Lisa Scottoline - Killer Smile

Mary shook her head, hurt. She knew that Amadeo had gotten bound up with Mike and somehow it was all of a piece. But she couldn’t move on, not yet. She didn’t know how and, now, she didn’t want to.

“Don’t look like that.” Judy’s blue eyes narrowed. “You know, even if what you’re saying is true, about the Escalade and all, it’s even a greater reason to get out of this case. Because you could be in danger, and for what? Are you keeping an innocent man from jail? Catching a murderer? That, I’d understand. But this? I helped you find that FBI memo because I thought that it would end all this, but I’m sorry I did. On balance, it’s just not worth it.”

“But Amadeo -”

“Is dead! He’s dead and gone. Nothing you do can change that or bring him back. Nothing you do now can bring anybody back.” Judy’s fair skin colored with emotion, and Mary knew who she was talking about.

I wish this feeling would go away , she thought, but didn’t say.

“And you’re working on Brandolini all the time, not your other cases. Did you get ready for those deps, for Bennie? Alcor and Reitman?”

“I’ll get to it.” Mary watched as a young mother approached, holding a toddler by its tiny hand. The baby wobbled along in blue overalls and new white sneakers, practicing his steps. “You think she’ll be mad?”

“Are you kidding?” Judy’s voice regained its familiarity, and they were on safer ground now, complaining about the boss. Judy was feeling good enough to eat her vegetables and opened a crinkly black bag of Yukon potato chips, to which she was currently addicted. “She won’t like it that you talked to the reporter, either. You didn’t have her permission and you know how she feels about the press.”

Mary shook her head. “Half the time she yells at me to assert myself, and the rest of the time she yells at me to ask permission.”

“Women.”

Mary looked away. The baby took a wiggly step forward, chest out, arms loose in the air, then stopped and swayed before plopping down on his cushioned bottom. He burst into a two-tooth smile. Mary said, “You know what that reporter said to me?”

“What?” Judy managed to get a large potato chip into her mouth, sideways like a pizza into a Tuscan oven. It wasn’t pretty.

“He said I should go to Montana. See Fort Missoula, the internment camp. It still stands, as a museum.”

“ You?” Judy’s cheeks bulged like a giant squirrel’s, her blue eyes wide. “Go to Montana ?”

“Yes, me. Of course, me, go to Montana.” Mary felt miffed, even though she’d had the exact same reaction. “I can find Amadeo’s grave.”

“But Montana! It’s just so not you .”

“Why isn’t it me, Jude?” Mary really wanted to know, because she agreed and wondered why.

“I don’t see you in big sky country. You’re so totally Philadelphia. You went to college in Philadelphia, you went to law school in Philadelphia, you grew up here and you’ve lived here all your life. It’s like your dad said the other night at dinner, remember?”

Mary remembered. Cowboy country. Pluto.

“Do you even know where Montana is?”

“Somewhere to the left.” Mary watched the baby, almost in front of their bench now, holding on to his mother’s hand. He made cute little grunting noises from the effort, eah eah eah . He couldn’t have been more than eleven months old, but he wanted to walk so badly. You could see it.

“ Montana is directly under western Canada, Calgary, and it borders Idaho and Wyoming. Glacier National Park is there. It’s a beautiful state. Mountains, plains, great trout fishing, deer, elk, moose, and antelope. Have you ever seen an antelope?”

“Sure. Looks like a dog with horns. Don’t you tire of being my straight man?”

Judy smiled. “ Montana ’s great. You’d love it. I’ve fly-fished near Butte with my dad and hiked there, in the West, with my sisters and brother.”

“Show off.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t go. Go.”

“It’s a free country.”

“Clearly.”

“I have the money, I can buy an airplane ticket.” In fact, Mary had never even been on an airplane, which was the first of three secrets she kept from the world. The second was that she couldn’t swim. She fell silent, watching the baby take its wobbly steps. It passed right in front of them, tottering by. Eah eah eah.

Judy was watching the baby, too. “Mare?”

“What?”

“Did you pay the baby to walk by us, just now?”

Mary burst into laughter, and Judy laughed with her, which was when they became best friends again. “Isn’t it funny how things happen like that? Sometimes you’re thinking about something and then something like that happens, and they seem to connect? Like you hear a song. As if someone’s sending you a sign.”

“You’ve lost it, Mare.”

“Things like that are happening to me lately. Signs.”

“No, they’re not. It’s spring, time for new babies and little lambs to walk around. They’re not signs, they’re just coincidences.”

“Maybe,” Mary said, but she didn’t think she was wrong, or that lambs had anything to do with it.

“You know, if you want to go to Montana, you absolutely should go. Maybe out there you’ll find whatever you’re looking for, and then you’ll be done with the case. Get Brandolini out of your system. Go. You can do it.” Judy paused. “Tell you what. If you decide to go, I’ll cover your desk and take Bennie’s depositions.”

“You will?” Mary looked over, and Judy was herself again, grinning crookedly.

“So, you gonna go?”

“I don’t know.” Airplanes. Pluto. Montana scares me.

“Of course, if I take those deps for you, you’ll have to do something for me in return.”

“What?” Mary asked, but she already knew the answer.

Mary spent the afternoon following up on the internee files that she and Judy had found, double-checking for references to Amadeo, and being ambivalent about going to Montana. She didn’t bother to run home, shower, and change for her blind date, not only because she was Definitely Not Trying, but also because somebody could have been following her, which was an excellent excuse.

She took a cab from the office to Dmitri’s, a Greek restaurant in Olde City, which she liked on sight. Three rows of tables filled the small, unpretentious room, and an open grill was located behind a counter in the dining area, filling the air with the fresh smells of broiling fish and greens sizzling in olive oil. The tables were cozy, the dishware heavyweight, and every place setting had a spoon. Mary felt comfortable immediately and not only because nobody was colorizing her butt. She peeked over the top of her menu at her date.

His name was Paul Reston. His brown hair was wavy, and his eyes smallish behind fairly nondescript horn-rims. He had a straight nose and a full mouth that gave his face an appealing, if not wildly handsome, look, and he was dressed in a tweed jacket over a white oxford shirt. She forgot what kind of pants he had on, but he was the Dockers type. Paul seemed more down-to-earth than her last blind date, which meant that she would have a harder time finding fault with him. Mary knew she could succeed, if she just put her mind to it.

“Would you mind if I made a suggestion for an entrée?” Paul asked, looking over the top of his menu, and Mary smiled inwardly. If the scene felt familiar, it was. All of her blind dates started this way, then had the same middle and end, as predictable as a dialogue in high school French. Où est la bibliothèque?

“What would you suggest?” Là-bas, près de la gare.