Moment of Truth Read online

  Mary watched two of the news vans take off after the bus, but the morning rush had started and in time one got lost in it. She slipped into a knit cap she had in her pocket, picked up a transfer slip, and got off the bus at the stop, then transferred to the C to get home. Nobody would suspect she was on the C. Nobody would bother with the C. It was the least suspicious bus route in Philadelphia. She watched the remaining news van get stuck in traffic, following the wrong bus, and she headed home. It would take her a little longer by bus, but it gave her time to think.

  Jack had said that Paige’s inheritance was the reason the cops thought he had tried to kill her. Mary had been pretty good at wills and estates in law school, and unlike criminal law, remembered it well. So the effect of Honor’s will and Paige’s trust must have been to have the Buxton money revert to Jack. Mary knew that was almost boilerplate in wills. Whittier was the executor of both estates, a service generally performed for two percent of the total estate yearly, as Mary recalled. If it were a large estate, even two percent could amount to several million dollars, but it obviously wouldn’t be collectable until after the deaths.

  The bus chugged ahead, as did her thoughts. So Whittier would have wanted Honor and Paige dead for two reasons; either Honor was changing executors and he was in danger of losing the fees, or he simply wanted to hasten the day of collection, by killing them both. She shuddered. The bus hissed to a stop, taking on passengers as it approached the business district, and a young man in a tan baseball cap climbed on and wedged into the seat next to her. He let a heavy book bag slip from his shoulders and set it on his lap.

  Mary returned to her thoughts. Only one thing didn’t make any sense; Donovan’s question. How were Whittier and Trevor connected? One was an important law partner, the other was a high school kid. Like the one next to her on the bus. Mary glanced over at him, for field research. Close-up, he reminded her of Trevor, either that or the outlandish possibility that all teenagers were dressing alike. His baseball cap had a bright red A on it, which she assumed stood for Abercrombie and not Adultery. He wore a hoop earring in one ear, and she speculated that they issued the earring at Abercrombie’s. He was about sixteen or seventeen and he wore jeans, a T-shirt, and only a light jacket, to prove he wasn’t cold.

  She smiled. Boys hadn’t changed much. He had clear blue eyes, looked clean-cut, and was obviously on his way to school in town. Maybe he even went to Trevor’s school. “Excuse me,” she said, “which school do you go to?”

  “Pierce,” he answered.

  She nodded. Or not Trevor’s school. But maybe he knew him. Philly was a small town. “You know anybody named Trevor Olanski? He goes to Philadelphia Select.”

  “No.”

  Of course not. So much for coincidences that broke the case. Mary had bad karma. She hadn’t been to confession in eighty-five years. She gave up, looking out the window.

  “What’s your name?” the teenager asked, and she turned back to discover he was smiling at her.

  “Uh, Mary,” she told him, and he nodded as if she had said something incredibly interesting.

  “That’s a nice name.”

  “It is?”

  “What’s your last name?”

  “DiNunzio.”

  “Mary DiNunzio. That sounds good together.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” she said, and he laughed warmly. She suppressed her smile. Was he trying to pick her up? The only time men looked at her like that was when a model was walking behind her. And he wasn’t even a man, he was a man-child.

  “Where do you go to school, Mary?” he said, and maybe it was her fatigue, but the first thought that popped into her mind was:

  I’m old enough to be your mother. In fact, she wasn’t, but she felt old enough to be his mother. And it gave her an idea about Trevor and Whittier, even though the kid didn’t go to Trevor’s school. She remembered something she’d heard in the last crazy days. Where had she heard it? Who had said it? We’ve had our eye on Olanski…. He moves lots of drugs to kids in private school…. He sold to the wrong kid a few months ago….

  Could that be it? Mary had found a connection between Whittier and Trevor, at least a possible connection, if it panned out. It shook her from her reverie. The bus was almost at her stop. She had to go. She couldn’t wait to tell Brinkley. She could be right. She could break the case, all by herself. Anything was possible. It was America. She picked up her briefcase from the bus floor and jumped to her pumps.

