if.’ What if Barclay killed her to keep her from telling anyone about Naturcare?”

  “That’s ridiculous.” His face was ashen. I couldn’t tell whether it was from anger or distress. His cheek muscle twitched.

  I wondered if telling him my suspicions was really wise, but I had blurted it out before I thought. After I considered it, it seemed as if it might be a good way to see how much he knew, whether he could add anything to the blotter. The recorder was running. “I’m sorry, but it’s not ridiculous. There is every reason to believe it’s true. You’ve just given him a powerful motive, haven’t you?”

  “It’s unfounded nonsense.” He spat the words out, as if he could not bear to have them in his mouth any longer than necessary. “If everyone who had a motive to murder someone else were brought to trial, the courts would be backlogged for the next century and a half. There isn’t a shred of evidence to suggest that the woman didn’t just combine too many happy pills with a fine bottle of wine. If I were drinking a Bâtard-Montrachet ’85, I’d make damn sure I finished the bottle, too.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Maybe it was an accident; maybe she intended it. Maybe she only half intended it. She was certainly miserable enough, God knows. We’ll probably never know for sure. But I do know that there is no reason to believe Barclay had anything to do with it, even if he prayed out loud for her death in the middle of Prospect Street every single night.”

  My pulse accelerated rapidly, so that I felt a little dizzy. I hoped I wasn’t going to get seasick. “He was there on the afternoon of Eleanor’s death, Henry. He was seen talking to her by the hot tub.”

  He looked stunned. “Barclay was seen?” His voice was hoarse.

  Something was bothering me about this entire conversation—that is, something more than having to tell Henry that one of his partners was probably a murderer and that the law firm that gave his entire life meaning was headed for trouble. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. It made me irritable. “Well, someone was seen bending over her while she sat drunk and naked in the water. Someone in a suit. Who else could it have been but Barclay?”

  He shuddered. I could see it travel the length of his body. He looked out to sea. “Who else indeed?” he asked quietly.

  All those synapses in my brain were working overtime, struggling to make a connection. The bytes of information were heading toward some great inductive synthesis. I could feel it. Suddenly my heart thudded so hard in my chest I had to sit down.

  I had it now. How had he known the wine was Bâtard-Montrachet ’85?

  Henry looked at me with concern. “Are you all right?”

  No, I wasn’t. In my first conversation with Rob about Eleanor’s death, he had made it very clear that the police weren’t giving out details from the scene, like what kind of wine she’d been drinking or the fact that she’d flapped out to the hot tub in ghastly pink mules. He wasn’t supposed to know it himself. If you didn’t count the police force or the people Kenny and Rob and I had inadvertently told (like the wine shop clerk), the only person who could know about the Bâtard-Montrachet would be somebody who’d been at the crime scene himself.

  Somebody like Eleanor’s killer.

  23

  My first thought was How could I have been so stupid? I’d been so obsessed with Barclay’s treatment of Eleanor that I had yearned to pin her death on him, and I’d refused to consider any other possibility. Henry had just painted a gruesome picture of the firm’s future after news of the side letter got out, and nothing meant more to Henry than the firm. He’d as much as said so himself. If I hadn’t been blinded by prejudice and my own divorce jitters, I would have at least considered that his motive and opportunity were equal to Barclay’s.

  I remembered the letter in Eleanor’s papers where Barclay tried to convince her she had “misunderstood the whole thing,” meaning, as I now supposed, the side letter. He must have really been sweating. Maybe when he realized she wasn’t going to back down, he panicked and told Henry that Eleanor had found out. Eleanor might even have told Henry herself; she certainly wouldn’t have had any idea he already knew, and if she hoped to blackmail the firm…

  “Caroline?” Henry was looking at me with concern.

  I was trying to keep my face absolutely impassive, despite the images that were galloping through my brain.

  My second thought was Nobody knows I’m here.

  “Are you all right?” he asked again.

  I forced myself to concentrate on sounding normal. “A little seasick, I guess,” I told him. “If you don’t mind, I’d really like to go back to shore now.” I tried to keep the edge of desperation out of my voice. The wake of a passing trawler rolled the boat a little, and I shifted my footing. Henry remained immobile, watching me. We were almost to the mouth of the harbor, where the water was choppy around the end of Point Loma. It was the only place near the shore where people occasionally drowned if their boats capsized.

