Like a Woman Scorned (11 page)

 Carley couldn’t sleep that night. Something was bothering her, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. The rest of the office staff had begun to get friendlier with her, and even invited her several to after-work get-togethers. Carley always had an excuse for not going. She didn’t want things to move in that direction with any of her coworkers. No attachments. No one to say goodbye to. She went straight home from work every evening and kept to herself nights and weekends. She even gave up clothes shopping. Outside of getting groceries, she was rarely seen out and about in Boston anymore.

One evening Carley realized what was upsetting her so much lately. She had come to absolutely despise Rick, and just didn’t want to be around him any longer. The more she got used to him, the more she hated herself for it. His habits made her nuts. He was sloppy about so many things and not at all the kind of person she first figured him for. Not slothful when it came to business, to be certain, but unforgivably careless over the important details which disinterested him.

Quite by accident one day, she learned that Rick and his wife were already separated. Carley had suspected as much, seeing as she never had the opportunity to even speak to her. Rick’s mother-in-law phoned the office and left a message that pretty much revealed his current personal situation. Rick said nothing to Carley about it when he read the message she left for him.

Carley knew the time had come to accelerate her plans. It was time to get out of that office and out of Rick’s life for good. She could do it now. She could go back to her old life feeling vindicated and satisfied, as long as she left Rick a little stinger in doing so—something to even the score.

That weekend, Carley devised a plan for bringing things to a close. She went over it again and again in her mind. Four months. That’s all she needed. Four months from now, she would bring it all to fruition. The timing was undeniable. In four months it would be one year since she became a blonde named Carley and moved to Boston.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was Valentine’s Day when Carley first began transferring money from the client trust account to the firm’s general account. It seemed an appropriate day to begin. The other female staff members were getting flowers delivered and giggling over them. Carley received a small bouquet as well. It was from herself, with a card that simply read
from Derek
. Because she wasn’t too friendly with anyone in the office, she didn’t have to make up detailed stories other than it being from “a man she just started dating.”

Carley didn’t enter the bank transfers in the check register. She made a note to herself of the amount of money transferred and the names of the clients who would be affected. Rick never looked at the checkbooks or logged into the bank accounts online. He left all the bookkeeping to Carley, just as he had done with Anna. Big mistake. Lawyers are held legally responsible for the actions of their staff when it comes to the misappropriation of funds.

The American Bar Association's Model Rule 1.15 protects client funds, and along with the State Bar forbids client funds being mixed with an attorney’s for any reason. A client wouldn’t know about any misappropriation of funds unless his refund check bounced after the completion of his case. Rick was nearing the end on two cases which would have significant overages in the trust account. As required by state law, letters were sent to these clients informing them of this situation. But Carley was making sure the client trust fund account would be nearly empty when those refund checks were mailed.

That was just the beginning. Several of Rick’s clients owned large boats in the harbor. Rick occasionally ate lunch at the Boston Harbor Yacht Club with them. There was a yacht broker right next door. On the same early March day that she mailed the two bad refund checks from the client trust account, Carley also went to the yacht broker and placed a down payment on a 60-foot motor yacht. She claimed to be doing so for her boss, Rick Waterman. Not surprisingly, the salesman knew who he was and had even showed him a boat or two in the past. Perfect. Carley made sure the down payment amount matched that of the exact amount of missing money from the client trust fund account.

Three days later, Carley knew it was time to go. It would only be another day or so before those checks to the clients came back bounced. She couldn’t risk still being in the office when an angry client with a returned check stormed in. Plus, she knew she couldn’t keep the yacht salesman from getting through to Rick by telephone much longer, as she had told him that Rick was out of town for only a few days when she made the deposit.

Fortunately, Carley was the only one who stayed late that evening.

Carley looked around the room, checking and double checking, one wall at a time, each piece of furniture, making sure her fingerprints were nowhere and everything was wiped clean. She took her time, cleaning the table tops and shelves on every book case, going over them twice until she felt she had left no trace.

