Courting Trouble Read online

  “Mel! Mel!” she called out, then turned around and hurried upstairs, into her bedroom. He wasn’t on the bed but the louvered door to her closet lay partway open.

  “Mel?” Anne ran over and slid open the door at the same moment as she heard an indignant meow. Mel had been sleeping among the Jimmy Choos and was stretching his front legs straight out.

  “SuperCat!” Anne scooped him up, and his warm throat thrummed in response. She teared up at the softness of him, though she knew her emotions had only partly to do with his recovery. “Let’s get outta here,” she said, her voice thick. She left the room but the cat stiffened when they reached the top of the stairs.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she soothed, but then she heard the sound of footsteps on the front stoop, outside her house. Then the metallic jiggling of the knob on her front door.

  She stopped at the top of the stairs. Somebody was at her door. She edged backward, out of the line of sight.

  Right before the front door swung wide open.

  6

  Anne stood in her second-floor hallway, scratching Mel to keep him quiet and listening to the shuffle of feet below. It sounded like a crowd, and she hoped it wasn’t the mobile crime unit. She could hear the noises of holiday traffic coming in through the open doorway. Whoever had come in the door must have been standing in the entrance hall, where Willa had been killed. Then she heard a man’s voice:

  “It looked pretty clear to us, from the spatter pattern on the east wall, here, and against the entrance-hall door. Typical full-force spatter, from the shotgun. See, here, on the frosted glass? And the floor. The rug.”

  Shit! He sounded like a cop or a detective, and Anne drew away from the stairs, hugging Mel. As much as she wished she could go to the police and tell them everything, she would never do that again. They hadn’t been able to protect her last time, and she couldn’t forget the image of a steel gun-barrel pointed at her.

  The detective was saying, “The young lawyer, Murphy, answers the front door. The shooter hits twice, two shots to the face. She falls in the entrance hall. The shooter drops the gun and takes off. He leaves the front door open. He’s gone. He’s outta there.”

  Upstairs, Anne felt vaguely sick and clutched Mel, for comfort this time. She had been right about the way it had happened, but it was so awful to contemplate. Poor Willa.

  A woman spoke next. “He dropped the gun? This guy’s no dummy.”

  Anne felt a start of recognition at the voice. It’s Bennie Rosato. What’s she doing here? She’d never been in Anne’s house before, even though she lived less than five minutes away. But Bennie visited the crime scene in murder cases she defended. It was the first step in any investigation, to meet the arguments of the prosecution and build the defense case. So why was she here?

  The detective again: “Yeh, he’s good. Ballistics has the gun. They’ll check it for prints, but that’ll take days, given the holiday. Fourth a July weekend, we had to dig to get anyone at all. My guess is it’ll turn up nothin’.”

  “I agree,” Bennie said. “This guy had this planned. Perfect timing, perfect execution.”

  “No pun,” added another man, with an abrupt laugh.

  “What did you say?” Bennie demanded.

  “That’s not funny,” chorused another voice, a woman’s.

  Another surprise. It was Judy Carrier. She must be down there, too. Judy had never come to Anne’s house when she was alive; she had turned Anne down every time she asked her to lunch. And if Judy was down there, then so was Mary, because they were joined at the hip. Anne almost laughed at the absurdity. Bennie, Mary, and Judy in my house? What provoked all this sudden interest in my life? My death?

  “I won’t waste my time teaching you manners, Detective,” Bennie said coldly. “Your apology is accepted. But I want you to know that Anne Murphy was in my care. She was my associate. She moved here to work for me and she was killed on my watch. I told her mother I’d take care of her, and I failed.”

  Told my mother? What? When? Anne was astounded. How had Bennie found her mother, much less spoken to her? And why? What was going on here?

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Rosato—”

  “Not sorry enough. Hear me—holiday or no holiday, you better find who murdered Anne Murphy before I do.”

  Upstairs, Anne felt stunned. Bennie was going to do what? Why?Anne could count on one hand the number of conversations she’d had with Bennie Rosato during the entire year she’d worked for her.

  “Now, tell me you surveyed the neighbors,” Bennie was saying.

