Before I Sleep Page 8

  But Danny had never told his son no. He'd always said, not yet, son. Not yet. Someday.

  “Someday” had finally arrived. Danny had come back a day early from a shrimping trip. Closing his eyes, Seamus saw his father coming up the front walk, dirty and grungy from hard work, burned by the merciless sun, stinking of shrimp and the sea.

  “What are you doing back so soon?” Seamus's mother had asked, her voice full of delighted laughter.

  And Danny had looked down at his son and grinned. “It was a profitable trip,” he said, “and I've got a boy to take to a baseball game.”

  The boy had shrieked with excitement. The man he had become sat with his eyes closed and burning, and his throat so tight from unshed tears that he could hardly breathe.

  What had become of them all?

  CHAPTER 6

  18 Days

  Carey stepped out of the station shortly after eleven. She carried her sweatshirt, her laptop computer, and a half-empty bottle of water, and she had only one thought on her mind: getting home and getting to bed. The last couple of nights her sleep had been interrupted by terrible nightmares, dreams she forgot as soon as she opened her eyes. Last night she had slept with a light on to dispel the shadows in the corners of her bedroom, but it hadn't helped. Even light couldn't hold back the oppressive sense of impending doom that was dogging her steps.

  A shadow detached itself from one of the trees, walking toward her, and her heart slammed as she recognized a male figure. She turned, ready to dash back into the station.

  “Carey! It's me.”

  Seamus. Her flight response instantly converted to fury. “What the fuck are you doing?” she demanded.

  He stopped a few paces away. “You never used to swear,” he said.

  She was about to give him a demonstration of just how much she could swear when something stopped her. The tone of his voice hadn't been accusatory, she realized. It had been almost—wistful. “You bring out the best in me,” she finally said, her tone slightly acid.

  “I always did.” The same acid laced his words.

  “What do you want?”

  “To talk. Come on. I'll buy you breakfast, and we'll do a little horse trading.”

  She hesitated, reluctant to expose herself to any more of this man. Five years ago he had cost her a lot of heartbreak; as angry as she had been with him, she had still drowned her pillow with tears. It would be awful to discover she was still susceptible. But that wasn't likely, she decided. Whatever hadn't been torn out by the roots during their breakup had certainly withered and died during five years of neglect.

  Besides, horse trading meant he had something to offer her, and she couldn't pass up the possibility that he'd changed his mind about looking into the Summers slashing case.

  “Okay,” she said. “The Pancake Place?”

  They had once eaten a lot of midnight breakfasts at the Pancake Place. Both of them had worked long hours in their jobs, and had gone through periods where the only time they could find to sit down to a meal together was in the middle of the night. Seamus had been fond of breakfast at any time of the day or night, and, before long, Carey had developed a taste for it herself. To this day she sometimes made herself French toast or pancakes when she got home from work.

  But coming to one of their old haunts might not have been a bright idea, Carey thought as they entered the restaurant. The decor hadn't changed one bit; it was still brightly lit with overhead fluorescents, and the tables, chairs, and booths were still the same beige Formica and brown Naugahyde, a little worse for wear.

  She could feel the years peeling away, leaving nerve endings exposed.

  But the waitress was different, and time stopped pin-ponging between then and now. The menus were different, too, freshly printed on white stock and inserted in brand-new plastic covers. But the items on them were the same, and she heard herself ordering her favorite strawberry pancakes and decaf. Seamus ordered steak and eggs with an extra side of English muffins. She recognized the signs: He hadn't eaten since breakfast.

  The coffee came in a carafe, and Seamus filled both their mugs. She watched him stir cream into his, and wondered if his stomach was bothering him, since he usually drank it black. Then she wondered why she should care. It was not her business anymore.

  “My dad,” he said, then fell silent.

  She waited, but when he said no more, prompted him. “What about your dad?”

  He sighed and stirred his coffee some more. The spoon clinked steadily against the side of the cup. “My dad has some problems.”

  She almost asked what that had to do with her, then reined in her impatience. It was one of the things he had always complained about, the way she could never just let a story unfold but had to go after it with questions. The lawyer in her, he'd called it. But she'd always been that way. She was like a bird with a seed, pecking away to get at the kernel as quickly as possible. It was part of what made her such a success on her show, and part of what had made her a good trial attorney; but it was her nature, not something she had learned.

  It was also something she was learning to control when it seemed wise, and right now it seemed wise.

  He looked tired, she thought, tired and … very unhappy. But his being unhappy was nothing new, she reminded herself. That was one of the things that had driven her crazy about him, the way he never permitted himself to just enjoy anything. “My dad,” he said again.

  She couldn't help herself. It just slipped out. “Right. Your dad. I got that part.”

  He looked up sharply, almost as if he were going to snap at her, but then surprised her with a short laugh. “My dad,” he said again. “It's a subject I don't want to discuss. But I guess you can tell that.”

  “I do get that feeling. However, if you don't get around to it, we might be here all night.”

  He gave another laugh, this one actually humorous. “You know how hard it is for me to talk about personal things.”

