Courting Trouble raa-9

by Lisa Scottoline

  “I see. Do you keep records of what people order, when they buy?”

  “Sure. I fill out an order for the sale, even walk-ins, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Does it contain any personal information, like name or address?”

  “Sure, I ask everybody for name, address, and phone number, but not everybody wants to give it. They don’t have to legally, but we ask anyway, for the mailing list.” Rachel looked defensive. “If it’s really busy though, I don’t always get a chance to write out the order. I just fill it and give ’em the flowers. Drives my dad nuts.”

  Anne was already eyeing the counter for the order forms.

  “This Satorno,” Mary continued, “may not have used his real name and he may have even used a fake address, but he bought a dozen red roses here either yesterday or this morning. Do you have any way of looking him up, seeing if he had an order? We need to find him. It’s really important.”

  “Find his order?” Rachel wiped a dark strand of hair from her damp brow. “Listen, I’m sorry, but I have to close and I have a shitload to do before I leave. You know how long it would take to go through the orders for red roses? They’re not even sorted and they’re all mixed in. I wasn’t going to deal with it until Tuesday.”

  Anne kept looking for the order forms. Behind the counter, next to a multicolored ribbon rack, sat a series of gray loose-leaf notebooks that contained catalogs, then she struck gold. Order slips. Some were stacked on an old-fashioned spike, but most were in disarray. She nudged Mary, whose gaze had already located them.

  “Rachel, I know you’re busy, but we can help. If you’d let us look through the order forms, maybe we could find him. With the three of us, we could look through them in no time, and we’d leave the orders sorted for you. You wouldn’t have to do it on Tuesday. We could do it while you closed up and we’d be finished right away. Your dad would think you’re a star.”

  “No, sorry.” Rachel shifted her weight behind the counter. “I’d like to, but I can’t.”

  “A woman’s life depends on it. She’s about your age, and but for the grace of God—”

  Anne stepped forward. “My life,” she said, surprised at the desperation straining her voice. “Please, we won’t keep you, I swear.”

  Rachel looked at Anne, and sighed heavily.

  Half an hour later, the sign on the door had been flipped to closed, but anyone looking through the storefront window would have seen three women in black, standing on the far side of the counter in front of three stacks of order slips. Mary, Judy, and Anne were each paging through the weekend’s slips, but so far no red roses had been sold to a Kevin Satorno, anyone with the initials K.S., or any other aliases he would have used.

  At least one that Anne could imagine. She had only ten orders left and she was already feeling it was a fool’s errand. Kevin would never leave his real name or a real address. He was a fugitive and he was smart. But she wanted to be thorough and she tried not to be discouraged. There were two other piles. “How you doing, Mary?” she asked. “Any luck?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Don’t give up!” Judy said, but Anne could see her pile was down to five orders. No way was there an order for Kevin. It was a waste of time. She couldn’t face it. If they didn’t get him now, when would they? At her funeral? How many fake ceremonies could they stage? She returned to her receipts. Invoice # 00547, Invoice # 00548, Invoice # 00549.

  Anne sighed. That was it. No more orders. She fought back tears of frustration. “Somebody please tell me that they found his order,” she said aloud.

  Mary bit her lip. Her stack had been searched and turned over. “No Satorno. No name here even remotely suspicious. Just a bunch of orders for red roses and red, white, and blue carnations.”

  Judy was examining her last invoice. “Lots of roses, none to him. Most of these orders were bought by women, but he wouldn’t have gone that far with an alias.” She turned to Anne. “Maybe we should just take all the red-rose orders and go to each house that’s listed, regardless of name.”

  Anne shook her head. “No. He’d leave a fake address. Why wouldn’t he? I bet he walked in, paid in cash, got his flowers, and walked out.”

  Rachel came from the back office, her apron gone and her hair swept back by a headband made from a leftover ribbon. She held a Hefty bag full of trash. “I’m all done locking up out back. I even cleaned out the delivery vans. Did you find him?”

  “No,” Anne answered, dejected.

