“Who’s assigned to Cavuto?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. I left a message. I even told the desk detective all about the Escalade, so they can issue an APB.”
“Which they won’t do.”
“Not yet.”
“So you gonna wait for him to call back?”
“What do you think?” Mary smiled.
“He leaves us with no alternative, does he?” Judy grinned back, but Mary’s smile faded.
“Us?”
“Of course, us. It’s always us.”
“Not this time.” Mary rose and picked up her purse and bag. She’d stow the bag in her office. It would only burden her, where she was going. “You have a conference call, you should take it.”
“I’ll say I got sick.”
“No, I’m going on my own.”
“But it’s dangerous.”
“Not really. I’m just going to look around a little.”
“Alone? You?” Judy’s eyes flared. “You get scared by yourself. Remember the Della Porta case? You got heebie-jeebies at the murder scene. You wouldn’t even get out of the car.”
Mary smiled. It was true. That was before Montana. Now she was determined. “I can do it alone. If you got shot, I couldn’t take the guilt.”
“You got shot on one of my cases, and I didn’t give it a thought.”
“Ha! You know you love me.” Mary laughed, hoisting her heavy bag higher onto her shoulder. “See ya.”
“No, wait!” Judy called out, but the phone started ringing again, and Mary was off and running.
Rain pelted Mary’s shoulders in her go-to navy blazer, and she stood as close as possible to Frank Cavuto’s building. Wet crime-scene tape crisscrossed the front door, collecting rain so that DO NOT CRO was all anybody could read. It made her sick at heart. She had seen way too much crime-scene tape even in her short career; now it was all over TV shows and party gags. For Mary, murder would never be remotely funny. As far as she was concerned, all crime-scene tape should read: SOMETHING UNSPEAKABLE HAPPENED HERE.
Soggy Acme carnations wrapped in crinkly plastic blanketed the front stoop, next to sprayed daises and wilted roses, their stems encased in green plastic straws. Hallmark cards had been Scotch-taped to the door but were now drenched, and one hung open, showing all the nouns underlined in now-dripping marker; Sympathy and Sorrow and Sadness. A tiny Italian flag had been wedged in the mail slot, and it moved slightly in the rain. Frank had mattered so much to this community. He had been loved.
Frank, what did you do that got you killed?
She stood on tiptoe and peered through the small glass window in the door. It was dark inside; she couldn’t see a thing. Then she heard a sound behind her and turned, startled. A homeless man was standing there, in a Phillies cap and a stained Dorney Park T-shirt. It was raining on his skinny shoulders, which were already saturated, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“That guy got shot,” the man said. “They shot him, they did.”
“I know.”
“Neighborhood’s goin’ to hell,” he said, shuffling on, and Mary’s blood pressure returned to normal. She glanced around, uneasy. She’d taken the bus to get here, making sure she wasn’t followed, and hadn’t seen the Escalade. She glanced again, double-checking, but it was nowhere in sight. Not that she felt safe. She wouldn’t feel safe until Frank’s killer had been caught and she learned the truth.
Mary glanced around one last time and saw nothing amiss, so she left the stoop to walk around the front of the building to the corner, where Frank’s office was. The large window with dirty glass was covered by a drawn curtain. Damn! Mary reached into her handbag, rummaged around, and pulled out a brown spongy cowboy hat on a key ring, one of her presents to herself from the Missoula airport. At one end was a tiny penlight, and she flashed it around the window, discovering nothing except that the curtain had a cheap cotton lining.
Thunder clapped in the night sky, and rain soaked her suit and hair. She was getting nowhere fast and was cold and wet to boot. She looked around, blinking water from her eyes. Only light traffic sped in the hard rain down a slick Broad Street. A mostly-empty SEPTA bus barreled along, churning gutter water in its huge corrugated tires, spraying watery grit. The bus zoomed past the empty kiosk in front of Frank’s office. The sidewalks were completely vacant, owing to the thunderstorm, and evidently even the crazy man in the Phillies cap had sought shelter.
Mary glanced around one more time, to make sure the coast was clear. When it was, she made her move.
