Lady Killer

by Lisa Scottoline

  “Maria,” her mother called, raising her arms, and Mary gave her a big hug, scooping her off her tiny feet. Her mother gestured to a flock of women behind her, also in their flowered dresses. “Maria, my ladyfriends, you know, from church.”

  “Hello, ladies.” Mary turned to them and extended a hand.

  “Good to meet you,” the one said, with a Puerto Rican accent. “Your mother, she make my baby’s dress.”

  “Mine, too,” said another, grinning, and the woman next to her nodded, too.

  “She did a wonderful job. So beautiful, we tell our friends.”

  “You have the best seamstress in the business,” Mary told them, realizing suddenly that she’d inherited her business-getting ability. Vita DiNunzio was the rainmaker of South Philly, and Mary’s heart gladdened when she saw her mother beaming.

  “Come, see, Maria.” Her mother took her by the hand. “We have friend for you, for dinner.”

  “Who?” Mary asked, and the crowd seemed to clear a way to the kitchen, where Anthony was standing with a tentative smile. His dark eyes were bright, and he wore a tan sport coat with khaki slacks and a lightweight black turtleneck. He gestured at her mother.

  “Your parents saw me at church, and they insisted I come to dinner. I hope that’s okay.”

  Yay! “I think it’s a great idea,” Mary answered, wishing she’d worn her contacts.

  Later, the house cleared out except for the four of them, and they had a great meal, during which Mary tried to get used to Mike’s chair being occupied by a another man who, by all accounts, was pretty wonderful. Anthony joked with her mother in Italian and listened to her father’s old construction stories, and when dinner was finished, he even offered to do the dishes, which was when the afternoon skidded to a halt.

  Mary froze at the table. Her mother construed an offer to help in the kitchen as an insult, akin to a puppy offering to take the scalpel from a neurosurgeon.

  “Grazie mille, Antonio,” her mother answered, with a grateful smile that Mary had never seen in this situation. She watched, mystified, as her mother rose slowly and touched her father on the arm, saying, “Come, Mariano.”

  “Wha’?” her father asked, looking up in confusion until he received the Let’s-Leave-These-Kids-Alone message her mother was telecommunicating via her magical eyes. Mary tried not to laugh. Her mother had a varied repertoire of eye messages, and the bestsellers were: Don’t-Eat-With-Your-Fingers, Leave-That-Piece-For-Your-Father, and I’ll-Never-Trust-That-German-Pope.

  “That was awkward,” Mary said, after her parents left the kitchen.

  “No, that was cute.” Anthony rose, picked up the plates, and took them to the sink. “Let me do dishes.”

  “No.” Mary got up with her plate. “You’re the guest and you have nice clothes on.”

  “Let me, I like to.” Anthony slipped one of her mother’s flowered aprons from the handle on the oven, and tied it around his waist. He grinned. “Too gay?”

  “Nah.” Mary laughed again. Actually, she loved the look. What was it about men in aprons? It was so homey, and in some odd way, kind of sexy. Maybe because it meant that somebody else was doing all the work?

  “So.” Anthony turned on the water. “You didn’t mind me barging in?”

  “No. I wanted to apologize, too, for not calling you right back.”

  “You weren’t blowing me off? ‘You broke my heart, Fredo.’”

  “Ha!” Mary turned back to the table, ostensibly for the other dishes, but she didn’t want him to see her smiling. She felt a little dorky and worried that she had gravy spots on her glasses, spaghetti blowback.

  “I knew you were busy, saving the neighborhood.”

  “Well, just one, who I’m not sure deserved it, anyway.”

  “We both knew that.”

  “I guess,” Mary said, but didn’t elaborate. Her doubts were confidential, and she didn’t want to spoil her nice mood. Maybe that’s what moving on meant, but she didn’t know. She hadn’t done it before. She took more plates to the sink and set them on the counter. “I decided I was right about the neighborhood, by the way.”

  “Funny, so did I.” Anthony rinsed a dish, making a landslide of tomato sauce. “I think you were right. That’s what community is. People taking care of each other.”

  “Really.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  “It is?” Was I drunk? “I mean, it is.”

  “So you know what I did?”

