Dead Ringer (36 page)

“Dessert’s on the bottom.”

“Really?” She dug deeper to a cellophane pack of Oreos, a bag of Pepperidge Farm chocolate chips, a megasize Snickers bar, a half gallon of milk, and a few cans of Coke. It was Thanksgiving in a bag, and Bennie hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she saw it. “This is amazing! Where did you get all this stuff?”

“The deli, when you were inside St. Amien’s.”

“When did you put it outside?”

“I didn’t, I paid a little kid to do it. I’m taking no chances.”

“This is great!” Bennie felt overwhelmed. It was such a thoughtful thing to do, and somehow so sexy.
What do women want? Someone else to go food shopping.
“Thank you so much.”

“There’s Milk-Bones for the boy, too. So. You got dinner, and you’re safe inside. Don’t answer the door, not for anything or anybody. If the doorbell rings, call 911 right away. Don’t even worry if it’s a false alarm, call them anyway. Then call me.”

“Where will you be?”

“I’ll stay here awhile, and when I’m sure it’s okay, I’ll go home. I want you to eat well, go to sleep, safe until the morning. Call me when you get up, and we’ll start over.”

Bennie swallowed. So that was
it?
Okay, of course that was it. Right? They hardly knew each other. What did she think was going to happen? “David, what’s going to happen?”

“You’re going to get through this. We’re going to catch Alice. And it will all be over.”

“And then?”

“I’ll come over and you’ll make me coffee. And I’ll stay. If you want.”

Bennie felt her toes curl. “I think I want. I mean, I definitely want.”

“Hold that thought. And tell me good night.”

“Good night, David,” Bennie said, with more regret than she wanted to admit.

30

Bennie felt refreshed and energized when she got off the elevator on her floor. She’d slept like a baby, she’d eaten a provolone hoagie for breakfast, and she was a little in love with her surveillance, who had ensured her safety all the way into work.

She strode through the reception area in a crisp un-Bennie-like suit of pressed white linen. She’d slicked her blond hair into a neat French twist and she’d even smeared on pink lip gloss and brownish eyeliner. She carried her purse, her briefcase, and a box of Krispy Kremes. She was feeling excellent, especially for a murder target. In life, you have to take the bad with the good.

“What’s up with
you,
girl?” Marshall asked with a smile, getting up slowly from behind the reception desk, in a bright yellow maternity dress. At her size, it looked roughly like the sun rising at dawn.

“Marshall, are you feeling okay?” she asked, vaguely alarmed.
I mean, you’re a planet
.

“I’m fine. The doctor says everything is okay, and I should keep coming to work, that the activity is good for me and the baby. Here’s your mail and a hand delivery from Sam.” Marshall handed Bennie a huge stack of messages and mail. “Enough about me, let’s talk about you. What are you so happy about? Are you wearing makeup?”

“It’s my disguise. I’m back in control of my life, Marshall. Ain’t nobody happy if Mama ain’t happy.”

“Huh?”

“You never heard that? I’m fighting back, and finally winning.” Bennie skipped through the phone messages, reading them aloud. “Sam, Julien, reporter, reporter, CoreMed—whoever that is—and DiNunzio, good. What’s new with DiNunzio?”

“She thinks she’ll finish today, at the library in Washington. She’s coming home a day early, on an afternoon train.”

“Good.” Bennie looked at the last message. “Mort Abrams,” she said, and did a double take. “
Abrams?
That’s
very
exciting. They’re all very exciting. And it’s time to celebrate.” She touched Marshall on the shoulder. “Come into my office. We’re having a little party.”

“We are?”

“Yep.” Bennie charged ahead, bearing her tray of hot glazed doughnuts, and she knew the smell would waft through the office and work its Krispy Kreme magic. “Carrier! Murphy! Breakfast in my office! I’ve been cooking all morning!”

“Huh? What?” Heads popped out of their offices, and the associates hurried after Bennie and Marshall. They all piled in, making hot coffee and passing around steamy doughnuts stuck to plates of legal pads. In no time, fresh coffee and hot pastry scented the room and they all gathered around the conference table with hot mugs and sugar highs.

Bennie raised her mug of coffee. “A toast to you, ladies. To your faith and hard work, and to DiNunzio, who will be home tonight! Our wonderful news is that Rosato & Associates is back in business! Julien St. Amien intends to continue the class action!”

