Moment of Truth (17 page)

“Oh-my-God, her mom was just murdered, right?” Tori! squealed like they used to for Elvis, and Mary looked nervously around. The department was mercifully empty, Philly evidently not being Young & Hip enough. You had to go to New York for that. Mary leaned closer to Tori!

“I’d prefer you keep this confidential. I’m a lawyer working on the case, and I need to know if you saw Paige Newlin at the shoot.”

“But that is so weird, that her mom got killed and all. I saw her name in the paper. Newlin. That is sooo
random
.”

“Yes. Now, did you see a redhead? Long ponytail?”

“A redhead?” Tori! swirled her tongue around her barbell, which Mary gathered was helping her think. “Uh, no. There were a lot of girls. I didn’t think they were so hot.”

“Did you happen to meet any of their managers?”

“No, none of the managers come to the shoots.”

Mary considered it. Paige had said her mother was there. “What about mothers who are managers? Like Paige’s mother, Mrs. Newlin.”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I was kinda busy, you know, getting the stock we needed.”

Mary sighed. “So you didn’t see Paige and her mother?”

“Nope. Can’t help you out there.” Tori! clicked again, then started waving. “Maybe Fontana can, though. She’s our tailor. Fontana!” she called out, and Mary turned to see whom the manager was hailing. Coming at them with ladylike steps was a very short woman, Mary’s mother’s height. She wore a navy blue suit, a white shirt with a floppy bow tie, and brown shoes with sensible heels. Her glasses looked old and her smile sweet, and Mary knew instantly that they were both Little & Italian.

She fought the impulse to run into her arms.

“I no like to tell bad things,” Fontana said, hurrying along on her little legs. The “things” came out like “dings,” but Mary could translate easily. If you grew up in South Philly, you could communicate instantly with any tailor, barber, or mobster.

“I don’t want you to tell bad things,” Mary said, hurrying beside her, matching stride for stride. Fontana Giangiulio had to be pushing seventy but Mary could barely keep up. “I just want you to tell me what you saw.”

“I have to do de weddin’ dress now. Dey need me dere.”

“I’ll walk you. I don’t want to interrupt your job. Just tell me, please, what you heard. It’s very, very important.”

“I no like to say.” Fontana shook her head in a jittery way as she chugged forward. “Ees no nice. Ees, what dey say, tales outta school.”

“No, it’s not. If it’s the truth, it’s not a tale, and you can save someone’s life.”

“Oh,
Deo
,” Fontana said, scurrying along. “I no say.”

“You saw the Newlins on Sunday, the mother and the daughter, Paige. You fixed Paige’s dress.”

“De
seam
, I said. No de dress. De dress, she was fine.
De seam
was no right.” Fontana didn’t stop to frown. “I put de clip in de back seam, to hold for de picture. Not for permanent, you know, for …
come se dice, Maria
?” She waved a tiny hand.

“For temporary,” Mary supplied. “For the picture, got it. So you worked with Paige.”

“I feex her seam. De customers, dey think we no hear, we no see. But we hear. We see.”

“I know, that’s true.” Mary could imagine little Fontana buzzing around the models, kneeling as she chalked the hem at their feet. The tailors would be ignored because servants were invisible, especially to the likes of the Newlins. “What did you see?”

“Oh,
Madonna mia
!” Fontana waved her hand again as they barreled to the escalator and climbed on. Mary took advantage of the chance to breathe, now that Fontana had to stand still for a minute. “Dey fight, dees two!”

Mary tried to hide her excitement. “A big fight or a little fight?”

“A beeg fight! Dey fight and dey fight! But only in de dressin’ room, you see. Not where nobody can see.”

“What did they fight about?”

“De mother, she call de daughter alla names. She call her a
puttana
!”

“A
puttana
?” Mary was shocked. It meant a prostitute. A whore.

“
S
í
! S
í
!
Fontana no can believe!” She shook her head for half a floor, gliding downward with her chin high, upset at the very thought. “Den de daughter, she start to cry, and de mother, she laugh.”

“Laugh?”

“
S
í
! S
í
!
She laugh and she walk allaway out!”

“She left?”

“
S
í
! S
í
!
” Fontana hopped off the escalator when it reached the second floor and took off past the makeup counter. The bright chrome of Clinique reflected on her glasses, but Mary could see her aged eyes go watery behind them. “But de girl, she start cryin’, so sad. De makeup, ees alla mess. De seam, Fontana do again, with de clip. De girl cryin’ on her knees, so Fontana help de girl up. She so pretty, like angel.” Fontana motored past black and glossy Chanel, but Mary saw it as a dark blur. “And
Fontana,
she hold de girl, hug de girl, until she no cry no more and she get up and she feex her makeup and Fontana feex de seam and she pretend like no ding happen.”

Mary tried to visualize it. “Then what?”

“An’ den she go out and dey taka her picture. Howa you like
dat
?”

“That’s terrible,” Mary said, meaning it. She knew there had been something very wrong between mother and daughter. She wondered how long it had gone on, emotional abuse like that. A long time, for Paige’s powers of recovery to be so fast, her emotional scars hidden by makeup and a professional smile. Had Jack known about it? Had it been hidden in dressing rooms and behind closed doors, or was Mary making excuses for him? What had her father said, that night over coffee?
If your mother was doing bad things to you, it would be my fault.
“Did anybody else see?”

“
S
í
! S
í
!
One person know what I say ees true.” Fontana stopped in her tracks and held up a finger.