Next she opened drawers and cabinets, making sure nothing had been placed in any of them. A chill ran down the back of her neck. All she worried about at this point was making a mistake. Don’t make a mistake. Don’t make a mistake. She’d planned for too long to let that happen now.

The computer keyboard at her desk had been replaced with exactly the same model. She had never touched Rick’s keyboard—or anything else in his office, for that matter. Carley had been extremely careful of those sorts of details. No law books had been opened by her. Any legal research he needed had been done on her computer. And her computer led to nowhere; nothing personal ever searched for by her, no trails or links to her life outside of that office.

Any hairs likely to be found would be blonde, but she wouldn’t be blonde for much longer.  Besides, the cleaning crew was the best she had ever seen, so it was unlikely that anything would linger over the next few weeks.

She wanted to be remembered as the tall, thin, blue-eyed blonde paralegal who worked for him as his secretary for about a year. She would no doubt be on video camera throughout the lobby and perhaps even up here on the 12th floor. But those tapes weren’t going to help anyone find a person who simply ceased to exist.

He was away so much of the time that he never noticed how little involvement she had with things in the office other than at her desk. The plant service watered the plants and the cleaning people did all the cleaning. She rarely touched anything in the small kitchen space. No trace of her would be found in that area. She wiped the phone clean with antiseptic wipes, knowing any prints or fibers from her would be gone within seconds.

It all looked good. She took off her rubber gloves and left the office for the last time, careful to not leave any prints on the doorknobs.

Carley then went home and followed the same routine in her apartment, cleaning, looking around, checking and double checking. She wanted to leave the place sparkling. No point in having the property owners wanting to come after her. She would simply have moved out ahead of time, vanished, and the owners were not likely to care much once they saw there was no damage or missing items. Carley then called for a taxi to the airport. She was booked on the ten o’clock flight to Zurich, the last flight out.

After a short flight delay, Carley had no trouble falling asleep once the plane was up over the Atlantic. She was exhausted. They were due to land at approximately 8:00 am.

A flight attendant woke her when the plane was about to land. Carley quickly got herself together. After de-boarding and picking up her bag, she followed the signs to the trains.

Carley got off the metro at a stop near her bank and slipped into a restroom stall. Out came the contacts, off came the wig. She was now a redhead with hazel eyes again. A few minutes with a hairbrush was all she needed to turn back into Alison Carson.

Alison wrapped the wig into a plastic grocery bag before stuffing it into the restroom trash can. Then she brushed her jacket so that any remaining hairs would fall to the floor, and looked in the mirror to see her old self staring back before exiting the restroom.

At that moment, a busy train unloaded passengers in the underground station. Alison found herself surrounded with the others and blended right in as she came up the stairs from the tunnel. She was bumped and jostled, but finally managed to get out and head down the street to her bank. It would have just opened for business for the day.

Alison held the key to her safe deposit box, gave the clerk the box number, and together they headed into the vault. Within a few minutes, she had her regular passport, driver’s license, the $10,000 she’d left, and her old cell phone all back in her purse. She put all the identification items for Carley Morrison into the safe deposit box, locked it up, and said goodbye to the clerk. Outside and around the corner, she tossed the safe deposit key down a sewer drain when she was fairly certain no one was paying her much attention. Then she checked into her hotel room and spent the rest of the day shopping in Zurich.

The next morning she grabbed her phone, now fully charged again, and went out for breakfast on the patio. Alison was craving fresh air, and felt as if she hadn’t been outside for months. The trees were full and blooming, squirrels chasing each other around, birds nesting. One tree in particular resembled the willow on Granny Paula’s old farm and brought back sweet memories. The coffee and croissants arrived, and Alison consumed them with a rare delight. They were the best she could ever remember enjoying.

