Vicki stopped feeling sorry for herself, at least temporarily, and picked up the phone. There was work to do. She had made a mental list of all her credit cards and spent the next half hour getting each toll-free number from 1-800 information, then canceling the cards. She ordered a new ATM card, rush delivery, and she’d still have to get a new driver’s license and DOJ creds. She sighed and lay back in the pillows, to devise a good lie to explain how they’d been lost. She closed her eyes against the lamplight. Her mind wandered and her thoughts flowed where they would. She was still for another minute, then she reached over and picked up the phone, dialed a number, and waited.
One ring, two rings, three rings, four. After five rings, the answering machine switched on and said:
“You have reached Grandmaster Bob Morton, and, yes, I am even better-looking than I sound. Please leave a message for me and The Commodores.” The tape segued instantly into Morty’s trademark song, “Brick House.”
Vicki felt a wrenching deep within her chest. She listened to the song, then hung up, and dialed again. She did that four more times, and by the fifth time, she felt better just holding the receiver, listening to Morty, feeling connected to him, somehow. Tonight she didn’t know what to do about his murder, but tomorrow she would. She had to. She couldn’t help feeling she was on to something, and she couldn’t leave it to the cops, ATF, or anyone else. Morty was her partner. Vicki hung on to the phone long after the song had finished, and when the tears came, she let them slide down her cheeks until she fell soundly asleep.
Rring! Rring! It was the telephone that woke Vicki up, her face stuffed in her pillow. She cracked a scratchy eye at her alarm clock. The red digital numbers read 8:15. She had slept in.
Rring! Rring! She pushed herself up from the bed and reached for the phone.
“Vick.” Dan, his voice unusually grave. “You near a TV?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Turn it on. Right now.”
“Why? I’m asleep.”
“Just do it.”
Vicki reached for the remote on the nightstand and flicked on the TV, set to channel ten. Grisly images flickered across the screen: yellow crime scene tape, uniformed cops standing around a row house, a black van, and a low metal gurney on wheels, bearing a black body bag. In the next scene, a pretty blond reporter said:
“Arissa Bristow was found dead this morning of multiple stab wounds. The body was discovered in Mrs. Bristow’s West Philadelphia home, and police have no suspects at the present time.” Then the screen changed to a commercial for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
My God. The news stunned Vicki. She felt suddenly chilled in the bedroom and yanked the comforter from the bed, wrapping it around her naked form.
“Isn’t Bristow your straw’s last name?” Dan asked. “Think she’s a relation?”
“It’s her mother.” Vicki muted the commercials, numb.
“Her mother killed, the night after Morty? Think it’s a coincidence?”
Vicki couldn’t answer. Her head was spinning, tangling her thoughts. Dan didn’t know what had happened last night. She hadn’t had the chance to tell him. She didn’t know where to begin.
“Vick? You okay?”
“I met her, I was there,” Vicki started to say, but she couldn’t finish. I should have stayed with Mrs. Bristow. I should have made sure she got home safe. Her knees went weak, and she felt herself sinking down onto the bed in the comforter.
“Vick, what’s going on?”
“I wish I knew.”
“I’m coming over. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“You don’t have to,” Vicki said, but she was interrupted by the ringing of her doorbell downstairs, followed by a loud pounding on her front door. The sound frightened her, unaccountably. “There’s someone at the door. I have to go.”
“Vick?”
“Hold on.” Vicki shed the comforter and looked around the room for something to put on. She felt more naked than she was. Something felt very wrong. Suddenly, events were getting ahead of her, out of control. The knocking pounded louder on the door. She had to get dressed. She had to go. “Dan?” she heard herself say.
“I’ll be right over, baby,” he answered, understanding instantly.
SEVENTEEN
Five minutes later, a scene was taking place that Vicki couldn’t have imagined if she’d tried. Two Philly homicide detectives sat across from her on her couch, and against the front wall stood Chief Bale. He had shifted into official mode, unsmiling under his groomed mustache, his dark eyes a mixture of distance and disapproval. He wore his Saturday best, jeans and a black turtleneck under his camel-hair topcoat, but his manner was anything but casual. The cops sat on one side of the coffee table, Vicki sat on the other, and between them on the coffee table, in a clear plastic evidence bag, was her black Kate Spade wallet.
