Killer Smile

by Lisa Scottoline

  However, a well-placed source assures this reporter that DiNunzio believes that Saracone himself may have been responsible for Brandolini’s death, only apparently by suicide. And the same source reveals that Saracone is responsible for the mysterious injury that DiNunzio has been sporting about town. Only with Mr. Saracone’s death yesterday, of cancer, can the full story be told.

  “He’s got it all,” Judy said, flopping into the chair opposite Mary’s desk. They’d both come into the office on yet another rainy day to get some work done, but this threw a major wrench into their plans. Judy had brought the paper in, having just picked it up on a Starbucks run.

  “My God.” Mary skimmed the rest of the story, which detailed her initial interview with MacIntire and all the stuff he’d learned by calling everyone from Missoula, piggybacking on her work. The article went on to raise the same questions she’d had about Frank’s murder, though Mary hadn’t breathed a word to him. She felt sympathy for Frank’s family and betrayed for herself. And she couldn’t help but wonder about the identity of the well-placed source. “Think his source is someone at Saracone’s or a leak at the Roundhouse?”

  “Would Detective Gomez have talked to a reporter?”

  “I doubt it, not him. He seemed like a decent guy.” Mary flashed on her conversation with the detective, the end of which had taken place at the open door to the interview room. She remembered the eavesdropping detectives and the woman in the skirt. “But people in the squad room definitely heard us. One of them may have leaked it.”

  “Lucky for you that Bennie went back to New York. She probably picked up the newspaper, but even she can’t turn a Metroliner around.”

  “Don’t bet on it.” Mary shoved the paper out of her sight. She was thinking about Keisha. She’d already told Judy about the nurse’s call to her cell phone. “I called Keisha again this morning, but she didn’t call back. This could explain why.”

  “How so?” Judy pried the white lid off her coffee, releasing hazelnut steam, and took a sip.

  “Our cover is blown. This whole thing is no longer our little secret.” Mary was thinking aloud, trying to wrap her mind around it. “If Keisha wanted to talk to me before, she’d be wary of me now. She may not trust me anymore at all.”

  “Right, or she might not want the media attention.” Judy looked fresh in a plain white T-shirt, denim shorts, and bright red flip-flops. She’d pulled her hair back in a stubby ponytail, stiff as a blonde paintbrush. The indirect light from the window brought out the alert blue of her eyes.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Have a cigarette.”

  Judy laughed. “Have some breakfast, do your work, and get yourself ready for this dep.”

  “But this screws me up! People will read it, or hear about it. Saracone’s son will see it, and his wife, and Chico The Escalade.” Mary considered the timing of the article, then realized something. “That must be why Mac ran the story right now. He lucked out when Saracone died, because he and the paper can’t be sued for defamation now. You can’t libel a dead man, isn’t that the law in Pennsylvania?”

  “Yep. Good for you.” Judy sipped her coffee. “When the other papers pick up on the story, I’m sure the calls will start. It’s just you and me in the office, and we probably shouldn’t answer the phones. We can avoid Premenstrual Tom and Premenstrual Bennie.”

  “He still calling?” Mary had almost forgotten.

  “Don’t worry about it. I have them all recorded, and the TRO hearing will be scheduled as soon as I can serve his ass. So don’t get the phone.”

  “But what if Keisha calls here, instead of on the cell?”

  “Why would she, and anyway, you don’t sound like you’re putting Brandolini behind you.” Judy’s eyes darkened. “Your cheek is barely healed, Mare. You want a repeat of the other day?”

  “I’ll give it up after I talk to Keisha.” Mary reached for the phone. “I better call my parents about that article. I’ll call Eisen, too, so he doesn’t freak when he sees the papers. Then I’ll get us both ready for his dep, so by the time Bennie hears about the newspaper story, she’ll love me again.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Judy said, peering across the desk. “You gonna eat that croissant?”

  “No, you are.”

