Accused: A Rosato & Associates Novel (17 page)

“No, that’s okay.”

“I don’t know if we have time for this. It makes me grumpy.” Judy checked her watch. “What do you think?”

“Whatever you want.”

Judy frowned, her eyes searching Mary’s. “You sure you’re okay? You want to do this? Should we just go interview the guy and forget about food?”

“Maybe we should skip the food and go see the kid, before the Gardners close in.” Mary didn’t want to worry Judy, nor did she want to tell her all her amazing new insights about how much life sucked without Angie. It wouldn’t serve any purpose, and it would only make Judy feel bad, which was the last thing she wanted. “What do you say?”

“Agree.” Judy clapped her on the arm. “You lead. You know where the frat house is.”

“I do, but I was only inside once. This way.” Mary turned, Judy fell in step beside her, and they joined the swarm of undergrads, grad students, and university staff, wearing laminated IDs around their necks. They passed the Faculty Club and the Christian Association, and Mary tried not to remember anything that involved Angie, or indeed anything at all. It was time to rejoin the present and investigate a murder case. “The frat is St. Andrew’s or St. A’s. They used to have casino nights with real money and real waiters, in uniform.”

“Sounds like jerks,” Judy said, as she covered ground with her big stride. She was almost as tall as Bennie, and when Mary walked with Judy, she felt like the stumpy mommy to a child on growth hormones. Obviously, she had been the exact same height as Angie, both were five foot three inches, but she put that out of her mind. She slipped her BlackBerry out of her blazer pocket and checked for Allegra’s email, but it wasn’t there.

“Allegra still hasn’t written me back about Fiona’s girlfriends.”

“She’s probably outside, playing with the bees.”

“We’ll have to tell her to check her email more often. If she doesn’t get back to us by the time we can meet Gage, let’s ask him.”

“Good idea.”

“What do we do if he’s at class or something? Wait?”

“Eat falafel,” Judy answered with a grin, and Mary led them right up Locust Walk, the pedestrian walkway that bisected the campus, lined with tall leafy oaks that cast dappled shadows on the cobblestones and Gothic buildings with authentic Victorian details, like stone gargoyles and bats. The university housed offices like Student Affairs, Alumni Affairs, and the yearbook in some of the buildings, but a few of the homes were owned by fraternities, and Mary halted when they reached St. Anthony’s, an incongruously modern brick building on the right.

“This is it.” Mary gestured at the building, which seemed oddly impenetrable, with white curtains covering its windows and no activity out front, unlike all the other buildings, which buzzed with students hanging out, talking, or drinking sodas on the front steps. St. A’s was the super-exclusive, rich-boy fraternity, the last bastion of old-school preppies and Eurotrash with world-class trust funds. Angie hadn’t liked St. A’s because she didn’t like anything that smacked of materialism, which was why she became a nun. And Mary, who was generally in favor of money, if not an outright money fan, became a lawyer.

“What are we waiting for?” Judy asked, puzzled.

“Nothing,” Mary answered, shooing the ghosts away and heading for the door.

Chapter Nineteen

Mary and Judy were let into St. A’s by a uniformed maid, who’d showed them into a waiting room with cracked leather stuffed chairs and floor-length curtains. On the wall hung framed maps of Philadelphia from the days of Ben Franklin, before Italians moved in and brought the flavor. It was so classy, Mary couldn’t believe it was a real frat house. She muttered to Judy, “What kind of frat house has a
maid
? I don’t have a maid and I’m a partner.”

Judy looked over. “You should have a cleaning person. You can afford one. We have someone come in, every two weeks.”

“You
do
? Don’t you feel guilty?”

“No, why? It’s an honest job, and it’s the best money we spend.” Judy stood up, restless, and wandered over to a Penn’s emblem, on the wall. “Mary, what’s the motto mean? You’re the Latin jock and alumna.”

“
Leges sine moribus vanae.
‘Laws without morals are useless.’ Now sit down and tell me about your cleaning person. I’d feel so guilty. What do you do, put your feet up while she vacuums underneath? Sheesh!”

