Authors: Lisa Scottoline
Mary sipped her water and tried to listen, but she couldn’t.
“…he likes the Broughley recliners the best, they got the suede, all kinds a suede, and I admit, it’s a nice design and it’s recliners for cool people. But in half a year, Marc’s got the showrooms in all three locations wall-to-wall with Broughley, and then I find out that the new Broughley rep named Ricky is really a
girl
named Rikki…”
Mary couldn’t sit still. If she could just get that message, she could listen to Eisen’s problems with a clear head and everything would be okay. She needed one lousy moment of privacy with her phone. Then she got an idea.
“…and next thing I know, my partner, who’s got a wife and three kids in private school, one with ADHD and can’t eat wheat products, my partner who never in ten years took a vacation, is now seeing more of Tortola than Mick Jagger, and I got enough Broughley to…”
“Excuse me a second,” Mary said, rising nervously. “I know this is rude, but I can’t concentrate on the story, as much as I want to, because I need a cigarette.”
“You
smoke
?” Bennie demanded, and her incredulous eyes telegraphed,
DiNunzio, you know you don’t smoke. You never smoked a day in your life. You don’t even know which end to light.
“I do smoke. I smoke. I do everything bad.”
I even fly on airplanes. I smoke on airplanes, in fact. While I swim.
“You knew that I smoked, didn’t you?”
“No, I thought you quit,” Bennie countered, and her eyes glinted evilly in the soft lights. “You told me you quit.”
God, she’s good. That’s why she’s the boss. She lies better.
“I fibbed a little, and now I’m jonesing for a cigarette. I need to go outside and smoke. I’ll be right back, I’ll only take a puff and be right back.”
Eisen interjected, “I knew you were jumpy. I could tell, right off.” But at this point, neither woman was listening. This was litigation in which the client had become irrelevant. The battle was between boss and associate.
“I’ll be right back, I swear.” Mary eased out of the corner seat and reached for her purse, but Bennie caught it by the shoulder strap.
“No, sit down.” Bennie held fast to the leather strap. “I won’t let you go. How can you quit smoking if you keep back-sliding?”
“Everybody backslides a little.” Mary tugged her purse, but Bennie was too strong and held on. All that stupid rowing.
“Not everybody backslides, when their heart is as bad as yours. You know what your cardiologist said. You could —”
“Cardiologist?” Mary blurted out, then caught herself. “He changed his mind. He said it’s okay to smoke while I’m weaning myself off.”
But while the women were playing tug-of-war, Eisen was standing up at the table. Suddenly Bennie stopped talking, and Mary looked over in dismay.
Oh, no.
He was going to fire her. He had had it. She had pushed him too far. But in the next minute, Eisen burst into a smile and threw a friendly arm around Mary.
“I’m with you, Mare,” he said, and there was a new warmth in his voice. “I quit, too, so I know what you’re goin’ through. Let’s go outside and fall off the wagon together, and I’ll tell you the dirty parts of the Broughley story. Ha!”
No!
“Sure,” Mary said, tugging her purse free in defeat. She let Eisen lead her away from the table, and when she looked back, the boss was laughing her ass off.
As soon as she was alone in the cab, Mary finally listened to the cell message:
“I called you at work and left a message but it’s Saturday and I guess you’re not there.” Keisha’s voice sounded vaguely panicky. “I need to see you, but I don’t want to say more on the cell. Call me as soon as you can.” She left a number with a 215 area, and Mary called it immediately. When the ringing stopped, an answering machine picked up.
“This is Keisha Grace. Please leave a message at the sound of the beep,” it went, and Mary left a message telling her to call back anytime, day or night.
She snapped the phone closed in the backseat of the cab as it whisked her home through the city. Her stomach felt shaky, but it wasn’t from her first — and last — cigarette.
Mary couldn’t let go of Amadeo, just yet.
LAWYER IN MURDER MYSTERY, screamed the headline on the thick Sunday morning newspaper, and Mary went white when she saw her own photo plastered underneath, the one she had posed for in her office. The byline of the article belonged to Jim MacIntire, and she skimmed the first two paragraphs:
Lawyer Mary DiNunzio is a fighter. She fought her way to the top of her hotshot Philly law firm, Rosato & Associates, and she is fighting to discover what happened to a man who has been dead for over sixty years. She traced that trail all the way to Montana and back, and though she was once cooperating fully with this reporter, she now has no comment about the story — and denies tracing the death to one Giovanni Saracone, now deceased.