  “I seem to remember commenting on it a few times.”

  This time he smiled at her. “With justification,” he admitted. “Okay. My dad. The bane of my existence.”

  “I thought that was me,” she said lightly.

  “You've been superseded.”

  “That's good. I think. I never quite saw myself as a bane. On the other hand…” She trailed off, dropping the forced lightness, and reached out to touch the back of his hand. It was wrapped tightly around his coffee mug, telling her clearly how difficult this was for him. “It's okay, Seamus. Just do it your own way.”

  “I don't have a way,” he reminded her. He turned his head, looking at the dark window beside them. There were no other customers in the restaurant, and the parking lot outside was almost invisible. It was like being cut off from the rest of the world.

  “My dad,” he said, “is an alcoholic. I'm going to put him in detox in the morning.”

  “I'm sorry.” She didn't know what else to say. She assumed this had to be painful for him. But he surprised her.

  “He needs it,” he said bluntly. “He's ruined his life with his drinking, and I'm not going to live with a souse.”

  “I can understand that.” “He has nowhere to turn but to me. If I throw him out, he'll be living on the street.” He looked at her. “I made it a condition of staying with me. He has to dry out and stay dry.”

  “You don't really have any alternative.”

  “I don't think so. But there's more.”

  Just then they were interrupted by the waitress, who brought their platters of food. Seamus was hungry enough that he let the conversation lag until he'd eaten more than half of his twelve-ounce steak and most of his home fries.

  “Anyway,” he said, picking up where he'd left off, “in the process of running his business and his life into the ground, he got into some trouble with the IRS.”

  “That's never fun.”

  He shrugged one shoulder, as if to say it didn't matter whether it was fun, it just was. He didn't waste breath ra
iling about things that couldn't be changed. “Whatever. The point is, he's in trouble, and I don't even know how much trouble. He can't remember when they started coming after him, or how much they want. He said it was thirty thousand plus penalties. I do know that they confiscated his fishing boat, which is worth more than the thirty thousand dollars he owes them, but then he got a letter today asking him the whereabouts of the office equipment he'd claimed deductions for. Apparently he sold the stuff to support his addiction.”

  “Not good.”

  “Nope.”

  “He'll owe taxes on whatever money he got for the stuff in addition to the claim they're already making.”

  “Yup.” He cut off another chunk of steak and chewed it. Then, with an impatient movement, he pushed his plate aside and reached for his coffee cup.

  “You need to finish eating,” she told him. “You haven't eaten since early this morning, right?”

  “I lost my appetite. Danny has that effect on me.”

  “Danny?”

  “My father.”

  “Oh.”

  “When he first told me what was going on, I figured confiscating the boat would settle it. To judge by the letter today, it's not going to be that easy. Apparently whatever he owes is more than the boat's worth—although I have to tell you, Carey, I just can't figure it. He never made enough money to run up that kind of tax bill.”

  “Penalties and interest. They add up really fast.”

  He nodded slowly and sighed “I'm not even sure he owes all this money. He hasn't been working much, if at all, because of his drinking. He couldn't have made more than a pittance in the past five years. And he can't remember the last time he filed a return.”

  “So maybe they're taking this action based on estimated income for the years he didn't file.”

  His brows lifted. “I didn't think of that.”

  “Well, I'm not a tax attorney, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did something like that, and as long as they don't get other information, they're going to go on the assumption that he just quit filing but is still working the same as he always has. Of course, I don't have the foggiest idea if that's even legal or possible. There might be something else going on.”

  “Well, I honestly can't figure out how he came to owe so much. But like you said, it could be penalties and interest.”

  “You need to get somebody to look into it, Seamus.”

  “That's what I thought. And that's where we get to the horse trading.”

  “I'm not a tax attorney,” she reminded him. “I took one course on tax law in school, and that's all outdated now.”

  “But you're an attorney. You know how to talk to people, how to find things out, and how to negotiate. You're also extremely bright. I have no doubt you could find out what you need to know.”

  “You'd do better to hire someone who really knows what she's doing.”

  “Maybe. But I doubt it. And the other part of my problem is that paying for Danny's detox is probably going to clean me out.”

  “You shouldn't have to pay for that! He's an adult. There must be some program…”

  He shook his head. “Danny's my responsibility. I'm not going to foist him off on taxpayers.”

  “But you're perfectly willing to ask me to do a favor.”

  “No. I'm not asking for a favor. I said horse trade and I meant horse trade. You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours. Good old-fashioned barter.”

  “And just what do I get in exchange?”

  “I'll look into the Summers case for you.”

  One corner of her mouth lifted. “Damn you.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “Trade.”

  “It won't take you more than a few hours to check into the Summers case. It might take me years to straighten out Danny's mess.”

  “I'm not asking you to straighten it out. I'm asking you to find out what's going on. Then I can decide what I need to do about it. Just find out the parameters of the mess, so I can get a handle on it. Right now, I don't even know where to start.”

  “Probably by calling the phone number on the letter he got today,” she said drily.