  By midafternoon, Mary had finished preparing for the Eisen deposition and had made all her calls. Keisha still hadn’t called. Mary hadn’t answered the phone but just kept checking the messages: a slew of reporters, her father, assorted clients who had forgiven their celebrity lawyer, and a prisoner who wanted a date with her legs. When she couldn’t take waiting for Keisha anymore, she got proactive. She picked up the receiver, dialed information, and waited until it found the number and connected her.

  “HomeCare, WeCare,” answered a pleasant voice, a woman’s. “Leslie Eadeh speaking.”

  “Yes, Leslie, maybe you could help me.” Mary put on a cigarette voice, inspired by last night. “I have a problem. I’m looking for one of your nurses, Keisha Grace.”

  “It’s Sunday, dear. The business office is closed.”

  “I know, but this nurse, Keisha, is due at my house today, and she can’t get here. She called and said her car broke down.”

  “What’s your name?”

  Mary’s gaze shifted to the papers scattered across her desk, order forms from E & S Furnishings. The top name belonged to Rikki Summers, offending Broughley sales rep, the body that launched a thousand recliners. “Broughley. Rikki Broughley.”

  “Like the recliners?”

  Uh. “Exactly. But we’re no relation.”

  “Too bad. I love the suede.”

  “Everybody does.”

  “Please wait a minute, Ms. Broughley,” the woman said, and Mary could hear the click, click, click of computer keys over the line. “We don’t have a record of Keisha coming to see you today, Ms. Broughley. We show she hasn’t worked since Friday.”

  Since Saracone’s death. “There must be some mistake with your records.”

  “I doubt that highly, Ms. Broughley.”

  “Everybody makes mistakes. Keisha was here at my house just yesterday, Saturday.”

  “Keisha was?” Leslie asked, in a way that sounded like she knew her. “You sure you got the right girl? Sometimes our patients get confused.”

  “Certain of it. She’s African-American, pretty, young, about five three, same as me, with very large eyes and a pretty smile. Her name tag reads Keisha, I remember seeing it.”

  “That’s her. Hmmm.” Leslie sounded stumped.

  “She left me her phone number.” Mary gave her the number. “I called but there’s no answer. See, she called and said her car broke down and could my son pick her up.”

  “Her car broke down? I thought it was new.”

  Oops. “I know, it’s an outrage. Anyway, my son left an hour ago but he lost the address and I don’t remember it. So now I need her address.”

  “Ms. Broughley, we don’t give out that information. I can call her for you.”

  “You won’t get her. I just called her at home and got no answer. There’s no answer on her cell, either.”

  “Keisha gave you her cell?”

  “Sure enough.” Mary read her the number. “We got along very well. I thought the world of her, that’s why I sent my son out to fetch her. I hate to think of Keisha standing in the rain. She wouldn’t do that to one of us patients, not for a minute.”

  “You’re right about that, and this weather is so awful. Sometimes I think we’ll never see the sun again.”

  Mary knew the feeling. “And it’s so cold for this time of year. Even the rain is so cold. If I could just have her address. I think my son’s only a block or so away.”

  “Well, I guess it’s okay, just this once. Tell Keisha I said hello.”

  “Will do.” Mary jotted the number down, thanked her, and hung up. She grabbed her purse and hurried to Judy’s office to make her escape, taking personal inventory. She was wearing jeans,
Jack Purcell’s, and her old Penn sweatshirt, and her hair was loose under a Paddington Bear slicker and rain hat. It was a good outfit for a stuffed animal, not an amateur sleuth, but she had no choice. With one last hurdle, she was good to go. She stuck her head in the door of Judy’s office. “This is me, leaving,” she said.

  “Is it that time already?” Judy squinted at her Swatch watch, which Mary knew was a tumbling circle of smiling baby heads.

  “You can’t tell time with that thing, admit it.”

  “Yes I can. It’s half past baby nose.” Five seconds later, Judy was still squinting.

  Mary faked a yawn. “Listen, I’m beat. I couldn’t sleep last night. I’m going home to take it easy, to be fresh for tomorrow.”

  Judy scoffed. “Please don’t bullshit me. You’ve got something up your sleeve.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “What is it? Give.” Judy leaned over her messy desk.