  “Mary?” asked the teenager, whom she’d forgotten. His face was flushed with embarrassment, and his eyes looked hurt. She couldn’t do that to him. Scarred at such a tender age, he could turn into a lawyer. She bent down and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “I’m taken, but thanks for asking,” she told him, and made her way to the front of the aisle, where the driver steered the bus to a slow and safe stop. She didn’t even have to hold on to the pole to avoid mortal injury. Definitely a rookie, she thought, and thanked him before she got off. It was the first time she meant it.

  Mary hustled down Broad Street and when she turned the corner onto her block, broke into a run. She was so excited. She had figured it out. All they had to do was see if it was true. Brinkley could help.

  She ran by brick stoops and marble stairs, past front windows with leftover plastic crèches and porcelain Christmas trees. Christmas lights were still strung across the street, rooftop to rooftop; they swayed in the stiff wind and glowed faintly against the morning sky, making a crayon canopy of red, blue, green, and yellow. Mary loved the lights. She loved life. She ran toward her house.

  I’m old enough to be your mother. It was possible. She would find out if Whittier had a teenage son or a daughter. They would be roughly the right age. If Whittier had a kid, then maybe Trevor, drug dealer to preppies, had sold the kid drugs. And maybe that was the connection. It was possible, distinctly possible, especially in Philly. It was such a small town in many ways, and in her experience, the rich kids hung together and knew each other, even if they went to different schools. They went to the same exclusive camps, parties, even cotillions. This was Philadelphia, still.

  Mary was going to free Jack, once and for all, and the certainty powered her to her front door. She reached the stoop panting, unlocked the door, and hurried inside. But she did a double take when she hit the kitchen.

  She hadn’t counted on the extra guest.

  55

  Mary dropped her briefcase in surprise at the sight. “Is the bus that slow?” she said, and laughed.

  Detective Stan Kovich smiled sheepishly from behind the tiny kitchen table. His large frame barely fit the rickety chair. “I could have given you a ride, but then I would have been fired.”

  Mary slipped out of her coat. “Somebody want to fill me in?”

  “That would be me.” Brinkley gestured over a rather large plate of fried green peppers and soft scrambled eggs. She couldn’t help noticing he’d been served first, so her mother and the Glock had made a truce. “Siddown, we got something to tell you.”

  “Yes, sí.” Vita DiNunzio came over in her flowered housedress, with crisscrossed bobby pins holding the pin curls in front of each ear. She took Mary by the arm. “Maria, you sit and eat. Your friend Jack, he okay?”

  “He’s fine, thanks,” Mary said, giving her mother a quick kiss before she sat down.

  “You want coffee?” her father asked, but he was already scuffing over in his plaid bathrobe and slip-on slippers, bearing the steel pot. He poured her a cup, an arc of steaming brown.

  “Thanks, Dad.” Mary looked at Brinkley. “Okay, Reg, you go first, then I do.”

  Brinkley nodded. “We know that our boy Trevor deals coke to lots of rich kids at area schools. He was picked up for it last week, with a kid named Ruben-stone. One of the kids he sold to was Whittier’s son, who goes to a private school in the subs. Kovich found out from a buddy of ours in juvy. That’s the connection between Whittier and Trevor.”

  “Jesus, I
knew it!” Mary launched into the story about the kid on the bus to show she had figured it out herself, but her mother kept glaring at her from the stove for taking the Lord’s name in vain.

  “Well, you were right. Here’s proof.” Brinkley passed a piece of paper over the table. It looked like an official form with redacted portions in the typed narrative. “Kovich had to wait ’til his buddy got back to find the papers, because the complaint was withdrawn. The next day, in fact. Christian Whittier was one of the kids Trevor sold to, and a William Whittier picked him up. We think Whittier paid to bury the complaint. It can’t be an accident that the arresting officer’s on vacation.”

  Mary frowned. “So let’s think about this. Trevor and Whittier met last week? That doesn’t give us anything.”

  “No, last week is the only time we know about, probably the most recent. But it isn’t the first time Whittier’s son makes a buy from Trevor, I guarantee it. Once a junkie makes a connection, they stay with it, especially these kids. They don’t want to go a bad neighborhood to make a buy. They might get their hands dirty.”