Twenty-Two
Mary edged away from the window, hustled along the Broad Street side of Frank’s building, then took a right at the corner. Typically the cross streets were residential except for the mom-and-pop corner grocery/beauty parlor/florist, and well-kept rowhouses stretched in a line of unbroken brick down the street, their gray marble stoops light spots in the downpour. It was a nice, safe neighborhood, except when girl lawyers were on the prowl.
Mary stole down the street in the darkness, following a hunch that turned out to be correct. On her right, tucked behind Frank’s building, she found what every resident of South Philly longed for — a parking space. Frank’s space was in a paved lot that was the exact footprint of a rowhouse, which he had undoubtedly bought, torn down, and paved for this purpose. And unless she was wrong, there would be a back door to his office. She stepped onto the asphalt of the parking lot and froze.
A motion detector! Bright light flooded the tiny lot, suddenly illuminating the back door, a window next to it, and a paralyzed lawyer. Mary sprang backward out of the brightness, then flattened in the shadow against the building, its coarse brick clammy beneath her palms. She edged sideways while the light remained on, and she could tick off the seconds with the sound of her own nervous breaths.
Rain hurtled down and she spent a fleeting moment wondering if she was about to commit a venial or a mortal sin, then reconsidered. THOU SHALT NOT STEAL didn’t necessarily encompass THOU SHALT NOT BREAK IN, and after all, someone had broken into her office, so turnabout was fair play. At least she was furthering the cause of justice, which should count for extra credit in the God Department.
Click! The security light went off in the next instant, and she waited a minute more, getting thoroughly drenched. Then she hurried back to the parking lot and the window, and when thunder shattered the sky, hopefully deafening the neighbors, she shoved her fist in her purse and put the entire assembly through the glass window, which broke easily. Then she climbed inside.
The window dumped her into darkness and she landed on her butt in what felt like a hallway, because her head was against one wall and her wet shoes against another, less than three feet away. She didn’t dare turn on a light, but she reached for her bag on the floor next to her, got out her trusty Montana penlight, and flicked it on. A pool of light roughly the size of a dime roamed uselessly over the walls of the hallway, and Mary got up. Shards of glass tinkled to the floor. She grabbed her bag and shook herself off, hearing more tinkling sounds, and aimed the penlight down the hallway, then hurried into the dark corridor. Frank’s office would be on the right, closest to the corner, and she turned.
Into a wall.
Clunk! She rubbed her nose and reminded herself not to go faster than she could see, then waved the penlight around until she found an open doorway and walked through, casting the flashlight around. It was the reception area, so she must have been near the front of the office building. Damn! She walked again to the right, looking for Frank’s office and after she’d tripped only twice, she found it. Partly because of the odor.
Mary wrinkled her nose. That smell, she knew from other crime scenes. It was blood, decomposing blood. The old Mary would have run screaming or maybe cried, but the new Mary scorned such lame-ass, estrogen-fueled responses, so she gritted her teeth and moved forward through the threshold she knew led to Frank’s office.
She cast the penlight around, watching it wander like a laser pointer over certificates
and law degrees and finally, her own photo in the group shot of the old softball team. She experienced a pang of times lost, then of Frank. He was dead, someone had murdered him, and now she wanted to know who. She took a step toward the desk, and the scent of his blood intensified here, becoming part of the office forever. She became vaguely aware that she was avoiding whatever Frank’s desk looked like, since he had been shot there.
Lame, lame, lame. Grow up, cowgirl. Look.
The penlight found a splotch of brownish blood on the desk, where papers had been undisturbed, and Mary felt her stomach turn over. Or maybe it was somebody else’s stomach, since she was tougher now, and she walked around the desk, the primal smell filling her nostrils. She gasped when the penlight inadvertently found blood spatter against the wall behind the desk, blanketing the photos that hung there.
The penlight fell on Frank’s desk, which had been ransacked, every drawer pulled out and left on the floor. Bills, receipts, pencils, and pens spilled everywhere, just as they had in Mary’s office. She squatted on her haunches and aimed the penlight at the first drawer in the middle. The penlight seared a white circle into the drawer, and the lock had been broken, wedged completely out of the drawer, leaving even the walnut splintered like balsa.
