Lisa Scottoline - Killer Smile

“Don’t you have to get that?”

“It’s a conference call in Alcor, which turns out to be the mother of all securities cases. Let them get the other three hundred lawyers on the line, then they can patch me in.”

“Sorry.”

“Forget it.”

“I searched for Saracone online, too, until my laptop battery and my cell phone battery gave up.” Mary fell silent a minute, watching rain slake the window. Nimbus clouds darkened the sky, and this high up, she could see lightning flash behind the storm clouds. It was better than seeing it from seat 17A. “It ain’t rocket science, Jude. Even I can put this together.”

“Meaning what?”

Uh. Gimme a minute. “Well, basically, there must be something about Amadeo, a reason he was killed, and it’s behind everything.” Mary was convincing herself as she went along, but she still felt like she was fishing.

“So why did whoever it is kill Cavuto?” Judy’s phone finally stopped ringing.

“I don’t know. Maybe to keep him quiet, to keep secret whatever he knew. Frank seemed worried to me that morning, and he wasn’t that good a liar. He could have been getting nervous, as I was digging around, maybe getting closer to the truth. Do I flatter myself?”

“Somebody has to.”

Mary laughed, which felt good, temporarily. “I knew Frank, and whatever his role in this mess, he couldn’t have been a principal. He wasn’t a real bad guy at heart, he was just a guy whose law firm had some involvement. Maybe that’s why the house sale at bargain prices.”

“This isn’t my main concern.” Judy’s face darkened, matching the clouds. “I’m worried about you.”

Me, too . “I’m worried about my job. Am I fired yet?”

“You caught a break. Bennie didn’t ask where you went on vacation, so I didn’t volunteer it. She sent her condolences for Cavuto, but she can’t get an extension on her trial. We’re free at last, free at last.” Judy frowned. “But I’m still worried about you. I think we should go to the police.” Her phone started ringing, and she ignored it again. “Tell them the story.”

“I’m on it. I called the Homicide Squad on the way in and left a message for Reggie and his partner, Detective Kovich. Remember them?” Detectives Reginald Brinkley and Stan Kovich had become Mary’s friends on an old murder case, and Reggie still stopped by her mother’s house for meatball sandwiches, raising the African-American population on Mercer Street to one. “I know they’d help, but the detective answering the phone said they were out on jobs.”

“Who’s assigned to Cavuto?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. I left a message. I even told the desk detective all about the Escalade, so they can issue an APB.”

“Which they won’t do.”

“Not yet.”

“So you gonna wait for him to call back?”

“What do you think?” Mary smiled.

“He leaves us with no alternative, does he?” Judy grinned back, but Mary’s smile faded.

“Us?”

“Of course, us. It’s always us.”

“Not this time.” Mary rose and picked up her purse and bag. She’d stow the bag in her office. It would only burden her, where she was going. “You have a conference call, you should take it.”

“I’ll say I got sick.”

“No, I’m going on my own.”

“But it’s dangerous.”

“Not really. I’m just going to look around a little.”

“Alone? You?” Judy’s eyes flared. “You get scared by yourself. Remember the Della Porta case? You got heebie-jeebies at the murder scene. You wouldn’t even get out of the car.”

Mary smiled. It was true. That was before Montana. Now she was determined . “I can do it alone. If you got shot, I couldn’t take the guilt.”

“You got shot on one of my cases, and I didn’t give it a thought.”

“Ha! You know you love me.” Mary laughed, hoisting her heavy bag higher onto her shoulder. “See ya.”

“No, wait!” Judy called out, but the phone started ringing again, and Mary was off and running.

Rain pelted Mary’s shoulders in her go-to navy blazer, and she stood as close as possible to Frank Cavuto’s building. Wet crime-scene tape crisscrossed the front door, collecting rain so that DO NOT CRO was all anybody could read. It made her sick at heart. She had seen way too much crime-scene tape even in her short career; now it was all over TV shows and party gags. For Mary, murder would never be remotely funny. As far as she was concerned, all crime-scene tape should read: SOMETHING UNSPEAKABLE HAPPENED HERE.

Soggy Acme carnations wrapped in crinkly plastic blanketed the front stoop, next to sprayed daises and wilted roses, their stems encased in green plastic straws. Hallmark cards had been Scotch-taped to the door but were now drenched, and one hung open, showing all the nouns underlined in now-dripping marker; Sympathy and Sorrow and Sadness . A tiny Italian flag had been wedged in the mail slot, and it moved slightly in the rain. Frank had mattered so much to this community. He had been loved.

Frank, what did you do that got you killed?

She stood on tiptoe and peered through the small glass window in the door. It was dark inside; she couldn’t see a thing. Then she heard a sound behind her and turned, startled. A homeless man was standing there, in a Phillies cap and a stained Dorney Park T-shirt. It was raining on his skinny shoulders, which were already saturated, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“That guy got shot,” the man said. “They shot him, they did.”

“I know.”

“Neighborhood’s goin’ to hell,” he said, shuffling on, and Mary’s blood pressure returned to normal. She glanced around, uneasy. She’d taken the bus to get here, making sure she wasn’t followed, and hadn’t seen the Escalade. She glanced again, double-checking, but it was nowhere in sight. Not that she felt safe. She wouldn’t feel safe until Frank’s killer had been caught and she learned the truth.

Mary glanced around one last time and saw nothing amiss, so she left the stoop to walk around the front of the building to the corner, where Frank’s office was. The large window with dirty glass was covered by a drawn curtain. Damn! Mary reached into her handbag, rummaged around, and pulled out a brown spongy cowboy hat on a key ring, one of her presents to herself from the Missoula airport. At one end was a tiny penlight, and she flashed it around the window, discovering nothing except that the curtain had a cheap cotton lining.

Thunder clapped in the night sky, and rain soaked her suit and hair. She was getting nowhere fast and was cold and wet to boot. She looked around, blinking water from her eyes. Only light traffic sped in the hard rain down a slick Broad Street. A mostly-empty SEPTA bus barreled along, churning gutter water in its huge corrugated tires, spraying watery grit. The bus zoomed past the empty kiosk in front of Frank’s office. The sidewalks were completely vacant, owing to the thunderstorm, and evidently even the crazy man in the Phillies cap had sought shelter.

Mary glanced around one more time, to make sure the coast was clear. When it was, she made her move.

Mary edged away from the window, hustled along the Broad Street side of Frank’s building, then took a right at the corner. Typically the cross streets were residential except for the mom-and-pop corner grocery/beauty parlor/florist, and well-kept rowhouses stretched in a line of unbroken brick down the street, their gray marble stoops light spots in the downpour. It was a nice, safe neighborhood, except when girl lawyers were on the prowl.

Mary stole down the street in the darkness, following a hunch that turned out to be correct. On her right, tucked behind Frank’s building, she found what every resident of South Philly longed for – a parking space. Frank’s space was in a paved lot that was the exact footprint of a rowhouse, which he had undoubtedly bought, torn down, and paved for this purpose. And unless she was wrong, there would be a back door to his office. She stepped onto the asphalt of the parking lot and froze.