Amazing Grace (8 page)

“I was supposed to do it yesterday,” Seth said grimly. “I promised Sully I would, by close of business. But the auditors stayed till almost six o'clock. That's why I got to the Ritz late. I knew he had till two o'clock today, and I had till eleven, so I figured I could take care of it this morning. I was worried about it, but I didn't panic. Now I'm panicked. We are utterly, totally, and completely screwed. He has an audit that starts Monday. He has to put it off. The banks here won't be open by then. And I can't even goddamn call him to warn him.” Seth looked as though he was about to cry as Sarah stared at him in shock and disbelief.

“He must have checked by now and seen you didn't make the transfer,” she said, feeling slightly dizzy. She felt as though she were on a roller-coaster ride, barely able to hang on, without a seatbelt. She couldn't even imagine what Seth felt. He was risking prison. And if so, what would happen to them?

“Yeah, so he knows I didn't make the transfer. And then what? With the goddamn earthquake shutting the whole city down, I can't get the money back to him now. He's going to have a sixty million shortfall when his auditors show up on Monday morning, and I can't do anything about it.” He and Sully Markham were both guilty of every kind of fraud and theft, crossing state lines. Sarah knew, as Seth had when he did it, that it was a federal offense, and about as bad as it could get. It didn't even bear thinking. She felt as though the room were spinning as she looked at him.

“What are you going to do, Seth?” Sarah said in barely more than a whisper. She fully understood the implications of what he'd done. What she couldn't understand was why he'd done it, or when he'd become a criminal. How could this be happening to them?

“I don't know,” he said honestly, and then looked her in the eye. He looked terrified, and so was she. “I may go down on this one, Sarah. I've done this kind of thing before. And I've helped Sully out too. We're old friends. We just never got caught before, and I was always able to clean it up at my end. This time I'm up shit creek.”

“Oh, my God,” Sarah said softly. “What happens if they prosecute you?”

“I don't know. This one's going to be hard to cover. I don't think Sully can postpone the audit anyway. The timing of it is at the discretion of his investors, and they don't like giving anyone time to do fancy footwork or cook the books. And we sure cooked them. We fucking fried them. I don't know if he tried to postpone his audit once he saw we had an earthquake and I didn't transfer the funds back to him. Sixty million is a little tough to slip under the rug. And it's a hole they'll notice. Worse yet, the trail leads directly to my door. Unless Sully pulls off a miracle at his end before Monday, we're totally fucked.

“If the auditors figure it out, the SEC will be after me in about five minutes. And I'm a sitting duck waiting for it to happen here, but I can't run away from it now. If it happens, it happens. We'll have to get a terrific lawyer and see if we can make a deal with the federal prosecutor, if it comes to that. Other than that, I'd have to run away to Brazil, and I'm not doing that to you. So I guess we sit here, waiting for the other shoe to drop, after the dust settles from the earthquake. I tried my BlackBerry a little while ago, and it's as dead as a doornail. We just have to wait and see what happens … I'm sorry, Sarah,” he added. He didn't know what else to say to her, and there were tears in her eyes when she looked at him. She had never, ever suspected him of being dishonest, and now she felt as though a wrecking ball had hit her.

“How could you do something like that?” she asked, with tears rolling down her cheeks. She hadn't moved. She just sat staring at him, unable to believe what he had said. But it was obvious that it was true. Her life had instantly become a horror movie.

“I figured we'd never get caught,” he said, shrugging. It seemed incredible to him too, but for different reasons than what was upsetting Sarah. Seth didn't get it. He had no idea how betrayed Sarah felt by his confession to her.

“Even if you didn't get caught, how could you do something so dishonest? You broke every imaginable law, misrepresenting your assets to your investors. What if you'd lost all their money?”

“I figured I could cover it. I always did. And what are you complaining about? Look how fast I built my business. How do you think you got all this?” He waved his arms grandly around their bedroom, and she realized she didn't know him. She thought she did, but she didn't. It was as though the Seth she knew had vanished, and a criminal had taken his place.