  “I would tell you. Gimme a break.”

  “Did Keisha call?”

  “No.”

  Judy’s eyes narrowed. The alert blue had been replaced by eyestrain pink. “Did you call her?”

  “No.”

  “Truth?”

  “Yeth.”

  Judy seemed placated. “Okay, I believe you. Go home and chill. You’re the best.”

  Ouch. “You, too,” Mary said. That much was true.

  Then she hurried out in her sneaks.

  Thirty-One

  Mary had got off the D bus in West Philly, in a residential neighborhood that was truly integrated. At the moment, however, Mary’s was the lone white face on the street, and her Paddington Hat screamed Dumb Things Only White People Will Wear. The rain slowed to a drizzle, so she took off the hat and rolled it like a hoagie into her slicker pocket. Then she turned left on Gingko Street. The sky was permanently cloudy and prematurely dark, but residents were still out, enjoying the last night of the weekend. A young couple walked by with a golf umbrella held over a baby bouncing in a Snugli, and kids played Wiffle ball in the street, hitting foul balls with a wet thwick. Gingko trees lined the street, and Mary eyed them, loving their primitive branch system, if not the stinky berries they dropped all over the sidewalk. Gingkos were as Philadelphia as snapper soup, and they scented even the best of her pumps.

  She traveled down the street, walking past 5207 and 5209, four-story Victorians with Cape May paint jobs, and she inhaled a great-smelling back porch barbecue, which she’d take over foie gras any day. But she wasn’t thinking about food now. She was thinking about Keisha Grace. At the end of the street lay a newer limestone apartment building, and Mary raised her eyes to the second floor. One of those windows belonged to the nurse.

  She went to the building’s front door, painted a forest green, and was about to knock when she noticed it was slightly ajar. She opened the door and went inside an entrance hall that bore a large homemade sign, PLEASE CLOSE THE FRONT DOOR BEHIND YOU! She read the stainless steel mailbox covers until she found 2F, Grace/Whitman. All right! She pressed the black button, and the walls were so thin she could hear a loud buzz overhead. A man answered almost immediately.

  “Yes?” On the cheap intercom, his voice sounded like it was underwater.

  “This is Mary DiNunzio, and I’m looking for Keisha Grace.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Well, may I come up and see you? She’s been calling me, and I’d like to talk with you, if I may.”

  A pause. “Okay. Come on up.”

  The buzzer sounded and Mary crossed the hallway to open a thick front door, which swung onto a red carpeted hallway and ended in a set of narrow stairs. The hallway smelled vaguely of gingkoes and Glade, and she went upstairs to the second-floor landing, which contained a long hallway with several doors, but no sign. She took a flyer and went right. 2D, 2E, 2F. The door had been painted navy blue, and as soon as Mary knocked on it, any worries she’d had about going alone to a stranger’s apartment vanished at the sight.

  The man at the door was a tall but slight African-American in black nylon gym shorts, a red Temple T-shirt, and round rimless glasses. His dark eyes were bright and intelligent behind the glasses, and he had short close-cropped hair and a slight overbite. He extended a hand with long fingers. “Bill Whitman,” he said, shaking Mary’s hand. “You’re the one in the papers, aren’t you? The lawyer.”

  Mary cringed. “Yes, that’s me.”

  “I knew I knew that name.” He smiled, and the tips of his front teeth popped into view. “Nice picture.”

  “Thanks.” Mary stepped inside the apartment, which was large and had high ceilings. It was neat for a guy’s apartment and simply furnished, with a black cloth couch she’d seen in the IKEA catalog, a teak coffee table, and a wool rug in earth tones. Abstract paintings hung in a trio on an exposed brick wall, and the overall effect made her jealous. “This is a really nice apartment. Mine’s so small.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Center City.”

  “Got more space up here.” Bill gestured at the couch the way boys do when they’re playing host, halfheartedly swinging his hand from the shoulder. “You want a water or somethin’?”

