Accused

by Lisa Scottoline

  “But who is that man?” Rita’s face was a mask of confusion. “Who is Neil Patel? What does he mean to you?”

  “Let me get all the facts first. I have to get back to my office, as soon as I can.” Mary had to talk to Lou and Judy, and process the new information. “What are the chances of my getting a cab outside?”

  Rita shook her head. “In this rain, not very good, that’s for sure, and the bus doesn’t stop near here, either. You can borrow my car if you like. If it helps Lonnie, I’d surely be happy to help.”

  “I’ll take you up on that offer. Thank you.” Mary hated to inconvenience anyone, but she didn’t want to waste a minute. “Is your purse in the coat room? Let’s go get it.”

  “This way.” Rita turned on her heel and hustled through the crowd, saying polite “excuse-me’s-please,” with Mary at her heels. The two women hurried into the anteroom, where Rita found her purse, extracted her keys, and handed them over, closing her eyes briefly, then opening them. “I just said a prayer to guide your footsteps, and I know He will. Thank you so very much for all you’re doing for my son, and the light of God is within you, I can see it plainly, no matter what Brother Washington says about lawyers.”

  “Thank you so much.” Mary gave Rita a big hug, then rummaged around the garment rack for her purse and umbrella. “I should be back later tonight, don’t worry. I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s going on, and get the car back to you. Thanks again.”

  Mary hurried out the door, opening the umbrella against the driving rain and leaving the church. She hustled back over the vacant lot, avoiding the puddles and watching her step over the shaky rubble footing. She reached Rita’s Altima, tucked the stalk of the umbrella under her arm, fumbled for the key fob, and chirped the car unlocked, then jumped inside, closing the umbrella and stowing it on the floor on the passenger side.

  She started the ignition, flipped on the windshield wipers, and reversed out of the space, down the street. It was hard to see in the rain, but she cruised to the corner, took a right onto Aston Street, heading for Chestnut Street or one of the other major streets that would lead back to Center City. She couldn’t wait to tell Lou about Neil Patel, so she picked up her BlackBerry and pressed L, but didn’t hear the call ringing when she held the phone to her ear. She braked at the light and checked the screen, but the battery icon glowed a telltale red. The screen read, INSUFFICIENT BATTERY FOR RADIO USAGE.

  “Damn!” Mary reached in the console where she kept her car charger, then she realized she wasn’t in her own car. She tossed the BlackBerry aside and looked around for a pay phone, but they were artifacts in most city neighborhoods. She looked out the window but all she could see was the pouring rain, making a blackish-gray haze of the rowhouses and parked cars. Lights shone dimly inside the homes, and pedestrians hurried along the pavement, mere shadows under umbrellas.

  She braked at a traffic light, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, her thoughts going a mile a minute. She couldn’t imagine any connection between Neil Patel and Lonnie Stall, so she went backwards in time, trying to piece it together, brainstorming with herself. She’d believed that Tim Gage had paid Lonnie to take the fall for Fiona’s murder, so she applied the same reasoning to what she’d just learned about Neil Patel. If her reasoning held true, then Neil would’ve been paying Lonnie to take the fall for Fiona’s murder. The only possible conclusions were that Neil Patel had killed Fiona himself, or that Neil was covering up for someone else who had killed Fiona. And the latter conclusion was unspeakable, because Neil wouldn’t cover up for just anybody. He worked for the Gardners, and she didn’t even want to think that the killer could be one of the family.

  Mary clenched the steering wheel, horrified. Even after the traffic light turned green, she remained stricken, at a standstill. A car honked behind her, and she came out of her reverie and hit the gas. The Altima lurched forward, and she had to brake quickly not to crash into a delivery van in front of her, its red taillights bathing her in crimson. She found herself stuck in an endless line of traffic, two lanes of congestion going both ways, and she’d never get to the office at this rate.