  “Last night and this morning. Nobody saw anybody running down the street from the house, or anything suspicious at all. Everybody was either at the Party on the Parkway, or out of town, avoiding the Party on the Parkway.”

  “May I have the specifics?” From below came the sound of papers rustling, and Anne guessed that Bennie was pulling out a legal pad, and the detective his notes. But Anne couldn’t get over what she’d already heard. Told my mother she’d take care of me?

  “Here goes. House number 2255, Rick Monterosso, not home, he’s the neighbor on the east side. House number 2259, Millie and Mort Berman, neighbors on the west side, not home either. The couple across the street in 2256, Sharon Arkin and Rodger Talbott, the same. 2253, no answer at door last night or this morning, possibly out of town. 2254, the Kopowski family, out to dinner at Striped Bass. 2258, the Simmons, they were at the Parkway and didn’t get home until after the murder.”

  “So both next-door neighbors were out. Who called 911 on the gunshots? If the door was open when he shot her, which it had to be, then the shots would be heard easily down the street. And it’s not a big street.”

  “People musta thought it was firecrackers. We only got the one 911 call, guy named Bob Dodds, in 2250. I interviewed him last night, and that’s all he knows.”

  “But you have at least the one good lead, don’t you? Kevin Satorno, the stalker. If he’s out of prison.”

  What?! How did Bennie know about Kevin? Anne almost gasped. She hadn’t told anyone in Philly about him. She had wanted to put the past behind her when she moved here, and had kept him a secret. Nor had she breathed a word about Kevin in her interview with Bennie. She wanted the job and didn’t want to seem like the kind of loser who dated psychos. So how did Bennie find out? Anne felt completely bewildered. Mental note: It’s confusing to be alive after your own death.

  Bennie was saying, “Given what I read in the court file, if Satorno is out, he has to be the number-one suspect. He tried to kill her once. He may have escaped and tried to kill her again. It’s a no-brainer. I had the case file hand-delivered to you. Did you read it?”

  “I read the file, of course,” the detective replied, testy. “I called the DA in charge in Los Angeles. I’m waiting on the call back, but it’s Fourth a July in California, too, Ms. Rosato. He’s on vacation.”

  “They told me that, too, but they wouldn’t give me his number in Hawaii. Do you have it?”

  “I didn’t ask. He’s on vaca—”

  “I don’t get something. Kevin Satorno is a state prisoner in California. How hard can it be to find him?” Bennie laughed without mirth. “You’re supposed to know where he is, at least most of the time.”

  Give ’em hell, Bennie. Anne felt heartened. She went to the banister and peeked over, with Mel tight in her arms. She could see Bennie standing in her living room, a tangle of long blond hair trailing untamed down the back of her blue workshirt, which she wore with faded jean shorts and beat-up New Balance sneakers. Her legs were superbuff from rowing, a sport Bennie seemed to like, despite the exercise required. At present Anne was revising her views on the woman, but not on exercise.

  The detective was out of eyeshot, but Anne could hear him explaining, “If it weren’t the weekend this would be easy. We know he was sentenced to twenty-four months and started out in L.A. County, but they transferred him a few times, and we’re not sure where he ended up. He could be on parole.”

&nb
sp; “But you would know if he was paroled, or even escaped.”

  “Not yet. Paroled, we got the same problem as finding out where he’s incarcerated. Gotta talk to the right people, and they’re not in the holiday weekend. Escaped, it’s still no picnic.”

  Bennie snorted. “I can’t believe that. You can’t even find out if he’s escaped?”

  “From the joint in California? Believe it. If some knucklehead gets outta state prison in any state, somebody has to enter his name in NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, outta Washington. Nobody knows nothin’ ‘til the name gets entered, and it has to get entered by a person, who has the time and is workin’ the Fourth a July weekend.” The detective paused. “Even if it gets entered, we get about a million of those teletypes a day. We never look through ’em, we don’t have the time, or any reason to.”

  “Now you have a reason to.”

  “I got a gal goin’ through them right now, but you have any idea how many we’re talkin’ about? There are 75,000 walk-aways in Philly alone, right now. And fifty of them are wanted for murder.”

