Holidays at Crescent Cove (6 page)

“Vince, haven't you come to your senses yet? Come home before you get into more trouble.”

Grace had meant to move away,. She didn't want to be privy to whatever was happening in her father's practice or her parents' relationship, but her mother's voice was too loud to ignore.

“You've lost your mind,” her mother said.

“No, I think maybe I've come to my senses. Stop worrying.”

He handed Grace the phone.

“Grace,” her mother said. “You have to talk some sense into him. The partners are frantic, it seems he has some papers they need for a case they're arguing next week and they need to prep for it. Tell him to come home before he gets into more trouble with the firm than he's already in.”

“Relax, honey, I know what I'm doing,” her father yelled over her mother's arguments.

“I'll kill him,” her mother said, and hung up.

Grace closed the call. “She said—”

“That she's going to kill me. I heard.”

Chapter Seven

G
RACE RUSHED BACK
to her desk. “Just put those papers back where they came from. I don't know why you're here. I certainly don't know why you think that I will in any way help you defend that bastard. I'm sure there are plenty of—I believe the term you used was “real lawyers”—in your firm all too willing to sell their souls. So just get up and get out.”

The color drained from her father's face, and she saw that his hands trembled. And suddenly she was afraid that she had gone too far and would literally be the death of him.

There was a moment of indecision, while she teetered on the brink of falling from anger into concern. She managed to pull herself back just in time. “Please, leave me alone. I have a life I like. Please don't ruin it.”

“Grace, you don't understand.”

“So you've told me. Often. And quite frankly if it has anything to do with getting a known murderer off, I don't want to understand. I have plenty to do just helping people who need legal help and—get this—deserve it.”

Her father's lips tightened until they almost disappeared. Grace looked away. She wondered if she should call Nick after all, but she would not humiliate her father that way, even though he deserved it.

“The law should be blind.”

“No it shouldn't. The law should be just.”

Her cell rang. Grace gritted her teeth. Maybe her mother could convince him to leave. It was like being cornered by a dog that you think may be rabid.

It was Jake. She moved away from her father and slipped into the corner cubicle where she consulted with clients in private, as private as a one room office could be.

“Just wanted to see how you were today.”

“Well, I'd be fine if I could get my father out of my office. Evidently he stuck around over night.”

There was silence at Jake's end.

“Listen, thank you for calling. I really appreciate it and I'd love to talk, but I have this situation.”

“Need me to come over?”

She'd love to dump this in his lap, in anybody's lap but her own. “No, but thanks for offering.”

“Okay, but just call.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“Dad and I were wondering if you had plans for Thanksgiving? I figured you'd probably go to Margaux and Nick's.”

“They invited me, but I think I'm just going to stay home and catch up on some work.” She sounded pathetic. She put on a brighter voice. “Though I'll probably stop by for dessert, just to see everybody.”

“Well, we would love for you to come to us. There will be siblings and in-laws and children coming out of the woodwork, but if you don't mind a large and noisy crowd . . . Anyway, you're invited.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate it, but—”

She heard a brief scuffle and realized it was coming from the phone.

Seamus's voice replaced Jake's. “You don't have to decide right now. Just come. We're expecting you. Don't bring a thing, just your lovely self. Around one o'clock. Or earlier if you want. Good. See you then.”

“You heard the man,” Jake continued. “Gotta love his tactics. Don't give them a chance to say no. But if you think you can stand it, I'd like you to come. Think about it.”

She hung up and thought how nice it would be to get to know Jake better without all this angst. To actually be wanted. Yes, much better. And maybe she could make it happen. But first things first. She went out to battle her father—once again.

He was gone.

Grace looked around the office, suspecting some kind of trick. She looked in the washroom. Empty. Hell, she even looked in the supply closet. No deranged lawyer hiding anywhere. He was really gone, and he'd taken his briefcase.

Well, good riddance.

She was hit with a niggling sense of missed opportunity. There would never be a reconciliation. Their beliefs, their mores, were just too fundamentally different. And that made her sad. She ruthlessly pushed the feeling away and returned to her desk to try to get some work done.

And discovered his final ploy.

He'd left the brief sheets spread across her desk facing her desk chair. The sneaky bastard.

Fine. She'd file them right where they belonged—in the recycling bin. See how he liked that. Though he probably had twenty copies. She started to scoop them up. But she couldn't keep from glancing at them, and her fingers slowed at a manila folder marked
Character Witnesses.
Right.

She couldn't resist. The urge was like pulling at peeling sunburn or picking at a scab until the wound bled. She opened the folder, read the list of community leaders, political and government officials who attested to Sonny Cavanaugh's character.

They portrayed him as a boy—hell, the man was at least twenty-eight, maybe older—who had fallen into the wrong crowd. Wrong crowd? He was their ringleader. A thief. A murderer. He was the scab, an infected canker that poisoned everything and everyone who came in contact with him. Including her father. Including Grace if she had stayed to defend him again.

It was already too late for her father, but not for her.

She slapped the folder shut, carried the pile of papers over to the recycling bin and dumped every sheet in before closing the lid. If she'd had an incinerator, she would have burned the whole batch.

Grace managed to put in a useful day of work, though she did jump whenever the phone rang or someone opened the door. When she went out for lunch, she made sure no one was waiting for her before she scuttled down the street.

Surely, this time he had given up and really gone home. But a tiny voice asked,
Then why did he leave those case papers?

But as the day wore on, she pushed him out of her mind, and by the time she left for home, she'd determined to forget the whole incident. Pretend it was a bad dream and now she was awake.

When her mother called that night, Grace told her he was really on his way home. He had to know by now she would never help him get that bastard off.