Suddenly the doors rolled apart, and Tim Gage stepped out with a smile that he flashed at Mary and Judy like it was beamed from a lighthouse. “I’m Tim, sorry to keep you waiting. Linda gave me your business card and told me you were here, but I had to finish, and I’ll be right with you.” Gage turned slightly, and out of the living room bopped a little kid with red hair, freckles, and missing front teeth. “Say hello to William, who’s in third grade at Drew Elementary.” Gage rested a hand on William’s shoulder, in its little white polo shirt. “William is starting his own business and learning to be an entrepreneur. He’s got his own startup. Isn’t that great?”

“It sure is,” Judy answered. “What’s your business, William?”

William ducked behind Gage, who smiled indulgently. “William is a little bashful with new people, so I’ll tell you for him. William wanted his class to have a pet hamster, like he read about in one of his books, so he borrowed the money for the hamster and its cage, and formed a syndicate of other third-graders who hold shares to own the hamster and pay their share in its upkeep. They’re going to hold a bake sale to pay back the bank.”

Judy smiled. “That’s wonderful, William.”

Mary couldn’t help but be touched, and she was guessing that Gage was the bank and not necessarily a murderer, though that remained to be seen.

“Today, William learned how to make a balance sheet, because the syndicate has some expenses, like hamster pellets and wooden shavings, and he also learned to put a value on his time and labor. Right, William?” Gage bent down and managed to gentle the boy out. “Another day we’ll work on meeting new people, because that’s something business leaders have to do, too, but not today. Ladies, if you wait a sec, his mom should be waiting for him, and I’ll walk him out, then be right back.”

“Thanks so much. Bye, William.” Judy waved at the boy, who averted his eyes.

“Good-bye, William.” Mary tried to process the information while Gage and the boy left, closing the door behind them. “Was that for real or for show?”

Judy laughed. “Mare. He might be a nice guy, even though he has a maid.”

“Not possible. He’s a stone cold killer.”

“Now who has confirmation bias, huh? The kid obviously likes him, so how bad can he be?”

“Kids liked Ted Bundy, too.”

“You’re making that up. What a guy, huh? He must be in some kind of community outreach program, from Wharton.”

“You call it outreach, I call it
noblesse oblige.
”

“Call it what you want, at least he’s doing it.” Judy paused. “I should take the lead with him. I did literacy outreach in school, and I like him better than you do. Also he’s superhot and you’re engaged.”

“But you’re living with someone who has a maid.”

“Stop. Here he comes.” They both fell silent as the door opened, Gage came in, strolled toward them, and sat down in one of the cushy chairs, crossing his long legs and raking back his glossy bangs.

“Sorry to make you wait, but that hour is sacred to me.”

Mary wished for a notepad, so she could write, OH PLEASE.

Gage slid her business card from the pocket of his white oxford shirt, which he wore tucked into his jeans. “So you’re from the law firm of Rosato & Associates, and you said you were here on a personal matter. What would that be?”

Judy cleared her throat. “My name is Judy Carrier and this is my colleague Mary DiNunzio, and we’re looking into the murder of Fiona Gardner.”

Gage frowned slightly. “You know that there’s a man in prison for that, right?”

“Yes.”

“Were you hired by him, to get him out or something?”

“No, we were hired by Allegra, Fiona’s sister, because she thinks that Lonnie Stall, who was convicted of the crime, is in fact innocent.”

Gage’s eyebrows flew upward, disappearing under his hair. “Allegra thinks that? Little Allegra?”

“She’s not so little anymore, and we just thought we’d ask you a question or two, because I’m sure you feel, as Allegra does, that justice should be done.” Judy gestured at the wall plaque. “Laws without morals are useless, right?”

“Okay,” Gage said uncertainly. “I have some time, so shoot. What’s your question?”

“We understand that you dated Fiona in high school, is that correct?”

“Yes.” Gage blinked, his mouth falling into a sad line. “We dated for two years, we were boyfriend and girlfriend, you’d say.”

“So you knew her well?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Can you tell me what she was like?” Judy kept her tone light, and Mary knew that she was trying to ease him into the questioning, and it was working because Gage’s expression softened.

“Sure, Fiona was a great girl. She was funny and smart and really lively. She was just fun, fun to be around. Everybody adored Fiona.”

“Who were her closest girlfriends, do you know?”

“Sure, who doesn’t? Sue Winston, Mary Weiss, Honor Jason, and Hannah Wicker.”