She’d felt almost physically sick when they’d set it down like a trump card. Next to it lay two smaller evidence bags, one that contained her green-and-white plastic library card and the other a curled-up white paper card, her membership to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Evidently, crack addicts wouldn’t be seeing the new Manet exhibit. And if Vicki screwed up now, neither would she. She didn’t know if Chief Bale was here as friend or foe, but you didn’t have to be a former ADA to realize that the detectives were here to question her in connection with Mrs. Bristow’s murder. The wallet made her a lead, if not a suspect.
“Your wallet was found on the body,” the black detective said. His name was Albert Melvin, and he was young and attractive; clear brown eyes, a generous mouth, and a brawny build in a black leather jacket that seemed to retain the winter cold. He’d shaved his head completely, a macho look that struck Vicki as incongruous with his warm, if official, smile. She was guessing he’d taken the test only recently, because she didn’t know him and he wasn’t as dressed up as your standard Philly homicide detective. Detective Melvin gestured at his evidence array on the coffee table. “This is your wallet, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“No money was in it. No credit cards, no driver’s license. Just the membership card and the library card.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“How did Ms. Bristow get your wallet? Do you know?”
“Yes, she took it from me, last night. My wallet and my cell phone.” Vicki told herself to stay calm. She could ask for a lawyer, but it would signal that she had something to hide, and Bale would fire her again, after he fired her for going to see Mrs. Bristow in the first place. She could represent herself; she knew how the Philly detectives put their cases together and she could anticipate the questions they’d ask. “I’d like to explain what happened, if I may.”
“Please do,” Detective Melvin answered, with his official smile. Next to him on the couch, the other detective made a note in his steno pad, his dark head bent so his pinkish bald spot showed. He wore glasses and a navy suit, with a skinny striped tie.
“First, I’m an AUSA and I had nothing to do with Arissa Bristow’s murder.” Vicki met Detective Melvin’s eye to show him she wasn’t guilty, which turned out to be harder than she’d expected. She didn’t kill Mrs. Bristow, but she did feel guilty about the murder, and even she could hear it taint her tone. “I did meet Mrs. Bristow last night and may well have been the last person to see her alive, depending on what the coroner told you about time of death.” Vicki waited a minute, but they weren’t volunteering any information. “Let me start at the beginning, which is when I left Chief Bale’s office yesterday, before noon.”
Suddenly there was a loud knock on the front door, and everyone turned.
Dan. “I’ll get it.” Vicki practically jumped to her feet and ran to the door, opening it onto a blast of frosty air that wasn’t completely weather-related. Dan was acting casual despite the fact that he was standing on the front step with two uniformed cops. Of course, they’d want to search.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Dan said, with an ironic smile.
Vicki’s neighbors across the street, Mrs. Holloway and the three kids, were at their window, gawking at the two squad cars that sat double-parked in front of her house.
“Come in, everybody,” Vicki said, as if she were the perfect hostess. The three men trundled into the house, and she closed the door after them, getting her bearings as the cops introduced themselves. She shook their hands, still in cold black gloves. “I’d make coffee for you, officers, but I’m busy being interrogated.”
The cops laughed, and Dan quickly masked his surprise at Bale’s presence. “Hey, Chief,” he said.
Bale merely grunted in response.
Detective Melvin smiled again. “Ms. Allegretti, do you mind if the officers look around?”
Dan’s eyes widened. “They’re really gonna search your house? For God’s sake, why?”
“Go right ahead, officers.” Vicki had no choice but to authorize a consent search. She signed the form when they produced it, with Bale watching her every move, leaning back against the wall again, his arms crossed. She turned to Detective Melvin. “They’re welcome to look anywhere. The clothes I was wearing last night are in the upstairs bedroom. It’s a black suit, and it’s probably on the floor. You’ll find hair and fibers from Mrs. Bristow’s house on my clothes, and vice versa. I can explain all of that.”
