Crimes by Moonlight

I sat back on my heels and looked at my sons. They nodded in unison.

I called the vet, and then I called Richard. The vet got back to me right away.

“YOU’RE not making sense.” It was close to midnight when Richard came through the front door and collapsed into the recliner, still holding his briefcase. “First you tell me Tooth was poisoned, then you say he ate a plastic bag. What’d the vet say?”

I moved aside a toy cell phone and perched on the sofa opposite him. “He barfed up the plastic bag in the car on the way to the vet. So the vet said it was probably the plastic bag, and I could leave him overnight, but I didn’t. I brought him home.” And saved us a couple hundred dollars, I thought, but didn’t say, because Richard would find that irritating, would respond with “Money’s no object,” as if saying it would make it so. And anyway, it hadn’t been about money; Tooth would hate to be away from us.

“He looks okay now.” Richard snapped his fingers, and Tooth shuffled over to him, heavy tail doing a slow wag. “Is there anything to eat, by the way?”

“Beef bourguignon. And yeah, he’s okay at the moment, but…” I looked across the room. The African violets were doing better, too. No, not just better. They looked completely fine. Thriving, in fact. Robust.

“So why are you going on about him being poisoned?”

“I’m not,” I said, u

Richard loosened his tie. “What word did they use?”

“ ‘The witch make Toof fwowe up.’ ”

He half smiled. “What witch?”

“Madeeda.”

The smile died. “What?”

I blinked. “Madeeda. That’s her name. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He bent over to untie his shoes. The hair on top of his head was thi

“The name? I have no idea. I’ve asked the neighbors if it sounds like anyone who lives around here, and I’ve Googled her, using different spellings. Among other things, I found a South African soccer player and a dessert recipe from Sudan.”

Richard eased off his shoes. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you Googling her?”

“Because… I think, you know… she’s haunting us.”

Richard rubbed his eyes, then opened his briefcase. “I think your next call should be to Dr. Iqbal.”

“Why? I feel fine. The baby feels fine.”

He brought out a folder of papers and closed his briefcase. “Sweetheart, you think a soccer player is poisoning the dog and the plants. You call me at work, expecting me to do something about it. I want Dr. Iqbal to say it’s some hormonal thing. I’d feel better.”

And I hadn’t even told him about the cracked kitchen window. “You can’t be that worried,” I said. “You never returned my call.”

“It was a bad day. Big meetings. If you’d said it was an emergency, Jillian would’ve put you through.”

“The meetings just now finished, at eleven p.m.?” I hated the edge in my voice.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve called.” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, briefcase and papers still on his lap. “We’re on a triage system at the office. Life-and-death matters get handled. Everything else waits, and…” There was a pause. Was he asleep?

“Wake up!” I screamed. “This is a life-and-death matter.”

Richard’s eyes flew open, and he looked as shocked as I felt. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t a screamer. I was a happy camper, a team player. And why was I screaming, anyway? Tooth was better. My African violets were positively hearty. I made my voice calm. “Do you want di

“Uh-” He was at a loss now, not knowing which comment to respond to.

I sighed. “Okay, never mind all that. What’s with work? Why was it a bad day?”

He closed his eyes again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t care if you want to talk about it. I want to know.”

“I don’t want to worry you.”

“Well, there’s a wrong answer. Now you have to tell me.”

He shook his head.

“Richard,” I said. “Don’t make me come over there and sit on you. I’ve been tiptoeing around this for days, around you, and I’m not in the mood anymore.”

With an agonized squeak, the recliner flattened out, moving my husband backward until his feet dangled off the floor. He looked like he was waiting for a root canal. Just as I was about to yell again, his eyes opened and contemplated the water-stained ceiling. “A few weeks ago I was working on an account. I had a question about the California tax code, so I looked at the books of another account, just as a reference. A big client. Somdahl’s biggest.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Clarien Industries. Pharmaceuticals. Anyhow, I looked through the Clarien profit and loss statements and compared it to their tax returns and came across… irregularities.”

“ ‘Irregularities.’ Like, math errors?”

“That would be one interpretation.” Tooth’s tail thumped on the wood floor. We both looked at him. Fast asleep. Dog dreaming. “I brought it to Werner’s attention.”

“And?”

“He said he’d look into it. Mention it to Somdahl.”

“And?”

“I didn’t hear anything, so I brought it up again. With Werner. Then Somdahl himself summons me into his office. Offers me coffee, tea, fucking cappuccino, like I’m his best friend, like a prospective client. Then he blames the whole Clarien thing on Fenwick. The guy I replaced. Says Fenwick had a substance abuse problem and was unreliable, and that’s why he was let go. But now Somdahl is stuck with this Clarien problem, and what are we going to do about it? If we come clean, we’re talking millions in penalties, for them, maybe for us. We don’t just lose the client, we get sued for malpractice, other clients think ‘sinking ship,’ and they jump. The firm wouldn’t survive it. We’re already down 46 percent from last year. Layoffs up another 7 percent last month. I’m doing the work of four people. We all are. Probably what drove Fenwick to drugs.”

My body was shaking. How had Richard kept this to himself? The clues had been lying around for weeks, like dust bu

“Richard.”

“What?”

“You can’t be part of a cover-up.”

He was silent for a moment. Then, “I don’t have to. I just forget I saw it. Then Somdahl’s secretary misfiles Clarien.”

“That’s the definition of a cover-up. You don’t have to be ru

“Who do I tell? The SEC? And what if they don’t respond? Nothing comes of it. But there goes my career.”

“Somdahl seems to think they’ll respond-”

“Somdahl can’t take the chance.” Richard rubbed his face. “And what if it happens like he says? The firm goes under. Everyone you met last month at the picnic, all those people unemployed. Stocks worthless, pensions gone. Because of me.”

“Not because of you, because of stuff that happened before you got there. Don’t let them guilt you into a conspiracy-”

“Nobody likes a whistle-blower-”

“I like you, I’ll-”

“There’s no profit in it, no percentage-”

“Goddamn it, Richie, you’re sounding like them.” I felt the edges of hysteria closing in on me. “And isn’t it illegal, by the way? What they’re hiding? What you’re hiding now? Because the thought of you behind bars is frankly scarier than who likes you or doesn’t like you at fucking Somdahl & Associates.”