Dead Ringer

time to play cop, Ms. Rosato.” Detective Needleman gave her arm a final pat. “You need a ride? Let me take you home.”

Bennie found her voice, and it carried a ring of certainty that surprised even her. “I’m not saying that Mayer did it, but I’m not ruling it out, either. I don’t know. But I can’t pretend that Mayer didn’t fight with Robert in court today, or that we didn’t beat him. And seventy million dollars is a lot of motive.”

“Now you’re talkin’ about motive? Seventy million dollars is a lot of money, and that’s all I know right now.” Detective Needleman sat heavily in the driver’s seat, keeping one loafer out of the car flat on the asphalt. “Brinkley likes you, but he did say you get yourself worked up.”

“Murder gets me worked up, particularly this murder. And sometimes I’m right, so will you please consider that this murder may not be what it seems right off the bat?”

“Oh, Jesus, here we go.” The detective looked through his windshield with pursed lips.

“Keep an open mind, consider that maybe it’s not a robbery, a street crime, whatever. And you’re going to talk with Mayer, so why wait until tomorrow? Wouldn’t you like to know where he is right now? He was the last person to see Robert alive.”

“I would, and I will. Now you need a ride or not?”

“No, thanks.” Bennie was thinking clearly now, or what passed for clearly to the delusional. Robert had been stabbed to death. The detective had said they hadn’t found the murder weapon. “What kind of knife was it, do we know?”

“A sharp knife, I gather, and there is no we. Later I will find out. You won’t.”

Bennie let it go. At least he was keeping his sense of humor. He’d need it. “What kind of sharp knife? How long was the blade? Was it a steak knife? The Palm is a steakhouse.” She had been there exactly twice. She was guessing when she said, “They give you a steak knife when you order, you know.”

“No good deed goes unpunished, does it?” Detective Needleman closed the door of the car with a rueful smile. “I tried to be nice to you, I talked to you, and now look where it got me. Wait’ll I get Brinkley.”

“Sorry.” Bennie watched him turned the key in the ignition, and the car’s old engine wheezed to life. She half considered taking a ride just to keep badgering him. “Any chance I can go with you when you talk to Mayer?”

“You know, I bet you read a lot of Nancy Drew when you were little. Am I right?” He raised his voice to be heard over the car engine. “Why is it that every little girl who reads Nancy Drew thinks she can be a homicide detective? My wife, she’s the exact same way.”

“Hold on.” Bennie leaned on the car so he wouldn’t take off. “Here’s what to ask Mayer about. He was Robert’s chief competitor in the medical-lens business, and I know there was bad blood between them over a contract with a company named Hospcare. Mayer lives in Chestnut Hill, his home address was on the complaint they filed. I can fax you over a copy, or you can call information. As for his lawyer, I don’t know where-”

“I think I can do this without you.” The detective released the emergency brake. “Call me crazy.”

“I’m just trying to help. I know these players, and I have information you may need.”

“I’ll call you if I need you.”

“I want to get whoever did this.” Bennie leaned into the open car window. The Crown Vic reeked of cigar smoke. “And if the bad guy wears a tie, I don’t want him getting away with murder.”

“I don’t either, and I will keep an open mind, I always do. But don’t get in my face and don’t go over my head. I’ll keep you posted as I see fit.” The detective’s eyes went flinty, and his tone turned stern in a way that suggested he was a good father. “You have any questions or want to tell me something, you can call me at the Roundhouse.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t try and sell me that.” Detectives never spent time sitting around the Roundhouse. They were always out on jobs, as they called them. “Lemme have your beeper number.”

“No.” The detective frowned and gunned the engine, probably so it wouldn’t stall. Detectives got the worst cars in the pool and bitched about it constantly. He shouted over the breathy noise, “The best hope of getting the knucklehead who killed your client is to leave it to the professionals! Let me do my job! You get in there, you’ll screw it up!”

“Wouldn’t think of it!” Bennie shouted back, withdrawing from the window.

“There is a line!” Detective Needleman wagged his finger. “Don’t cross it, Nancy!”

Bennie put up both palms. Don’t shoot, said her body language, and the Crown Vic cruised off.

She put her arms down when he was out of sight. She hadn’t actually agreed not to cross the line. Nancy Drew wouldn’t have, either. And she didn’t even have a law degree.

Chestnut Hill is one of Philadelphia’s oldest and most exclusive residential neighborhoods, settled comfortably to the north of Center City, first by the Quakers. The neighborhood boasts spacious, graceful homes built of distinctive gray-black stones, and its main street, Germantown Avenue, winds gently through the center of town and climbs the hill that lends the town its name. Tall leafy trees line the street, sheltering quaint colonial-scale storefronts refitted with tasteful versions of Baby Gap and Starbucks. Traffic was nonexistent at this late hour, so Bennie had Germantown Avenue all to herself, though its authentic cobblestones slowed her, destroying the shock absorbers on the Saab as she rumbled over them, bump bump bump, rattling her jaw and setting her teeth on edge. But that could have been her mood.

Robert. Dead. She rolled down the window and gulped in a lungful of fresh March air, waiting until the nausea passed. The night breeze wafted cool and green, full of promise, carrying the music of crickets. It qualified as a beautiful night, which somehow made Bennie angrier, for Robert’s sake. He wouldn’t get to see it, wouldn’t draw another breath on this earth. Why had he been meeting with Mayer? Did it matter?

She pressed the gas and the Saab climbed, bobbling past one green street sign then the next, looking for Prescott Road. Bump bump bump. Something in her felt satisfied at dropping in on Herr Mayer. Normally she wouldn’t contact a represented client without his lawyer’s consent, but Linette hadn’t thought twice about doing exactly that to her. Two wrongs make a lawyer.

She passed Gorgas Lane, then Cliveden. She had to be getting closer. Then a new thought struck her. She didn’t have to worry any longer about seeing a represented client. Robert’s death had mooted the rules of professional ethics, at least as applied to this situation. Because without a client, Bennie could be out of the class- action lawsuit. Bump bump bump.

The implications of Robert’s murder dawned on her only slowly, and she felt guilty and selfish for even thinking of them. Robert had been the principal of St. Amien amp; Fils, and it was a privately held French company. God knew what bylaws governed, if any, or how its being a foreign corporation mattered. Robert had to have a successor or a second-in-command; most companies had successor plans in place. Bennie would have to find him because unless he wanted to continue the lawsuit, there would be no lawsuit, as far as she was concerned. No class-action settlement to transfuse her firm’s finances, pay the rent, and get her back on her pumps. Whoever killed Robert could have unwittingly dealt a death blow to her law firm. She could lose Rosato amp; Associates. She could lose the associates. She could lose her house.

Bennie bit her lip not to think about it. That realization had no place now, not tonight. Robert had lost his very life, and he was the reason she was here. The green street sign coming up read Prescott Road, and she could feel a surge of new energy as adrenaline dumped suddenly into her bloodstream. She wanted answers, and she’d shake them out of Mayer if she had to.

She swung the Saab onto Prescott and hit the gas.

20

Of course I know what time it is,” Bennie answered, wedging a perfectly placed Saucony farther into the front door, which was being pressed on the other side by a startled Herman Mayer.

“Then what are you doing here? How dare you come to my home at this hour! This is an outrage! It’s the middle of the-”