“Yes!” Carrier said, setting down her coffee to throw her arms into the air, signaling a touchdown. She had on her favorite denim smock, with a hot pink T-shirt that matched her hair. “That’s so great!”

“Yeah!” Murphy hollered beside her. She cut her usual curvy figure in a tan jersey that skimmed her skinny knees, and her hair swung long and free. She butter-churned her way across the room, shaking her cute tan butt. “Awesome!”

“Go, us!” Marshall clapped from her seat at the table, and Bennie raised a hand.

“Marshall, please don’t explode,” she said, and everyone laughed, applauding and boogying. When they finally settled down, Bennie filled in the details, including her trip to see the suspect at the Roundhouse and Julien’s decision to become a solo practitioner. Somehow Julien was what they wanted to talk about first. “I’m having him over, so you can show him what you do and talk him out of wanting to do it.”

“We can’t do that,” Carrier said, munching a doughnut. “We love it too much here. Every friggin’ minute.”

Murphy laughed. “Yeah. We can’t get enough, now that the long distance is back on.”

Bennie smiled, despite herself, and Marshall said, “Can I go back to work, Bennie? Somebody has to.”

“Sure, thanks. You gonna be okay to walk there? You need a hand?”

“More like a chairlift,” Marshall mumbled as she waddled out of the office.

Bennie clapped her hands together. “Okay, moving right along, we do have other business to attend to this morning. The cops have a suspect in Robert’s murder, which I think is totally bogus.”

“I have a question,” Murphy said, her lovely face turning grave. “What happened to you last night, Bennie? I saw you on TV, bitching out the reporters.”

“I’m back on the sauce.”

Murphy raised a perfectly groomed brow. “This could be the only explanation for your eyeliner.”

“A for effort?”

“No. Anything more from Alice? I got you a hearing for next week.”

“I’ll take it. Meantime, no more break-ins, lots of new locks, and David surveilled the street last night and this morning.”

“That working out okay with him?”

“Good as can be expected,” Bennie answered. She suppressed:
He food-shopped for me and I think I’m in lust.
The kids didn’t have to know everything about Mommy and Daddy.

“Boss,” Carrier broke in, barely able to contain herself. “I did some research last night on Linette.”

“You did?” Bennie asked, surprised. It was what she had been going to call the associate about before David stopped her. “What did you learn?”

“I found out he lives in a town house in Society Hill, on Delancey. I have the address in my office. It’s one of those huge ones.”

“Really.” It would have been Bennie’s first question last night. Perhaps the world
could
turn without her. “Good for you, Carrier.”

“But wait, there’s more. What we want to know is what Linette was doing the night of the murder, assuming he didn’t hire anyone to kill Robert.” Carrier barely took a breath before answering her own question. “Dinner ended before nine, according to Abrams, and at that hour there are two basic possibilities for most lawyers in America. Back to the office, or give it up and go home.”

Bennie smiled.

“Now. We know that Linette didn’t go back to the office, because of what Murphy learned from the sign-in log at his building. So let’s give this jerk the benefit of the doubt and say that he
intended
to go back to the office, but changed his mind and went home instead.” Carrier’s voice took on a logical cadence. “Now, to get to his house from the Palm, it’s about ten blocks. We know he didn’t have a car, Abrams told us that. That means Linette could walk, go by bus, or take a cab.”

Bennie nodded. “Door number three, the cab. He’s too self-important to take a bus, much less walk.”

“I thought so, too.” Carrier held up a finger, her china blue eyes keeping a secret. “Now, we know that he didn’t go back to the office. So we need to eliminate the possibility that he went home.”

“How do we do that?”

“We do what I did. First question. What is the way that most lawyers, especially ones with major dough, get a cab at that hour?”

“They call a radio cab, Penn Call. We did it at Grun.”

“Right, and we did it at Stalling and Webb, too. It’s easiest. They come right away. You charge it to the firm, you sign a receipt for the fare and the tip. It costs nothing and it’s instant. So I made a basic assumption, that if Linette changed his mind about going to work, he would have taken a Penn Call cab home. You with me?”

“I don’t know.” Bennie was dubious. “It’s not that hard to get a cab at a hotel like the Hyatt, where the Palm is.”

“True, but Abrams would have seen Linette grab a cab there, especially because he had to wait for the valet to get his car. Abrams didn’t say he had seen Linette do that. So it’s logical to assume that if Linette got a cab, it wasn’t at the Palm.”