However, a well-placed source assures this reporter that DiNunzio believes that Saracone himself may have been responsible for Brandolini’s death, only apparently by suicide. And the same source reveals that Saracone is responsible for the mysterious injury that DiNunzio has been sporting about town. Only with Mr. Saracone’s death yesterday, of cancer, can the full story be told.
“He’s got it all,” Judy said, flopping into the chair opposite Mary’s desk. They’d both come into the office on yet another rainy day to get some work done, but this threw a major wrench into their plans. Judy had brought the paper in, having just picked it up on a Starbucks run.
“My God.” Mary skimmed the rest of the story, which detailed her initial interview with MacIntire and all the stuff he’d learned by calling everyone from Missoula, piggybacking on her work. The article went on to raise the same questions she’d had about Frank’s murder, though Mary hadn’t breathed a word to him. She felt sympathy for Frank’s family and betrayed for herself. And she couldn’t help but wonder about the identity of the well-placed source. “Think his source is someone at Saracone’s or a leak at the Roundhouse?”
“Would Detective Gomez have talked to a reporter?”
“I doubt it, not him. He seemed like a decent guy.” Mary flashed on her conversation with the detective, the end of which had taken place at the open door to the interview room. She remembered the eavesdropping detectives and the woman in the skirt. “But people in the squad room definitely heard us. One of them may have leaked it.”
“Lucky for you that Bennie went back to New York. She probably picked up the newspaper, but even she can’t turn a Metroliner around.”
“Don’t bet on it.” Mary shoved the paper out of her sight. She was thinking about Keisha. She’d already told Judy about the nurse’s call to her cell phone. “I called Keisha again this morning, but she didn’t call back. This could explain why.”
“How so?” Judy pried the white lid off her coffee, releasing hazelnut steam, and took a sip.
“Our cover is blown. This whole thing is no longer our little secret.” Mary was thinking aloud, trying to wrap her mind around it. “If Keisha wanted to talk to me before, she’d be wary of me now. She may not trust me anymore at all.”
“Right, or she might not want the media attention.” Judy looked fresh in a plain white T-shirt, denim shorts, and bright red flip-flops. She’d pulled her hair back in a stubby ponytail, stiff as a blonde paintbrush. The indirect light from the window brought out the alert blue of her eyes.
“What are you going to do?”
“Have a cigarette.”
Judy laughed. “Have some breakfast, do your work, and get yourself ready for this dep.”
“But this screws me up! People will read it, or hear about it. Saracone’s son will see it, and his wife, and Chico The Escalade.” Mary considered the timing of the article, then realized something. “That must be why Mac ran the story right now. He lucked out when Saracone died, because he and the paper can’t be sued for defamation now. You can’t libel a dead man, isn’t that the law in Pennsylvania?”
“Yep. Good for you.” Judy sipped her coffee. “When the other papers pick up on the story, I’m sure the calls will start. It’s just you and me in the office, and we probably shouldn’t answer the phones. We can avoid Premenstrual Tom and Premenstrual Bennie.”
“He still calling?” Mary had almost forgotten.
“Don’t worry about it. I have them all recorded, and the TRO hearing will be scheduled as soon as I can serve his ass. So don’t get the phone.”
“But what if Keisha calls here, instead of on the cell?”
“Why would she, and anyway, you don’t sound like you’re putting Brandolini behind you.” Judy’s eyes darkened. “Your cheek is barely healed, Mare. You want a repeat of the other day?”
“I’ll give it up after I talk to Keisha.” Mary reached for the phone. “I better call my parents about that article. I’ll call Eisen, too, so he doesn’t freak when he sees the papers. Then I’ll get us both ready for his dep, so by the time Bennie hears about the newspaper story, she’ll love me again.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Judy said, peering across the desk. “You gonna eat that croissant?”
“No, you are.”
By midafternoon, Mary had finished preparing for the Eisen deposition and had made all her calls. Keisha still hadn’t called. Mary hadn’t answered the phone but just kept checking the messages: a slew of reporters, her father, assorted clients who had forgiven their celebrity lawyer, and a prisoner who wanted a date with her legs. When she couldn’t take waiting for Keisha anymore, she got proactive. She picked up the receiver, dialed information, and waited until it found the number and connected her.
