Courting Trouble Read online

  Courting Trouble

  Scottoline, Lisa

  (2011)

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  From New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, a new novel featuring the all-female ass-kicking wise-cracking Philadelphia law firm Rosato and Associates How many people get to solve their own murder? A quiet Fourth of July weekend at the beach is shattered when Anne Murphy opens her morning newspaper. Staring back at her from the front page is her own photo, under the headline LAWYER MURDERED. Once the body in the morgue is identified, the murderer will realize their mistake. In the meantime, playing dead to stay alive, Anne must find out who is trying to kill her. Unable to rely on the police, who have already allowed her stalker to slip through their hands once, she has no choice but to confide in her new colleagues at Rosato & Associates. It will take all their combined ingenuity to crack the case before it's too late.

  LISA SCOTTOLINE

  To my readers, with my deepest thanks

  For your dedication, I offer my own

  May you always be courageous.

  —BOB DYLAN, “Forever Young”

  Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz (singing): When other friendships have been forgot, ours will still be hot.

  —I Love Lucy,

  “Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress,”

  Episode No. 69, October 19, 1953,

  singing Cole Porter’s “Friendship”

  Table of Contents

  PerfectBound Exclusive e-Book Extras:

  A LITTLE MORE ABOUT LISA

  ONE NIGHT ON MY BOOK TOUR

  THE NOVELS

  EPIGRAPH

  1 Anne Murphy barreled through the bustling lobby of the William Green Federal Courthouse, her long, auburn hair flying.

  2 ROSATO & ASSOCIATES, read the brass nameplate affixed to the sky-blue wall, and Anne stepped off the elevator into . . .

  3 Seagulls squawked over a greasy brown bag in a trash can, and dappled pigeons waddled along the weathered boardwalk, . . .

  4 Half an hour later, Anne had turned in her apartment key to a puzzled realtor and was streaking toward the Atlantic City . . .

  5 The smell that greeted Anne when she opened the door into her kitchen wasn’t one she’d ever come home to.

  6 Anne stood in her second-floor hallway, scratching Mel to keep him quiet and listening to the shuffle of feet below.

  7 Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Mary gasped, just before Anne clamped a firm hand over her mouth and backed her . . .

  8 Anne fled to the back corner of the elevator as Matt Booker stepped in with his clients, Beth Dietz and her ponytailed . . .

  9 Fifteen minutes later, Uncle Sam and her large, stuffed manila envelope were downstairs in the office lobby, being let out . . .

  10 FRANKIE & JOHNNY’S, said the sign on the storefront, in funky black letters. The windows had been covered with plywood . . .

  11 Fifteen minutes later, a cherry-red Mustang idled in an illegal parking space, pointing toward an unsuspecting gay bar.

  12 What’s going on?” “Gil Martin’s here,” Bennie answered. “Carrier’s in with him.” “What? Gil? Here? Why?”

  13 Anne, in her white baseball cap and black Oakleys, Bennie, and Mary stood in the bright but tiny third-floor kitchenette.

  14 Bennie steered the Mustang through the city traffic, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror. By now Anne had learned . . .

  15 Outside the second-story window, dimestore firecrackers popped and holiday lasers sliced the night sky, but Anne . . .

  16 Matt looked like he’d been punched in the face. An inch-long cut tore though his left cheek, jagged and freshly red, . . .

  17 Loser! Anne’s heart sank. The Mustang had been towed! She cursed herself and her red roots. Her bad planning and her . . .

  18 The Chestnut Club was one of Philadelphia’s grandest gray adies, a Victorian mansion with a huge, paneled entrance . . .

  19 The interview room at the Roundhouse, Philadelphia’s police headquarters, was as full as a stateroom in a Marx Brothers . . .

  20 SCHWARTZ’S FLOWERS, read the sign outside, and the dark-haired sales clerk was so harried that she barely looked up . . .

  21 Anne was surprised to discover that a lime-green VW Beetle could be almost as much fun as a Mustang convertible.

  22 There was no lobby in the Daytimer Motel, only a small paneled room with a fake-wood counter that blocked access to . . .

