Courting Trouble (19 page)

“Great!” Anne said, though she usually avoided Shredded Wheat. The box remained on the table: squat, red, and remarkably smug for a breakfast food. Its long list of “Nutrition Facts” faced her, reporting alarming amounts of phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, and copper. Metal belonged in plumbing, not breakfast, but Anne reached for the cereal, fixed herself a bowl, and pretended it was Captain Crunch.

“So, let’s review,” Bennie said, swallowing. “You’ve survived a stalker who wanted to kill you, a client who wanted to fire you, and haircut by office scissors.”

Anne managed a smile. “One of these things is not like the other.” She took another bite of Shredded Wheat, which didn’t taste bad because it lacked taste altogether. She glanced around the polished pine table for a sugar bowl, but it was completely bare except for the woven place mats of yellow straw.
Maybe that’s what was in this cereal.
“May I have some sugar, please?”

“No,” Bennie answered.

“Kidding?”

“There’s no sugar in the house. No sugar and no TV. They’re both bad for your health.”

Anne thought this must be some form of insanity.
No Lucy? “No sugar?”

“Ever hear of sugar blues?”

“Is it how you feel when there’s no sugar in the house?”

Bennie smiled. “Forget it.” She finished another mouthful of Shredded Wheat. “You don’t like sports, do you, Murphy?”

“I shop. It takes stamina. I train by eating Cocoa Krispies. Now
that’s
dinner.” Anne became vaguely aware that she was trying to make Bennie laugh, and wondered why that was so.

“I admire you, Murphy. I do.”

“Me?” Anne almost choked, but it could have been the place mat.

“I think you’re handling your situation like a champ. I’ve taken some heat in my time, but not like this. I’m proud of you. This is just awful, and I know how horrible you feel about Willa.”

“Thanks,” Anne said quickly, feeling her face warm. “I do appreciate everything that you, and the others, have done for me.”

“No problem, but it’s not over yet. Tomorrow is the big day. The memorial service.” Bennie ate more cereal and washed it down with Diet Coke. “We will get this asshole. DiNunzio’s tougher than she looks, and Carrier comes through in any clutch. They both do.”

“I bet.”

“But I have an apology to make, on their behalf and my own.” Bennie paused, eyeing Anne directly. “None of us was welcoming when you first came to the firm, and it’s my fault. I didn’t take the time to get you assimilated. I didn’t realize how important it was. None of us acted very well, and I’m very sorry for that.”

“That’s okay.” Anne swallowed the thickness in her throat. She set down her tablespoon and vowed never to eat home furnishings again.

“No, it’s not okay. I’m a good lawyer, but I see now I’m not a good manager. I’m not so good, I think, at making sure everybody is getting along, being happy. Working together. I usually make sure we win.”

“Winning is good.”

“Not good enough. Things fall through the cracks, and people. Like you.”

“I wasn’t so friendly—”

“The burden was on us. On me. You came to my city, to my firm. However you acted was understandable, considering what you’d been through.”

No time like the present.
“I have a question, Bennie. You knew everything about Kevin. About my past.” She thought of her mother’s bouquet of daisies. “How was that?”

“One of your work references told me about Kevin. That he’d tried to kill you, that you’d held up under extreme pressure and put him in jail.”

“They’re only supposed to verify term of employment,” Anne said, surprised.

“They wanted you to get the job. They were trying to help you change your life. And when I heard the full story, it sold me. I knew you could take anything
I
could dish out.”

Anne smiled. She really wanted to ask about her mother, but it seemed so awkward.

“The rest I researched. I have lots of friends in the criminal defense bar out there, and I asked around.” Bennie sipped her soda, and the ice made a sound too festive for the conversation. “I remembered from the interview that you said you had no family. But you didn’t say anybody had died. And there was no mention of a family or even birthplace on your résumé. So I had our firm investigator look into it. You know Lou, don’t you?”

“You
investigated
me?” Anne tried not to sound too pissed.

“Sure, and I don’t apologize for it. I can’t have just anybody at my firm, and people don’t spring from somebody’s head. Everybody has a family, whether they deny it or not. Not just a family, a
context
. Like a word, with meaning in a paragraph.” Bennie smiled over the rim of her glass. “And with some work, I found your context.”

