Lisa Scottoline - Legal Tender

“Mind if I smoke?” Detective Azzic asked, shaking out a Merit from a short white pack.

“Yes,” Grady said, and Azzic paused before lighting up.

“You kidding?”

“No. I’d prefer you didn’t.”

Azzic half smiled and dropped the pack into his breast pocket, keeping the one cigarette out, unlit. “So, Ms. Rosato, we asked you here because you may have information that would help us understand what happened to Mr. Biscardi.”

“She won’t be making any statements, Detective,” Grady said.

Azzic looked up at him. “It would help if she could explain what happened last night between her and Mr. Biscardi.”

“I appreciate that, but as I said, she’s not going to do it that way. She’s not making any statements. Kindly ask her a question.”

Azzic leaned close enough for me to smell the nicotine clinging to his jacket. “Ms. Rosato, many witnesses help themselves more by just telling the story without the lawyers getting in the middle.”

I almost laughed. “I am a lawyer, Detective, and I’m already in the middle.”

Grady’s fingers dug into my suit so hard I felt it through my shoulder pad. “She’s represented, Detective. Please ask your first question.”

“All right. We’ll do it your way, to start with.” Azzic crossed his legs and the steely edge of a gun in an ankle holster popped into view. He flopped his pant leg over it, but it didn’t dispel the intimidation factor and wasn’t meant to. “Ms. Rosato, you’re certainly familiar with the criminal law and police procedures, but it’s my duty to tell you your rights. You’ll have to suffer in silence.”

“Go right ahead.”

He went through my Miranda rights. I’d found them routine when they were read to my clients, but they took on an uncanny significance now that I was the one sitting in the chair bolted to the floor. I strained to relax and played a game with myself, trying to place Azzic’s accent. It was blunt, working class, with that pronounced o indigenous to north Philadelphia. I guessed Juniata Park or maybe Olney.

“Let’s pick up where we left off,” Azzic said. “What was your fight with Mr. Biscardi about?”

“It wasn’t a ‘fight,’ ” Grady interjected. “It was a discussion.”

Azzic nodded almost graciously. “What was your discussion with Mr. Biscardi about?”

I cleared my throat. “Mark wanted to dissolve the partnership.”

“But you didn’t want him to.”

“Bennie-” Grady said, but I waved him off.

“I was surprised, but I had no choice. The partnership was dissolvable at will by either partner.”

“You weren’t happy about it, were you? You and he had started the firm together, and you were seeing each other for many years until he took up with Ms. Eberlein.”

Grady squeezed my shoulder. “Detective, I’m instructing her not to answer that question, if that is a question. Please move it along.”

Azzic sighed. “You shouted at Mr. Biscardi during this discussion, didn’t you? You were angry.”

Grady squeezed again. “Asked and answered, Detective. There was a discussion about the partnership’s dissolution and they disagreed, but both parties decided to move on. Next subject or I’m afraid we’ll have to leave.”

Azzic rolled the unlit cigarette around his fingers. “Ms. Rosato, did you know you stand to inherit twenty million dollars as a result of Mr. Biscardi’s will?”

“What?” I blurted out, shocked. “Twenty million dollars?”

“Detective,” Grady said evenly, “she already told you she didn’t know Mr. Biscardi had a will.”

My head was spinning. The amount was so huge it made me sick for the position I was in. It was almost impossible not to believe I killed Mark for that much money. I gave in to a panicky urge to explain. “I knew Mark’s family had money, but not that much. They weren’t showy about it. They had a split-level, a station wagon-”

“Bennie, please,” Grady said, his fingers clutching like talons.

Azzic’s gaze was point-blank. “So you’re saying you had no idea Mr. Biscardi had inherited most of this money from his parents?”

My mouth must have dropped open, because Grady answered, “That’s what she’s saying, Detective.”

“Didn’t you attend their funeral with Mr. Biscardi?”

“Uh, yes.” The service had been tense, with very few mourners, since the family was so small. Mark had almost no grief reaction, even at the cemetery. His parents had died together in a car accident, but Mark had grown up in Catholic boarding schools, estranged from them for a long time. “They weren’t a close family.”

“Didn’t Mr. Biscardi mention anything about an inheritance?”

“No.” I glanced at the two-way mirror and saw with dismay that I looked nervous. Who was on the other side of the mirror? Meehan? “Nothing.”

“And you didn’t ask?”

“No, it never came up.” It did seem odd, in retrospect. But it was Mark’s business and I always respected his privacy on family issues. God knows, I needed my own.

“One thing I don’t get, Ms. Rosato. I understand Mr. Biscardi told you during your discussion he wanted to make more money. Why did he want more money when he had so much already? Can you help me out with that?”

“Detective,” Grady said, “you’re asking her to speculate about Mr. Biscardi’s state of mind.”

“She was his girlfriend, wasn’t she? Maybe they talked about it.”

“Bennie, I’m instructing you not to answer.”

“Well, Ms. Rosato?” Azzic’s eyes bored into me again.

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me,” I said, the words sour in my mouth, like any lie. Mark had always competed with his father, a self-made businessman, and he’d wanted to be as successful as his father had been. Still, I had no idea he aimed to be that successful.

Detective Azzic fiddled with his Merit, tamping it end over end. “So you didn’t know about the will, even though it was prepared by a very close friend of yours?”

“Who prepared it?” I asked.

“Bennie!” Grady snapped, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Who was it, Detective?”

“Sam Freminet,” Azzic said.

Sam? It shocked me. Sam hadn’t said anything, ever.

“You’re friends with Mr. Freminet, aren’t you, Ms. Rosato? Good friends?”

Grady stepped forward into my field of vision. “I’m instructing my client not to answer.” He put his hands on his hips, pushing his jacket aside in a gesture that was as menacing as they got south of the Mason-Dixon line. And not to the cops, to me.

“I refuse to answer on the grounds it may incriminate me,” I said obediently. But I was still thinking, Sam ? He was a bankruptcy lawyer, not an estates lawyer.

Azzic shook his head. “Isn’t Sam Freminet an attorney at Grun amp; Chase, where you and Mr. Biscardi used to work?”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds it may incriminate me.”

“When was the last time you spoke with Mr. Freminet?”

I’d called Sam from the Roundhouse before this interview, but hadn’t reached him. Even that would make me look bad, now. “I refuse to answer on the grounds-”

“Ms. Rosato,” Azzic said, his voice growing loud, “weren’t you jealous of Eve Eberlein?”

I said my line. I refuse to answer on the grounds it may make me look like a smacked ass.

“Didn’t you throw a pitcher of ice water at Mr. Biscardi in open court? Just yesterday morning, the day he was murdered? Because you were so jealous of Ms. Eberlein?”

Oh, shit. “I refu-”

“Detective Azzic, this interview is over,” Grady said abruptly. “I won’t let you harass my client.” He took my arm and I stood up, surprised to find my knees wobbly.