Page 70 of The Best Lawyer
I looked through the sliding door at the back of the house. Joe had just finished building an impressive deck overlooking the pristine landscape. He’d built a stone fire pit a little further out. He’d been promising to start hosting some of the family get-togethers so I didn’t always have to. Though I never minded.
I opened the door. “Joe!” I called out, hearing my own voice echo back to me. Either he couldn’t hear me or wouldn’t listen. I got no reply. With his air conditioning on full blast, I quickly slid the door shut.
I wanted to do something. Though Joe was older than me, we were Irish twins. I still had plenty of big sister energy where he was concerned. I was that way with all my siblings. I found an empty yard bag in the garage and walked back inside. I’d start at the back of the house and work my way forward.
I went into his second bedroom. Lately, he’d used it as an office for his fledgling construction company. Addison Quick implied Joe was underwater. My brother had never told me any such thing.
I couldn’t see the surface of his oak desk. He had so many papers strewn over it, several layers deep.
“Don’t you have a file cabinet?” I asked no one. He had a corkboard on one wall with a tri-county map. He’d placed push pins in the areas he had jobs. Seventeen of them, I counted. To me, that seemed like a thriving business. Had he over-extended himself?
I knew I shouldn’t look. I knew it was a violation of his privacy. But it wasn’t like I had to dig very far. Just by moving a few of the papers around on his desk, a bleak picture began to emerge.
Past due notices. It appeared he owed at least five different suppliers. One of the accounts had already gone into collections. I gasped at the number. On this one alone, Joe owed almost ten thousand dollars. I found a few other unpaid invoices crumpled on the ground.
This wasn’t like him. I wouldn’t call my brother organized in a traditional sense. But he had a system that always worked for him in the past. He also had a better head for numbers than I did. He could calculate amortization schedules in his head. Though he barely made it through high school, I knew Joe had an IQ well into the hundreds.
How had it happened? How had he let everything snowball? I found a credit card bill and my stomach churned. He was maxed out on his twenty-thousand dollar limit. He’d taken several large cash advances. The interest alone on this would eat into whatever profit he’d made.
I sank into the chair at his desk. “Oh, Joe,” I whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
But I knew why. My older brother was the most stubborn of us all. He hated asking me for help. He hated ever needing it. More than anything, he hated me saying I told you so. And I had. When he started this venture, I’d advised my brother not toput up his own house to secure funding for the business. My stomach churned as I pulled out my phone and brought up the county register of deeds site. It took all of two clicks for me to find it.
Six months ago, Joe had taken out a second mortgage on this place. I knew if I dug deep enough, I might find a delinquent mortgage bill. I clicked over to the township treasurer’s office. I let out a small sigh of relief. Whatever else was going on, he wasn’t in foreclosure. Yet.
I shuffled a few more papers around on his desk. I don’t know why one of them caught my eye. Looking back, I wished it hadn’t. So many things might have turned out differently if I’d just minded my own business and walked away when Joe didn’t answer the door.
But I didn’t. My hands trembling, I read the notice from the Northville building inspector. My eyes blurred. I had to blink and take a breath to refocus. Then I reread the date. It seemed to hit me straight in the solar plexus. I looked back at his pushpin map. He only had one job pinned in Wayne County. The road on the map corresponded with the notice. Maybe I was still wrong.
“What are you doing?”
Joe’s sharp voice startled me. I let out a small yip and dropped the bag, spilling garbage onto his floor.
“I said, what are you doing here?”
Slowly, I got to my feet, still holding the building inspector’s notice. If he had realized what I had in my hand, he ignored it. I wished I could.
“I was looking for you,” I said, my voice shaking at first. Then my shock gave way to anger. “The better question is, what are you doing here?” I gestured to the mess on his desk.
“That is literally my business, Cass. You need to leave. We said we were going to avoid each other until this trial was over.”
“I never once said that. I never wanted that. I said we wouldn’t discuss the case. I made you promise not to ask me about Katy.”
“And I haven’t,” he said.
I crumpled the paper in my hand. Anger gave way to pure rage. I threw the paper ball into his chest, wishing it had the physical weight to match its true impact.
“I told you,” I said. “I asked one thing of you. I said if you told me one lie, I was out.”
Joe didn’t pick the paper up off the ground. Of course he didn’t have to. He knew what it was. So I picked it up. I smoothed it out and thrust it at him.
“Say it,” I said. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
I pressed the paper against his chest and shoved him as hard as I could. Joe took a small step backward, but of course I was no physical match for him. It was like trying to push down a concrete wall with my hand.
“This is none of your business,” he repeated.
“1253 Bettony Road. Your big job. Even before all this with Katy, I remember now how excited you were about it. How if it went well, you’d get more Northville jobs. That’s where the money was. You said that.”