  “What?” Mary stood beside Anthony, their arms almost touching, side by side at the sink. She felt as if they were playing house, and it wasn’t uncomfortable, but natural. He seemed to warm to it, too. It was the sort of domestic vibe that would have sent most men running, but not this one.

  Anthony said, “I know some people in the psychology department at school. They put me in touch with the chairman of the department, Dr. Rhonda Pollero. She specializes in educational testing of younger children and she agreed to test Amrita’s son as a favor to me.”

  “Really?” Mary felt a rush of gratitude, and Anthony looked down at her with a smile.

  “She’s one of the biggest experts in the country, and she’ll even come down from New York, as soon as Dhiren’s well enough.”

  “That was so nice of you.” Mary felt touched, as if Anthony got her in some fundamental way. In the next minute, he leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips, as if he’d been doing that all his life. His kiss left her standing on tiptoe, and when she opened her eyes, he was smiling sweetly.

  “Cara mia,” he said softly, in Italian.

  “My dear,” it meant, in English.

  Mary liked the sound of it, either way.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Mary was cleaning up her bedroom when she got a call on the cell, but she didn’t recognize the number. She picked up. “Yes?”

  “Mare, it’s me.” Trish sounded panicky.

  “Did the feds call?”

  “Yeah, they wanna meet with me tomorrow.”

  Yikes! Mary wished she knew more about dealing with the FBI, and now she couldn’t call Bennie.

  “I can’t talk to them. I’m sure the boys are watchin’ me. If they think I’m gonna snitch, I’m dead.”

  “I know, relax. We can deal with this.” I hope.

  “You’re the one who convinced me to come back. You’re the one who convinced me to go to the cops.”

  “You did the right thing, Trish.”

  “You were at the funeral home. You saw. Everybody’s crazy right now. All of ’em, on edge. That’s when people get dead.”

  “Where are you?” Mary asked, bearing down.

  “At my mom’s.”

  Mary checked her watch. Eight o’clock. “I’m leaving now,” she said, tense, and went back outside, not completely surprised to find it raining.

  Half an hour later, she was standing in the dark drizzle on the Gambones’ front stoop, and Mrs. Gambone opened the door. She looked tense, her affect flat, and she wore a dingy pink tracksuit with Uggs knockoffs. In her hand, she held a long brown cigarette that trailed smoke.

  “Mare, thanks a lot for comin’.” Mrs. Gambone admitted Mary to the living room. “I appreciate you helpin’ out.”

  “No problem.”

  “You can’t let her go to the FBI. She won’t live another day.” Mrs. Gambone smoothed her hair into an old denim scrunchy, and she had no makeup on, showing a weepy puffiness around her eyes.

  “Don’t worry. Where is she?”

  “Upstairs in her room.” Mrs. Gambone gestured with her cigarette, making a smoke snake.

  “Thanks.” Mary crossed the darkened room, more contemporary than her parents’, with blue-patterned couches and chairs under a rectangular mirror. She climbed the staircase, and at the top was an opened door, with light spilling from it into the dark hallway. “Trish?”

  “In here.”

  Mary entered the small bedroom, which was like stepping into the past. A girl’s bed with a pink
chenille coverlet stood out from the wall on the right, and plush animals sat in a saggy little line on the bed. On the bedpost hung a mortarboard, dangling its Goretti tassel. There was an undersized wooden desk, and a bulletin board on the wall, which had black felt varsity letters thumbtacked to the top and an array of old photographs, mostly pictures of Bobby. Mary looked away.

  “What took you so long?” Trish asked, sitting up. She’d been flopped on the bed, reading a magazine. The light from an undersized lamp on the night table showed her eyes as swollen as her mom’s. “Close the door behind you.”

  Mary closed the door. “How you doin’?” She pulled a wooden chair out from under the desk.

  “How do you think I’m doin’?” Trish sniffled, smoothing back her dark hair, flowing loose to her shoulders. She had on a black Eagles sweatshirt that read Division Champions and she somehow made it look sexy. “The government’s after me.”

  “They’re just sending a feeler, so don’t overreact.”

