Lisa Scottoline - Dirty Blonde

“Oh, really?” Cate tried not to think of the last time she’d heard words like that, only last night, from a different detective. My coming here sure isn’t procedure. She shooed the words away. She wasn’t going to tell Nesbitt about Russo unless he already knew about it. It was a dicey game, and she sipped her coffee, hot and sweet, gathering the strength to play.

“I spoke with Chief Judge Sherman about the Marz suicide. I presumed he called you at home.”

“Yes.”

“Obviously, you won’t have to worry about Marz anymore.”

“I guess not.” Cate thought of the opinion she’d finished last night, too late. Would it have changed Marz’s mind? If only she’d gotten to it sooner. “It’s a terrible shame.”

“Sure is. Anyway, we’ll be clearing the Simone case. We’re going to announce it at the press conference. Marz shot himself with the same gun he used on Simone. The ballistics tests verified it. So, bottom line, he killed Simone and then killed himself. It fits with some information we got from his wife, too. Depression and all.”

“How’s his wife?” Cate took another sip of coffee, then set her cup down on the conference table.

“As well as can be expected.” Nesbitt shifted in his seat. “But there’s something else I wanted to discuss with you, Judge. I’d like to keep this confidential. I’m here as a professional courtesy to you, now that the Simone case will be officially cleared.”

Russo . “I understand.”

“Let me begin at the beginning. You got the Simone case when you first became a judge, right?”

“Yes, a little over six months ago.”

“Jury selection started, what, about a month ago?”

“Right, about then, yes. It took a long time to pick this jury because everyone had seen the TV show.” Cate didn’t get it. “Why do you ask?”

“When we caught the Simone murder, we went to his hotel suite that night, as part of the investigation. He was staying at the Four Seasons during the trial. He had a huge suite. We liked Marz for the doer, that is, we suspected him because of what had happened in court and because of the videotape. Also he’d taken off. But I thought it wouldn’t hurt to look around Simone’s hotel room and see what we could find out.”

Cate nodded, unsure where Russo fit in.

“I guess I was being a little nosy, because Simone was a Hollywood guy and all. I mean if you had a chance to peek in Steven Spielberg’s medicine chest, wouldn’t you?”

“No doubt.” Cate found herself liking Nesbitt. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but he had a nice, straightforward way about him.

“So I looked around on Simone’s desk and there were the usual items, a laptop, a PalmPilot, a coupla cell phones-he had five of ’em.” Nesbitt paused, pursing his lips. “He didn’t have a lot of business papers around except files from the lawsuit. We confiscated them, which is procedure, and I logged them in at the evidence room.”

“Okay.”

“I did see some loose papers in a fancy folder. The folder was leather and it had a yellow pad inside and a clipboard. Well, inside the folder was a record of your personal whereabouts, starting from about six months ago.”

“My personal whereabouts?” Cate didn’t understand.

“I found a record, a chronological record of everything you did, for about six months, up to now. From the looks of it, Simone was having you followed for some reason. Everywhere you went. To court, home, or well, out.”

Cate’s mouth went dry. “That’s impossible.”

“I thought you might say that, so I made a copy of the papers.” Nesbitt reached inside his jacket pocket, withdrew a packet of papers that had been folded in two, and handed them to Cate, who opened them up and read the first page:

September 7-Judge leaves work at 5:15 p.m. Drives to 263 Meadowbrook Lane, at 6:34 p.m. Leaves at 10:16 p.m. Drives home at 11:30 p.m.

Meadowbrook Lane? That’s Gina’s house! Cate read on.

September 8-Judge leaves work at 7:06 p.m. Goes to Warwick Hotel, 1822 Locust Street at 8:09 p.m. Keynote Speaker at Reception for Trial Lawyers of Philadelphia. Leaves hotel at 11:02 p.m. Arrives Mike’s Bar, 1003 Locust Street at 11:37 p.m. Leaves bar with unidentified man at 11:57 p.m. Goes to Holiday Inn with same man at 12:10 a.m. Leaves Holiday Inn at 1:35 a.m., alone. Goes home at 2:05 a.m.

Cate remembered that night. That speech. That man.

September 29-Judge leaves work at 6:23 p.m. Drives to Roosevelt Blvd Conference Center and receives award from woman lawyers association. Leaves Conference Center, 9:07 p.m. Arrives Mack’s Shack, 1030 Cottman Avenue at 10:02 p.m. Leaves with unidentified man at 10:32. Drives to…

Cate skimmed the record. Oct 30…Unidentified man; Nov 24…Unidentified man; Jan 10…Unidentified man…

Cate felt sickened. Her private life, exposed. There were ten pages in the packet, and she couldn’t bring herself to read the rest in front of Nesbitt. She was so ashamed she could barely look up and meet his eye. Somehow seeing her behavior in black and white made it look so much worse. Or maybe she’d just been in denial for too long.

“Why would he do this?” Cate asked, stunned, and if Nesbitt thought less of her, he didn’t let it show.

“Did you ever receive any unusual calls from him?”

“I’ve never spoken with him on the phone. That would be an ex parte communication, that is, a communication with one party in a lawsuit, which isn’t done.” Cate heard the huffiness in her voice and almost laughed at the irony. I’d whore around but I’d never take an ex parte call.

“Did you ever receive a note from him, or a letter?”

“No.”

“Do you have any reason to think he had an interest in you, romantically?”

“No.”

“Did you have any encounter with him at all? An intimate encounter?”

“No, of course not,” Cate answered, though she couldn’t blame him for asking. “I never met the man until the trial.”

“Then I can’t explain what he did. It’s like he surveilled you, or had you surveilled. I’ve seen that in divorce cases, mostly. Like Cheaters , on TV.”

Cate let it go. She was getting sick of TV. “You think he hired a private detective?”

“No, these papers don’t look professional enough. Private detectives, their reports tend to follow the same format. This is an amateur’s work.”

“He wouldn’t do it himself. He couldn’t. He doesn’t have the time and I doubt he was even in the city. I thought he worked in L.A.”

“Maybe someone who works for him did it.”

“He has an assistant,” Cate said, thinking aloud. She thought of Micah Gilbert, the young woman from the front row of the gallery, with the long hair. Simone was never without her during trial. “What kind of man has someone else do his stalking?”

Nesbitt smiled briefly. “That’s not all, Judge. There were pictures, too. Look on the last page. I photocopied a few.”

“ Pictures ?”

“Not like that. I mean, not of that. ” Nesbitt cleared his throat, and Cate was already tearing to the back of the packet. “They were color but they came out in black-and-white on the Xerox.”

Cate squinted at the first photo, taken at night. It was a picture of the Chestnut Grill, a bar in Fort Washington. A black curve at the top of the picture frame suggested the edge of a car windshield. The second photo was a candid photo of a good-looking man with a mustache, also taken at night on a city street. Oh boy. Cate recognized the mustache. She flipped the page. Oh no. The last photo pictured Cate herself going into another bar, her face clearly visible as she waited at the door for someone else to leave.