“Okay,” Bennie said. The reasoning held up.

“So let’s say Linette walks toward his office and then decides to go home. There are so few cabs in this city, it’s not New York, and I think he’d save himself the hassle and do what the rich lawyers do. Phone Penn Call.” Carrier paused. “So I called Penn Call, pretending to be Linette’s secretary. I told them that he’d left his Montblanc pen in the cab last night, and asked if they knew which cab he took from the Palm to his house.”

Bennie smiled. “Cute.”

“They said if he had taken a cab, the driver would have turned in the receipt. But guess what? They had no record he took a trip from the Palm to his house, and they checked all the receipts. They even asked the drivers. And yes, Linette does have an account with Penn Call. He uses them exclusively. The dispatcher told me he even keeps them on speed dial, on his cell.” Carrier couldn’t hide her pride. “And by the way, they also told me they didn’t take him anywhere else that night either. Linette was not in a Penn Call cab the night Robert was killed.”

Hmm
. Bennie was worried about something. “What if the cab company—”

“Calls and tells Linette?” Carrier held up her traffic hand. “Don’t worry, I thought of that. I called back as the secretary, saying I’d made a mistake and please not to tell my boss I screwed up.”

“Smooth.”

Carrier grinned. “So let’s review. What have we learned? That Bill Linette didn’t go back to the office
or
to his house on the night St. Amien was murdered. So, where was he?”

“Interesting.” Bennie mulled it over. “Of course, there
are
other places to go.”

“We’re talking about Philadelphia.”

Murphy’s lovely green eyes shifted to Carrier. “Judy, how many married men do you know?”

“My dad,” Carrier asked, nonplussed, and Bennie smiled while Murphy followed up.

“Well, I know more than a few, because they hit on me all the time. I’m not bragging, I’m just giving you a field report. Nine times out of nine, if a man is hitting on me, he’s married.”

“You’re kidding,” Carrier said, so surprised she couldn’t finish her second doughnut.

“If Linette didn’t go home on a night he told a client he was going back to the office, I bet you he’s got a chick somewhere.” Murphy pushed aside her coffee. “And he’s probably set her up in an apartment in town, within walking distance of his office, for his convenience.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s the standard offer. Platinum AmEx, BMW convertible. It’s minimum wage.”

“Whoa,” Carrier said, but Bennie was remembering her visit to Linette’s plush offices.

“Linette has a receptionist who looks like Miss Texas.”

“Now you’re talking,” Murphy said. “I’d start there.” She turned to Carrier. “Sorry to shoot your theory, Jude.”

“It’s not shot, Murph. We just go digging.”

“What do you mean?”

“We find some reason for you to go over to Linette’s office and see if he hits on you.”

Murphy sniffed. “Of course he’ll hit on me. I’m practically undefeated.”

“Are you two nuts?”
Bennie interrupted.

“What?” they both asked, in unison. The phone started ringing but everybody ignored it.

“Have Linette
hit on you,
Murphy?” Bennie couldn’t believe the words coming out of her own mouth. “It’s crazy, dangerous, and
revolting!
And it wouldn’t prove anything!”

“It could,” Murphy answered.

“Like what?”

“We don’t know yet. We’d be investigating.” Murphy looked as if she were actually considering it, sipping her coffee and narrowing her eyes. “We have to find out what Linette’s up to, then confront him.”

Carrier joined in. “Or turn him in. Or catch him in a lie. It’s not the whole picture yet, boss. It’s just a piece. That’s how we always do it. Piece by piece, like a puzzle.”

“
What?
No we don’t. It’s
not
a puzzle!” Bennie wanted to tear out her moussed hair. The only problem with Mama was the kids. “I do
not
send my associates to
seduce killers!
”

“I bet we could crack this case, Bennie,” Murphy added.

“Absolutely not!” Bennie’s good mood vanished. She reached for her coffee but it was cold. The intercom starting buzzing on her phone, and she picked up. “Yes, Marshall?”

“Got Sam on line one. He says it’s really important.”

“Okay, thanks. Ask him to hold while I kill my associates.” Bennie pressed off the intercom and turned to the offenders. “Girls, leave my office and get back to work. Do legal work, since we’re back on the class action. Leave Linette alone. And leave me alone.”