  “Easy for you to say.” Trish crossed her legs in skinny jeans. She was barefoot, and her pedicure was perfect. “Your ass isn’t on the line.”

  “Okay, so who called and what did he say?”

  “Name was Kiesling. He said he wanted to come and talk to me tomorrow.”

  Mary remembered. The FBI agent she had met that night at the Roundhouse. “What did you say?”

  “I told him, no, I don’t know anything, and he said they could subpoena me. Is that true?”

  “I think so, but like I told you in the car, I don’t have a lot of experience with this. Tomorrow, let me make some calls and get you another lawyer, one who specializes in this kind of thing.”

  “So you’re really dumpin’ me?”

  “Trish, I’m not the best lawyer for you. I’d be doing you a disservice—”

  “Good loyalty,” Trish snapped, her mouth twisting into an ugly sneer.

  Loyalty? Mary couldn’t help but chuckle. She flashed on Giulia, then her cheating husband Joe.

  “Why is that funny?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, what?” Trish shot back, itching for a fight. “You laughed.”

  Mary kicked herself for reacting. The girl was under stress.

  “You don’t think I’m loyal?” Trish put a spiky acrylic nail to her chest. “I’m totally loyal. I’m a loyal girl. I went to you when I needed a lawyer because I knew you from school.”

  Also you thought I’d give you a discount.

  “I’ve had the same friends for, like, thirty years. G, Yo, and Missy, we go way back. G is my best friend from, like, when we were two.”

  “Okay, whatever. Don’t get all worked up.”

  “I don’t like you sayin’ I’m not loyal, when you’re the one who’s not loyal.”

  “How am I not loyal?” Mary couldn’t help but take the bait. “I just dropped a week of my life for you.”

  “You didn’t tell me about you and Bobby.”

  Ouch. Mary felt stung.

  “Yeah, right.” Trish puckered her lip. “You didn’t know I knew, did you? Ritchie told me yesterday, after the cemetery. He said you dated Bobby. Did you?”

  Mary’s mouth went dry. “Not for long, okay?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “When was this?”

  “Senior year.”

  “Was he goin’ out with me at the time?”

  “No, you two had broken up.”

  “I dumped him, he didn’t dump me.”

  Mary thought of what Judy had said. You got a chance to reinvent yourself. The Mean Girls never did.

  “So how come you didn’t tell me?” Trish’s eyes narrowed.

  “What difference did it make?”

  “I don’t know, it musta made some difference, because you didn’t tell me. If you’da tol’ me, I woulda thought it didn’t matter. Now I think it does.”

  Hmm. “Trish, this is old news, from high school.”

  “Yeah, well, I was livin’ with him till last week, so it ain’t old news to me. Why didn’t you tell me? You said we were friends. I’d never keep a secret like that from a friend.”

  “Ha.” Mary’s mouth dropped open.

  “What?”

  “You’d never keep a secret from a friend? How about Miss Tuesday Thursday? How about your boyfriend?” Mary couldn’t stop herself. “Why didn’t you tell the girls about him?”

  “I thought they might slip and tell Bobby.”

  “Bull! They never hung with Bobby, and you know it.”

  Trish’s eyes flared. “You callin’ me a liar?”

  “I know you’re a liar. You lied to me about who your boyfriend is.”

  “I did not.” Trish flushed, and the words came out of Mary’s mouth before she could stop them.

  “You’re such a good, loyal girlfriend that you’re sleeping with Giulia’s husband.”

  Trish gasped, momentarily dumbfounded.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Oh, please.” Mary waved her off, disgusted. “Stop it, just stop it. I don’t know how you live with yourself. Giulia’s so sweet, and she’s your best friend. She went crazy trying to find you. She cried over you in my office. She was so worried, she didn’t sleep nights. You’re a terrible, disloyal friend to her.”

  “I’m a great friend to her.”

  “You’re the worst.”

  “No, the best. Because I saved her life.”

  Mary scoffed. “What? When? In gym class? You lend her socks?”

  “No, you jerk.” Trish shot back. “You think you’re so smart? I have news for you. That opal ring they found in the alley? My ring?”

  “Yes, so what?”

  “I lent it to Giulia two years ago, when she got married again. For something borrowed, something blue, you know that rhyme? And she never gave it back.”