“HomeCare, WeCare,” answered a pleasant voice, a woman’s. “Leslie Eadeh speaking.”
“Yes, Leslie, maybe you could help me.” Mary put on a cigarette voice, inspired by last night. “I have a problem. I’m looking for one of your nurses, Keisha Grace.”
“It’s Sunday, dear. The business office is closed.”
“I know, but this nurse, Keisha, is due at my house today, and she can’t get here. She called and said her car broke down.”
“What’s your name?”
Mary’s gaze shifted to the papers scattered across her desk, order forms from E & S Furnishings. The top name belonged to Rikki Summers, offending Broughley sales rep, the body that launched a thousand recliners. “Broughley. Rikki Broughley.”
“Like the recliners?”
Uh
. “Exactly. But we’re no relation.”
“Too bad. I love the suede.”
“Everybody does.”
“Please wait a minute, Ms. Broughley,” the woman said, and Mary could hear the
click, click, click
of computer keys over the line. “We don’t have a record of Keisha coming to see you today, Ms. Broughley. We show she hasn’t worked since Friday.”
Since Saracone’s death.
“There must be some mistake with your records.”
“I doubt that highly, Ms. Broughley.”
“Everybody makes mistakes. Keisha was here at my house just yesterday, Saturday.”
“Keisha was?” Leslie asked, in a way that sounded like she knew her. “You sure you got the right girl? Sometimes our patients get confused.”
“Certain of it. She’s African-American, pretty, young, about five three, same as me, with very large eyes and a pretty smile. Her name tag reads Keisha, I remember seeing it.”
“That’s her. Hmmm.” Leslie sounded stumped.
“She left me her phone number.” Mary gave her the number. “I called but there’s no answer. See, she called and said her car broke down and could my son pick her up.”
“Her car broke down? I thought it was new.”
Oops
. “I know, it’s an outrage. Anyway, my son left an hour ago but he lost the address and I don’t remember it. So now I need her address.”
“Ms. Broughley, we don’t give out that information. I can call her for you.”
“You won’t get her. I just called her at home and got no answer. There’s no answer on her cell, either.”
“Keisha gave you her cell?”
“Sure enough.” Mary read her the number. “We got along very well. I thought the world of her, that’s why I sent my son out to fetch her. I hate to think of Keisha standing in the rain. She wouldn’t do that to one of us patients, not for a minute.”
“You’re right about that, and this weather is so awful. Sometimes I think we’ll never see the sun again.”
Mary knew the feeling. “And it’s so cold for this time of year. Even the rain is so cold. If I could just have her address. I think my son’s only a block or so away.”
“Well, I guess it’s okay, just this once. Tell Keisha I said hello.”
“Will do.” Mary jotted the number down, thanked her, and hung up. She grabbed her purse and hurried to Judy’s office to make her escape, taking personal inventory. She was wearing jeans, Jack Purcell’s, and her old Penn sweatshirt, and her hair was loose under a Paddington Bear slicker and rain hat. It was a good outfit for a stuffed animal, not an amateur sleuth, but she had no choice. With one last hurdle, she was good to go. She stuck her head in the door of Judy’s office. “This is me, leaving,” she said.
“Is it that time already?” Judy squinted at her Swatch watch, which Mary knew was a tumbling circle of smiling baby heads.
“You can’t tell time with that thing, admit it.”
“Yes I can. It’s half past baby nose.” Five seconds later, Judy was still squinting.
Mary faked a yawn. “Listen, I’m beat. I couldn’t sleep last night. I’m going home to take it easy, to be fresh for tomorrow.”
Judy scoffed. “Please don’t bullshit me. You’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What is it? Give.” Judy leaned over her messy desk.
“I would tell you. Gimme a break.”
“Did Keisha call?”
“No.”
Judy’s eyes narrowed. The alert blue had been replaced by eyestrain pink. “Did you call her?”
“No.”
“Truth?”
“Yeth.”
Judy seemed placated. “Okay, I believe you. Go home and chill. You’re the best.”
Ouch
. “You, too,” Mary said. That much was true.
Then she hurried out in her sneaks.