Courting Trouble (23 page)

My God!
Anne froze on her feet, her mind racing. These amateurs thought Judy was her killer!

“You did it!” yelled the first reporter, as Detective Rafferty and his partner forced him to the ground. “You can’t do this! We are the working press! We are the working press! We have rights! Constitutional rights!”

The service was thrown into pandemonium. People darted from their seats, tripping on chairs. Anne was pushed against the guests when a vivid flash of red at the door caught her eye. A dozen red roses, held by a deliveryman, his face visible over the roses. His hair was dyed matte-black, but his eyes, nose, and mouth were recognizable.

It was Kevin.

“Stop him!” Anne screamed above the din, but Kevin vanished in the next instant. “Stop him! Stop that man!” She yelled but her voice got lost in the uproar.

“No!” she screamed again, then turned around and took off after Kevin. She wouldn’t lose him this time. Not again, never again. She threw herself into the people hurrying toward the exit. Cops charged into the room, blocking her way. She grabbed the short sleeve of one, trying vainly to get his help.

“Officer, I need you. Come with me!” But the cop was already past her and reaching for the handcuffed reporter being hauled off by the detectives. She’d have to do it herself.

“Move! MOVE!” Anne shouted at the people running from the room. She found open road for a brief instant, then pressed her way into the hallway, trying to see Kevin over the fleeing guests. Suddenly someone in front of her got pushed back, and Anne almost fell. Someone trounced on her hem. Her hat and sunglasses got knocked off. She looked wildly around, jostled this way and that. Kevin was nowhere in sight. She had lost sight of him.
Not again!
She felt like crying, like screaming. Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes.

“Hey!”’ she yelped as she was shoved from the side, then felt herself falling backward. She grasped for someone’s handbag on the way down but the woman yanked it away. The next thing she knew she had hit the carpet and was in danger of being trampled. She covered her head with her hands and tried to roll away, with flower petals sticking to her hands and face.

Red rose petals.

Anne opened her eyes and squinted through the moving feet. Red petals lay scattered everywhere on the carpet. They had to be from the red roses Kevin had been carrying. He must have run out with them, then dropped them. Black pumps blocked her view and the spike heel of a dress sandal almost speared her in the ear. Ahead, an empty glass vase rolled on its side. Beyond the vase lay a white paper of some kind, bright against the blood-red rug. A small card, the kind that came with flowers. Kevin’s card.

Anne crawled forward on her elbows, risking life and limb. The heavy rubber sole of a wingtip almost stepped on her nose, but she kept an eye on the card. A straight pin affixed it to a headless rose. If she waited until everyone was gone, the card could be as torn up as the bouquet. She got kicked in the ribs by indeterminate footwear and winced in pain.

She was only three feet from the card, then two. The card lay just out of reach. She stretched out her hand but a stack heel crunched down on her index finger.

“Yeow!” she cried, and took one final lunge.

T
he interview room at the Roundhouse, Philadelphia’s police headquarters, was as full as a stateroom in a Marx Brothers movie, but far less funny. Detective Rafferty stood against the wall, jacketless, his striped tie loosened from the melee at the Chestnut Club. His partner sat next to him, hunting-and-pecking on an antique typewriter. It read Smith-Corona in script and sat atop a laminated wooden table against the wall. Except for a few chairs, including a steel Windsor bolted to the floor, there was no other furniture in the tight, airless shoebox of a room. It was a dingy green color, scuffed beyond belief, reeking of stale cigar smoke. Judy and Mary stood off to the side, near a smudged two-way mirror, while Bennie stood at Anne’s elbow, acting as her counsel.

Anne occupied the steel Windsor chair. “No, I’m not dead,” she said, which really seemed sort of obvious. Or maybe it wasn’t. Her forehead bore a girl version of Matt’s goose egg, and her ribs hurt from being kicked around the carpet. Two buttons had been torn from her art dress, and her stapled hem had fallen. On the plus side, she still had her beaded earrings and something else she treasured, tucked into her bra.

“So the body in the morgue, it’s Willa Hansen’s?” the detective asked.

“Right.”

“She has no family.”

“No immediate family.”

“What about your family? You don’t want them to know you’re alive?”

“I haven’t seen my mother in a decade. I never met my father.”

