Lisa Scottoline - Legal Tender

Grady sat down, undaunted. “I’d like to call Sam and find out where he was that night.”

“You will not.”

“Bennie, we’re fighting the clock here, you heard Azzic. He’ll charge you as soon as he has something that can conceivably support it. Then where will you be? Murder’s not a bailable offense in Philly. You’ll go right to jail.”

I flashed on the women’s prison at Muncy. I’d been there to see clients and was always relieved to hit the front gate on my way out. “Are you trying to scare me, Grady?”

“I surely am.” He smiled, but I didn’t.

“Okay. Fine. But if anybody talks to Sam, it should be me.”

“I’d like to, as your lawyer.”

“No. You don’t know Sam. He’s one of the dearest men in the world, he volunteers for Action AIDs. He was mad at me because I had a client opposed to AIDS research. He-” I stopped in midsentence. Bill Kleeb. Eileen’s threat against the CEO. I had completely forgotten. I checked my watch. 7:00. I wondered where Eileen and Bill were now, whether they were back at their apartment. If I couldn’t get to Detective Azzic, maybe I could get to them. I got up and hustled to my briefcase for their file.

“Bennie? What in God’s name are you doing?” Grady asked, astonished as I ran back and forth.

“I have to make another call.” I found the phone number Bill had given me and punched it in.

“Now? We’re in the middle of a conversation.”

I held up a hand when Bill Kleeb’s voice came on the line. “Can you meet me at eight tonight? It’s very important,” I told him. Bill agreed only reluctantly, and I named a place to meet, then hung up, feeling uneasy.

“Who was that?” Grady asked.

“A client.” I replaced the file and zipped my canvas briefcase closed. “I have to go. You want to walk me out?”

“Which client? Where are you going?” He stood up.

“To meet a client, the animal rights guy, okay? Maybe his girlfriend.”

“Why?”

“I have to.”

Grady put his hands on his hips. “Bennie, I’m your lawyer. I’d like to know as much as the police and the press do about you. Besides, you said you’d let me win the next one.”

He had a point. I would have smacked a client who was behaving as badly as I was. “I just want to check in with him, see how he is. I can’t tell you more than that, it’s confidential and I don’t want you involved in it.”

“You’re worried about a client when you’re being investigated for murder?”

We met eye to eye, and I wasn’t entirely comfortable in his gaze. “I’m worried about all my clients. You saw me, I made a zillion phone calls today.”

“Why does this client merit a personal visit?”

Because I wanted to see if he and Eileen were picking out china patterns or explosives, but I couldn’t tell Grady that. “He’s young, a kid. He needs some help. Extra help.”

“Good. I’m extra helpful, I’ll go with you.” He retrieved his suit jacket from the chair and tossed it over his shoulder, hooking it with a finger.

“You can’t come. You have to hold the fort.” I opened my office door, but Grady halted the door’s progress with a hand.

“I don’t get it,” he said, gray eyes frank behind his glasses. “I know how much you care about finding Mark’s killer, but you spent the day doing everything else but. Now you’re running off. Aren’t you avoiding it?”

“I have some things to get in order,” I said, though I sensed he was right. Somehow, the threat to the Furstmann CEO was urgent to me. Maybe it was a murder I could prevent, as opposed to one I couldn’t. Or maybe it was just too hard to deal with Mark’s death.

“Hello?”

“Grady, if all goes well tonight, we’ll solve this thing together. You need my help, I can tell.”

He laughed. “Oh yes, I need your help. Don’t know how I got along without you before. Now will you call Sam Freminet or should I?”

“I will.”

“Will you also think about who else had a motive to kill Mark? Was anyone angry with him? Any clients in the past, anyone like that?”

“Yes, sir.”

He grinned. “I like the sound of that.”

“Don’t get too used to it.”

“Don’t worry. Call me here or at home if you need anything, after your meeting or anytime. I’ll be doing my alibi research. I’d like to know where the other associates were last night about the time Mark was killed.”

It caught me up short. “Our associates? Christ.”

Suddenly my office windows filled with a harsh white light. The TV klieg lights, fishing for file footage. Grady turned toward the windows, now bright as midday despite the growing darkness. “Wonder if they got the telephoto on us.”

“Probably. Let’s go say hi.” I walked to the window, and Grady came after.

“Don’t give them the finger this time,” he said.

“You’re no fun.” I looked out the window, shielding my eyes from the searing light. Reporters thronged on the street below, silhouetted in front of the round lamps like shadows on the moon.

Grady scanned the crowd. “The First Amendment at work.”

“Right. Half of them are my clients in the libel cases. I defend their right to hound people.”

“Be careful what you wish for, right?”

I gazed into the hot white brightness, wondering whether the next scene caught in the spotlight would be my arrest for murder.

They sat before paper cups of tap water, looking hungry. If you’re going to meet vegetarians for dinner, don’t do it at McDonald’s. I don’t know what I was thinking when I picked this place. Maybe about Mark’s death, Detective Azzic, and Muncy Prison. “I could get you some fries,” I said lamely.

“Thas’ all right,” Bill said, sitting slightly apart from Eileen. If they’d made up, it was an uneasy truce. He wore a plain white T-shirt and jeans, and his injuries were healing only slowly. The swelling on his forehead had gone down but the gash remained, and the white of his left eye was still bloodred.

“How about a Filet-o-Fish? That’s not meat.”

Eileen wrinkled her upturned nose. She was all nervous energy, eyes roving the restaurant, foot wiggling in white Candies sandals. “No fish. It has a face.”

“Not anymore,” I said, and nobody laughed. Christ, I was losing it. I sipped my coffee. At least it was hot, but even that would change, now that they’d been sued. “I don’t eat veal,” I offered, but Eileen was looking away again. She hadn’t met my eye once, undoubtedly blaming me for convincing Bill to plead out.

“You should read about factory farming,” she said idly. “Cows, pigs, it’s no different than veal. They grow them in pens and feed them antibiotics and steroids.”

“Steroids?” I pushed away my half-eaten Big Mac. If I got any bigger, I’d be Alice in Wonderland.

“It’s poison, and then there’s the bacteria. Things grow in meat. Things you can’t see.” She flicked crayon-black bangs off a face that would be pretty but for its hardness. Her eye makeup was heavy and her spandex dress eye-catching. Her arm was still in a sling, but that was the only souvenir of her fracas with the police.

I wanted to swing the conversation around to her death threat without betraying Bill’s confidence. “Bill told me all about the lab, Eileen. You must’ve seen some terrible stuff.”

“I did.”

“Are Furstmann’s labs worse than others?”

She scratched under her cast. “What do you care? You’re not even our lawyer.”

Ouch. “That guy with the ridiculous briefcase my replacement?”

“What’d you expect?” she said, with a savvy laugh. Her gaze wandered around the restaurant, so I surveyed the place. It was empty except for an old man chain-smoking in the far corner. The dinner rush was over, nobody was coming in. What was Eileen looking at? Then I realized she didn’t want to see, she wanted to be seen.