Mary crouched closer and turned a sharp piece of wood over with the penlight, like a kid examining driftwood on the beach. The killer had taken whatever papers, if any, Frank had in the desk. The cops would think they were looking for money or petty cash, but she wasn’t buying that either. What could have been in there? She took one last look around at the debris scattered behind the desk but saw nothing that mattered. All the time, she was wondering, if Frank had papers relating to Saracone, where else would they be? Then it hit her.
A safe. Mary rose and started looking behind the certificates and photos. No safe. She remembered that Frank had mentioned a will vault. Was it literal? She searched his bookshelves, behind his books, and through the drawers in a credenza against the wall. No safe or vault. Then she realized she’d been going about it the wrong way. She should just troll the office and see what the killer had destroyed; if he’d found a safe, she’d found a safe. She took a slow once-over of the office again, trying not to breathe the horrible odor or see anything too upsetting, which was a neat trick at a murder scene. But there was nothing. No safe. No vault. Strike one.
She left the office and cast a light around the secretary’s area, then reconsidered. Frank had to have a file room, didn’t he? All lawyers had file rooms, and he had even mentioned one at their meeting. She hurried past the reception area, toward the hallway leading to the parking lot, but right before she got to the hallway was an open door. She flashed the light and walked in, where it smelled oddly rosy. She cast the light around.
A toilet, seat up, and on the back rested a can of pink Glade air freshener. Strike two. She went out again and cast the penlight around the hallway. There it was; another door, halfway open. She went inside and found herself in a room that even smelled tiny and cramped, the air stale with old coffee. She flicked the penlight around her, full circle. A wooden table held a Mr. Coffee coffeemaker and the usual array of cups, sugars, plastic stirrers, and powdered creamers. Mary scanned the file room, pivoting quickly on her heel, and noticed that the room had no windows. Good. She went back to the door, closed it securely, and found a light switch, which she flicked on. Fluorescent panels went on overhead, filling the room with harsh light, which was when she saw it.
A recessed frame in the wall near the baseboard had been completely demolished. White and gray plaster had been cut away, wire mesh wrenched out of shape, and wooden studs in the wall had been cut, as if with a crude saw. Mary knelt before it, examining it. Even an idiot could tell that a safe had been extracted from this spot, like a diseased tooth. Was it the will vault that Frank had mentioned? How had they carried it out? Put it on a dolly and wheeled it? Mary considered it. It would have made more sense than trying to bust it open here, and taking it away would clinch the police theory of a break-in.
Damn. She rose slowly, looking at the file cabinets next to the hole. Banks and banks of them; beige, standard-issue Hons in four-drawer stacks. She set upon the filing cabinet, pulling each drawer out and closing it again. Each drawer contained only case files in legal-size manila folders, suspended on Pendaflex hangers and filed by plaintiff’s name, and she went through the first few. There was nothing remotely suspicious about the files, then Mary had another thought.
She eyed the carefully hand-printed labels in the front of each drawer, starting with Ab–Ar. She took a quick look at the B drawer for Brandolini, but there was no Brandolini file for Amadeo or Theresa. But it was at least possible that there was a Saracone file. Mary scanned the drawers until she reached the S s, then yanked on the third drawer, fourth row: Sa–Su. Inside were more case files, starting with Sabella v. Oregon Avenue Painting and Plastering, and she thumbed through the case files until she reached where Saracone’s would be. There was no manila folder.
She stopped, momentarily stumped. Either there was no case file for Saracone or the killer had taken it, leaving no sign that the file cabinets had been disturbed. Smart. Had he left a sign, the cops would have suspected it was more than a robbery for cash. Mary tried to think what to do next. No safe, no nothing, no sign of anything linking Saracone to Frank.
She felt her shoulders slump. Maybe her Saracone search was a dry hole. Maybe it really had been a robbery and murder. Maybe huckleberries didn’t have superpowers. She sighed audibly and lowered her head, resting it on her arm as it lay on the open file drawer, which was when her gaze fell on the two bottom drawers, after the Z s. BILLING, read the label, with last year’s date, then this year. Of course! Why hadn’t she thought of that? Every lawyer kept a copy of his bills in a separate file, in addition to the copy that would be in the case file, for tax and accounting purposes.