“Who?” Mary asked, breathless.

“Jesus Christ, he know,” she said, with a faith that Mary couldn’t begin to understand.

For her part, she could never fathom where Jesus Christ was when a mother called her daughter a whore.

Jack paced in his holding cell, waiting to use the pay phone outside. The guard said he’d get to it before they left for county jail, but that was an hour ago. He’d made a stink, claiming he had to call his lawyer, but it was a lie. Mary was the last person he’d phone right now. He had to call Trevor and get him down to the prison. Find out where that kid was the night Honor was killed. He’d shake the truth out of him.

“Guard! I need to make that call now!” Jack turned on his heel when he reached the bars of the cell, then turned back. The cells were a lineup of vertical cages, their white-painted bars chipped and peeling. Grime covered a concrete floor that sloped down to a small drain, and there was no toilet. They allegedly took the prisoners out for that, though the stench of urine filled the cell like a zoo.

“Fire! There’s a fire!” Jack shouted, but even then there was no answer. An old man in the next cell laughed softly; he had been laughing to himself since they put him in there. Jack paced back and forth, driving himself crazy with what-ifs. What if Trevor had killed Honor? What if he and Paige had done it together? What if Paige had lied to him completely?

The prisoner in the next cell laughed louder, reading Jack’s thoughts.

“Ms. DiNunzio,” Brinkley said, standing beside Kovich, “before you lay down the law, mind if we sit?”

“There’s chairs at the dining table behind you.” DiNunzio gestured, and Brinkley looked around Paige Newlin’s elegant, feminine apartment. The couch, chairs, and coffee table were decorated in shades of white, and he felt suddenly like an anvil on a cumulus cloud.

“Here we go, Mick,” Kovich said jovially, yanking a chair from the dining room to the coffee table, and Brinkley dragged one over for himself. The chairs raked four wiggly lines in the thick white rug. Brinkley and Kovich sat down as the lawyer kept talking.

“Here’s the way it goes, Detective Brinkley,” DiNunzio was saying, from a seat next to Paige Newlin. She had a pretty face but wore a blue suit with a high collar that made her look tight-assed. “You can ask the questions you need to, but Paige cannot answer if I instruct her not to. She’s been through a lot and she’s feeling awful. As I told you on the phone, I don’t know why you had to meet with her.”

“It’s just for background information.” Brinkley slipped a pad from his breast pocket and flipped it open. Another woman lawyer whose name he forgot sat catty-corner to the sofa in a shapeless corduroy dress. He wasn’t surprised that women lawyers dressed as lousy as men lawyers. “Ms. Newlin,” he said, “first let me say how sorry we are for the loss of your mother.” Beside him, Kovich nodded in sympathy, like he always did when they did next-of-kin notifications. “Please accept our condolences.”

“Thank you.”

“I do need to ask you a few questions.” Brinkley worked a ballpoint from the spiral of his notebook. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

Brinkley was starting with the softballs, to get her talking. He didn’t want her threatened and he wanted to observe her. The first thing he observed was that she had pierced ears. She was wearing tiny pearl earrings, smaller versions of her mother’s. He thought of the earring back in the rug. “Date of birth?”

She told him, sipped water from a glass, and replaced it on a coaster on the coffee table. Grief weighed each perfect feature and her mouth sagged with pain. She looked obviously bereft, even to his suspicious eye. Still it was hard to ignore her looks. Dressed in blue jeans and a classy white turtleneck, Paige Newlin was a knockout. Big blue eyes, pillow mouth, and glossy red hair that cascaded beyond her shoulders.

Brinkley made a note of her birth date. “Born in Philly?”

“No. Actually, in Switzerland. My parents were traveling.”

“You reside here, at Colonial Towers?”

“Yes.”

“I understand that you used to live at home with your parents. When did you move here?”

“Early last year.”

“Your parents’ home is beautiful, by the way. Antiques and such, everything nice.” Brinkley gestured vaguely. “It’s very well kept. Do your parents have help, for the house?”

“Yes. A maid.”

“How often did she come?”

“Twice a week, Monday and Thursday.”

“So she had been there yesterday?”

DiNunzio leaned toward Paige. “If you know,” she said, and Paige shrugged.

“I don’t know. I live here now.”

“I see.” Brinkley nodded. He was thinking about the dirt on the coffee table. If the maid had come on Monday, it could have been new the night of the murder. “How was it you came to live here?”

DiNunzio interrupted, “Your question isn’t clear, Detective, and I’m not sure I see the relevance anyway.”

“I’m just trying to get some background information.”

“Background or not, she doesn’t understand the question, and neither do I.”

He shifted his weight and addressed Paige. “I was asking you why you moved out of your parents’ house.”

“I wanted to be on my own. Live alone. Be independent.”

“Did you get along with your parents?”

“Yes.”

“With your mother?”

DiNunzio cleared her throat. “She just answered that, Detective Brinkley. Again, I’m not sure it matters who she got along with.”

“I’m wondering why she moved out of her house at such a young age. It’s unusual, and we like to fill in all the questions the captain will ask us. He gets feisty about the details.”

“That’s your problem.”

Brinkley, his annoyance growing, addressed the daughter. “Did your parents get along?”

DiNunzio cut him off with a chop. “I’m instructing her not to answer that.”

Brinkley was getting pissed. He’d never met a lawyer who hadn’t interfered with getting to the truth. He couldn’t understand that kind of job. “You’re disrupting a police investigation, Ms. DiNunzio.”