She finished her coffee and dialed her mother’s number. The length of time that had gone by since she last contacted her parents made Alison’s eyes well up as the phone rang. She missed her family. Her mother was thrilled to hear her voice, talking so fast that Alison could hardly understand her. As they both calmed down, it was clear that a reunion was in order so Alison decided she would go to Phoenix and see her folks. It’s not as if she had anything better to do.

Alison told her mom she would get a flight from Zurich to New York and call back from there in two or three days, depending on whether she wanted to spend a day shopping in New York. Then she would fly in and see them.

Alison’s father got on the line and had the same sense of excitement, looking forward to seeing her. He said he understood her need to shop for a day in New York, because, “After all, you’ve only been in the most fashionable part of Europe for a year.”

“Yes, Daddy, you’re right. That’s probably why I didn’t buy anything. It was too much so, if you get what I mean. I probably didn’t even spend $100 shopping.” She feigned the shock she was passing on to her father and they both giggled. They said goodbye. Alison couldn’t wait to see them.

Alison spent two more days in Zurich, and then boarded a flight to New York. After landing, she picked up a Boston Globe from the newsstand on her way to the taxi line. She saved it until she got into her hotel room.

There it was, on page 3 of the local section in the Boston Globe. Local prominent attorney Rick Waterman indicted for misappropriation of client funds. The Bar Association had frozen his membership pending a complete investigation, and local authorities were considering filing criminal charges.

Criminal charges? Alison was startled by that. It was probably just for hype. Co-mingling client trust funds was a fairly common violation. It was usually done by accident, and only discovered during a random audit by federal regulators. Most law firms were eventually fined some small amount for minor bookkeeping errors with the trust account. Alison knew this particular case would be more significant because of the large amounts of money involved, and their almost-direct tracing to a payment on a personal luxury item. She wouldn’t be surprised if he was dis-barred. But criminal charges seemed a bit extreme. She doubted it would come to that, and felt a tremendous sense of satisfaction at seeing Rick get what was coming to him.

Happy, Alison went shopping.

She then texted Emil to let him know she was back in the country and going to her mother’s in Arizona for a few days, and asked if they found a new place to live yet. He got right back to her, saying they did have an apartment leased, not too far from her, and were already in the middle of moving into it. They could be completely out in a day or two. All was well at her place, and nothing noteworthy happened over the year she was gone. They agreed to meet for lunch the following week to catch up on all the details. There were six large cardboard boxes of junk mail waiting for her when she got home.

Two days later, Alison landed in Phoenix. She was overwhelmed with emotion at seeing her parents. They looked fantastic, or maybe it was because she was so glad to see them.

“Where’s your luggage?” Dad asked.

“This is it, just my carry on. I shipped everything else straight to San Francisco because I didn’t want to get bogged down with bags. I had enough of that already with customs. So we can get out of here.”

 “Good thinking, honey.” Her father was exuberant. They got to the car and he handed Alison the keys. “Here, get back in the groove.”

She had no problem doing that, since her father had a new Mercedes. Alison knew he was showing off with her, so she decided to appease him and rant over the car excessively.  They arrived home within the hour and had coffee and pastries that Alison brought. This was always one of their favorite things to do together.

“What’s with your voice?” Dad asked when they got back home. “Did you pick up an accent on your travels? You sound like your grandmother.”

In horror, Alison realized she was still speaking some sentences in her Bostonian blonde-floozie voice.

“Oh, that. Yeah Dad, I’m a little horse today for some reason. Maybe because I’m jetlagged. And I think I might have adopted a strange bit of an accent from somewhere, heck maybe from everywhere. Hope I lose it soon.” Alison made a strong mental note to work on losing Carley’s voice before seeing anyone back home.

Her parents asked lots of questions about her travels and Alison was fully prepared to answer with a web of lies. She mixed in a few invented funny stories at popular tourist locations, and even alluded to a relationship with a male friend she made in Germany. She finally begged off and headed to bed, the usual spot in the guest room made up for her. She was tired.