  “If they'll even talk to me. I'm just his son, remember. They might not tell me a thing.”

  It was true. Taxpayers did have some privacy protection.

  She sighed and looked down at her hardly touched plate. She didn't really have a choice. She would never sleep easily again if she passed up this opportunity. She'd been tormented for five years by the feeling that stones had been left unturned in the Otis trial, so how could she leave a stone unturned now, when there were only a few days left to correct the situation?

  “Okay,” she said. “I'll do it. But you have to get the information on Summers fast.”

  “I know.”

  “And Danny has to agree to my representing him. I can't just dive in on this on your say-so, Seamus.”

  “He'll agree. Come home with me right now, and I'll wake him up out of his drunken stupor.”

  “Fair enough.” But she had the feeling she was going to get a lot more than she bargained for.

  Seamus still lived in the same modest bungalow. Pulling into his driveway behind him was like déjá vu, Carey thought, worse than the Pancake Place. She switched off her ignition and waited for her emotions to settle.

  The night was windy, and the royal palms in Seamus's front yard were tossing wildly. Low clouds scudded across the sky, yellowed by the city lights below. Tall live oaks grew on either side of the house, old trees that spread their sheltering branches over the roof. In the daylight they provided cooling shade. At night they seemed to swallow the house in a dark cavern.

  She shivered with an inexplicable sense of unease and found herself reluctant to get out of the car. Ghosts, she thought. This place was full of ghosts.

  Seamus came back to her and opened her car door. “Come on in,” he said. “I don't want you sitting out here while I wake the old fart.”

  She climbed out and watched him close her car door. “You don't have a lot of respect for your father,” she remarked.

  “Not anymore.”

  How sad, she thought, following him up the driveway and along the walk to the front door. She also found herself wondering how she could have lived with this man for six months and not heard one mention of his father. “Has he always been alcoholic? That would explain a lot.

  “No.” But he offered no additional information, leaving her to wonder what the story was behind this.

  A solitary lamp was lit in the living room. He didn't turn on any others. “Wait here. I'll go wake him up.”

  So she waited, looking around a room that had once been familiar to her. It looked the same, but in the past it had never reeked of beer.

  She turned as she heard him coming back down the hall. This time he had an old man on his arm. Danny Rourke was a little unsteady on his feet, bent and old-looking, far too thin to be healthy. But what Carey really noticed was the way Seamus held his father's arm. Regardless of how he might talk about Danny, Seamus loved him.

  Seeing Carissa, Danny shook off his son's arm and tried to stand straighten His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, and he swayed a little as he stood on his own, but there was pride there, under the alcoholic veneer, and she felt herself responding to it.

  “Dad, this is Carissa Stover. She's an attorney. I asked her to look into your trouble with the IRS. Carey, my dad, Danny Rourke.”

  Carey walked over to the old man and offered to shake his hand. His grip was strong, and he gave her a smile as he mumbled a greeting. Long ago, he had probably been a very attractive man.

  “Mr. Rourke,” she said. “I told Seamus I'd look into the problem, but I can only do it if you want me to represent you.”

  “I can't pay you.”

  “Seamus is paying me, Mr. Rourke.”

  “That's not right.” Danny looked up at his son. “You shouldn't do that.”

  “Don't worry about it,” Seamus said shortly. “Just tell th
e lady you want her to represent you. All she's going to do is find out what the hell is going on, so I can figure out what we need to do about it.”

  “It's my problem,” Danny insisted, his voice only slightly slurred. “I'll get what's coming to me.”

  Seamus shook his head. “It's my problem, Dad. You made it my problem when you turned up on my doorstep. Now say yes to the lady so she can get home to bed.”

  Danny's eyes reflected hurt and humiliation as he looked at Carey. “Yes,” he said. Then he turned and shuffled back down the hall to bed, steadying himself against the wall.

  Neither Seamus nor Carey said anything until they heard the door close behind him.

  Carey spoke first. “He's got a lot of pride.”

  “Not enough to stay away from the bottle.”

  “Don't you think you're being a little hard on him?”

  “Hard?” He repeated the word disbelievingly. “Nobody pours the booze down his throat except him.”

  “Alcoholism is a disease.”

  “Sure. One that can be cured by refusing to bend the elbow.”

  Carey thought of the pack of cigarettes in her purse and figured she wasn't so very different from Danny Rourke. Crutches could be very difficult to get rid of.

  “Come on,” he said. “I'll walk you to the car.”

  “But I need some information if I'm going to get to work on Danny's case.”

  He looked embarrassed. “Oh. Yeah.” He picked up a crumpled piece of paper from the end table and handed it to her. “This is the letter from the IRS. It's all I've got. God knows what happened to his business records. If he didn't lose them, they were probably on the computer he sold— or on the boat the IRS confiscated.”

  “There's probably enough information here to get started,” she said after scanning the letter. “At least enough to find out exactly what they want.”

  “A gallon of blood and a pound of flesh,” he said. “And how they expect him to make any money to pay them back when they've taken his boat beats the hell out of me.”