Mary closed the drawer, squatted on the carpet, and pulled out the drawer for last year’s bills. The first manila folder read JANUARY, and the others were the months of the year, in chronological order. She flipped through January, reading bills sent to a variety of South Philly residents and small businesses, most of them for a few thousand dollars. Nothing. Mary paged through February, which was more of the same, then continued through March, April, and May. By June, she was beginning to lose hope, but then she hit the middle of June and stopped cold.
There it was. Right in the middle of the stack. A bill, and under the client name, at the top, it read: Giovanni Saracone. Mary read the bill, which merely stated: Payment on semiannual retainer. The amount — $250,000.
What? A retainer of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Mary almost laughed out loud. That was insane! Not only was it way out of line with Frank’s other bills, even her old white-shoe firm, Grun & Chase, didn’t have more than a handful of clients with retainers of that magnitude. A case demanding those fees would be in the news every day! What type of case could Frank be handling for Saracone that would justify those fees? And twice a year?
Mary skipped back to the year before that, and thumbed through the bill copies. Again, midway in the pack, on the fifteenth, was a file copy of a bill to Giovanni Saracone. The amount was $250,000. Again, unlike the other bills, not even a brief description of the services rendered. What kind of client accepted that for a retainer accounting? None. Mary could barely contain herself.
What gives? Five hundred grand a year billed to Saracone? For what? For how long? And did it have anything to do with Amadeo? It must have. Here was a link between Saracone and Frank. Mary just didn’t know what it meant. Her gaze shifted to the drawer with even older bills, and it took her only five minutes to find the June and December bills to Saracone, again totaling $500,000. She checked the year before that and the two before that, going back a total of five years. Each year had the same bill copies, coming to half a million dollars for five years. Two and a half million dollars. It bought a lot of softball jerseys. How long had it been g
oing on, and why?
If there had been a Saracone case file, it had been taken, but Mary didn’t think there had been a case involving Saracone at all. Ever. The timing didn’t make sense; most small litigation matters didn’t last that long. And the killers hadn’t thought to look here in the billing files because they didn’t know about them — for once, the bad guys weren’t lawyers. Mary’s thoughts raced ahead. These had to have been some sort of payments from Saracone to Frank, disguised as legal bills. Did Frank know something — maybe about Amadeo’s murder — that Saracone wanted silenced? If so, why not kill him a long time ago? And who invoiced for blackmail?
Mary’s hands trembled as she held the folder. She didn’t want to risk Exhibits A through F disappearing when the bad guys figured out what they’d left behind. She’d lost enough documents for one case, in the drawings. She took the Saracone bill from the file folder, then went back to the other folders and took out all the Saracone bills going back all five years. She stacked the bills, folded them over, and stuck them in her purse; then she replaced the file folders, closed the drawers, and left the file room, turning off the light. Good girls conserved electricity and avoided detection.
She hurried down the hallway, climbed back out of the shattered window, and headed down the street in the rain. She had broken at least one commandment, THOU SHALT NOT STEAL LEGAL BILLS, but she was too jiggered up to question her conduct or even to feel guilty. She clutched her purse protectively to her chest, out of the rain. Because inside were the bills, with a very valuable address.
So she knew exactly where to go next.
Twenty-Three
The thunderstorm showed no signs of letting up, and rain pelted the roof of Mary’s ancient BMW and struck her windows, clouding what her breath didn’t fog. She’d gone home for her car and never once thought about turning back or even stopping for coffee, she was so excited. She drove pedal-to-the-metal past acres of dark hills, shadows of cornfields, and winding country roads, to a place called Birchrunville, then looked around for the house. It wasn’t hard to find in such a small, apparently exclusive place. The town boasted one intersection, a quaint post office, and an elegant restaurant called the Birchrunville Cafe, and was moneyed in a completely tasteful way. Mary never would have guessed that an Italian from Philly would end up in such ritzy country. But then again, she didn’t know enough about Giovanni Saracone.