“My mother?”

“Yes.”

“Not my father.”

“No.”

Anne felt her heart quicken. “Where was she, anyway?”

“Southern California.” Bennie set her glass down. “That’s all I should say. She asked me not to tell you, and I promised I wouldn’t.”

Anne held her features rigid. A knife of familiar anger sliced near her heart. “How nice of her.”

“I am sorry. I respected her wishes, but I thought it was hurtful, too.”

“I don’t care enough to be hurt,” Anne said quickly, and she sounded lame even to herself. She wanted to scream. How can a parent have this power over a grown child? Even the
worst
of parents?

“I think she wasn’t very proud of herself, and that’s why she didn’t want you to know.” Bennie paused. “There is a drinking problem, I gather.”

“Meaning she was barely coherent when you spoke.” Anne knew just how that conversation would go, and her face flushed with sudden shame. “She didn’t ask you for money, did she?”

Bennie didn’t confirm or deny. “My family is no model either, but I miss my mother every day. Well. We all make mistakes.”

Anne’s chest felt tight. “Has she contacted you, since then?”

“No, but I remind you. She left the flowers you’ve been driving around with.” Bennie smiled softly. “Not that you care.”

“I only had to die to get her attention. She phoned it in. The card was typed at the store.” Anne stared at her leftover cereal and tasted a bitterness in her mouth that wasn’t magnesium. “I don’t even know how she got my home address.”

“I told her,” Bennie answered, and Anne looked up.

“
You
? When?”

“When I spoke to her last year, when you moved here.”

Anne fell silent.
So it’s not even like she follows me in the newspapers.

“You wish I hadn’t. I’m sorry.” Bennie sighed. “We always wish our parents were better than they are. Bigger, stronger, richer. Better people, more reliable. But they’re not, they’re just not. Sometimes, the best course is to try to accept that, as truth.”

“I accepted that a long time ago,” Anne said, then hated the way she sounded. She pitied herself for pitying herself, and even more because Bennie was right.

Mental note: Maybe bosses became bosses for a reason.

O
utside the second-story window, dimestore firecrackers popped and holiday lasers sliced the night sky, but Anne ignored it all in favor of the computer monitor. She sat at the workstation in Bennie’s messy spare room, which contained old athletic equipment, a white Peugeot bicycle, and boxes of old files, which had been stacked on the skinny daybed against the wall before they had cleared them off. Anne would have gone to bed but she couldn’t help finishing her Internet search of Bill Dietz’s background. The top of the screen read:

Your search has revealed 427 persons named William Dietz with criminal convictions.

She had picked up reading the listings at 82, and she was already at 112. She still didn’t know why she was doing it. She didn’t know if she’d find anything and didn’t know why it mattered. Only that she had looked into Bill Dietz’s eyes and remembered malevolence behind them. Evil masquerading as concern for his wife; abuse dolled up as protection, even love. She returned to the search.

At 226, Anne was in the zone of eliminating Bill Dietzes and taking a caffeinated pleasure in the accomplishment of a simple task. Click on a listing, read it, click on the next. It was easier than redrafting her opening argument or trying to guess which guise Kevin would take in his next incarnation. At 301, she’d still had no luck.

“Murphy, it’s very late,” Bennie said, from the threshold of the office. “You have to get to sleep.” She entered with Bear behind her, his nails
click-clacking
on the pine floorboards. She wore a white terry-cloth bathrobe and her hair had been piled into an unruly topknot, but when she got closer Anne could see that her eyes were tinged with pink and vaguely puffy.

“What’s the matter? You getting a cold?”

“I guess I’m allergic to cats. My face itches, and I can’t stop sneezing.”

“Oh, no.” Anne felt terrible. “When did this start?”

“After dinner. I took a shower but it didn’t help.”

“Should I leave and take Mel?”

“No, you don’t have anywhere else to go. Just keep him in the room. On the bright side, our eyewitness Mrs. Brown is all over the news. On TV, on the radio. The cops announced they’re officially looking for prison escapee Kevin Satorno in connection with your murder. He’s a wanted man.”

“The wish of erotomanics everywhere.”

“Which brings me to my next point. Since Satorno is on the loose, I wanted you to have some peace of mind. I can protect us, if need be. Don’t freak out when you see this.” Bennie stuck her hand in her bathrobe pocket and extracted something. Its silvery finish caught the light from the lamp.