“Thanks.” Detective Melvin nodded in a way that directed the officers out of the room, and Vicki eased onto the couch while the detectives resettled themselves on the other side of the coffee table. A bewildered Dan Malloy remained standing for a moment in his jeans and his black down jacket, then he walked around the coffee table and sat down next to Vicki, who hoped her gratitude didn’t show.
“Well, here’s what I did yesterday, from noon onward,” she began, while the other detective started to take notes. She proceeded to tell them everything, including her call to Dan, but not her call to Morty’s answering machine because she was already feeling exposed enough. In the background, the clinking of her pots and pans told her cops were searching her kitchen. Vicki took a deep, final breath. “That’s the truth, and the whole truth.”
“I see.” Detective Melvin looked up from his steno notebook, which he’d pulled out of his back pocket in mid-lecture. His expression seemed relieved and his frown had vanished. They weren’t charging her today, anyway. “I do have a few questions. Was there—”
“Wait a minute,” Dan interrupted, leaning forward on his knees. “You guys can’t really think that Vicki is a suspect in this murder, or, for that matter, in anybody’s murder. I mean, this is ridiculous!”
“We have to investigate our leads, sir.”
“Get real, detective. The wallet’s not a lead.” Dan snorted. He’d been a federal prosecutor for so long, he thought the locals were dummies, and it showed. “Who kills someone and leaves their wallet behind with a library card?”
“We didn’t say it wasn’t strange, sir.”
“You know a lot of killers belong to the art museum? Obviously, that crack addict stole Vicki’s wallet. I mean, what are you thinking? Vicki’s a criminal? She’s law enforcement. An AUSA, for God’s sake!”
“Dan, let them ask the questions they need to.” Vicki worried he was going too far. Behind her, the clinking from the kitchen had stopped and was replaced by the heavy tread of the officers’ thick-soled shoes as they climbed the stairs to her second floor.
“But they’re stupid questions!” Dan exploded, and Bale waved him into silence, at the same time that Vicki leapt in.
“Please, detective, you were saying.”
Detective Melvin resettled. “Ms. Allegretti, how much money was in your wallet?
“About fifty dollars. Also, my credit cards, a driver’s license, and an ATM card. And my Justice creds,” Vicki added, as if they were an afterthought, but Bale rolled his eyes. Now they would both have to think of a lie.
“Did you report it stolen to the police?”
“No, I didn’t think it would matter. I chalked it up to bad luck.”
Detective Melvin made a note. “I assume you won’t mind us contacting the people you mentioned, including your parents.”
Oh, great. “Of course not. Feel free.” Vicki recited their addresses and phone numbers, which the detectives wrote down in unison. She would have to call her parents and explain why cops would be calling them, which bothered her almost as much as the officers searching her bedroom. She experienced the completely paranoid fear that they’d plant something incriminating in her house. Then again, she also believed that blow dryers jumped spontaneously into bathtubs.
“Now, you said you visited Arissa Bristow to investigate the murder of the ATF case agent. Did you believe that Reheema or her mother was responsible for this murder?”
“Honestly, I didn’t know. That’s what I was trying to follow up on.” Vicki paused. If they were thinking about possible motives for her to kill Mrs. Bristow, it was a stretch. Did she kill Reheema’s mother to get back at Reheema for having the CI killed? Too much. And how would the teenagers have known she and Morty would be at the house? Or was their theory more tenuous, like that Vicki killed Mrs. Bristow as revenge for Reheema having her partner killed? No, motive didn’t exist. “But after what I learned, I’m not sure that Reheema was involved in any conspiracy to kill my CI or Morty.”
Bale glowered, shifting his weight uneasily from one loafer to another. He didn’t want her thinking about stuff like this, much less talking about it, but she couldn’t stop now. And she was still curious: “Detective Melvin, the news report said that Mrs. Bristow was found in her home, stabbed to death. What was the estimated time of death?”
