Courting Trouble

Listening, Anne felt her mouth go dry. This wasn’t the script they had discussed back at the office. Bennie had hated the idea of lying to the people, so she was supposed to keep her eulogy generic and impersonal. On the sidelines, Judy and Mary exchanged looks, and the office staff whispered to each other in their seats.

“But more recently,” Bennie continued, “I have come to know Anne Murphy, and actually to love her. Her boldness, her courage, and her doggedness. Her resourcefulness, even her recklessness—”

Suddenly, a young man stood up at the far end of the third row. “Judy Carrier! Ms. Carrier!” he shouted. “Ms. Carrier! You!” He pointed to Judy, standing at the front of the room. “City Beat wants to know, Ms. Carrier!”

Bennie’s lips parted in surprise, and Judy edged away, appalled. Anne didn’t get it. Was it a joke? Who was this clown? The crowd turned to the young man, who kept shouting.

“Ms. Carrier, why were you in Anne Murphy’s car the day after she was murdered? What do you have to say for yourself?” The man had leaped from his folding chair and headed straight for Judy before anybody knew what was happening, pulling a tiny digital camera from his jacket pocket. “City Beat wants to know!”

City Beat? It was the paper Anne had read on the way to the office. The one with that wanna-be journalist, Angus Connolly, with the bush hat. But this guy wasn’t Angus Connolly, and what did he want from Judy, for God’s sake?

Anne rose to her feet, watching in shock as he snapped pictures, advancing on Judy. Detective Rafferty jumped from his chair and lunged toward the reporter, as did his heavyset partner.

All of a sudden a second man started yelling from the other side of the row. “Judy Carrier! Carrier! Answer our allegations! What were you doing with Anne Murphy’s car? You killed Anne Murphy! City Beat has the story!”

What? Anne was stunned. Judy’s eyes widened, her arms pinwheeled, and she tumbled backward into the flowers. Anne rushed to help Judy, but she saw Gil bolt for the exit with the Dietzes right behind. Matt and Bennie tried to get to the second reporter, who was charging toward Judy, brandishing something.

“Judy Carrier!” he shouted. “You killed Anne Murphy! We have the proof! City Beat has the proof! An exclusive undercover investigation!” He was shouting as Bennie grabbed him. Matt and two other men piled on, but the young man wouldn’t stop yelling. “Confess! You had her car! We have the proof! You were driving her car the day after you shot her!”

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.

19

The 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,