Accused: A Rosato & Associates Novel (23 page)

“I know all that, too.”

“So why is this different?”

“It’s different because of the nature of the client. The clients you just named, and I’ve met plenty of them, are normal adults. They’re couples or they have families and support systems.”

“So? We take our clients as we find them. We don’t pick and choose.”

“Allegra is none of those things and has none of that.”

“So she needs it, even more.”

“She’s a depressed young girl, who’s completely at odds with her family, which by the way, sounds like it was profoundly traumatized by the murder of Fiona.”

“Murder is traumatizing. Can you hold that against them? And how can you hold it against Allegra, if she has an emotional illness?”

“I don’t hold it against her, and you know me better than that.” Judy’s tone changed, but Mary felt like they were sliding toward a fight, which she couldn’t seem to derail.

“I do, and that’s why I’m surprised.”

“I just feel that you’re going in a direction in this case I’m not sure I approve of, and now we’re not getting paid at all.” Judy turned to her, shifting position, which made her voice louder, reverberating off the hard surfaces of the car. “And you were right before, you don’t have to justify it to Bennie, you have to justify it to yourself. Is this the best use of your time?”

“To me, it is.”

“Is it the best use of mine? I’m not sure I think it is.”

“It’s so unlike you to not be on board in a case.”

“Evidently, it happens, and I’m not on board.” Judy sounded resigned and angry. “Allegra confounds me. She thinks Tim Gage was at the party, she thinks Lonnie Stall was at the house. We run around chasing ghosts or keeping her company in the hospital. She doesn’t even want any other visitors but us. I’m an appellate lawyer, not a paid friend. And by the way, we’re not even paid.”

“She said we will be, in the end, and I believe her.”

“But she’s thirteen, so she doesn’t realize the complexities of trust administration or distribution of a trust’s assets, which can take years. She thinks you break open a piggybank.” Judy paused. “So, no, I’m definitely not on board. I have plenty of cases to work, and they’re only piling up. I’m along for the ride, but you’re driving the car.”

Mary felt stung. “It sounds like you’re not even along for the ride.”

“And you don’t like that, I can tell.”

“Of course I don’t like that. It’s not like us.” Mary steered the car straight, but she felt so out of control of everything, suddenly. Of the cases, of Judy, and of their friendship. “I like it the other way, the way it always is. We work a case together, side-by-side, and we figure it out. We win. We do amazing things. We catch the bad guy. We’re a team.”

“Not this time,” Judy said softly, without rancor, and Mary felt hurt and nonplussed.

“So what do we do now?”

“You’re the partner. You tell me. Take me off the case if you want.”

“Aw, Judy, don’t be that way.”

“What way? I mean it, no hard feelings. You have the power now. Wield it.”

“If you want off, why don’t you just ask me?”

“I wouldn’t do that, with Bennie. I’d never
ask
to be taken off a case. If she thought it was the right thing, she’d take me off.”

“For real, we’re having this conversation?” Mary gripped the steering wheel. Her head began to pound, and her contact lenses were sticking to her corneas like adhesive name tags.

“It’s your law firm now, and I’m your associate. Maybe it’s kind of fun if we drive around together, trying to answer questions that trouble obsessive children, but is it the best use of the firm’s resources?”

Mary couldn’t understand what was going on without being able to look Judy in the eye. They hadn’t eaten in hours, and Mary couldn’t help but feel that a nice plate of gnocchi would make all of this weirdness go away.

“Mare? Is that what you really need me to be doing, for your law firm?”

Suddenly, Mary’s cell phone rang. “Hold on.” She tucked her hand into her pocket, and pulled up the ringing phone, showing the screen to Judy. “Do I need to get this?”

“It’s Lou. I’ll answer, you talk.” Judy took the phone, pressed the button, and answered, “Hey, Lou, it’s Judy. Mary’s driving. I’m putting you on speaker.”

“How’s my girls tonight?” Lou’s gravelly voice emanated from the BlackBerry and echoed throughout the car.

Mary answered, “We’re great. How are you?”

“Okay. Where are you guys? Why aren’t you home?”

“It’s a long story, but we’ll see you first thing in the morning. Got good news for us?”