“And what happens to all this if you go to prison?” She had never expected him to be this successful, but they had a big lifestyle now. The house in the city, another mammoth house in Tahoe, their plane, cars, assets, jewelry. He had built a house of cards that was about to fall down around them, and she couldn't help wondering how bad it could get. Seth was looking stressed and embarrassed, as well he should.

“I guess it goes down the tubes,” he said simply. “Even if I don't go to prison. I'm going to have to pay fines, and interest on the money I borrowed.”

“You didn't borrow it, you took it. It wasn't Sully's to give either. It belongs to
his
investors, not either of you. You made a deal with your buddy so you could lie to people. Nothing about that is okay, Seth.” She didn't want him to get caught, for his sake and theirs, but she knew that it was only justice if he did.

“Thanks for the lecture on morality,” he said bitterly. “In any case, to answer your question, all this would probably go, pretty quickly. They'd seize all our stuff, or some of it, the houses, the plane, and most of the rest. What they don't take, we can sell.” He sounded almost matter-of-fact about it. As soon as the earthquake hit the night before, he knew his goose was cooked.

“And how are we supposed to live?”

“Borrow money from friends, I guess. I don't know, Sarah. We'll have to figure that out when it happens. Right now, today, we're okay. Nobody is going to come after me in the middle of the aftermath of an earthquake. We'll just have to see what happens next week.” But Sarah could figure out as well as he could that their whole world was about to come down around their ears. There was no way to avoid it, after the fancy footwork he had done. He had put their life at risk in the worst possible way.

“Do you think they'd take our house away?” She suddenly looked panicked as she glanced around the room. This was home to her now. She didn't need a home as elaborate as this one, but this was where they lived, the house their children had been born into. The prospect of losing everything frightened her. From one minute to the next, they could be destitute, if Seth got arrested and prosecuted. She started to feel frantic about it. She'd have to find a job, a place to live. And where would Seth be? In prison? Only hours before, all she had wanted was to know that her children were alive and safe after the earthquake, that their house hadn't fallen down around them. And suddenly, with what Seth had revealed to her, everything else had, and all they had for sure now were their kids. She didn't even know who Seth was, after what he'd told her. She'd been married to a stranger for four years. He was the father of her children. She had trusted and loved him.

She started to cry harder as she thought about it, and Seth came to put his arms around her, but she wouldn't let him. She didn't know if he was ally or foe now. Without even thinking about her and the children, he had put them all in jeopardy. She was furious at him, and heartbroken over what he'd done.

“I love you, babe,” he said softly, and she looked at him in amazement.

“How can you say that? I love you too. But look what you did to us, all of us. Not just yourself and me, but the kids too. We may get thrown out into the street. And you could wind up in prison.” And almost certainly would.

“It may not be that bad,” he tried to reassure her, but she didn't believe him. She knew too much about SEC regulations herself to swallow the platitudes he was handing her. He was in extreme danger of being arrested and going to prison. And if he did, their life, as they knew it, would go with him. Their lives would never be the same again.

“What do we do now?” she asked miserably, blowing her nose on a tissue. She didn't look like the glamorous young socialite of the night before. She was like a very frightened woman. She was wearing a sweater over her evening gown, her feet were bare as she sat on their bed, crying. She looked like a teenager whose world had just come to an end. And it just had, thanks to her husband.

She took down her French twist and let her dark hair fall over her shoulders. She seemed half her age as she sat there, glaring at him, feeling betrayed as she never had before. Not for the money and lifestyle they would lose, although that mattered too. Everything had seemed so secure and that had been important to her, for their children. But more than that, he had robbed them of the happy life he had set up for them, the sense of safety she counted on. He had risked all of them, when he transferred the money Sully Markham lent him. He had shot her life out of a cannon right along with his.

“I guess all we can do is wait,” Seth said quietly, as he walked across the room and stared out the window. There were fires burning below them, and in the morning sunshine, he could see damage to houses near them. Trees were down, balconies were hanging at odd angles, chimneys had toppled off roofs. People were walking around outside with a dazed air. But none of them were as stunned as Sarah, crying in their bedroom. It was only a matter of time now before life as they knew it now would end, and maybe their marriage with it.