  She took a right onto the next cross street, which she seemed to remember was a back way to Center City. She couldn’t read the sign for the rain, but she thought it was Huntingdon Avenue. It had to be a main artery because the Altima’s tires shimmied as they got caught in the groove of trolley tracks, which crisscrossed West Philly, still used by subway-surface cars. She wasn’t as familiar with this section of town, farther southwest than the University of Pennsylvania and her old stomping grounds.

  The windows and windshield started to fog up, and she hit a button on the dashboard for the defrost. Air conditioning blew into her face, but the windshield didn’t clear and the only thing that got defrosted were her contact lens. The traffic finally started moving, and Mary took the first right she could, then a left, taking the shortcut downtown.

  Her thoughts raced ahead, trying to make sense of Neil Patel or someone in the Gardner family as Fiona’s murderer. She had no idea what their motive would be, but either would have had ample opportunity to commit the murder. Patel and any family member would have had access anywhere in the new Gardner Group headquarters, including the second-floor conference room, where Fiona had been killed. Mary could imagine Neil or a family member going with the VIP clients who were being shown around, then slipping away from any client group without being noticed.

  Mary took a right turn, following the shortcut, preoccupied with the details of how the killer could have committed the crime. She thought back to the layout of the reception area, with the public stairway leading to the second floor, and she could imagine Neil or a family member running up the stairs, going past any cordon or sign without being questioned by security or anyone else. She would bet that the surveillance tapes would show as much, but nobody would think twice if they saw any of them going up and down. Neil or a family member wouldn’t have even had to take the stairway by the loading dock and kitchen, where she had thought Tim Gage had sneaked in and which the police believed Lonnie had used.

  She took another left turn onto Floodgate Street, relieved to see that she was one of the few cars on the block and that she had escaped the major traffic jam. She wiped a fan in the windshield and noticed that the neighborhood was deteriorating, with fewer lights on inside the houses, some of which appeared to be vacant. She found herself wishing that the car had GPS, but it was too old, or that her BlackBerry still worked, so she could access a map application. Still she stayed the course, because Philadelphia was famously designed on a grid and she refused to get lost in her own hometown.

  Mary hit the gas, expecting to see more houses and stores any block now, but her mind was on the murder. Her gut tensed when she started to think of how easily Neil or a family member could have committed the crime. The inner circle would have known that the presentation ceremony would have been at nine o’clock, so everybody would have been busy preparing for the event and security would have been distracted, too. The killer could have lured Fiona upstairs to the second-floor conference room in a number of ways. He could have simply asked her to meet him, at any point in the evening, making up some pretext. He could have told her it was a detail about the presentation ceremony or about anything else, for that matter. If it was a family member, it would have been simple—and appalling.

  Mary remembered that Fiona’s cell phone was never found, and she felt something click in the back of her brain. Neil and the Gardner family would have known Fiona’s cell phone number, so they could even have texted Fiona and told her to come upstairs. Fiona would have run upstairs, leaving her girlfriends behind or maybe even Tim Gage, who was at the party around that time.

  The windshield wipers flapped frantically, and Mary kept traveling down the road, sickened by the horrifying scenarios running through her mind. Meantime, the neighborhood was getting worse. There were no people with umbrellas on the sidewalk, and the rowhouses had morphe
d to vacant lots, cyclone fencing, and empty storefronts. A single car traveled behind her, so at least she wasn’t completely alone. She decided to go a few more blocks and if she didn’t see more lights or activity, to go the other way. Some sections of West Philly could be as confusing to navigate as the warrens of South Philly, and she must have gotten turned around somehow. Evidently, Feet wasn’t the only one with a bad sense of direction.

  Mary accelerated despite the weather, her thoughts returning to Fiona’s murder, with a powerful sense of dread. The murder weapon had been a common kitchen knife, and the killer could have obtained that anywhere, even from the kitchen in the office that night. He could have been waiting in the conference room and when Fiona entered, he could simply have walked up to her and plunged the knife into her chest.

  Mary felt tears come to her eyes, picturing Fiona breathe her last few breaths, shout with pain, shock, and betrayal, then fall backwards on the floor, terror etched forever into her beautiful young face. The killer would have collected the knife and her cell phone, because he would have known they could incriminate him, then he would have left the room quickly and gone downstairs, without an ounce of suspicion.