“Good news and bad news. Which one you want first?”

“The good.”

“I’m emailing you the guest list from the party. Another buddy of mine from Blackmore slipped it to me, without his boss knowing.”

“Whoa. Nice move.” Mary smiled at Judy, but she was looking away, out the window. “Does it show Tim Gage?”

“Lemme check, it’s alphabetical.”

Mary felt her heart rate quicken, waiting.

“No Tim Gage or any Gage on the list.”

“So he wasn’t invited, but it doesn’t mean he didn’t show up.” Mary felt more confused than ever. “Allegra says he was there, but he says he wasn’t. Can we persuade your buddy to let us have a videotape?”

“No way. They gave up the guest list only because it’s fairly predictable: the Mayor, the Philly Chamber of Commerce, and all the rich people that show up at every benefit. I know from reading the society pages. I’m not sure Lou The Jew would be especially welcome.”

Mary smiled. “So I guess we get busy, Lou. I’d ask everybody on the list if they saw anything odd or unusual that night, and also if Tim Gage was there. You can print his picture off his Facebook page.”

“They’re not gonna talk to me if they’re friends of the Gardners, you have to know that. Lemme think if that’s the best way to go about it, Mare.”

“Okay, we’ll talk about it in the morning. I do have a lead I’d like you to get started on.”

“Your wish is my command.”

“There’s a caretaker at the Gardner residence named Alasdair Leahy, he’s English. I’d like to find out about him before I meet him tomorrow. Where exactly he lives, anything you can learn.”

“I’ll start in the morning.”

“Lou, I might need it by the morning. I have to go out to the property early, to deal with something, and I’d like it before then.” Mary omitted the part about the bee retrieval, avoiding Judy’s eye. “There’s also a young girl named Hannah Wicker, a classmate of Fiona’s at Shipwyn. She’s the sole survivor of a horrible car accident that killed Fiona’s three other friends, and they’d been drinking. I’m betting she’s on Facebook, and Alasdair isn’t. I’ll take her.”

“That damn Facebook’s gonna put detectives out of business.”

“Ha, not you, Lou.”

Lou hesitated. “Mare, you don’t sound good. You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Mary wasn’t inclined to elaborate.

“Judy, what’s the matter with our bride? She should be on top of the world.”

Judy paused. “She’ll be okay, I’ll take care of her. Good night, Lou. Thanks for your hard work. Get some sleep.”

“You, too,” Lou answered, then hung up.

“Well?” Judy hung up the phone. “Am I off the case?”

Mary glanced over at Judy, whose face was illuminated from below by the glowing screen of the BlackBerry, which made her look like a spooky version of herself. “I have a more important question. Are we still best friends?”

“Forever.” Judy set the BlackBerry on the console, so even her spooky face was no longer visible. “Now, am I off the case?”

“Yes,” Mary answered after a moment, steering into the darkness.

Chapter Twenty-six

Mary locked the front door behind her and let herself into a house that was quiet and still. It was past midnight, so Anthony had already gone to bed, and she set down her purse on the small ladderback chair in the hallway, oddly relieved not to see him. Maybe because it had taken her almost half an hour to find a parking spot, driving around the block until she was dizzy.

“I want my own parking space,” Mary said aloud, to no fiancé in particular. Still, she felt touched to see the bills, mail, and catalogs arranged in neat piles on the console table, sorted into His, Hers, and Theirs, and he’d left the lamp on for her, another thoughtful touch. It was as if she was happy to see the evidence of him, but didn’t mind missing him in person. She’d done enough fighting for one night, with Judy, and it left her feeling disoriented and empty.

You have a question to answer, partner.

Mary kicked off her pumps and padded down the hallway, past the darkened living room and into the kitchen, on autopilot. The amber fixture hung over the granite island, where Anthony always left her a note when she got home late. This one was written on a piece of legal paper, since they always had so many canary yellow pads laying around, and it lay next to a ballpoint pen and a flowery pink birthday card that he must’ve picked out for his mother’s birthday.