  23 There was almost no traffic heading into the city, and the Beetle zoomed up the steep slope of the Ben Franklin Bridge, . . .

  24 It was dark by the time Anne and Mary reached the squat row house somewhere in the redbrick warren that was South . . .

  25 The commissioner’s private conference room at the Roundhouse was large and rectangular, and contained a long walnut table . . .

  26 I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU DID THAT!” Bennie was yelling at Anne from the passenger seat of Judy’s Beetle, and her voice . . .

  27 Anne dashed down the sidewalk to Judy’s car. Her breath came raggedly and her knees had gone weak. She looked behind her.

  28 The sun was still high but glowing a late-day orange, scorching a slow descent through the sky. The air had grown oppressively . . .

  29 Boom! A white chrysanthemum burst into bloom and faded to a sparking skeleton as the first fireworks went off in the night . . .

  30 At the interview room of the Roundhouse, fluorescent lights on the ceiling cast harsh shadows that hollowed out the faces of . . .

  31 It wasn’t an hour later, delivered by a speeding squad car, that Anne was home, dressed in jeans, a pink tank top, and yellow . . .

  32 On the front step stood Beth Dietz and she looked like she’d been crying. “Can . . . I come in?” Sobs choked her voice, and she . . .

  33 The fifth of July, a Tuesday morning, dawned clear and cool, the temperature hovered at a civilized seventy degrees and with . . .

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY LISA SCOTTOLINE

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  1

  Anne Murphy barreled through the bustling lobby of the William Green Federal Courthouse, her long, auburn hair flying. She was about to do something crazy in court and couldn’t wait to get upstairs. If she won, she’d be a hero. If she lost, she’d go to jail. Anne didn’t think twice about the if-she-lost part. She was a redhead, which is a blonde with poor impulse control.

  “Ms. Murphy, Ms. Murphy, just one question!” a reporter shouted, dogging her heels, but Anne charged ahead, trying to ditch him in the crowd.

  Federal employees, lawyers, and jurors crisscrossed the lobby to the exits, hurrying home to start the Fourth of July weekend, but heads turned at the sight of the stunning young woman. Anne had wide-set eyes of willow-green, a straight nose dusted with freckles, and a largish mouth, glossy with an artful swipe of raisiny lipstick. Very female curves filled out a suit of cream-colored silk, and her long, lean legs tapered to fine ankles, ending in impractical Manolo Blahnik heels. Anne looked like a model, but given her past didn’t even think of herself as pretty. None of us outgrows the kid in the bathroom mirror.

  “Uh-oh, here comes trouble!” called one of the court security officers, as Anne approached the group of dark polyester blazers clustered around the metal detectors. Manning the machines were five older guards, all retired Philly cops, flashing appreciative grins. The guard calling to Anne was the most talkative, with a still-trim figure, improbably black hair, and a nameplate that read OFFICER SALVATORE BONANNO. “Gangway, fellas! It’s Red, and she’s loaded for bear!”

  “Right again, Sal.” Anne tossed her leather briefcase and a Kate Spade messenger bag onto the conveyor belt. “
Wish me luck.”

  “What’s cookin’, good-lookin’?”

  “The usual. Striking a blow for justice. Paying too much for shoes.” Anne strode through the security portal as her bags glided through the X-ray machine. “You gentlemen got plans for the holiday weekend?”

  “I’m takin’ you dancin’,” Officer Bonanno answered with a dentured smile, and the other guards burst into guffaws made gravelly by cigarette breaks at the loading dock off of Seventh Street. Bonanno ignored them cheerfully. “I’m gonna teach you to jitterbug, ain’t I, Red?”

  “Ha!” Officer Sean Feeney broke in, grinning. “You and the lovely Miss Murphy, Sal? In your dreams!” Feeney was a ruddy-faced, heavyset sixty-five-year-old, with eyebrows as furry as caterpillars. “She’s an Irish girl and she’s savin’ herself for me.” He turned to Anne. “Your people from County Galway, right, Annie? You got pretty skin, like the girls in Galway.”