  Mary glanced at Paige, silent behind an empty plate. The teenager had been beside herself when she heard Trevor had been killed and looked like she hadn’t slept at all. Still, Mary had to press her. “Paige, do you know anything about this?”

  “No,” Paige said. She brushed a strand of red hair from weary eyes, trying to rally. “I didn’t know Trevor was so into drugs and I didn’t know anybody he sold it to. I just knew he had it all the time.”

  “It’s okay,” Mary said, patting her hand. The kid was going through hell, and judging from the empty plate, maybe having morning sickness. No matter what, Vita DiNunzio would force-feed her. Food equaled love in this household. Mary turned to Brinkley. “So, go on, Reg.”

  “We figure that Trevor and Whittier’s kid were at least acquaintances, maybe even friends. Assume Trevor sells to Whittier’s kid from time to time. Whittier finds out. He knows that Trevor is the boyfriend of Paige Newlin, Honor and Jack’s daughter, and he blackmails Trevor into killing Honor.”

  “Where do you get the blackmail?” Mary asked, and Kovich raised his hand like a kid in school.

  “That’s from me. When me and Donovan interviewed Whittier, he told us that Trevor was blackmailing him over Newlin’s drug use. It was the same thing he said at the scene, when Trevor got shot, the uniforms told me. Whittier had to have made that shit up on the spot, to explain what he was doin’ at the office so late at night. And he ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed, was my impression.”

  Brinkley nodded, picking up the story like a relay team. “People, when they lie, they make it up from something they know. We see it every day. Like there’s a grain of truth in it. Somebody was blackmailing somebody, it’s just the other way around. If Whittier is behind this, like we think, that’s how he gets Trevor to do the murder. He says, Kill her or I’ll turn you in for the drugs you sell my kid. You can’t pull strings forever, even in this town. Maybe Whittier pays Trevor, too, to sweeten the deal.”

  “That sounds like Trevor,” Paige added sadly. “Sorry to say it, but he liked money.”

  Mary thought about it. “So now all we have to do is catch Whittier. That’s up to me.” Her mother glared at her again as she ladled scrambled eggs onto a flowered plate, and Mary recognized it not as the watch-your-language glare, but the if-you-get-yourself-killed-I’ll-kill-you glare. Only a few Italian mothers had perfected it, all members of well-known crime families. Her mother said nothing as she carried a plate of peppers and eggs over and set it in front of Mary with more clatter than necessary.

  “Eat,” her mother commanded, but Mary knew she wanted to say, Choke.

  “Mom, of course, I’ll be very, very careful,” she said, and her father smiled. “Now, as I was saying. I think it’s up to me because I’m the lawyer in the group and I can go over to Tribe without suspicion.”

  “It’s a start.” Brinkley said. He finished the last of his eggs and turned to her mother at the stove. “Vita, this was terrific. Best breakfast I ever had.”

  “You deserve,” her mother said warmly.

  Mary smiled, mystified. Brinkley was getting along with her mother better than she was. “When did you two become such good friends, Mr. I Have A Gun?”

  “Since I fixed the pilot light,” Brinkley explained, and Mary laughed, as the doorbell rang and six heads looked at the front door in alarm.

  Mary stood stricken at the silhouette of the police officers and Detective Donovan on her parents’ marble stoop and felt instantly angry at herself for bringing this into her parents’ home. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, though she suspected the answer.

  “We’re here for Detective Brinkley,” Donovan answered, self-satisfied in his black wool topcoat. “May we come in?”

  “Not unless you have a warrant,” Mary told him, but his hard eyes widened when not only Brinkley but Kovich appeared behind Mary.

  “Figured I’d find you here, Reg, but I didn’t figure on you, too, partner.” Donovan sounded sterner than his years. “I bought that dentist story.”

  Right behind Kovich and Brinkley hobbled Vita DiNunzio, flushed with anger and brandishing a wooden spoon clotted with scrambled eggs. “Whatta you doin’ inna my house?” her mother demanded, but Mary held her back.

