Courting Trouble

family or even birthplace on your resume. So I had our firm investigator look into it. You know Lou, don’t you?”

“You investigated me?” Anne tried not to sound too pissed.

“Sure, and I don’t apologize for it. I can’t have just anybody at my firm, and people don’t spring from somebody’s head. Everybody has a family, whether they deny it or not. Not just a family, a context. Like a word, with meaning in a paragraph.” Bennie smiled over the rim of her glass. “And with some work, I found your context.”

“My mother?”

“Yes.”

“Not my father.”

“No.”

Anne felt her heart quicken. “Where was she, anyway?”

“Southern California.” Bennie set her glass down. “That’s all I should say. She asked me not to tell you, and I promised I wouldn’t.”

Anne held her features rigid. A knife of familiar anger sliced near her heart. “How nice of her.”

“I am sorry. I respected her wishes, but I thought it was hurtful, too.”

“I don’t care enough to be hurt,” Anne said quickly, and she sounded lame even to herself. She wanted to scream. How can a parent have this power over a grown child? Even the worst of parents?

“I think she wasn’t very proud of herself, and that’s why she didn’t want you to know.” Bennie paused. “There is a drinking problem, I gather.”

“Meaning she was barely coherent when you spoke.” Anne knew just how that conversation would go, and her face flushed with sudden shame. “She didn’t ask you for money, did she?”

Bennie didn’t confirm or deny. “My family is no model either, but I miss my mother every day. Well. We all make mistakes.”

Anne’s chest felt tight. “Has she contacted you, since then?”

“No, but I remind you. She left the flowers you’ve been driving around with.” Bennie smiled softly. “Not that you care.”

“I only had to die to get her attention. She phoned it in. The card was typed at the store.” Anne stared at her leftover cereal and tasted a bitterness in her mouth that wasn’t magnesium. “I don’t even know how she got my home address.”

“I told her,” Bennie answered, and Anne looked up.

“You? When?”

“When I spoke to her last year, when you moved here.”

Anne fell silent. So it’s not even like she follows me in the newspapers.

“You wish I hadn’t. I’m sorry.” Bennie sighed. “We always wish our parents were better than they are. Bigger, stronger, richer. Better people, more reliable. But they’re not, they’re just not. Sometimes, the best course is to try to accept that, as truth.”

“I accepted that a long time ago,” Anne said, then hated the way she sounded. She pitied herself for pitying herself, and even more because Bennie was right.

Mental note: Maybe bosses became bosses for a reason.

15

Outside the second-story window, dimestore firecrackers popped and holiday lasers sliced the night sky, but Anne ignored it all in favor of the computer monitor. She sat at the workstation in Bennie’s messy spare room, which contained old athletic equipment, a white Peugeot bicycle, and boxes of old files, which had been stacked on the skinny daybed against the wall before they had cleared them off. Anne would have gone to bed but she couldn’t help finishing her Internet search of Bill Dietz’s background. The top of the screen read:

Your search has revealed 427 persons named William Dietz with criminal convictions.

She had picked up reading the listings at 82, and she was already at 112. She still didn’t know why she was doing it. She didn’t know if she’d find anything and didn’t know why it mattered. Only that she had looked into Bill Dietz’s eyes and remembered malevolence behind them. Evil masquerading as concern for his wife; abuse dolled up as protection, even love. She returned to the search.

At 226, Anne was in the zone of eliminating Bill Dietzes and taking a caffeinated pleasure in the accomplishment of a simple task. Click on a listing, read it, click on the next. It was easier than redrafting her opening argument or trying to guess which guise Kevin would take in his next incarnation. At 301, she’d still had no luck.

“Murphy, it’s very late,” Bennie said, from the threshold of the office. “You have to get to sleep.” She entered with Bear behind her, his nails click-clacking on the pine floorboards. She wore a white terry-cloth bathrobe and her hair had been piled into an unruly topknot, but when she got closer Anne could see that her eyes were tinged with pink and vaguely puffy.

“What’s the matter? You getting a cold?”

“I guess I’m allergic to cats. My face itches, and I can’t stop sneezing.”

“Oh, no.” Anne felt terrible. “When did this start?”

“After dinner. I took a shower but it didn’t help.”

“Should I leave and take Mel?”

“No, you don’t have anywhere else to go. Just keep him in the room. On the bright side, our eyewitness Mrs. Brown is all over the news. On TV, on the radio. The cops announced they’re officially looking for prison escapee Kevin Satorno in connection with your murder. He’s a wanted man.”

“The wish of erotomanics everywhere.”

“Which brings me to my next point. Since Satorno is on the loose, I wanted you to have some peace of mind. I can protect us, if need be. Don’t freak out when you see this.” Bennie stuck her hand in her bathrobe pocket and extracted something. Its silvery finish caught the light from the lamp.

“A thirty-eight special, huh?” Anne reached for the gun and turned it over expertly in her palm. Its stainless- steel frame felt cool, and the hatchmarks on its wooden handle were slightly worn, as was the gold-toned Rossi logo. She thumbed the cylinder-release latch and let the cylinder fall open into her hand. The revolver was loaded with five Federal bullets. She closed the cylinder with a satisfying click. “It’s about ten years old. You musta bought it used.”

Bennie cocked an eyebrow. “Yes. How do you know that?”

“These guns don’t circulate much anymore. Rossi made ’em in Brazil. They were a bunch of guys who spun off from Smith & Wesson. That’s why it looks like one.” The clunky gun was a knock-off, but Anne didn’t say so. She wouldn’t like people saying bad things about her gun. She turned the revolver over in her hand, appreciating its heft, if not its style. “It’s a good gun. Practical. Plenty of stopping power. Good for you.” She handed it back.

“So you’re not freaked.”

“By a gun? Not unless it’s pointed at me. I’m not a gun nut, but I bought one after Kevin attacked me. I own a Beretta thirty-two, semi-auto. Fits in my palm. Cute as a button. I don’t even have to rack the slide to load it. It pops up, so I don’t break a nail. A great girl gun.” Anne could see that her boss was looking at her funny, so she explained. “I tried therapy, Bennie, but I sucked at it, and I’m not the support-group type. I went to the shooting range four nights a week. After a year I can kill a piece of paper, and I feel a helluva lot safer.”

“My, my. You’re an interesting girl, Murphy.” With a crooked smile, Bennie slipped the revolver back into her bathrobe pocket. “I want you to know the gun is here and it’s loaded. We’re safe. I’ll keep it in my night table.”

“Why don’t you leave it with me?”

“That’s not a good idea. Do you have experience with this type of gun?”

“Can Eakins paint by numbers?” Anne smiled, and so did Bennie.

“Just the same, I’ll keep it in my night table.” She turned to the computer monitor and scanned it with swollen eyes. “What’s the point of this search, when you should be getting ready for bed? So what if Dietz has a criminal record?”

“I can use it on cross, for impeachment.”

“True, but I don’t know what that gets you. If it really matters, we can sic Lou on him, after the holiday. Bill