Judy wrote down the names. “Why did you say, ‘who doesn’t?’ Were you close to them, because you dated her?”

Gage frowned. “Oh, you don’t know. Three of those girls were killed in a car crash, a few months after Fiona was murdered.”

Judy gasped. “Really? How horrible.”

“Yes, it was. It is.” Gage sighed, barely audibly. “It was on a stretch of Route 1 near Chadds Ford, and people get killed there all the time. The paper said that drinking was involved, but you should understand it wasn’t a coincidence.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fiona wasn’t a big partier, and she was a civilizing influence for her friends. You know, the field hockey team could get rowdy, but not when Fiona was around. You can imagine how hard they took her death, and once they lost her, they acted out, got wilder.” Gage pursed his lips. “She was the center of that group, and as they say, the center couldn’t hold, once she was gone.”

“That’s such a shame,” Judy said, and Mary could tell the revelation derailed her line of questioning, so she jumped in.

“Tim, you said that three of the girls were killed. Which one wasn’t?”

“Hannah Wicker. She survived the crash, the only survivor.”

“Do you know where she is, these days?”

“No idea.”

Mary nodded to Judy to take over, and Judy asked, “Do you know if any of those girls were at the party, the night Fiona was killed?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I believe they were. They were like a pack, they did everything together. It was basically the forward line of the hockey team. Fiona was the center, in more ways than one.”

“So I take it you weren’t there, the night she was murdered?”

“No.” Gage shook his head. “We had broken up about two weeks earlier, so I was out of the picture.”

“Where were you that night?”

“Home.”

Mary wished she had a way to check his alibi, but Judy didn’t bat an eye.

“Did the police contact you at all, in connection with her death?”

“No.” Gage scoffed. “Why would they?”

“Just checking on their procedure. Did they contact her friends?”

“I don’t know.”

“Also, can I ask, why did you break up? Or, who broke up with whom?”

“Yes, of course you can ask. High school was a long time ago, and whenever I think of Fiona, the sad part isn’t that we broke up, but that she was murdered.”

“So did you break up with her, or the other way around?” Judy asked again, and Mary made a mental note that she had to ask him twice.

“She broke up with me.”

“Do you know why? Did she say?”

“Not really, but I could tell she lost interest in me.”

Judy made a note. “When you say lost interest, what do you mean?”

“You know, she was more distant, not as available. Didn’t return calls or texts. She used to do office work for her father, filing and such, and all of a sudden, there seemed to be a lot more of that, even on the weekend.”

“Did she work at home or in town?”

“At home. With practice, games, and homework, she didn’t have time to go into the city. They have a home office complex at their farm. They call it the cottage.”

Judy nodded. “Yes, we’ve seen it.”

“Right, well, she used to help out on some project with her father and uncle, and I got the idea that she wasn’t that into me anymore.” Gage managed a rueful smile. “She had to spell it out, though. I was slow on the uptake.”

“You were hurt.”

“Yes,” Gage admitted, with the slightest of winces. “Puppy love, all that.”

Judy nodded. “By the way, which uncle was the project for?”

“Edward, he was a nice one. He was the youngest of the three brothers. The other one, Richard, was a little stiffer.”

“Did she break up with you because she became interested in someone else?”

“No, she didn’t say, and she didn’t start dating anyone afterwards.” Gage frowned. “I’m not the jealous type, and this was high school. I mean, really.”

“How would you know if she dated anyone or not?”

“We went to the same school. She stayed single, until she was murdered.”

“Right.” Judy smiled, and Mary knew they were both thinking that maybe Fiona had broken up with Gage for Lonnie, and if that were so, Gage would have no way of knowing it. Judy continued, “This is going to sound off-the-wall, but is there anyone you think would’ve had a motive to murder Fiona?”

Gage recoiled. “No, not at all. Fiona was just a nice, cute girl. She wasn’t nasty or mean, and she didn’t have an enemy in the world. As far as I’m concerned, they got the right guy in jail, whoever he is. I heard it was one of the waiters.”

Judy hesitated. “Let me ask you something else, off-the-wall. What do you know about Allegra?”

Mary didn’t know why Judy was asking him, but kept her own counsel.

“Allegra Gardner, girl genius? Look, I know she’s your client, but she is one weird kid.”