“Well, well.” Detective Rafferty rubbed his chin, where a five-o’clock shadow was beginning to sprout, even though it was only three in the afternoon. “We woulda figured this out by Wednesday, when the tests come back. Misidentifications happen, but we have procedures to prevent it. The holiday weekend screwed us up.” Rafferty looked at Anne. “You pretended to be dead?”

Anne was about to answer, but Bennie clamped a hand on her shoulder. “I’m instructing her not to answer that, Detective.”

“Oh, Christ! Why, Rosato?”

“’Cause I’m a good lawyer,” she answered. “Ms. Murphy has volunteered to speak with you only because you were about to question Judy Carrier in connection with her murder. Now we all understand that Ms. Murphy is not dead, and that Kevin Satorno shot Willa Hansen believing she was Ms. Murphy. Kevin Satorno is still your shooter, Detective. Find him.”

“I do have a few more questions for Ms. Murphy, who intentionally deceived us as to her whereabouts, which constitutes obstruction of justice. As does your conduct, by the way, and those of the other ladies here.”

Bennie didn’t bat an eye. “That’s not exactly the law, but I’ve no time to teach it right now. My client is happy to answer your questions, when I let her. Ask away.”

The detective returned to Anne. “Run this by me again, Ms. Murphy. You rented the Mustang on Friday night, July first. Late Friday night, you were erroneously reported murdered. Then Judy Carrier was in the car on Saturday and stopped for gas, using her credit card. July second.”

“Yes.” Anne tried not to look at Judy, who had to be kicking herself. It had happened when they’d gassed up. random, random, random.

“Then Ms. Carrier left her credit-card receipt in the car, and it’s dated July second.”

“Yes.”

“Then you parked illegally on Sunday morning, and the car was towed.”

“Yes.” Now Anne was kicking herself.

“The rental contract was found in the car, identifying the Mustang as rented to you. The gas receipt with Carrier’s name on it was also found, dated the day after your supposed murder. Are we all clear on the facts?”

“Yes. But how did these jerks get the receipt?”

“They were tipped off by the tow yard, who called one of them when the car came in.” Detective Rafferty consulted his skinny notebook. “The yard owner called Angus Connolly because he wrote the story in
City Beat
. The yard owner sold him the information, photocopies of the rental contract, and the gas receipt. He also contacted the
National Enquirer
and
Hard Copy
.” Rafferty looked over steel-rimmed reading glasses at Anne. “Do you have any information relating to that, Ms. Murphy?”

“No.”

“So all you know is that you’re alive?”

“And that Kevin Satorno will kill me if he finds out.”

Rafferty was shaking his head. The heavyset partner was typing slowly. The newest line of the white interview sheet rolling out of the typewriter read KILL ME IF HE.

Bennie pressed on Anne’s shoulder to quiet her. “We’re asking you for one more day, Detective. Just one day, then you can go public with it. The world still thinks Anne’s dead. Let’s let them keep thinking it for one more day. If you release this information, you’ll lose any chance of catching Satorno and you’ll place my associate in jeopardy.”

“I don’t see what difference one day will make.” Rafferty couldn’t stop shaking his head, which Anne didn’t take as a good sign.

Bennie leaned over. “It won’t be July Fourth weekend, that’s the difference, and it’s all the difference in the world. Like you said, the tests wouldn’t be delayed if not for the weekend. Later, you’ll free up personnel. The holiday will be over, the traffic will settle down, and everybody will be back to work. Think about it, Detective.”

Rafferty stopped shaking his head.

“When the world finds out that Anne is alive, the story will explode. Especially after the debacle at the memorial service, with her colleague accused of her murder in front of everyone.
Hard Copy
, Court TV, CNN, all the networks will pour into town, if they haven’t already. You really think you can handle that kind of deluge today, with two uniforms on duty?”

“We have more than that.”

“Not much, and consider, it’s the Fourth of July celebration, in the city that gave birth to the nation. All eyes are on us, Detective. You really want Philly to look bad right now? What will it do for the department? You really want national attention focused on the fact that the department didn’t notice the mistaken ID of a murder victim?”

Rafferty started to listen, and Anne knew Bennie was throwing anything against the wall that might stick, a time-honored tradition among trial lawyers.