  Mary sat stunned, not knowing whether to believe her.

  “So if the cops found it in the alley, it’s because Giulia had it on.” Trish met her eye, evenly. “It wasn’t Cadillac who shot Bobby, or any other wiseguy. It had to be Giulia.”

  Mary couldn’t deal. It was impossible.

  “She musta thought he killed me. Plus she always hated his guts. She knew he worked the corner at Kennick, so she musta went over and shot him dead. And she has a gun.”

  Mary was shaking her head. Giulia was such a sweetheart. It couldn’t be true.

  “When that detective pulled the ring out, in the Baggie, I knew right then what Giulia musta done. But did I tell them? No.” Trish leaned over, lowering her voice. “I took the rap for Giulia. I took the risk they’d think I did it, so they wouldn’t go after her.”

  Mary felt stunned. Trish was right, if she was telling the truth.

  “So now who’s the loyal friend?” Trish lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah, I’m hookin’ up with Joe, but so what? It didn’t mean anything. I saved her life, and I’m so nice, I didn’t even tell her. I didn’t even want the credit. Would you do that for a friend? Would you be that loyal?”

  Suddenly there came a noise from the first floor, and Mrs. Gambone called up the stairs. “Trish? Trish!”

  “What, Ma?” Trish called back, annoyed.

  “G’s here to see you! Okay if she comes up?”

  Mary’s gut clenched. She had to figure out what to do. She had no idea what would happen. She met Trish’s eye.

  “Send ’er up, Ma!” Trish yelled, and neither woman said anything, listening to the clack-clack of little boots on the stairs.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  “What’sa matter?” Giulia asked, her face falling the moment she entered the bedroom.

  For a minute, Mary didn’t know what to say. It was so hard to believe that Giulia had pulled a gun and shot somebody, much less Bobby. The girl looked like a cherub who’d gotten into her mother’s makeup kit, her chubby cheeks flushed from being outside, coloring even under her thick blusher, her lips a vivid red,
and glittery blue shadow on her eyelids.

  “Nothin’s the matter,” Trish said, evidently playing dumb. “Everything’s fine.”

  “You look upset.” Giulia came inside and closed the door behind her. “You still stressin’ about the funeral?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” Trish frowned with fake grief, and Mary marveled at what a good liar she was, proof that practice makes perfect.

  “So what’sa matter with you, Mare?” Giulia asked, cocking her head.

  “Nothing.”

  Giulia shrugged her padded leather shoulders. “S’all right, you guys don’t wanna tell me, you don’t have to. I know I gained weight, if that’s what you were talkin’ about.”

  “Nah.” Trish waved her off. “It’s the feds called, and that freaks me out.”

  “For reals.” Giulia bucked up and clapped her hands together. “Well, good, because I’m here to take you out drinkin’, T. I figured you’d be upset and all, after the funeral and what you been through, and so I thought we’d go out. I mean, you couldn’t do it before, when that animal was alive. Now that he’s gone, I mean, let’s have some fun.”

  Did you really say that? Did you shoot that man dead, out of loyalty? Or was Trish lying one more time?

  “I don’t know, G,” Trish answered.

  Mary couldn’t take it any longer. Trish had said she hadn’t told Giulia that the cops had the ring, so she could be tested easily. “Giulia, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, what?” Giulia smiled expectantly.

  “Did Trish ever lend you an opal ring?”

  “Huh?” Giulia blinked, then froze, her back against the door. For a second Mary thought she might open it and try to run, but her gaze traveled slowly and almost fearfully to Trish. “I’m really…sorry, T. I never shoulda done it. I didn’t have the right.”

  No. “So Trish did lend it to you?”

  “Yeah, she did. For my wedding. I wanted it to be the borrowed thing. But I never gave it back.” Giulia turned to Trish again, her voice quiet. “I’m sorry, T. Really.”

  “That’s okay, G,” Trish said, then looked at Mary, her chin raised. “See?”

  I can’t believe this. Giulia did it?

  Giulia continued, “I shouldn’t a kep’ it so long, I guess. I forgot I had it. I’ll get it back to you, T, I swear.”