  “What’s a ‘walk-away’?” Bennie asked. “What it sounds like?”

  “Yeh. Fugitives at large. Bad guys, who walk away from work release or skip bail. Failures to appear, all wanted on bench warrants. This Kevin Satorno wasn’t even locked up for murder, only ag assault. In the scheme of things, he’s a nobody. And he’s not even one of our nobodies. He’s a California nobody.”

  A nobody? Upstairs, Anne felt sick. She knew Kevin had started out in L.A. County Jail but had lost track of him after that, too. She’d wanted to put the past behind her. Only it wasn’t the past anymore.

  “So what is the department doing to find Satorno, if he’s out?” Bennie was asking, downstairs. “He clearly intended to kill Anne, and only to kill her. There wasn’t even an attempt at robbery, and no evidence of rape.”

  “The department can’t proceed on the assumption that he’s out, Ms. Rosato. We don’t have that luxury. It’s not like we got the manpower. We got only forty uniformed cops total in the Center City District, twenty in the Sixth District and twenty in the Ninth. They got all they can handle with the holiday, that’s why we released the scene. I can’t assign them to look for a guy that may be locked up.” The detective paused. “You wouldn’t know if Satorno has contacted the victim recently, would you?”

  “No.” Bennie turned to her left, out of Anne’s view. “Do you guys know? Carrier? DiNunzio?”

  Anne peeked farther over the banister, and Mel stiffened. He didn’t want to get anywhere downstairs, near the bloodstained entrance hall. She caught sight of Judy, in her well-loved overalls, a fresh yellow T-shirt, and a lemony bandanna.

  Judy was shaking her head. “No. Sorry. I didn’t know anything about Satorno until you told me today.”

  Suddenly, a hiccupy sob interrupted the conversation, a sound so emotional that it was almost embarrassing in public. Instantly Bennie turned around on her heels, as did Judy, just as a second sob came from the right, where Mary must have been. Anne couldn’t help but hang over the banister, and the sight made her own throat catch with surprise:

  Mary was weeping, making a petite, crestfallen figure sunk into Anne’s sofa. She had buried her face in her hands, and her thin shoulders shuddered with sobs. Her hair was in disarray, and khaki shorts and sleeveless white shirt lacked their usual neatness.

  “It’s all right, Mary,” Judy soothed, coming over and looping an arm around her friend. “They’ll catch the guy, you’ll see.”

  “I . . . can’t think about that.” Mary’s voice quavered though her sobs. Her cheeks looked mottled and her neck blotchy. “I just can’t . . . believe this happened. It’s so terrible that . . . she was killed. The way she was killed.”

  Upstairs, Anne watched the scene, mystified by their reactions as well as her own. Mary DiNunzio, who doesn’t even know me, is crying for me. And, for some reason, I feel like shit.

  Bennie went to Mary and placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Mary, maybe we should get you back to the office.”

  “That’s all right, I’m all right.” Mary’s sobs began to subside. Pain ebbed from her features and she held her palms against her cheeks as if to cool them. “I mean, there’s blood everywhere. It’s her blood!”

  “I know, I know,” Judy was saying, stroking Mary’s back. “You want to wait outside? Why don’t you wait outside?”

  Bennie turned briefly to the detectives. “Maybe you could give us a few minutes alone,” she said.

  “Sure thing,” they answered, in grateful unison. In the next minute, the front door opened again, a square of light reappearing on the living room carpet and the outside noise resurging. The detectives left and shut the door only partway behind them, and they stood on the stoop. In the next second, Anne smelled cigarette smoke wafting through the open front door. She moved closer to the landing, and her gaze returned to Mary.

  “I mean, Bennie, do you see this?” Mary was stretching a small hand toward the entrance hall, and Anne could see the trembling of her fingers. “There’s blood all over it. But we’re standing here, the three of us, talking like it’s a case or something. But it’s Anne we’re talking about!” Her voice rose, thinning out with anxiety. “Anne Murphy was killed here! Not a client, one of us! And she’s gone! Murdered! Did you both forget that?”