  Mary drove down the dark, deserted blocks, ahead of the other car, trying to figure out the last piece of the puzzle. She remembered that Lonnie had gone upstairs because he’d heard a woman’s shout, and she pictured him running up to find Fiona and trying to resuscitate her, just after the killer had left. That would have been consistent with Lonnie’s testimony at trial, as well as what he’d told Mary when she’d interviewed him at Graterford Prison.

  She cruised ahead in the rain, scanning for a place to turn around, becoming convinced she was heading the wrong way. She wondered if the car behind her was lost, too, because it was still there. Then she had another thought about the case, which struck her as a revelation. If Allegra had been right, that Lonnie knew Fiona and visited her while she was babysitting Allegra, then it was possible that the killer had seen Lonnie at the Gardner house, because Neil and the family worked in the cottage and could have spotted Lonnie on the property, even if the kids had stowed his car in the garage, because the main house was visible from the cottage.

  Mary reached the end of the block and took a right turn, putting on her blinker for the car behind her, which seemed to be a dark SUV. She wouldn’t mind leaving it behind, because it was beginning to give her the creeps. She cruised down the narrow street, then took another right turn around the block, preoccupied.

  She realized that if Neil or the family member had known that Fiona and Lonnie were seeing each other in secret, then he could have guessed that Lonnie’s phone number would be in Fiona’s cell phone. The killer could have knifed Fiona, picked up her cell phone, and texted Lonnie, telling him to come upstairs and meet her in the second-floor conference room. Lonnie wouldn’t have known that the text hadn’t come from Fiona and he would’ve gone upstairs in a flash. He would have tried to resuscitate her, then run out in a panic, as he had, never realizing that he had just been framed for murder.

  Mary hit the gas, glancing in the rearview mirror. The big headlights of the dark SUV popped into view, which seemed strange, unless its driver had gotten lost, too. She hoped she’d get out of the neighborhood soon, and if she’d been driving a nicer car, she would’ve been worried about getting carjacked. She told herself she was paranoid, undoubtedly because she was envisioning an awful murder.

  The more Mary thought about her theory of the crime, the more sense it made, and she felt sick to her stomach as she drove. Neil or a Gardner had set up Lonnie Stall for Fiona’s murder, and Lonnie had played into his hands by denying his relationship with Fiona, probably for fear of providing the Commonwealth with a credible motive to murder, which they could use against him. Mary felt the truth of her conclusion with a certainty that resonated within her chest. It wasn’t Tim Gage who had paid Lonnie off, it was Neil Patel. The open questions were who had killed Fiona and why, and Mary was determined to find out, but she would have expert help from now on. She had learned enough about the guilty plea for Gloria Weber to reopen the investigation.

  “WHAM!”

  Suddenly Mary felt a huge jolt from behind, and everything seemed to happen at once. She flew out of her seat but was caught by the shoulder harness. The Altima leapt forward on the slick asphalt, hydroplaning out of control. She screamed in shock and fear. The airbag exploded, shoving her backwards and hitting her in the face.

  She slammed on the brakes, struggling to react. The Altima skidded into a telephone pole, striking the front fender on the passenger side. The crash threw her against the door. Her windshield cracked into a million shards. Her brain rattled, her teeth banged together. The airbag deflated into a saggy mess of warm plastic.

  Mary tried to collect her thoughts. She had been in an accident, struck by the SUV. She could hear the loud idling of its massive engine. Its high beams blasted the Altima interior with light, blinding her. The SUV must still have been stuck on her bumper. She remembered she didn’t have a phone to call 911. She hoped the SUV driver would or already had. Otherwise no one else would call, because the block looked dark and deserted in the rain.

  She unfastened her shoulder harness, numb with shock. Her head hurt too much to think. She panted, slumping in the seat. Her mouth was oddly dry. She didn’t know if she’d been injured and looked down. She didn’t see any blood or broken bones. Her knees hadn’t hit the dashboard. Her blazer was covered with whitish powder from the airbag. The windshield had shattered but not fallen apart. She hated that she’d crashed Rita’s car. She wondered if the SUV driver was injured. She reached for the door handle, to get out of the Altima and check on him.