  “Galway, that near Glendale?” Anne asked, and they laughed. She never knew what to say when someone commented on her looks. The X-ray machine surrendered her belongings, and she reached for them as two reporters caught up with her, threw their bags onto the conveyor belt, and started firing questions.

  “Ms. Murphy, any comment on the trial next week?” “Why won’t your client settle this case?” “Isn’t this ruining Chipster’s chance to go public?” They kept interrupting each other. “Anne, what’s this motion about today?” “Why do you want to keep this evidence from the jury?”

  “No comment, please.” Anne broke free, grabbed her bags, and bolted from the press, but it turned out she didn’t have to. Officer Bonanno was confronting the reporters, hard-eyed behind his bifocals.

  “Yo, people!” he bellowed, Philly-style. “You know the rules! None o’ that in the courthouse! Why you gotta give the young lady a hard time?”

  Officer Feeney frowned at the first reporter and motioned him over. “Come ‘ere a minute, sir. I think you need a full-body scan.” He reached under the security counter and emerged with a handheld metal detector. “Come on, in fact, both of youse.” He waved the wand at the second reporter, and the other security guards lined up behind him like an aged phalanx.

  “But I’m the press!” the reporter protested. “This is my beat! You see me every day. I’m Allen Collins, I have an ID.” Behind him, his canvas briefcase stalled suddenly in the X-ray machine, and the guard watching the monitor was already confiscating it. The reporter turned back, puzzled. “Hey, wait a minute!”

  Officer Bonanno dismissed Anne to the elevators with a newly authoritative air. “Go on up, Miss!”

  “Thanks, Officer,” Anne said, suppressing a smile as she grabbed the open elevator and hit the button for the ninth floor. She hadn’t asked for the assist and felt vaguely guilty accepting it. But only vaguely.

  Minutes later, Anne reached the ninth floor and entered the spacious, modern courtroom, which was packed. The Chipster case, for sexual harassment against Gil Martin, Philadelphia’s best-known Internet millionaire, had attracted press attention since the day it was filed, and reporters, sketch artists, and the public filled the sleek modern pews of dark wood. Their faces swiveled almost as one toward Anne as she strode down the carpeted center aisle.

  Bailiffs in blue blazers stopped conferring over the docket sheets, law clerks straightened new ties, and a female court reporter shot daggers over her blue steno machine, on its spindly metal legs. Anne had grown accustomed to the reaction; men adored her, women hated her. She had nevertheless joined the all-woman law firm of Rosato & Associates, which had turned out to be a very redheaded career move. But that was another story.

  She reached counsel table and set down her briefcase and purse, then looked back. A young man dressed in a lightweight trench coat was sitting, as planned, on the aisle in the front row behind her. Anne acknowledged him discreetly, then took her seat, opened her briefcase, and pulled out a copy of her motion papers. The motion and the young man on the aisle had been Anne’s latest idea. Chipster.com was her first big client at Rosato, and Gil Martin had hired her because they’d known each other at law school. She had never tried a case of this magnitude, and in the beginning wondered if she had bitten off more than she could chew. Then she decided that she had, and stopped wondering.

  “Happy Fourth!” whispered a voice at her ear, and she looked up.

  Matt Booker was a year older than Anne’s twenty-eight, and he stood over her, with dark, wavy hair, light-blue eyes, and eyelashes too thick to be wasted on a man. She would have been wildly attracted to him if he hadn’t been opposing counsel, but that was an alternate reality. Matt represented the plaintiffs in this case, a female programmer named Beth Dietz and her husband Bill, who had filed a derivative claim against Chipster. Though Anne hadn’t dated anyone for the year she’d been in Philly, Matt Booker was the first time she’d been tempted. Really tempted, but opposing counsel was about as forbidden as fruit gets.

  “Go away,” she said, but Matt leaned closer.

  “I just want you to know that I’m not asking you out today.” His whisper smelled like Crest. “You’ve turned me down 329 times, and I’m detecting a pattern. Stop me before I ask again.”

  Anne blushed. “Matt, has it occurred to you that you are sexually harassing me, in a sexual harassment lawsuit?”