Chapter 4

Melanie stayed on the street outside the Ritz-Carlton for a long time that night, helping people, trying to get paramedics to them. She found two little girls who were lost and helped them find their mother. There wasn't much she could do. She didn't have the nursing skills of Sister Mary Magdalen, but there was a level of comfort and reassurance that she could give to others. One of her band members followed her around for a while, and then finally went to join the others in the shelter. He knew she was a big girl and could take care of herself. No one in her entourage had stayed with her. She was still wearing the dress and platform shoes she had worn onstage, and Everett Carson's rented tuxedo jacket over it, which by then was filthy, streaked with dust and the blood of people she'd assisted. But it felt good to her to be out there. For the first time in a long time, despite the plaster dust in the air, she felt like she could breathe.

She sat on the back of the fire truck, eating a doughnut and drinking a cup of coffee, talking to the firemen about what had happened that night. And they were shocked and pleased to be having coffee with Melanie Free.

“So what's it like to be Melanie Free?” one of the younger firemen asked her. He had been born in San Francisco and grown up in the Mission. His father was a cop, as were two of his brothers, and two more were firemen like him. His sisters had all gotten married right out of high school. Melanie Free was as far from his life as anyone could get, although watching her sip coffee and eat the doughnut, she looked just like everyone else to him.

“It's fun sometimes,” she admitted. “And sometimes it sucks. It's a lot of work and a lot of pressure, especially when we play concerts. And the press are a huge pain in the ass.” They all laughed at her comment as she reached for another doughnut. The fireman who had asked her the question was twenty-two years old and had three kids. He thought her life sounded more interesting than his, although he loved his wife and kids. “What about you?” she asked him. “Do you like what you do?”

“Yeah. Most of the time. Especially on a night like this. You really have the feeling you're making a difference, and doing some good. It beats having beer bottles thrown at you, or having someone take potshots at you, when you show up in the Bay View to put out a fire they started themselves. But it's not always like that. Most of the time, I like being a firefighter.”

“Firemen are cute,” Melanie commented, and then giggled. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had two doughnuts. Her mother would have killed her. Unlike her mother, Melanie was permanently on a diet, at her mother's insistence. It was one of the small prices she paid for fame. She looked less than her nineteen years as she sat on the bottom step of the fire truck, chatting with the men.

“You're pretty cute yourself,” one of the older firefighters commented as he walked by her. He had just spent four hours getting people out of an elevator where they'd been trapped. One woman had fainted, the others had been okay. It had been a long night for everyone. Melanie waved as the two little girls she'd found walked past her with their mother on the way to the shelter. Their mother looked stunned as she realized who Melanie was. Even with her long blond hair uncombed and tangled, and dirt on her face, it was easy to recognize the star.

“Do you get tired of people recognizing you?” one of the other firemen asked her.

“Yeah, a lot. My boyfriend hates it. He punched a photographer in the face, and wound up in jail. It really gets on his nerves.”

“Sounds like it.” The firefighter smiled and went back to work. The remaining ones told her she should go to the shelter then. It was safer for her there. She had been helping hotel guests and random strangers all night, but the Office of Emergency Services wanted people in shelters. There was falling debris everywhere, pieces of windows along with signs and chunks of concrete off buildings. It really wasn't safe for her outside. Not to mention the live wires that were a constant danger.

The youngest of the firefighters offered to walk her the two blocks to the shelter, and she reluctantly accepted. It was seven in the morning, and she knew her mother would be worried sick by then, and would probably be having a fit about where she was. Melanie talked easily with the young fireman on the way to the large church auditorium where people were being sent. As it turned out, the whole building was full to the rafters, and Red Cross volunteers and church members were serving breakfast. When she saw the size of the crowd, Melanie couldn't imagine how she'd find her mother. She left the fireman at the door, thanked him for providing her an escort, and threaded her way through the crowd looking for someone she knew. It was a massive group of people talking, crying, laughing, some looking worried, and hundreds of people sitting on the floor.