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For once Peter was in bed before Elizabeth and paging through the latest case file when she dropped into bed with an exasperated sigh.
Peter cursed quietly in his head and prepared to apologize. 'No case files in bed' had been an early and steadfast rule in their marriage, and if she'd actually been in the bed he would never have considered doing it, but she had been downstairs doing something business related and there was just something wrong about the import papers for that Matisse, something about the provenance. Which was something far better left to Neal to figure out, but for hours Peter hadn't been able to shake the feeling that he was just a moment away from having it gel in his head.
"The tax laws in this country are insane!"
A quick glance showed Elizabeth lying back and staring fixedly up at the ceiling. Peter quickly flipped the folder closed and stashed it under the mattress in a move so smooth he wished Neal had been there to see it. "Is the business giving you problems?" Usually Elizabeth had these things covered. She always seemed to have things covered.
"Oh, no." She looked over at him for the first time with a small frown. He continued to look innocent. This made her suspicious enough to raise one eyebrow, but she apparently decided to let it go. "No, I sent those to Sheila last month, like I always do. She's already worked her magic and filed them. No, I was talking about Neal."
"Neal?"
She rolled over on her side facing him, her head propped up on her hand. "Do you know the kind of hoops the IRS makes someone like him jump through?"
"Neal." He let his disbelief show. "Neal pays taxes?"
She swatted him for that. "Of course he does, Peter! He has legitimate income and he hardly needs to risk getting arrested for tax fraud for what the FBI is paying him."
"He gets a decent salary from us," Peter reacted without thinking. After all, the guy was supposed to be inside, making $2.50 a day sweeping floors or something.
"Of course he does, honey," she managed to soothe with an exasperated edge. "It's just not anything near the amounts he risks prison time for."
"So you're trying to tell me he filed income taxes on the items he stole?"
"No, of course not." And for the first time her righteous indignation on Caffrey's behalf seemed to waiver a bit.
"Because that's how they got"
"—Al Capone. I know." She smiled. "That's because they didn't have you around to get him on the real crimes he committed."
He couldn't stifle the grin. "That attempt at flattery was pathetically transparent."
Elizabeth didn't even blink, just held that smile. "Yeah, but you love it."
He gave in to his own smile. "Yeah, I do." But he still had to ask. "So since when have you taken to helping Neal Caffrey, Upright Citizen, do his duty by the IRS?"
"Since he asked for help, honey." As if she thought that was obvious.
"Why doesn't he get his little 'lawyer friend'"—and he air-quoted it—"to help him out?"
The unforced peal of laughter that erupted from his wife was one of the things he loved most about her. It was also one of the things that made him feel his stupidest. "Moz? I think he'd have to disinfect himself from head to toe if he so much as touched an IRS form." She giggled again. "Moz?"
Well, yeah, when she put it that way. He refrained from pointing out that the elusive Mr. Havisham was required to pay his share of taxes on wherever the hell he got income from as well. He did, however, automatically file the thought away for possible future leverage.
"O.K., fine. So why ask you?"
"Well, I don't think he's ever filed one before."
"He said that?"
"No, he pleaded the Fifth on that."
"You can't plead—"
"Oh, shush. You know what I mean," she scolded him. "I don't think he had any idea how complicated it would be."
"Didn't he file when he was in prison?"
"No, apparently the IRS gets so much fraud from prisoners claiming rebates that most of them don't bother."
"Well, no reason to raise any red flags on himself with yet another government agency."
"Exactly." Elizabeth ignored his sarcasm.
"So, what? Now he makes a straight salary from the FBI, he doesn't have any assets he's about to admit to, no dependents—unless he's trying to claim Havisham—what's so hard?"
Of course, Elizabeth had just been waiting for the chance to detail the sob story of Neal Caffrey, all misunderstood genius and soulful eyes. He hadn't believed it when he'd first come downstairs to find Caffrey instant best friends with both his wife and his dog, but in retrospect he shouldn't have been surprised at all.
But instead of beginning her tale, Elizabeth just looked at him for a moment. Long enough for him to realize that his eyes were fixed more on the ceiling than on her and had probably rolled a little bit to get there. When she had his attention again, she looked at him for a moment with that fond exasperation he'd seen so much more of in the past six months or so. "I know Neal's a criminal, Peter," she said, in a voice that disturbingly made him think of her soothing a small child. "I just happen to think he's still a good person."
Peter didn't know what his knee-jerk response to that would have been, but apparently Elizabeth did, because she stopped him with an upraised hand. He closed his mouth and she rolled over on to her front, propped on her elbows and staring down her pillow in annoyance. Peter was just glad she'd aimed that look at the pillow and not at him.
"Well, first he has to figure out how to even classify his income, because you pay him, but he's not actually on salary with the FBI."
"I don't pay him—"
She ignored his interruption. "And I know you two are always calling him a 'consultant', which would make him an independent contractor; he'd have to file a Schedule C like I do and worry about self-employment taxes and all that."
He nodded as though he was actually trying to follow this. There was a reason Elizabeth had taken over handling the taxes as soon as they married. And that had been before she started the business.
"But he's not technically a contractor either, is he? I mean he's really on a work-release program, right? And apparently the rules for prison income and work-release income are the same and are completely different from standard income. Also, he can't count any expenses against a business that way."
"What expenses? June handed him that ridiculous wardrobe complete with his multimillion view of Manhattan. And somehow I always end up paying for lunch whenever he's around."
"Which brings up another point," Elizabeth said, pointing directly at him. "The FBI pays $700 a month for his housing, right? Which again argues that he's on work-release and not an independent contractor. But either way, his apartment at June's is clearly worth far more than that, and there are rules about declaring barter income."
"For waxing the cars and ogling her granddaughter?"
"Regardless, he's working for her to make up the difference, which means—per IRS rules—that he's being paid a ridiculous amount for his waxing and ogling, and he's supposed to pay tax on that as income too. Only he never sees that as cash, so it's not like he can withhold a section of the loft and hand that over, is it? And he doesn't have that kind of cash—"
"—"
"—legitimately. So it's possible he could end up owing the IRS tens of thousands of dollars he doesn't have."
"...legitimately."
Elizabeth just looked at him.
Peter sighed. "June must have someone do her taxes."
"He doesn't want to impose."
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
"I sent him to Sheila. If anyone can untangle that whole mess, it's her," Elizabeth said, flopping onto her back again with a satisfied smile.
Peter just stared at her.
"What?" All wide-eyed innocence.
"If you already— Why are we even having this discussion?"
"Well, it shouldn't be so incredibly difficult for him to do the right thing." She frowned back up at the ceiling. "It certainly isn't motivating him to obey the law."
"No, the threat of being sent back to prison for the rest of his life is what's motivating him to obey the law," Peter pointed out, quite reasonably, he thought.
Elizabeth just gave him that look. The one that somehow combined utter fondness with "you're such an idiot". Over the years he'd figured out exactly what that look meant, even if he could rarely figure out why he was getting it.
"What?"
She held the look for just a moment more, and then reached out to pull him into a long kiss.
It meant he'd probably never know what it was he'd missed, but somehow right then, Peter just couldn't bring himself to care.