  “Come on, my advances are welcome, aren’t they? Sort of?”

  Anne didn’t answer. She was deciding. It had been so long since she’d let herself trust anyone. But she had known Matt for almost a year, since the complaint in this case was filed, and he was an overconfident pain in the ass, which she liked in a man.

  “A little? Slim to none?” Matt was asking, bracing a hand on the polished counsel table, and she took a chance.

  “Okay. After the trial is over, I will go out with you. But only after.”

  “Really?” Matt’s voice cracked, which Anne found cute. He was always so cool, it was as if his veneer had cracked, too. He looked astounded, his jaw dropping unselfconsciously. “Anne, are you on drugs?”

  “No.”

  “Will you sign an affidavit to that effect?”

  “Go away.” Anne studied her brief. “I’m preparing to kick your ass.”

  “What if I win this case?”

  “Not possible. You’re in the wrong, and you’re against me.”

  “I won the last evidentiary motion, remember?”

  “That was a battle, not the war.” Anne eyed the bailiffs over her papers. “Now go away. Everyone knows you’re flirting.”

  “You’re flirting back.”

  “I don’t flirt with opposing counsel.”

  “I’m not opposing, you are.” Matt snorted, then stepped away and crossed to plaintiff’s counsel table. Beyond it lay the jury box, a polished mahogany rail cordoning off fourteen empty chairs in various states of swivelhood. They made an interesting backdrop, and Anne wondered if Matt would still want to see her after the verdict came back. She thought of the young man sitting behind her and suppressed a guilty twinge. That made a total of two guilty twinges she’d had in her whole life, and Anne wasn’t good at suppressing them, on account of such sporadic practice.

  “All rise!” the bailiff cried, from beyond the bar of the court. The golden seal of the United States Courts rose like the sun on the paneled wall, behind a huge mahogany dais of contemporary design. Gilt-framed portraits of past judges hung on the walls, their thick oil paint glistening darkly in the recessed lights. The bailiff stood near one, his chest puffed out as if it bore medals. “All rise! Court is now in session! The Honorable Albert D. Hoffmeier, presiding.”

  “Good afternoon, everybody,” Judge Hoffmeier called out, emerging from the paneled pocket door, carrying a thick accordion case-file. The gallery greeted the stocky little judge in return, and he bustled into the courtroom, the hem of his shiny black robes brushing the carpet as he chugged past the American flag and onto the large, wooden dais, then plopped the file onto the cluttered desktop, seated him
self in his chair, and pushed up his tortoiseshell glasses.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Murphy.” Judge Hoffmeier smiled down at her, his eyes bright. His wiry hair was flecked salt-and-pepper, and he wore a Stars-and-Stripes bow tie that evidenced a sense of humor legendary on the district court bench. “What is it you’re troubling us with, young lady? My favorite holiday is almost upon us, and we should all be out buying hot dogs and sunblock.” The gallery chuckled, as did the judge. “Yes, I like sunblock on my hot dogs.”

  The gallery laughed again, and Anne rose and took her brief to the lectern. “Sorry to keep you, Your Honor, but I do have this pesky evidentiary motion. As you know, I represent Chipster.com, the defendant company in this matter, and I am asking the Court to exclude the testimony of Susan Feldman, whom plaintiff intends to call as a witness at trial next week.”

  “You don’t think the jury should meet Ms. Feldman, counsel?” If Judge Hoffmeier appreciated Anne’s beauty he hid it well, and she didn’t kid herself that he’d let it influence him. It took more than a pretty face to win in a federal forum. Usually.

  “Not at all, Your Honor. I think Ms. Feldman and her testimony should be excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 401, because it is irrelevant. Ms. Feldman alleges that one of Chipster’s programmers, named Phillip Leaver, sexually harassed her, in a rather bizarre incident.” The judge’s already-twinkling eye told Anne that he knew the underlying facts. “Neither Ms. Feldman nor Mr. Leaver have anything to do with this case or either of the parties at issue. The incident concerning Ms. Feldman occurred in a different department, at a different time, between different people.”