  I remembered how, at Eleanor’s funeral, Barclay had told Eleanor’s brother that Henry had offered the firm’s services in wrapping up her affairs. Were they looking for the side letter? Suddenly a wave of anger hit me right in the chest. After I told Steve that Eleanor had sent me some documents, he had made a se
arch of my office, and then someone had broken into the garage. Even Jeff had interrogated me, under the guise of…had Henry orchestrated the whole thing? How much did Steve know? I tried not to hyperventilate.

  “Caroline!” Henry commanded my attention.

  I looked at him, and my anger shriveled into a cold lump at the bottom of my stomach, replaced by fear. His look had changed from concern to…what? “Calculation” was the closest I could come. He knows, I thought.

  “When you’ve been in courts for as long as I have, you develop a sixth sense about your witnesses,” Henry said. He sounded calm, even serene, but he started compulsively rubbing his left arm. “You know when they’re lying, when they’re hiding something. You have to be able to look into their minds and know what they’re thinking, Caroline.” He looked so intensely into my face, I almost believed he could do it. I had to struggle not to avert my eyes.

  “I’m not a witness, Henry,” I said, striving for a jocular tone. I failed.

  “No, but you think you know something.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told him.

  “Don’t bother denying it, Caroline,” he said with artificial patience. “Ordinarily it would be pointless to bring this up, but only the two of us are here, and I can see quite plainly that I’ve said or done something to excite your suspicions. I don’t know what it was right now, but no doubt it will come to me presently. Right now you’ve transferred your theory about Barclay to me, and there are some things I need to make clear to you.”

  I thought about saying “Don’t be ridiculous,” but the words crumbled in my throat. I clutched the railing tightly with my hand, considering flight. I didn’t much fancy the idea of a long swim back to shore or of getting dashed against the breakwater rocks. On the other hand, the tape was still going, and maybe Henry would confess, thinking we were alone.

  “Really, Caroline, you are being far too melodramatic about this entire thing,” Henry said, observing my stricken countenance with apparent amusement. “This isn’t Columbo. No one is going to gratify you by confessing to having a hand in Eleanor’s death.”

  Jesus, maybe he really could read minds. I thought it prudent to remain silent.

  “There is something called ‘admission against interest’ that could incriminate anyone who, for example, concurred in such an interpretation of the facts, even if no one else was around to overhear. Do not for a moment believe that that will happen.” He was detached and authoritative, as if I were a young associate being instructed in the intricacies of the tax code.

  “I am a very good lawyer,” he continued. “This is not precisely my field, but nevertheless I am going to give you some excellent free legal advice. No matter what you think you have on me or Barclay, you do not have a case. ‘Flimsy’ would be a compliment for the sort of evidence you were talking about. Any D.A. who even considered taking it on would be laughed out of practice. First, there is no evidence of homicide. Second, if a man in a suit was seen bending over the hot tub, that doesn’t mean he was a killer. In short, with regard to Eleanor’s death, you have nothing whatsoever. Shall I go on?”

  “No,” I told him. Despite his assumption of command, he looked sweaty and rather gray. “Let’s go back now.”

  “Not yet. There’s something I want to make plain. If anyone were to make…accusations, I would be forced to protect my reputation by instigating an immediate libel suit. The person making the accusations would probably lose. At the very least she would be exposed as a lonely, paranoid, middle-aged woman with an ax to grind against lawyers, someone not unlike Eleanor herself.” His voice was soft. “You must see that it would not be in either of our interests that such an action be brought. It could expose a lot of damaging things on both sides. But I would be forced to. I’d have no choice.”

  He was trying to bully me, but I was going to pretend to let him do it, at least till we got safely back to shore. I was just about to open my mouth when a swell caught the boat hard, causing me to lose my footing and lurch against the railing.

  Henry’s eyes were riveted on my midsection, but not in admiration. I looked down. The tape recorder was sticking out of my pocket, still turning away.

  It seemed to have a galvanizing effect on him. One minute he was behind the wheel lecturing me on the law of libel, and the next he was lunging at me—or the recorder, I’m not sure which—in a rage. I’m not sure whether the murderous look in his eye would legally qualify as an “admission against interest,” but to me it was as good as a confession.

  I don’t know if he really would have choked the life out of me with his bare hands right there on the deck. For one thing, he was pretty old for a wrestling match, even with a premenopausal out-of-shape female who definitely preferred books to the gym. Still, given the circumstances, I didn’t want to wait and find out. My feet did the thinking for me before my head could react. They were over the rail and into the water before I could weigh the alternatives.