  Wow! Upstairs, Anne stood transfixed by the outburst. It was so unlike Mary to criticize anybody, much less Bennie and Judy, and they looked completely astonished.

  Judy stopped stroking Mary’s back. “We know it’s her, Mary. We didn’t forget that. We’re here trying to figure out who did this, to bring him in.”

  “What’s the difference?” Mary shouted. “We can find the guy, but it doesn’t bring her back. She’s dead, and you know what? We didn’t know the first thing about her. We worked with her for a year and we never even got to know her. I dated Jack for two months and knew more about him!”

  “We were busy,” Judy said, defensive. “We were working. We had the Dufferman trial, then Witco. Maybe that’s why you’re upset, because of your breakup—”

  “That’s not it, it’s Anne! It’s Murphy, whatever she wants to be called. Wanted to be called.”

  “Murphy,” Judy supplied, but Bennie was shaking her head.

  “No, I think she went by that because I called her that. I think. She introduced herself as Anne, at her interview.”

  “Whatever!” Mary exploded. “It’s us! We didn’t make the time for her! We didn’t even try. We don’t even know her name. She told us she had a date tonight. Did she? Who was the date? Is he the killer? We don’t even know! And now it turns out she had a stalker who tried to kill her last year, and who she even prosecuted! We never even knew that!”

  Judy looked defensive. “Murphy kept it all a secret, she was so private—”

  “What about the motion, Judy? She wasn’t keeping that so private. She brought a stripper into court, and we had to learn it from the news! She probably wanted to tell us when she came to my office last night, but we cut her off!” Mary’s eyes welled up again, but she blinked them clear. “We’re supposed to be an all-woman firm, what a joke! We don’t even support each other. What’s the difference between us, anyway? Men or women, in the end we acted just like lawyers.”

  “You’re just feeling guilty, Mare.”

  “I agree! I feel very guilty! And you know what, I should! You should, too!” Mary turned on her best friend, beside her on the couch. “You know what the truth is, Jude? You never liked Murphy. Anne. Whatever. You didn’t like her at all. That’s why you’re not upset.”

  Whoa. Anne was shocked. She felt like she shouldn’t be watching, but she couldn’t help herself. It was such good gossip, the fact that it was about her was almost beside the point.

  “I am upset!” Judy insisted, but Mary was out of control.

  “You are not! That whole time I was out sick, you avoided her. She asked you out to lunch, you t
urned her down all the time. You didn’t like her from the beginning. And you know why? Because she was so gorgeous! You thought she wore too much makeup, with the lipstick all the time.”

  They talk about my lipstick? Anne couldn’t believe the irony.

  “She did wear too much makeup!” Judy was going red in the face, too. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not upset—”

  “Why were we that way? I swear, it’s some kind of biological thing, to compete with other women for men, even when there are no men around. It’s sick! And when are we gonna rise above it?”

  “It wasn’t just her looks—”

  “You thought she used her looks!” Mary erupted, pointing. “You said it yourself, Judy! That Anne never would have gotten Chipster if she weren’t so hot.”

  Yikes! Upstairs, Anne couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She wasn’t supposed to know any of this and suddenly didn’t want to. Kind of.

  “Well, that much is true!” Judy finally shouted back. “How does a rookie get a case that big? The client knew her in law school? Gimme a break! You want to get real, Mary? Okay, let’s get real. Gil Martin never would have hired Anne if she hadn’t looked the way she did.” Judy’s head snapped around to Bennie, the bandanna flopping. “You had to wonder about it, Bennie. Why did Gil hire Anne, the youngest of all of us? The lawyer with the least experience? How many cases has she tried? One?”

  But Bennie was already waving her hands, trying to settle the fight. “Calm down, both of you,” she said, her voice even as a judge’s. “Mary, you know, you’re right. We all could have been more welcoming to Anne, and we weren’t. We were busy—as Judy says—but that’s no excuse.” Bennie leaned over, squeezed Mary’s shoulder, and gave her a gentle shake. “But blaming each other won’t help Anne now. It didn’t cause her murder.”