“Detective, we all agree that Anne Murphy was doing nothing but trying to save her own life, and hide from a man who had tried to kill her in L.A. You really want to charge her with obstruction, Detective? You really want to take this woman and hang her out to dry, for all the country to see,
on Independence Day, in Philadelphia
?”

Rafferty groaned. “You saying the women’s groups gonna be on me now? Why does everything have to be ‘woman this, woman that’?”

“It’s not a woman thing, it’s a victim thing.”

“I’m not a victim,” Anne blurted out, and Bennie said:

“Shut up.”

Rafferty was shaking his head again. “I don’t like being threatened, Rosato.”

“Nether does Anne Murphy, and neither do I. All I ask is one day, one lousy day. I’ll turn her in on Tuesday morning, and we’ll break it to the press together. Hold a news conference, all of us making nice. Safeguarding victim’s rights, after we catch the bad guy.”

Rafferty’s gaze slid toward his partner, who had stopped typing at FINDS OUT. “What do you think, Beer Man?”

Anne didn’t need an explanation for the nickname.

“Tuesday isn’t one day from now,” the partner said. “It’s Sunday, so Tuesday is two days.”

Bennie didn’t hit him. “It’s right after the holiday weekend. Tuesday morning, bright and early.”

Rafferty looked like he was thinking about it. “I don’t know if I have the authority to do something like this.”

Anne opened her mouth to say
Bullshit
, but Bennie buried strong fingers in her shoulder. “Let me talk to your captain, then,” Bennie said. “Let me make my case.”

“Can’t. He’s in the emergency room at Temple. Broke his ankle in a softball game.”

“The lieutenant then. I’ll talk to him.”

“He’s down the shore, at his house in Longport for the weekend.”

“The inspector?”

“He’s at PAL parties, for the neighborhood kids. He goes to thirty of them today. Sack races and roasted marshmallows. Fireworks, the whole thing.”

“Only you and me working today, huh?” Bennie shrugged. “Then I guess you have the authority, Coach.”

“Maybe.”

“The real question is, what are you gonna do with those clowns in stir, those so-called reporters?” Bennie frowned. “I want them charged. They ruined our chance to catch Satorno and they attacked Carrier. Murphy almost got stampeded because of them.”

“Right,” Judy added. “And now everybody in the city thinks I’m Anne’s killer.”

“Don’t come cryin’ to me.” Rafferty gestured at Anne and Judy. “You girls brought it on yourselves. You sent out the flyer. You whipped up the media, you told ’em to go get the big scoop. You shoulda known that you were gonna get legit reporters—and knuckleheads like those kids—all riled up.”

Judy looked down, and Anne’s fair skin turned pink. Unfortunately, the detective was making sense. Anne was happy she didn’t have to speak for herself, for once. Mental note: Nothing wrong with the term “mouthpiece.”

“That doesn’t excuse what those two men did, Detective,” Bennie answered, angry. “What is this, trial by tabloid? If they had evidence relating to a murder, gas receipts and such, then they should have turned it over to you.”

“Like you did?” Rafferty snorted. “You had knowledge that Murphy was alive. Did you call us?”

“Please. I wasn’t trying to make money, or get famous. I was trying to protect my employees, which is hardly the same thing, and we did call you in time. If you’re not going to charge those two assholes, you’d better keep them away from me.” Bennie was almost spitting-mad. It was like having a mother grizzly for a lawyer.

“Cool it, Rosato. They’re kids. The one with the jungle hat, he’s cryin’ like a baby.” His high forehead creased deeply. “The real question is what you’re gonna do for me, if I let your girl stay dead.”

“Anything. Almost.”

“This is what I want.” Rafferty turned and pointed a finger at Anne. “No more amateur cop, you. We got the resources. We got the expertise. We got a homicide fugitive squad, joint with the Feds, and they’re all over it. We link up with all the states, all the networks. We’re the cops, you’re not, get it? So, no more, young lady!”

“Agreed.” Anne didn’t add,
But I flushed him out with a bunch of flowers.

“No running around, no funny hats, no happy horseshit, understand?” The detective shifted closer, and his pantleg slid up, giving Anne a glimpse of an ankle holster holding a dark-handled revolver. A .38 caliber Smith & Wesson, not a knock-off. She wished she had one of those babies, but knew it wasn’t the right thought at this moment.