  “Ma, relax, it’s okay,” she soothed, feeling the balance of power shift to the flying DiNunzios. It meant trouble when her mother had The Spoon. The cops had only guns. It was no contest.

  Brinkley touched her mother’s shoulder, dismay marking his thin features. “It’s okay, Vita’s all right,” he said. “Sorry this happened here, at your house. I’m going along with these gentlemen and I’ll be fine.”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. DiNunzio, is it?” Donovan said, with a smile that would get him nowhere. “We’ll be gone in a sec. If Detective Brinkley doesn’t resist us, we can avoid cuffing him.”

  “Cuffing?” Mary’s mother repeated, making the g ring out like truth, waving the eggy spoon. “I cuffa you one! You no touch Reggie Brinkley. No touch!”

  “Don’t worry, Vita,” Brinkley said again, as he grabbed his coat from the couch. On the way out, he gave Mary a hug close enough to slip something into her jacket pocket. She had a guess as to what it was, but would check later.

  “I’ll have a lawyer down there in an hour,” she told him. In front of her parents’ house idled five police cruisers, exhaust pouring from their tailpipes and turning to steam in the cold air. Uniformed cops hustled Brinkley and Kovich into the backseat of the closest car.

  Donovan flashed a smile at the DiNunzios. “Thank you very much, and sorry about the intrusion.”

  Mary’s mother snorted in a way you didn’t have to be Abruzzese to understand. “You!” She waved the spoon. “You wanna good smack?”

  Mary sat at her parents’ ancient telephone table, holding the receiver of a black rotary phone that could qualify as a blunt instrument in most jurisdictions. She would be nagging her parents to replace it with a cordless if they weren’t already so upset, huddling together on the sofa like a soft mountain of bathrobe, the wooden spoon back in its scabbard.

  “Jude,” Mary said into the receiver, when her best friend picked up. “Have I got a client for you.”

  56

  The morning stayed clear and brisk, and Mary flowed with the foot traffic in the business district. Men hurried by with their heads cocked to cell phones, and women hustled along in conversation. She remembered when she had been one of them; an inexperienced associate dressed in her most conservative clothes, hands gripped around a briefcase that contained a legal pad, a Bic, and photocopied antitrust cases. Okay, so it wasn’t all that different now. She was still inexperienced, her clothes remained conservative, and she had the same briefcase, legal pad, and Bic, though the antitrust cases had been replaced by something distinctly illegal:

  The Glock that Brinkley had slipped her when he and Kovich had been taken away.

 
; She tightened her grip on her briefcase handle, its shape and heft second nature. The gun had felt far less so when she tried to aim it in her parents’ kitchen, where she pointed prudently away from any religious paraphernalia. Of course she hadn’t fired the gun; the shot would have brought the neighborhood, the police — or worse, her mother — running. As much as Mary hated guns, she had to admit it felt better to have it along, even if it smelled faintly of oregano.

  She stopped at the corner, keeping her head down in case anyone recognized her. The Newlin saga was all over the papers; the Daily News had run a small photo of her with Jack. It was a strange feeling, seeing yourself in the paper next to a man you had fallen for. The juxtaposition was more appropriate to engagement announcements than murder stories, but she was getting way ahead of herself. Must be the gun. It got a girl crazy.

  The traffic light changed and she allowed herself to be carried off the curb and across the street, her thoughts focusing on Jack, in jail again, and what she had to do to get him out. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was clear she had to question Whittier. She would be meeting with him as Jack’s lawyer and start with the easy questions. Ask him about his talk with Jack the day of Honor’s murder. Avoid mention of what happened with Trevor; don’t put him on the defensive. If Whittier wouldn’t cooperate, which was likely given that he hadn’t returned any of her messages left with his secretary, she would confront him.

  She sighted the glass spike that housed Tribe & Wright, a block away. Moussed heads bobbed on the sidewalk ahead of her, and the air was filled with the fog from cold breath and late-breakfast cigarettes. The crowd thickened as she approached the building, and her pace quickened, hurrying unaccountably to keep an appointment she didn’t have. She hated the thought of Jack, battered, in prison. She worried what Davis would do next. Two men in front of her stalled. What was the holdup?