booster spell.”
“She’s not home.” Mary shook her head. “This is what comes of bringing gringos into an Italian household. You just have the flu.”
“In August?”
“It happens.”
“It’s not that. It’s evil, pure evil. What should I do? Should we call Williams-Sonoma?”
“Why them?”
“For olive oil. Fiorella said we needed the best. If we’d had the best last night, I’d be fine today.”
Mary let it go. “Do you want me to come over?”
“No, I’m just going back to sleep.”
“You sure you’re okay alone?”
“Yes.”
Mary couldn’t hang up just yet. “Jude, you wanna hear a story, or are you too sick?”
“Gimme the headline.”
“Alice quit PLG, I might make partner in September, and my father had breakfast with Fiorella at a
“That’s incredible!” Judy’s tone improved, which Mary attributed to the curative powers of gossip.
“Which one’s incredible?”
“The restaurant.”
“I know, right?”
“And you, a partner! Time for the big-girl panties!”
Mary smiled. “Not yet. Maybe.”
“Sure you will! And Alice? The bitch is back?”
“Get this. She took money from PLG. She stole from the poor.”
“Whoa. She got her Robin Hood mixed up. She’s Hood Robin.”
“She’ll burn in hell.”
“Poor Bennie,” Judy said, which was exactly the reaction Mary expected, so she told Judy the rest of the story, and they both agreed on the need for a back-up restraining order.
Mary said, “Bennie’s not so bad, you know. We judge her too harshly.”
“That’s so like us.”
“She opened up to me, today. She actually said, ‘I appreciate you.’ ”
Judy gasped. “You misheard.”
“No. We
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Tell me what she said.”
Mary smiled. “Then it wouldn’t be confidential, but we talked about being twins.”
“Well, I’m happy about your partnership. Just remember I knew you when.”
Mary felt a twinge. She couldn’t believe that she might make partner before Judy, who was so much smarter. “I owe it to you, Jude. You’re the one who put me up to it. I never would’ve asked if you hadn’t made me.”
“I only encouraged you.”
“No, you shamed me into it.”
“Whatever. I’m just glad. You deserve it.”
Mary felt so lucky, in having Judy as a friend and Bennie as a boss. “You’re the best, you know that?”
“Don’t get all melty. I’m going back to bed. Watch out for Fiorella, Mare. She could bewitch your dad. See you later.”
“Don’t be silly, and feel better.” Mary hung up, but held the warm BlackBerry in her palm for a minute.
She was wondering how Judy always knew what she was thinking, even when she didn’t know herself.
Chapter Twenty-three
Bennie screamed and pounded on the new crack, hoping it would weaken, ignoring the animal scratching and growling on the other side of the lid, trying to get inside. She flashed on a terrifying image of its teeth sinking into her neck, then realized something. If the animal dug through the lid, he could help her break the crack.
She flipped her thinking. The animal wasn’t her enemy, he was her friend. He was on her side. She needed it to keep scratching and digging. She started pounding again, this time to taunt him, then began scratching on the wood, digging toward the animal as he dug toward her. Each of them scratched his side of the lid, the animal on the top and her on the bottom, mirror images of each other.
She grunted with effort, reduced to some primal state, merging into her animal self, clawing frantically at the wood, raking her nails along its surface. Something in her snapped when she realized that this was her last chance. She was running out of air.
She clawed and dug and tore, then started pounding, not feeling the pain, not smelling the stink, devolved and focused only on her scratching, fueled by the scratching on the other side.
She wouldn’t stop until she was dead.
Or devoured.
Chapter Twenty-four
Alice studied the claims in the Rexco Complaint, and it wasn’t difficult. The gist was that Rexco was a national manufacturer of screw-top lids, and three of its employees had quit to go work for a rival company, taking with them the trade secrets for making the lids, which violated Pennsylvania law. A different law firm had drafted the Complaint, and she could see that it wasn’t well done, full of typos and bad citation form, which were basic mistakes.
She flipped through the correspondence file and found a letter from Rexco, asking to come to the office for new representation, and another letter, from Bennie, agreeing to the meeting and outlining an overview of trade secret and unfair competition law in the Commonwealth, which gave Alice a complete script for the meeting on Monday.
She knew she’d have to quote some of the cases and maybe use a legal buzzword or two, so she turned to the laptop, logged on to Lexis, and skimmed enough cases to hum a few bars. Then she shifted gears, mentally put the Rexco file away, and got back to her own agenda by logging on to travelocity.com. She couldn’t find any direct flights from Philly to Nassau in the evening, so she booked the last flight to Miami, then a connection to Nassau on Monday night, paid for with Bennie’s Amex.
“Bennie?”
Alice jumped, then minimized the travel website.
“DiNunzio.”
“Sorry to interrupt. You were working so hard, you didn’t hear me knock. I wanted you to know that the brief is almost done and I’m going home.”
“Already?”
Mary looked apologetic. “It’s almost six o’clock.”
“No, there’s no need to. I trust your work.”
“Thanks. See you.” Mary smiled happily, then left and closed the door behind her, and Alice went back online, looking for hotels in Nassau. There was no Ritz or Four Seasons, but there were decent ones with availability, since it was off season. She looked up the address of the BSB bank in Nassau and booked a hotel near the bank, so she
