Lisa Scottoline - Mistaken Identity

“How about tomorrow morning?” she asked, and Mr. Gaines laughed.

Bennie worked in a fever, hauling box after box upstairs from the storage area in the basement of Della Porta’s rowhouse. She’d convinced the superintendent that as Connolly’s lawyer she had a right to her personal belongings, and he was reliably drunk enough to buy it. Bennie was hoping that reconstructing the apartment would help her to understand the way Connolly and Della Porta lived. Their relationship was the crux of the murder case and its subtleties could lead Bennie to useful evidence or a new angle. And part of her was driven to know more about Connolly, now that she looked more like her with her new haircut and makeup. She was mildly disappointed. The super had been too buzzed to notice her makeover.

Bennie piled boxes late into the night, a wall of almost forty of them in the living room, and surprisingly, the effort reinvigorated her. By the time she had the last box upstairs, it was almost two in the morning and she’d forgotten to call Grady. She tried him on her cell phone but there was no answer. He was undoubtedly sound asleep. She dropped the phone back into her purse, reached into her briefcase for the case file, and located the list of photos taken by the mobile crime unit. The MCU had been thorough, taking grisly but informative photos of the living room.

Bennie set the file down, tore the brown tape from the first box, and began to unpack. It took almost until dawn and left her lower back aching, but by the time she was finished, the apartment was completely reassembled. She walked from room to room, ending up in the doorway to the kitchen, which turned out to be well stocked. Della Porta had evidently been a cook; twenty cookbooks bearing his name inside sat atop the counter next to a Cuisinart. Heavy Calphalon cookware stocked the cabinets: an omelet pan, a middle- and large-size fry pan, even a tiny pan for melting butter. Eyeing the set, Bennie felt a twinge for his loss. Who could have killed Della Porta, and why?

She left the kitchen for the living room. Completely fitted out, it revealed sophisticated taste. The paintings on the front walls were original oils of city scenes by a fine artist named Solmssen: gas stations, storefronts, and a street in Manayunk that had the starkness of Edward Hopper. Over the dining room table hung an abstract watercolor, and a large reproduction of a Lichtenstein dominated the living area, its broad black lines showing a weepy comic-book blonde. Bennie stood staring at it. Interesting taste for a cop, but something about it troubled her.

She walked into the bedroom, which would have been equally classy if she had bothered to rebuild the heavy bed. She’d dragged up only the headboard, of antique brass, and rested it against the front wall according to the police photo. The hue of the brass told Bennie it was genuine, though its lightness suggested it was hollow. Matching pine nightstands flanked the bed, and in the corner stood the most unusual piece of all: an antique stand-up teacher’s desk, which looked like a lectern on spindly legs. Bennie walked over to it and ran her fingers along the dense grain of its dark wood. The thing must have cost a fortune.

That was it. She whirled around. The cookware in the kitchen, the art in the living room, the antiques in the bedroom cost major money. That would be in addition to the rent, a thousand a month, which was straining even Bennie’s finances. She had read in Della Porta’s obit that his deceased parents were middle-class, so there was no family money. Certainly his managing a boxer suggested a man with an interest in making a killing. So how did Della Porta get this kind of money, on the police force? And why spend all the money on the inside, hidden, and not on the apartment itself? Why not move to a better neighborhood, even?

Though the answers would help her defense, they weren’t ones Bennie welcomed.

“Where have you been, Bennie?” Grady asked, turning from the mirror in the bathroom. The unhappy downturn to his mouth was illuminated by a bare bulb hanging from a wire in the ceiling. His hair dripped from his morning shower and was still soggy at its curling ends. “It’s six in the morning. You were out all night.”

“I was working on Connolly.” Bennie stood in the center dim hall, still awaiting a light fixture. A spray of black wires sprung from the ceiling like an electrical spider, for which Bennie was momentarily grateful. Grady wouldn’t be able to see Connolly’s haircut in the dark.

“Where were you working? You weren’t at the office. I called and got your voice mail.”

“I was at the crime scene. Where you off to, so early?”

“I have to be in King of Prussia by eight o’clock.” Grady gave the Goody comb a shake and set it down. He was dressed for work in a light gray suit, white oxford shirt, and flowered Liberty tie. “The merger is on again and the venture capitalists want more changes. I don’t know when we’re gonna close. Also, the plumber never showed to put in the kitchen sink. The key was where you left it.”

“Wonderful.” Bennie scratched Bear’s head as he sat at a floppy heel. “I have no time to call him.”

“I’ll do it. You get too damn crazy.”

“Thanks. You finished in the bathroom? I need to shower. I have to get back to work.” Bennie kicked off her pumps and Bear ambled off to sniff one.

“I see the press is smelling blood.” Grady looked sympathetic. “You were all over the news on the radio. They’re reporting that Connolly is your twin. Who do you think leaked that?”

“God knows.” Bennie slipped off her jacket and blouse in the dark, shimmied out of her skirt, and dropped the entire outfit in a pile on the hall floor. “Hang tough. It’s gonna get worse.”

“Hey, did you get your hair cut or something?” Grady came over, squinting. They stood in the hall together, and Bennie hoped it was dark enough to conceal traces of her Connolly makeup, which she had wiped off. “I thought you liked it long,” he said. “I do, too.”

“I needed a change.”

“Well, I can’t see your hair too well,” Grady said, fingering a strand. “But the rest of you looks pretty good.” He gentled her into a kiss, cuddling her in his jacket. She would have lingered in his arms, but she broke the embrace, feeling vaguely undeserving.

“I have to get going. Sorry.” Bennie put her head down and flicked off the light switch to hide her hair before she entered the bathroom.

But Grady stayed at the threshold. “Making any progress?”

“I hired an investigator,” she offered, fully aware it was the least significant event of yesterday. Funny how one material omission could lead to another. Maybe not so funny. Bennie bent over the sink and twisted on the warm water, then soaped up her hands with an amber bar of Neutrogena. “Now, don’t you have work to do? Software companies to merge and acquire?”

“Did you see what I left you on the dining room table? I got some information about DNA testing from a lab down in Virginia. I found them on the Internet and they faxed me the application. The test costs about three hundred bucks and it’s confidential. I think you should do it.”

“DNA?” She lathered up and buried her face in warm water. “I’d feel funny about that.”

“Why? It’s reliable. I gave ’em a call and a researcher explained the whole process. They cut the DNA from the two blood samples and count the VNTRs, whatever they are. Identical twins have an unusually high number of matches of VNTRs. The test proves if someone is really your identical twin.”

“I’m supposed to take Connolly’s blood?” Bennie said, then caught herself wondering if she’d done that once already, in the womb. She splashed water on her cheeks.