  Boy, that water was cold. Even in the summer, when the four of us used to go snorkeling in La Jolla Cove, we always wore wet suits. If you didn’t, you ended up exhausted in under half an hour, and your muscles trembled when you tried to stand up onshore. All your body’s energy went into maintaining a safe temperature for its vital organs. It was a great way to burn calories.

  Jumping overboard into an icy sea in November, however, could not qualify as a prudent weight loss plan. The nautical blue sweatshirt filled up with water like a leaden sponge, so that it was hard to move my arms. The recorder sank past my hands, heading for the bottom. My running shoes were miniature anchors pulling my feet down. Henry was shouting something that might have been, “Come back,” although I couldn’t tell for sure. Despite the cold, I didn’t feel much like accepting his invitation. He circled me with the boat, coming uncomfortably (I felt) close with the engine. I kept going under, sometimes on purpose and sometimes because my clothes were so heavy I couldn’t help it. He didn’t throw me a life preserver, so I drew my own conclusions.

  Finally he gave up. The last I saw of him, he was standing on the deck clutching his chest with a stricken look. I hoped he had a coronary that fell off the Richter scale. I bent over to try to take off my shoes, a maneuver much more difficult to execute in the water than it sounds. My hands were already so cold they fumbled at the wet laces, and I had to submerge my face and arms, which caused my whole body to sink. When I had finally pulled them off, I was already tired. I surfaced and blew water out of my nose. When I opened my eyes, I saw the Legiti-mates heading west, toward the Coronados.

  But I didn’t have time to worry about Henry. I looked around to get my bearings. Land was a long way away, and the shortest line to it would take me through the rough waters where the harbor met the open sea. I was a fair swimmer, but Mark Spitz would have opted out of that one. I decided that the best course would be to drift back toward the middle of the channel and try to reach the buoy that marked the edge of the lane. Maybe some passing sailor would pick me up.

  It seemed like a good plan, except that I couldn’t keep my head out of the water, and my movements were hampered by my wet clothes. I got out of my sweatshirt and watched it sink with regret. I couldn’t get my pants undone, so I left them for the moment and relied on my arms to propel me.

  This was the moment I had always read about when your life flashes before your eyes or, at the very least, you reorder your priorities. I was almost looking forward to it, but all I could think about was the chicken salad I had had for lunch, and how I wished I hadn’t left half of it uneaten on my plate. I was probably hallucinating a little, too.

  Apparently devoid of philosophy, I struggled on toward the buoy. Fortunately, it was big enough to be seen by a battleship, because your perspective from within the water is definitely distorted. My teeth were chattering and my legs and arms were numb, but I thought I could make it.

  Finally, I drew up beside it. Hauling myself up on top of it looked like an impossible task, but I h
ad to get out of the water. I reached out a hand to pull myself up when an enormous brown head popped out of the water beside me, right next to my face. If I’d had the strength, I would have screamed. The sea lion looked less surprised, probably because it had come up beneath me.

  I had always thought they were rather cute at the zoo, but up close, “cute” was not the operative word. The beast was gigantic; that’s all there was to it. Its face was all whiskery, and its breath was more than a little reminiscent of the can of rotten sardines someone had once thrown out in front of our house. The eyes, while intelligent, did not look friendly. In short, a monster.

  He looked as intent on getting onto the buoy as I was. I feared it was too much to hope that he might recognize my superiority on the evolutionary chain and cede me the right of place. I chattered my teeth at him, the only sound I was capable of making. He regarded me with a bland contempt.

  I had to pull myself out, without waiting another minute. If he went for me with his flippers, or whatever sea lions do, so be it. I turned my back and pulled myself onto the buoy, gasping and shivering. He watched me from the water and then let out a deep, throaty noise with his mouth wide open. It sounded peevish, but not seriously annoyed. With one final piscatory blast in my direction, he gave me a disgusted look and swam off.

  Now that I was out of the water, there was good news and bad news. The good news was that there were a lot more boats out than I had realized, and some of them were sailing or motoring in my direction. The bad news was that I was nearly naked and soaking wet, and the wind was even less comfortable than the water had been. I clung to the rocking buoy with fingers that had all the flexibility of metal pipes and none of their strength. I concentrated on the boat that looked as if it would reach me first, a middle-sized sailboat making good way in the wind. I kept my eyes on it and plotted a visit to Death Valley in August in scorching detail.