“Around seven-thirty last night.”
The sentence struck Vicki like a body blow. I should have gone after her. I shouldn’t have been scared off by that man in the hood.
“Ms. Allegretti?” the detective asked, and Dan put a comforting hand on her arm.
“Vick. You okay?”
Vicki found her voice. “She was killed right after I left.”
“Of course, as you probably know, these things are never exact. It’s always give or take a half an hour.”
“I know.” Vicki was trying to piece things together. While I was eating lamb chops, Mrs. Bristow was being killed. “My cell was already gone by that time.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I called it from a gas station and a man answered. Maybe he had something to do with her murder.” Vicki felt a rush of adrenaline. Had she talked on the phone to Mrs. Bristow’s murderer? “Think about it. Mrs. Bristow had the wallet and cell, and she’d trade the phone and money for crack. Then she’d go somewhere — probably home — to smoke. The man could have followed her home, taken the drugs and killed her. Or maybe she bought the drugs and the man followed her home and killed her for them, then took the cell. Either way, we need to find that man.”
“We?” Detective Melvin arched an eyebrow, and Bale raised his chin. “Who’s we?”
“You’re right. Not we.” I meant me. “I meant you.”
“Good. Now, what did the man on the phone sound like?”
“A black male. Gravelly voice.”
Next to her, Dan was nodding with vigor. “Exactly. He did sound gravelly. I called her cell, too. A man answered and he didn’t identify himself when I asked him. He’s the one you want to go after, not Vicki.”
“What time did you call, sir?” Detective Melvin made a note.
“Around nine o’clock, I guess.” Dan ran a finger-rake through his unruly red hair, as he always did in court. “You heard what Vicki said as well as I did. Bristow was a crack addict, wandering the streets in a lousy neighborhood with fifty bucks in cash. Vicki is right. The likeliest scenario is that Bristow was followed to her house and killed for the drugs.”
“That’s certainly possible, sir.”
“It’s a helluva lot more likely than an AUSA knifing her to death!” Dan raised his voice, but Vicki cut him off.
“Dan, real
ly, it’s okay.”
“You should be on Lincoln Street right now, or Cater,” Dan continued, heedless. “Wherever it was, right now, you should be canvassing the neighbors! Checking out who went in and out of Bristow’s house last night!”
“For your information, we canvassed already, sir.” Detective Melvin raised his large hand, with a Bic pen stuck between his thick fingers. “So settle down. We have to ask your girlfriend a couple of questions.”
“I’m not his girlfriend,” Vicki said for the record.
Dan shot back, “Who are you kidding? You’re searching her house!”
Bale stepped forward, easing off the wall. “Malloy, enough!” he said firmly. “Let the detectives complete their investigation. You and I know Vicki didn’t kill anybody, but they have to do their jobs.”
Vicki sighed with relief. So Bale was on her side. It emboldened her, or maybe she just liked her promotion to Dan’s girlfriend. “Detective Melvin, who found Mrs. Bristow’s body?”
“Her daughter, Reheema.”
Vicki felt a sympathetic pang. She couldn’t imagine how horrific that would be, finding your mother knifed to death. “Where was the body in the house, exactly?”
“A bedroom on the first floor.”
“When was she found? I don’t know when Reheema was released from the FDC.”
“Let’s see.” Detective Melvin flipped back in his notebook, then ran a thumb down the page. “You met with the daughter yesterday in the morning, right?”
“Right.” Vicki had almost forgotten, it seemed so long ago. A loud thump came from her bedroom, which everybody pretended not to hear.
“The daughter wasn’t released until after midnight last night.”
“Why so late?”
“There were paperwork issues, I understand. She went straight to her mother’s house and found her body. We caught the case at about one in the morning.”
How awful. “The report said Mrs. Bristow was stabbed to death. I assume you didn’t recover the knife.”
“Not yet. It wasn’t pretty. The victim was stabbed nine times.”