  “I’m sorry. If I could think of another way to help you, I would.” Rachel logged off the computer at the counter, then unfolded the Hefty bag and snapped it open. “I only have one chore left, then I really do have to go. My family expects me at a barbecue.”

  “Sure, I understand,” Anne said. She was wracking her brain. What else could they do? Should they go to the houses? Check if the addresses really were fake?

  “My brother’s already there, and my parents.” Rachel reached under the counter, pulled out a large wastebasket painted with flowers, and hoisted it with one skinny arm. Anne grabbed the Hefty bag by its yellow drawstring and held the other side open for her, having nothing else to do but cry. “Thanks,” Rachel said, with a grateful smile. “My brother always leaves the trash for me. Pig.”

  “Thank you for trying to help.” Anne held her side of the Hefty bag while piles of silver flower-wrap, green tissue, and plant material tumbled inside, followed by a discarded catalog and soggy paper towels. Then she saw it. A plain white card. I love you, it said. Or did it? White freesia buds buried it like an avalanche. Was Anne seeing things? Wasn’t that a card, like the one he’d delivered to the memorial? Wasn’t that Kevin’s handwriting?

  “Wait!” Anne shouted. She shoved a hand in the trash, attacking it like a madwoman, shifting through the papers and cards and ferns. “Did you see? I thought I saw another card Kevin wrote.”

  Mary came over. “Like the first? Another one?”

  Judy reached for the Hefty bag. “In the trash?”

  Anne rooted around the trash, fishing for the card. “Can I dump it, please? Please? Rachel, please? I’d owe you so big-time, I swear.”

  Rachel half-smiled. “Sometimes I hate this job.”

  “I’m sorry, I really am. It’s just that I saw something he wrote.” Anne took the bag and dumped it on the floor, shaking it empty. She knelt down beside the filth and started sifting.

  Mary held up the plain, white card they’d brought with them. “It looked like this, and says, ‘I love you.’ That’s all.”

  Rachel took the card from Mary’s hand, examining it. “This looks familiar to me. I remember this. I don’t remember the guy, but I remember the cards.”

  “Cards?” Judy asked. “What do you remember? Cards? Plural?”

  “Cards!” Anne almost cried, half-listening as she went through the trash. Rosebuds, daisy petals, gum, cigarette butts, and inventory sheets went flying. There was the card! She picked it up and held it high. “’I love you,’ it says.” Then her eyes fell on another card atop the trash. I love you. Again, in Kevin’s writing. “Look at this! There’s more!” She searched. I love you I love you I love you I love you. Four more cards, all in Kevin’s hand. Then another. “There’s five of them here! Wait, six!”

  “My God,” Mary said, hushed, and Judy bent over the trash pile and started looking.

  “Here’s another!” Judy said, finding a white I love you card. “I don’t get it. They all say the same thing?”

  “I thought that was a little weird!” Rachel exclaimed. “It’s coming back, now. This dude wrote the card at the counter, which a lot of people do, but he wrote it over and over. At first, I thought it was so cute. He wanted it to be just right. I made a joke but he didn’t laugh. He kept writing them over and over. Is he the guy?”

  “Yes!” Anne was arranging the cards in a line on the counter. Eleven cards lined up like a dotted line. I love you I love you I love you I love you. “So, where is his order?”
>
  “Oh, no. I was mad busy. He must have been one of the ones I didn’t fill out.” Rachel’s face clouded. “He must have come at the worst time. I didn’t have a chance, I just wanted to make the sale and not hold anybody up. That’s why I don’t remember his face, I guess.”

  “No address?” Anne’s heart went through the fake-grass floor, but she didn’t want to make Rachel feel bad. Kevin had probably planned it that way so he wouldn’t be recognized, or maybe he just got lucky. “He wouldn’t have left a real address anyway. Did you see where he came from?”

  “No. I’m so sorry.” Rachel looked so crestfallen, Anne reached out and touched her arm.

  “It’s all right. Did he drive or was he on foot, do you know?”

  “I don’t know, but you can’t park around here. He must have walked.”

  “Do you recall how he paid?”

  “Cash, I think. Yeah, cash.” Rachel screwed up her cute nose. “It is weird to write the same thing so many times, isn’t it? I mean, some people mess up or get obsessive, but not like that.”