Mary went over to the note, which read,
“Honey, will you sign the card to Mom? Love you. Get some sleep!”
She picked up the ballpoint, opened the card, and scanned it like a contract before she signed her name after,
Anthony and,
then set the pen down and padded to the refrigerator, where she consumed approximately half an hour of comfort food, including but not limited to a glass of milk, a brownish avocado, hummus with baby carrots, and the entire container of green Ceregnola olives, which coated her lips with a telltale shine, like lip gloss for Italians.

Am I off the case?

The food gave her a second wind, if little comfort, and she watered her fig tree, then left the kitchen, turned out all the downstairs lights, and tiptoed up to her office, where she sat down at her desk and logged into the Internet, with a sour taste in her mouth that had nothing to do with her snack parade. She saw her philly.com home page pop onto the monitor, without focusing on any of the bold-faced news headlines or the wiggly ads for mortgage rates. She felt so strange without Judy, vaguely rudderless, having no sounding board to bounce ideas off of. She’d have to shift to Plan B, working with Lou, whom she loved, but it wasn’t the same as working with her best friend.

Judy, what’s the matter with our girl?

Mary navigated to her email and scanned the senders’ names, who were all clients, so they read like an endless things-to-do list that she’d rather avoid for now. She bypassed them until she got to Lou’s email, with its re line that read Confidential, then she clicked Open. It was characteristically blank, since Lou hated to type, but the attachment with the guest list was there and Mary clicked Print, to read it later.

She navigated to Google and plugged in the names of Fiona’s friends, the girls who had died in the car crash, Sue Winston, Mary Weiss, and Honor Jason. A lineup of news stories appeared on the screen and she clicked the first one, which opened under a heartbreaking photo of a red car, with its grille smashed cruelly into its shattered windshield, under a headline, TRAGIC ENDING FOR HIGH-SCHOOL FIELD HOCKEY SEASON.

Mary sighed, skimming the article, which contained no new details, except the age of the girls repeated after each of their names, age sixteen, which struck like a blow each time she read it. They were so young, too young to cope with the horror of losing their friend to such an awful and violent murder, but none of that made its way into the story, where they sounded like a bunch of reckless partiers. The alcohol and toxicology tests were still pending, but the girls had already been pronounced guilty in the newspaper, with none of the nuance of the real-life story.

Mary felt her heart go heavy in her chest, and her gaze wandered back to the wrecked car. She flashed on Mike’s hideously warped bicycle, wrenched out of shape by the car that had struck him on his daily ride along the West River Drive. Mary hadn’t known it wasn’t an accident when it had happened, and it had almost cost her her own life to find out the truth. She’d never get over it, and she could never have handled it at all, at sixteen years old. But for the grace of God, she could have been in a car, drinking and trying to outpace the pain. And she couldn’t help but add the deaths of Fiona’s girlfriends to Fiona’s, because the girls were all victims of the same murder. It made Mary more determined than ever to find the real killer.

She hit Print, then skimmed and printed the next few articles about the car crash for her bulletin board in the war room at work, then she navigated back to the Internet, logged onto Facebook, and searched for Hannah Wicker. There were only a few Hannah Wickers, with just one in the Philly suburbs, in Newtown.

Mary edged forward in her chair and opened Hannah Wicker’s page. Hannah’s email was listed there, and she tapped out an email asking the girl if she would meet to talk about Fiona’s murder. Hannah’s response came back almost immediately:

How awful, but yes. Say when.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The next morning, Mary scurried down the street, her pumps clattering on the gum-spattered pavement. It was just before dawn, the sky still a dusty blue over the flat rooftops, though the coming light of day would ghost the stars, hiding them in plain sight. Only the runners were out, trying to get some exercise before work, and lights were barely beginning to go on inside the houses. Mary had showered, put on a suit, and left before Anthony even woke up, because she had to get an early start if she was going to reach Chester Springs by the time the post office opened.

Mary kept up her pace, her purse and messenger bag bumping against her hip. She was already feeling stressed that her day would be cut short for El Virus’s birthday party tonight, but she tried to keep her residual resentment at bay, though it wasn’t easy. She was only on Delancey Street and she had five blocks to go before she reached the car, since the only parking space she could find last night was nowhere near the house. In fact, it was farther than remote parking at the airport, but there were no shuttle buses for women who didn’t have the balls to stand up to their fiancé. Nice girls finished last.