B
Y
T
UESDAY AFTERNOON
Grace's mood had turned from relief and annoyance to an unsettling fear. Her father was still MIA. Her mother was hysterical. Grace tried to convince her not to worry, that it was just a ploy by her father to guilt Grace out, to manipulate her into doing what he wanted.

“You don't understand,” her mother wailed, echoing Grace's thoughts. “He's done something bad. I don't know what, but the partners are calling here and they threatened me with collusion if I didn't tell them where he is.”

That got Grace's attention. “What exactly did they say?”

“I don't know. Just that he needed to come back. What could he have done that's so bad?”

“I'm sure you misunderstood them. You know how lawyers can get on their high horses and start throwing their weight around.”

“Grace, I've been married to your father for almost forty years, I think I know how lawyers act. I know every game, every maneuver, every attempt at coercion. These men are angry.” She dropped out of her lawyer's wife demeanor and back into hysteria. “And sounding desperate. What has he done? What if he goes to jail?”

“Jail?”

Okay, her father was stubborn, and he didn't blink about bending the law for a client, but he'd never do anything blatantly illegal, would he? Grace thought about the papers dumped in her recycling bin. And he certainly wouldn't give her the means to incriminate him. Would he?

“You have to find him.”

“Me? How am I supposed to find him?”

“He came to you. There had to be a reason . . . Grace? Say something.”

“I'm thinking.”

“I'm driving down.”

“No. You'd better stay and wait in case he does come home. If the partners come looking for him, try to find out what's going on and call me. And call me the minute you hear from him.”

God, she didn't need this. Until three days ago she'd been looking forward to the holidays, if not with her family, at least with her extended family of friends. Now, it was two days before Thanksgiving, and instead of making cranberry sauce or yams to take to dinner, she was going to have to scour the area for her father, lawyer on the lam.

She considered calling Nick. It was too early to file a missing person report, but she knew Nick would look unofficially for her.

What the hell had her father done to anger his colleagues?

She knew the answer lay in those recycled files. She could ignore them, refuse to act, not be a party to condemning her father or his law firm. But she wouldn't, couldn't, know until she read them.

Grace glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight. She grabbed her keys, pulled on her hat, coat, and gloves, and took the stairs at a jog.

The weather had turned cold, and she shivered inside her coat as she walked the three blocks to her office. The streets were dark, and for some reason a little spooky, but that was probably her state of mind more than anything else. Crescent Cove was a pretty safe place to live, especially off season.

Still, she was tempted to call Jake and ask him to meet her at the office. He'd said to call him any time. But Grace wasn't sure he meant it, and he did have to work in the morning. Besides, she didn't intend to stay at the office, but pick up the papers and study them in the comfort of her apartment. And hope to hell her mother was just being an alarmist and there was nothing incriminating in them at all. Because for all the disagreements they'd had, she didn't want to be the one who sent her father to jail.

She gathered up the papers, dumped them into a canvas carryall, and lugged them back to her apartment, where she spent the next two hours sorting and organizing. For the first half hour she shuddered every time she read the name of the defendant, but gradually his name became just a name as she delved further into the case, and the case became just another case.

It was an elaborate defense. A lot of research had gone into it, from what Grace could tell. So what was her father expecting? Not for her to come up with a solution. She didn't get why he was here at all. None of it made any sense.

As it got later, the print began to go out of focus. She adjusted the project lamp, blinked, opened a list of witnesses. She ran down the names, checked them against the prosecution list. Two had scratched. Two had been added to the defense.

She had a suspicion of what that meant, a suspicion she wouldn't put a name to.

She reached for the next folder. Why all this paper? It weighed more than a laptop. Did her father really think it was necessary to have the hard copies?

Of course not, dummy. He made the copies to leave with you.

Nothing was making sense. The more she read, the more she realized the defense was convoluted and weak at best. Where was their ace in the hole? Was that what this was about? He wanted Grace to find the missing link, like she had years before. She might find it, though she doubted it. Sonny Harrison was guilty as sin. And she'd be damned before she'd help him get off again. She yawned, propped her cheek on her hand and kept reading.

Yawned again. Her eyes were scratchy, the lids swollen and heavy. Maybe if she just rested for a minute. She lay her head on her arm, and woke up three hours later.

Her back was stiff and her hand was tingling where it had fallen asleep. She pushed herself out of the chair and went into the kitchen to brew coffee, then took a long, very hot shower.

It was only seven o'clock. She could take another quick look at the files before work, and then she would have done her duty, more than her duty. Hell, she had no duty to this case or to the firm. But she poured a cup and took it back to the table, where she pushed a sheaf of folders away and put her cup down.

Picked up the folder off the top of the to-be-read pile and opened it.

E-mails. A score of them. Interoffice e-mails among the defense attorneys. They were vague and seemingly routine, until Grace began to see the recurrence of certain words and began to read between the lines. Sonny-boy's defense team was preparing to coerce an eyewitness.

She dropped the file back to the table. Winning was everything to these guys. Including her father. Stubborn, yes. She didn't agree with his insistence that “the law is the law for everyone, even the crooks.” Still, she would never, never have suspected him capable of this if it wasn't staring her in the face.

And now she had been dragged into the whole sordid mess.

She threw the folder back on the table, her whole world tumbling around her ears. Opened the next folder without thinking and came face-to-face with the color police photos of the dead girl. Dark hair, matted and covering one part of her pale face, her arm flung out and her rounded belly vulnerable, its precious cargo dead.

She closed the folder, pushed it away.

There was no longer a question of walking away from this case. But she wouldn't be working for the defense. Harrison Cavanaugh wouldn't get out of paying the price this time. This time she would fight. And if it meant bringing down her father, then she'd do it.

She picked up the phone.