  “He’s more obsessive than most.” Anne found a laugh, and suddenly Rachel brightened.

  “Wait! I remember, he left his pen! He left his pen! He was writing so many cards and he was so happy when he got a good one, and then I made the joke and noticed him, and he got pissed off. He walked out so fast he left his pen. Does that matter?”

  “I doubt it, but let’s see.” Anne couldn’t help but feel excited, and Rachel was already grabbing the tall white pen-and-pencil holder.

  “I put it in here. His pen, with the others.” Suddenly she dumped the cup on the counter. Pens, pencils, a screwdriver, and an Exacto knife clattered onto the clean surface and started rolling around. There had to be thirty pens; red, green, blue, and white, piled like a child’s pick-up sticks. Then Anne noticed something about the pens.

  “They have logos! Maybe they’ll say where they’re from.” Anne scooped up a navy ballpoint, twisted it, and read the imprinted letters out loud. “Property of The Best Grandpop in The World.’”

  Judy was reading a purple pen she’d found. “’Claritin-D 24-hour.’”

  Mary squinted at a black pen. “‘Ace Appliance.’ I use them!”

  Anne grabbed a white pen, read it, and felt a jolt like electricity surge though her system. She thrust it into the air, and it shot up like a Roman candle. “We got him!”

  21

  Anne was surprised to discover that a lime-green VW Beetle could be almost as much fun as a Mustang convertible. Okay, not really, but she was so excited that they were finally going to get Kevin that she was trying to convince herself. Judy was driving her car, Mary was in the passenger seat, and Anne bounced along on the cloth-covered back bench as the VW chugged its way up the incline of the Ben Franklin Bridge. Mental note: Any vehicle with daisies in the dashboard is not a muscle car.

  Anne rolled the white pen from the florist’s between her fingers. It was a cheap plastic ballpoint with gold-toned letters that read daytimer motel. Underneath was the motel’s address and phone, in Pennsauken, New Jersey. It had been the only motel or hotel pen in the pencil cup at Schwartz’s, and Anne was praying that Kevin had found a room at the Daytimer. The Beetle reached the top of the bridge and slowed behind snaky lines of traffic.

  “Uh, oh. People still going down the shore,” Judy said with a sigh. She had rolled up the sleeves of her blouse and let her left arm dangle out the window. “I was hoping everybody who was going had gone already.”

  “Damn.” Anne edged between the two front seats and assessed the traffic through the funky windshield. “This looks bad. How long will it be, do you think?”

  “Not too long,” Judy answered. “There’s a line to the toll booths, but they’re not taking tolls this direction, so it’ll move along.”

  “It’s enough time to call Bennie,” Mary ventured. “I have my cell. Maybe we should.”

  “No,” Judy and Anne answered in unison, and Anne was liking Judy better and better.

  “Don’t back out now,” Anne said, to a worried Mary. “We settled this. We’ll call Bennie as soon as we see that Kevin’s checked in at the Daytimer. Why bother her if it’s a dry hole? If this isn’t the pen he left? We’re just taking a chance that he’s at the Daytimer, and it’s a remote chance, at best.”

  Judy nodded. “Anne’s right. Also Bennie would never let us do this, and why shouldn’t we? It’s fun! We get to play hooky! Isn’t it so cool up here?” She waved her arm against a clear blue backdrop of sky and a soaring arc of expansion bridge, but Anne couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin. They were back on track, after losing him at the service. She would get him yet. She was so close she could shoot him.

  “It’s smart of Kevin to stay in New Jersey, isn’t it?” she asked, idly. “It gets him out of town and takes the heat off.”

  Judy agreed. “Plus, it raises a jurisdictional question with the Philly police. Requires cooperation with the FBI, which is problematic.”

  Mary covered her ears. “We shouldn’t be discussing this. This is wrong. We’re going against Bennie. She’ll fire us.” She uncovered her ears and turned to the backseat. “Murphy, let’s talk about the case. Chipster. You have to make a new opening argument, now that you’re going to tell about the affair.”