  “No, thanks.” Mary looked to her left, where three desktop computers with three oversize monitors, two CPUs with the motherboards exposed, and two laptop carcasses covered the dining room table. Even she could sleuth this one out. “You’re a computer guy.”

  “Yeah. I do consulting and repair from here. It’s my own business, I started it two years ago. You know anybody who needs IT help, call me.” Bill sat down on the end of the coffee table, feet flat-footed on the floor. “So, you must be here because Keisha worked for Saracone.”

  Smart. “Yes. I met Keisha at Saracone’s, the night before he died.” Mary edited out the rest of the story, now that she was learning to shut up on occasion. “I got a call from her yesterday, asking me to call her back. I did, but that’s the last thing I heard.”

  “Sounds like Keisha. She comes and goes.”

  “When is she coming back?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Dunno that, either.”

  Huh? “Doesn’t she live here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doesn’t she tell you where she’s going when she goes out?”

  “Used to, all the time. But things have sorta changed.” Bill looked down, examining his Adidas slip-ons. “Lately, we’re, she and me, we’re kinda shady. She met somebody else. Been seeing him off and on, tryin’ to decide between me and him. Sometimes she goes with him for the weekend, then she comes back. I’m hopin’ this week she’ll come back.”

  Are you a saint? “That must be difficult.”

  Bill shrugged. “I love the girl.”

  You are a saint. Do we have a black saint, yet? “How long have you two been together?”

  “A year. We met at school. I graduated Temple, in IT. She was taking nursing courses, but she quit and got the job as a day nurse. Started at Bayada, went on to HomeCare. She doesn’t like to stay with one thing too long. She’s restless. The job suits her, I don’t.” Bill laughed softly. “She says I’m the only black geek in the world.”

  Mary winced. “Who’s the other guy, if I can ask?”

  “Dunno, but he’s got money. He bought her a new car.”

  “A new car!” It’s over, dude. “You can’t let him buy her a car!”

  “What am I gonna do about it?” Bill spread his large hands, palms up.

  “Fight for the girl! Tell her you love her! Find out who he is, snoop around her top drawer, follow her, spy on her, look through her stuff.” It was so obvious to Mary, since she’d gone to Montana. Maybe Bill needed to go to Montana, too.

  “There’s lots you could do, if you wanted to.”

  “Not my style.”

  Mary decided to change the subject. “How long did Keisha work for Saracone, do you know?”

  “Two months, off and on. She didn’t like
him. He used to order her around.”

  Mary recalled how Keisha had protected him, that night. “But she was good to him, right?”

  “I dunno. She was a good nurse. She did her job, I’m sure.”

  “Did she ever talk about Saracone?”

  “Not much.”

  “What did she say about him?”

  “Not much.”

  “Did Keisha ever mention a Chico? He’s the guy who hit me.”

  “No.”

  “Chico drives a black Escalade. Have you ever seen a black Escalade out front?”

  “In this neighborhood?” Bill smiled and his teeth tips peeked out. “I got three neighbors have a black Escalade. Everybody wants a black Escalade, even me.”

  Okay, forget that. “Did she know what kind of business Saracone was in, or the son?”

  Bill thought a minute. “Don’t remember her saying.”

  “I think it was investments. Sound familiar?”

  “News to me.” Bill shrugged, and Mary switched tacks.

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Wednesday morning, when she went to work. She was here all last week. Then she didn’t come home Thursday night, or any night since.”

  Mary felt a twinge of concern. “Aren’t you worried?”

  “No, happens all the time. She’s with him.”

  “Did you try her cell? I did, and she doesn’t answer. I think I left three hundred messages so far.”

  “She never answers when she’s with him.”

  Mary wasn’t taking no for an answer. “Could she be with her family, or would they know where she is, for sure?”

  “Nah. She’s only got a mom, and she lives in Birmingham. They don’t talk much.”

  “Doesn’t she have any girlfriends who would know where she is?”

  “She’s not big on friends, and I know where the girl is.” Bill shook his head with a sad smile. “I don’t like where the girl is, but I sure as shit know where she is. She’s with him, and I don’t know where he lives.”