  “WHAM!”

  The SUV crashed into the Altima again. Mary flew forward without the harness. The Altima smashed into a parked car. Her face hit the deflated airbag over the steering wheel. Pain arced like electricity through her nose and mouth. Her thoughts fogged, but she realized it was no accident.

  Someone was trying to kill her.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Mary glanced in terror at the rearview mirror. The driver’s side door of the SUV was opening. A figure got out of the car, a tall, dark shadow in the downpour. She guessed it was Neil Patel but she wasn’t waiting around to find out. She had to run for her life.

  She yanked the key out of the ignition, hit the panic button on the fob, and clambered over the console to the passenger seat. The car alarm went off and the Altima burst into sound. She grabbed the door handle, shoved open the door, and scrambled out of the car. She hit the street running.

  “Help!” Mary screamed, though the rain drowned her out. She raced past a darkened warehouse, as long as a city block. Adrenaline coursed through her system. Rain drenched her face and body. Her breath came in ragged bursts. She prayed somebody would respond to the car alarm, but she knew better. She was on her own.

  She slipped on the slick pavement but kept her legs churning. She could barely see a foot in front of her. She glanced over her shoulder.

  The shadow was chasing her, raising his right arm in a way that could only mean that he had a gun and was taking aim. A red flare burst from its muzzle.

  Mary bolted forward. The crack of a gunshot echoed faintly in the rain. She prayed the bullet wouldn’t hit her. He must have missed because she kept running as hard as she could, pumping her arms and legs.

  She looked wildly around for a place to hide. There was nothing but the wet brick wall of the warehouse. She didn’t dare run across the street, giving him a clear shot. The blare of the car alarm grew more and more distant. No one was coming, no one was around.

  “Help!” she screamed, frantic. She raced to the end of the block. Up ahead was another warehouse, but she spotted a light in one of the rowhouses on the cross street. She prayed somebody inside would hear her and call the police. She veered right around the corner and ran flat out for it, screaming at the top of her lungs.

  Crack! Another gu
nshot exploded but she was already on the cross street. She raced to the rowhouse. Rain flew into her eyes. She couldn’t see if anybody was home. She couldn’t take a chance and slow her pace or stop. Nobody opened the door of the rowhouse. There was no movement or people in the window.

  Suddenly she noticed a vacant lot behind the rowhouses. It was her only hope. She glanced behind her. He hadn’t turned the corner yet. She stopped screaming so he wouldn’t know where she was. If she could reach the lot, she had a chance of hiding. Unless he caught up soon, he wouldn’t be able to see her in the rain.

  She accelerated, summoning every ounce of strength, ignoring the pain in her lungs and legs. She reached the vacant lot and fell forward onto the rubble, glass, and other trash.

  She scrambled to her feet and flattened herself against the wall, gasping for breath. She tried to think through her terror. She squinted in the darkness for anything on the ground that she could defend herself with. It was too dark to see. She threw herself down on all fours, felt around desperately, and came up with a brick.

  Crack! sounded another gunshot, so nearby that Mary almost cried out in fright. The sound told her that he was approaching. She couldn’t hear his footsteps in the rain, but she spotted his shadow on the pavement, in the light from the rowhouse. His shadow was getting larger, so he was getting closer.

  Her heart thundered. She panted in fear and exertion. She couldn’t run forever. She couldn’t outrace a bullet. She couldn’t be defensive. She had to attack. She waited until the shadow loomed impossibly large, then she leapt from behind the wall and swung the brick as hard as she could at his face.

  “Arg!” he cried out, in pain and surprise. It was Neil Patel, and the brick had struck only a glancing blow to the back of his head. He staggered backwards, losing his balance. His arms windmilled. He dropped the gun.

  “You bastard!” Mary felt a surge of fury and slammed the brick squarely into his nose, hearing it crack.