  “You’re right,” Anne considered it, then reached into her purse, snapped the phone open, and hit speed-dial for Gil. “Here we go. Everybody be quiet.”

  “No fart noises, Mare,” Judy warned. The VW stopped next to a gigantic billboard for Harrah’s Marina, in which a woman drove a steamboat as big as an ocean liner. Sequined letters glittered, i’ll take you there. The call was picked up.

  “Gil, it’s Anne.” She cupped the phone around her ear to keep out the traffic noise.

  “Anne, where are you? Are you okay? I was so worried about you, after what happened at the Chestnut Club.”

  Right, that’s why you haven’t called. “Listen, we need to discuss your new defense. Meet me tonight, at the office at seven and bring any evidence you have of your affair with Beth.”

  “Evidence? Like what?”

  “Cards, letters, anything.” Anne flashed on I love you I love you I love you. Weird how parallel the relationships seemed. “Cards from flowers. Hotel receipts, phone bills, calendar notations. Any writings at all that show your relationship with Beth was consensual, not a quid pro quo for continued employment. We’re not going to hide the truth. We’re going to prove it.”

  “Anne, no! I don’t want that public, not now.”

  “It’s the only way you’ll win. We have to preempt any argument Beth may have, any proof of a sexual relationship.”

  “She has nothing! I never wrote her anything. You think I’m stupid?”

  Don’t answer. It’s not good client relations. “They have Bonnard, the French woman. She’s already testified at her dep that you forced her into sex, so they have pattern and practice. We’re moving to exclude it but the judge won’t rule until next week, and he’ll probably let it in. If they come at us, you’re dead and so is Chipster.”

  “But I didn’t force her! I didn’t force any woman! I did have a thing with Janine Bonnard, but—”

  Oh, great. “I know, you’ve been fooling around for years. That’s our defense. It isn’t pretty, but it isn’t illegal. We’ll talk when we meet. Just bring the stuff. I have to go.”

  “What do I tell Jamie? That I’m going to humiliate her in public?”

  You did that already. “Tell her I want her at that trial every day, in the front row. And when I put her up, she’s going to tell the truth. Testify about the pain your affairs caused her, but say that you wouldn’t force sex on anyone. Your philandering will win this case, Gil. Your pattern and practice is cheating, not harassment.”

  “That would be awful for Jamie, and for me!”

  “No, it will be awful for you, but I have a feeling Jamie would love to tell her story, and she just may save your sorry ass. She’ll be a c
ounterpoint to the plaintiff, and the truth of what happened comes out best through her, because it’s so obviously against her interest to admit. The jury will see that you’ve been punished, and go for the defense.”

  Gil sounded distinctly unhappy. “Anne, I have to think about this.”

  “We’ll talk tonight, after I see what you got.”

  “Does this mean you’re still my lawyer?”

  “See you tonight.” Anne snapped the phone closed, feeling uneasy. She’d liked the case so much better when she believed in Gil. Now she knew the truth.

  Judy met her eye in the rearview mirror. “Traffic’s starting to move,” she said. “It’s a sign.”

  “Let’s go get ’em,” Anne said, and Mary managed a cautious smile.

  Fifteen minutes later the VW was zipping through the toll booths and negotiating Admiral Wilson Boulevard, which didn’t show the Garden State to great advantage. Its four lanes snaked through strip bars, liquor stores, then more strip bars and liquor stores. Sometimes the scenic wonder was interrupted by another casino billboard or a strip bar that called itself a gentleman’s club. Anne felt confident that no gentlemen went there. The VW took a left, then a right, winding past tire warehouses, an auto body yard, and a stop for the PATCO speed line, a monorail tram that took commuters over the bridge into Philadelphia. After getting lost a little, the Beetleful of sweaty lawyers finally found themselves in the parking lot of the Daytimer.

  It was a small, tawdry motel that looked like it had been built in the sixties, with a low-slung sloping roof at the entrance, which was meant to serve as a carport. The glass over the front door was covered by security bars, and to its right flickered a neon sign that read VACANCY. As disgusting as the place was, it was all Anne could do not to run in. “I can’t believe we’re here. We got him!”