Dirty Blonde

“Really?” Cate tried not to get excited. It only raised more questions. “How do you know?”

“It was obvious, from the day she was hired.” Micah’s eyes glittered. “Lots of touching, pats on shoulders, like that. And joking around. I think it’s been going on a long time.”

“Really. Where was she hired from?”

“The Flavert Agency, her own business. Courtney sells common sense for a hundred thousand dollars a pop.”

Cate laughed.

“I told Art we shouldn’t pay it, that I knew more about Philly than she ever could. But he didn’t want to take any chances, and George insisted she was the best.”

“Maybe she was,” Cate shot back, and they both laughed like girlfriends. Then Cate asked suddenly, “Do you think she was sleeping with them both?”

“What? Who?”

“Courtney. The jury consultant.”

“She was sleeping with George,” Micah said testily.

“But was she sleeping with Art, too?”

“Of course not! What makes you say that?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? Art Simone was a very attractive man, with a lot of power and money. And Courtney was the one they both wanted at dinner.” Cate paused, letting it sink in. “Remember the threesome plotline for the first episode of the new TV series? The one you told me about? The two judges and a law clerk, in a menage a trois?”

“Right, the pilot,” Micah answered, her face reddening in a way that told Cate she’d struck a chord, however accidentally.

“Yes, the pilot. Two men and a woman. Whose idea was it for the threesome plotline? Yours or Art’s?”

“Art’s.”

“So is life imitating Art, or is Art imitating life? No pun intended.” Cate managed another fake laugh, but Micah looked stricken.

“But…Art would never cheat like that.”

On you. “On his wife, you mean.”

“Right. On his wife.”

Bingo. “We’ll never know, will we? And we know Art got his ideas from his life. Isn’t that what he testified to, on the stand? Remember?”

Micah reached for her water glass with a hand that trembled. Cate knew that Micah and Simone were having an affair. The girl’s reaction to the threesome clinched it-and the incredible Mercedes. Micah had thought she was Simone’s mistress; she never figured he’d cheat on his mistress with another mistress. Which left Cate with yet another question.

And a thought about someone who might know the answer.

CHAPTER 42

Cate could hardly wait for Micah to go before she called information on her cell phone, got the number, and waited for the call to connect as she ran to her car in the cold.

“Flavert Associates,” said a woman’s voice.

“Yes, is Courtney in?”

“She’s on vacation this week. May I ask who’s calling?”

“No, thanks.” Cate flipped her phone closed, in frustration. She would have loved to have cornered Courtney and gotten confirmation of her theory. She had learned so much. She felt like she was getting close to something. She reached her car, dug in her bag for the keys, and got in, eventually finding her way out of the parking lot and onto the street, where she stopped.

Commuters flooded the street in front of her car, moving en masse toward buses, parking lots, and the train station, wrapped in heavy mufflers and ski hats like wool envelopes. Night had fallen, the rush-hour traffic tangled into lanes of red taillights, and plumes of white exhaust rose above the cars, an urban version of the toxic fumes of Centralia. Smoke obscured everything lately, and suddenly nothing was clear. Marz. Marz’s wife. Micah. Cate flipped open her phone, pressed in the number, and the call connected.

“Homicide,” said a man’s deep voice, which Cate recognized with an undeniable thrill.

“Nesbitt?”

“Judge, what’re you doing? You didn’t return my calls. I’ve been wondering.”

Aww. “Sorry.” Cate was kicking herself.

“You’re stirring up a hornets’ nest about the Simone case. I’m getting calls about you. Where are you?”

Have to do something about that “Judge” part. “Back in the city.”

“Listen, a girlfriend of Marz’s wife called, from the temple choir. She’s asking me to reopen the case. How did the alto section of Beth Hillel get in on this act?”

Oops. “Maybe from Sarah Marz? She was making a lot of sense today.”

“You spoke with her?”

“We sat shiva.” Cate waited for her turn to leave the lot, but the traffic was unending.

“Judge, I’m not gonna reopen this case.”

“Maybe I’ll change your mind.”

“No, you won’t. George Hartford called, too, from whatever law firm. He also called my sergeant, on top of it. He doesn’t want you nosing around in Simone’s murder, and I don’t blame him.”

“How’s Russo?”

“Out of the woods. They moved him to HUP.”

“He’s at Penn?” Cate felt a tingle of excitement. Penn’s hospital was twenty blocks west. It was too good to be true.

“Wait a minute. Don’t even think about going. He’s dangerous, and it’s not procedure.”

“I’d never go see him. He tried to kill me.” Cate flicked on the turn signal to make a left turn, then finally saw her opening in traffic and seized it, heading west toward the hospital. “Where are you?”

“I’m in the northeast, on a job. A double homicide.”

“Sounds grim.” And an hour away.

“I should go. Call you later, Cate.”

“Great.”

Cate.

It took her half an hour in rush-hour traffic to travel the five miles to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in West Philly, and another twenty minutes to find a parking space in one of the clogged-to-capacity lots. Cate hustled from the Acura, her thoughts churning and her emotions racing ahead. Hard to believe she was visiting the man who had tried to kill her only the night before, but he had to have some valuable information on Marz. Cate kept an image of Sarah Marz in mind to motivate her. She prayed that Russo could answer some of her questions.

And also that she was mature enough not to pull his plug.

An impossibly young uniformed cop sat outside the door to Russo’s hospital room, reading the sports page, which he lowered when Cate presented herself, apparently not recognizing her. “Can I help you?”

“How’s the patient?”

“Fine, sleeps mostly.”

“Is Steve Nesbitt here?”

“Detective Nesbitt? He was here earlier but got beeped and left.”

“Oh, right, that job in the northeast.” Cate kept her tone even, so she could sound in the know and vaguely masculine. “I’m Cate Fante, to see Detective Russo.”

“Fante? I know that name, from somewhere,” the cop said, thinking aloud. “You’re the judge-”