Holidays at Crescent Cove Page 6

  “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.

  BY TUESDAY 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.

  Chapter Eight

  TEN MINUTES LATER Grace was walking out the door, armed with the e-mail folder and a photo of her father she’d downloaded from the Internet. She walked the two blocks to the parking lot where she kept her car. Her stomach churned as her mind replayed the image of that poor girl lying broken in the street, her rounded belly, her dark hair, her pale lifeless face. Neither the mother nor the baby had survived.

  Grace shook her head, trying to drive the image away. Trying to give herself the courage to do what needed to be done.

  She was usually fine with sharing personal stuff with her two best friends. But not this. Bri knew the barest details because she had been here when Grace moved back, hurt and humiliated.

  And Grace had told Margaux just this past summer, when Margaux was going through trials of her own. They’d never mentioned it again. But she would now. Today. Ask Nick for his advice. Take the chance of losing her friends forever when they heard what her father was planning to do and what she was planning to do to stop him.

  Grace stopped by her office and put up a Closed sign; she wasn’t sure how much time this would take. And a spasm of fear shot up her arm. That she would be tainted by the whole sordid case.

  But it wasn’t just that. Grace had lost her belief in the law for the second time in her life. And she wasn’t sure she could ever recover from this final bow.

  She turned into the Little Crescent Beach community where she’d spent so many summers. She drove down Salt Marsh Lane toward the beach. Passed the house her family had rented every year until she graduated from high school. They’d spent many happy summers there, with her father—like many of the fathers—coming for the weekend, and taking the train back to their respective cities on Monday morning.

  Grace always loved that little house, had good memories of their summers there, and thought that when she came back to Crescent Cove she’d buy it. But now she was content to live in town. She wanted nothing to do with the beach houses.

  She noticed a thin ribbon of smoke coming out of the chimney and hoped that whoever was renting it off season was enjoying it. Then she shoved it to the back of her mind, where it belonged.

  Margaux was waiting by the back door when Grace pulled into the gravel parking area behind the Sullivan beach house. She looked concerned. And Grace’s first reaction was to pretend that nothing was really that bad. But she couldn’t hide those things from her friends. And if she were honest, she didn’t want to.

  She’d been carrying “stuff” alone for far too long. She gathered her purse and the bag of papers, and got out of the car. And was hit by the tingling chill of salt air. It was so much stronger here than in town, it was hard to believe they were less than a mile away.

  And sometimes so far away.

  Grace had spent a good ten summers here with Margaux and Bri. She suddenly longed for those days, when life was simple, where everything was before them. But only for a second. She normally loved her life, except the estrangement from her family. But though she’d often wished for a reconciliation with her father, this last episode had finished any chance of that ever happening.

  “Grace.”

  Grace jumped. Margaux was standing right in front of her. She hadn’t noticed that she’d stopped walking and was standing in the middle of the gravel like a statue.

  “Sorry. Preoccupied.”

  “I can tell. Come on in. I have coffee. And pumpkin bread. Jude made it. I haven’t even had time to finish the shopping for Thursday or put things away, so the place is kind of a mess.”

  Grace let Margaux lead her to the back door and through the mudroom to the kitchen.

  Grace stopped again. “It looks like a hurricane just blew through.”

  One counter was loaded with brown shopping bags. A bowl of yams sat on the kitchen table, along with a five pound bag of flour and a row of sweet onions. A second, smaller table held pie boxes stacked six high.

  “It did,” Margaux said. “Nick and Connor made breakfast.” She pointed to the stack of dirty dishes in the sink. “We were running a little late this morning. Nick’s taking Connor to school but he’s coming back. The bags over there are from shopping last night. The fridge is packed. Jude’s is packed, and I’m sure Mrs. Prescott’s is, too. So bring your appetite Thursday. Mom and Nick’s mom are so glad to have everyone together that they just can’t stop cooking.”

  Grace smiled. It was so messy, and human and loving, that she had a hard time breathing.

  Margaux took two mugs down from the cabinet and poured coffee. She handed both of them to Grace and bought out two small plates and a loaf of pumpkin bread, which she cut into thick slabs. “Let’s take this out to the parlor. We might find a place to sit there.”

  The parlor was as familiar to Grace as her own apartment. Same furniture that had been there for years. And it was just as mismatched and lovingly used as ever. A stack of Margaux’s latest designs covered the top of the old knee-hole desk. A basket of trucks, books, and superheroes had been shoved into a corner. A history book lay facedown on the steamer trunk that did double duty as a coffee table. Next to it, a first grade writing tablet lay open to where Connor had been practicing writing his name. Margaux put the bread and plates down beside it.

  “Okay, shoot.”

  It was as if someone punctured the balloon of her emotions. Grace flopped back on the couch. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “I take it more has happened since you saw the newspaper article.” Margaux slid a plate with a slice of pumpkin bread toward her. Grace mechanically broke off a piece, sending a waft of heady spices right to her nose.

  “I don’t even know where to start. After you left, Jake dropped by and brought some pastries. Since I’d missed breakfast.”

  Margaux didn’t say anything, just looked at Grace over her coff
ee cup from the other side of the trunk where she sat cross-legged in a cabbage rose-covered easy chair.

  “It was a nice thing to do. But I was still kind of shell-shocked, so he just handed me the box and left. So later I invited him and Seamus to dinner. It was the least I could do. And it was part celebration for the reopening of the boardwalk.”

  “Hmmm,” Margaux said.

  Grace slowed down. “Then we—Jake and I—went for a drink—”

  “At last,” Margaux said. “Is that what you want to talk to Nick about?”

  “No. Of course not. Nothing even— He walked me home, and there on my doorstep was my father.”

  It took a second for Margaux to process the information, and like a good attorney, Grace waited to let it sink in.

  “Wow. What happened?”

  “I told him to leave. Jake saw me upstairs.”

  Margaux raised both eyebrows.

  “He saw me in.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  “I thanked him and told him to leave.”

  Margaux groaned. Shook her head. “Not that I blame you. Not with your dad ready to beat the door down.”

  “That wouldn’t have surprised me at that point.”

  “He never was one for subtlety,” Margaux agreed.

  “Then my mother called, hysterical because she couldn’t find him. I told her he was on his way home.”

  “And?”

  “He wasn’t. He left, but he didn’t go home. He showed up at my office yesterday morning. I had to leave the room for a minute, and when I came back he’d put the briefs from the Cavanaugh trial on my desk and disappeared again. And that’s what I want to talk to Nick about. I need some advice.”

  She hesitated, and in the silence they heard the crunch of gravel.

  “And speak of the devil . . .” Margaux smiled, an expression Grace envied.

  She pushed it aside. She was happy for her friend. Hell, she’d been happy for herself until two days ago.

  “You want to talk to him alone?”