“A thirty-eight special, huh?” Anne reached for the gun and turned it over expertly in her palm. Its stainless-steel frame felt cool, and the hatchmarks on its wooden handle were slightly worn, as was the gold-toned Rossi logo. She thumbed the cylinder-release latch and let the cylinder fall open into her hand. The revolver was loaded with five Federal bullets. She closed the cylinder with a satisfying click. “It’s about ten years old. You musta bought it used.”

Bennie cocked an eyebrow. “Yes. How do you know that?”

“These guns don’t circulate much anymore. Rossi made ’em in Brazil. They were a bunch of guys who spun off from Smith & Wesson. That’s why it looks like one.” The clunky gun was a knock-off, but Anne didn’t say so. She wouldn’t like people saying bad things about her gun. She turned the revolver over in her hand, appreciating its heft, if not its style. “It’s a good gun. Practical. Plenty of stopping power. Good for you.” She handed it back.

“So you’re not freaked.”

“By a gun? Not unless it’s pointed at me. I’m not a gun nut, but I bought one after Kevin attacked me. I own a Beretta thirty-two, semi-auto. Fits in my palm. Cute as a button. I don’t even have to rack the slide to load it. It pops up, so I don’t break a nail. A great girl gun.” Anne could see that her boss was looking at her funny, so she explained. “I tried therapy, Bennie, but I sucked at it, and I’m not the support-group type. I went to the shooting range four nights a week. After a year I can kill a piece of paper, and I feel a helluva lot safer.”

“My, my. You’re an interesting girl, Murphy.” With a crooked smile, Bennie slipped the revolver back into her bathrobe pocket. “I want you to know the gun is here and it’s loaded. We’re safe. I’ll keep it in my night table.”

“Why don’t you leave it with me?”

“That’s not a good idea. Do you have experience with this type of gun?”

“Can Eakins paint by numbers?” Anne smiled, and so did Bennie.

“Just the same, I’ll keep it in my night table.” She turned to the computer monitor and scanned it with swollen eyes. “What’s the point of this search, when you should be getting ready for bed? So what if Dietz has a criminal record?”

“I can use it on cross, for impeachment.”

“True, but I don’t know what that gets you. If it really matters, we can sic Lou on him, after the holiday. Bill Dietz isn’t your enemy in
Chipster.
”

“I know. His wife is.”

“Wrong. You’re the lawyer. Your opponent is her lawyer. Matt Booker.”

“Of course.” Anne resolved instantly not to tell Bennie her feelings for Matt, and vice versa. “That’s a given.”

Bennie squeezed Anne’s shoulder. “Do me a favor and go to sleep. You’re running on adrenaline, and you have a big day tomorrow. Now, good night.” She turned and padded out, sniffling, with Bear
click-click
ing after her down the hall.

Anne took a deep breath and resumed her search. She eliminated 302 through 397, hoping against all odds that this would be her Bill Dietz. She slowed just after 426, then clicked on the very last entry, feeling unaccountably as if she were rolling the dice. But the screen read only:
William Dietz, birth date 3/15/80, Cochranville, PA. Misdemeanor theft.

“No!” Anne said aloud, without meaning to. There was nothing. Mel picked his head up quickly, his ears flat.

Anne felt suddenly lost. She had been wrong. Bill Dietz did not have a criminal record. He was just a jealous, protective husband who had committed no crime, not even a misdemeanor. She felt stupid, useless, and depleted of energy and emotion. Nothing was going right. She was too exhausted to think. It had been too crazy a day.

She got up, turned out the desk light, shimmied out of her skirt, and slid into bed, slipping under the covers in her T-shirt. In time, the house fell quiet except for a loud, breathy snoring from Bennie’s bedroom down the hall. Anne assumed it was the dog, and hoped that she hadn’t made Bennie completely sick. At the foot of the bed, Mel circled a few times, then curled against her covered feet, just like home. But it didn’t feel like home. She could never go home again. She lay in the dark, feeling suddenly that she didn’t belong anywhere, with anyone. She had lost whatever context she had. It was just as Bennie had said, with characteristic bluntness:

You don’t have anywhere else to go.