“Yes. When are you going to follow up with Saracone?”

“As soon as I can.”

“You can’t waste a minute, Detective. Saracone is dying and you need to get over there right away. If Saracone isn’t behind Frank’s murder, he’ll know who is. And he’ll know why. Will you call me as soon as you’ve seen him?”

“Yes.” Detective Gomez walked to the gray door of the interview room, opened it, and gestured to Mary to leave. She didn’t.

“You have my office number, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did I give you my cell number?”

“When we spoke on the phone.”

“Try there, too. And please make the appointment this morning.”

“I’ll do it right away, dear.” Detective Gomez made another gesture for her to go, but Mary had a second thought.

“Wait! Why didn’t I think of this before? How about I stay right here while you call -”

“No.”

“Or I can wait in the squad room, to give you some privacy?”

“No. Absolutely not. Now, if you please.” Detective Gomez gestured again out the door, and beyond it lay the squad room, which, unlike on TV, was always quiet and still in the daytime.

Two of the detectives looked up from their desks, obviously eavesdropping. A woman in a suit walked by, and Gomez eyed her. “I’ll follow up as soon as I get back to my desk, get it? The sooner you leave, the sooner I call.”

“Okay, then I’m leaving.” Mary went to the door. Detective Gomez rested a heavy hand on her shoulder, then all of a sudden he poked her in her swollen cheek.

“That hurt?”

“Of course!”

“Good. Bullets hurt way more than that, and you only feel the pain if you live.”

Mary knew as much, but she wasn’t about to skip down memory lane with him.

“Leave the police business to the police from now on. Stay away from the Saracones. No more investigating, breaking and entering, or any of that funky stuff. Next time I lock you up! You hear me?”

“Yes, Detective.” Mary hurried out, feeling as if she’d just dodged a bullet. In fact, she was starting to feel positively bulletproof.

Which even she knew was a bad sign.

Twenty-Seven

“My God in heaven! What happened to you?” Marshall asked. She glanced up from the reception desk and did a double-take when she saw Mary’s bruised cheek, then stood and examined the wound with the laserlike absorption of a new mother. “Mary, what happened? You need to get that looked at!”

“I’m fine.” Mary was about to explain but noticed the reception area was full of clients ensconced on rental furniture. One of them was that reporter, Mac, who was already making a beeline for Mary. His eyes weren’t espresso anymore but were closer to shit brown. Mary said under her breath, “I have a deposition, right?”

“Great minds,” Marshall muttered back, and Mac joined them at the desk, his handsomeness arranged into a mask of concern.

“Mary, what happened to your cheek? It looks like you took a really nasty punch!”

Marshall interjected, “Mary, you remember Mr. MacIntire. I told him you have a deposition this morning, but he insisted on speaking with you.”

“I have a deposition,” Mary repeated matter-of-factly. “Sorry, I can’t talk now. Though I checked with my Uncle Joey and he said he doesn’t know any reporter named Mac from the Philly News.”

“He calls me Jim, and I never told him I was from the News. I doubt he knows what I do.”

Mary filed it away. Skinny Uncle Joey wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Still she didn’t trust this guy. “Also I called you twice. Did you get my messages?”

“No, so what happened to your face? Did somebody punch you?” Mac leaned over and squinted. “It’s so fresh, like you just got slugged.”

“It’s not. I didn’t.” Mary prayed for a good lie. “It happened when I was out west.”

“Someone hit you in Montana?”

“No, it was a horse.” Yikes. “A horse kicked me.”

“A horse kicked you in the face?” Mac’s eyes flared. “I had a friend who got kicked in the face by a horse, and it broke her cheek. She needed a whole series of operations to even talk again.”

“No, that’s not what happened.” Please God help me. I said a good lie. “The horse didn’t kick me in the face. It kicked me on the leg, and I fell down and hit my face.”

“Now, I understand,” Marshall said helpfully, and Mary faked a smile, which stung.

“Sorry, Mac, I have to go get ready for my dep.”

“But we said we’d meet again, so I could write the second installment of our Brandolini story, remember?”

“You never did the first installment, and I have to go.” Mary started to leave, but Mac fell into step with her.

“I was waiting until both installments were done, to show them to my editor. And we should talk, since Frank Cavuto has been murdered. Shame, isn’t it? You two went way back, didn’t you? I heard you played softball on his team. Word is, you had a mean right arm.”

Mary picked up the pace. “How did you know that?”

“I called Frank after we met. He liked you very much. He said you were a great lawyer, doing your best for Brandolini.”

Hmm. “My comment is that it’s awful and sad that Frank Cavuto was murdered. Now I have to go.” Mary turned on her heel in the tight hallway. “Listen, you can’t follow me to my office. I have to get ready for a dep.”

“I can wait until after your deposition is over. I need to catch up, and you could tell me what you learned about Brandolini at Fort Missoula. After all, I was the one who suggested you go there.”

Mary gritted her teeth. “I have another dep in the afternoon. It’s wall to wall today, and I didn’t learn anything in Montana anyway.”

“Is that for the record? Because that’s not what the director said, at Fort Missoula. He and the staff were very impressed with you. He said you’d tracked down an old mechanic, a Mr. Milton, at the camp.” Mac frowned. “He said you found some old pictures, and even identified a friend who was with Brandolini when he committed suicide.”

The reporter had learned everything. I hate the First Amendment.

“Then he put me in touch with a widow you met, who said the friend was named Giovanni Saracone. I spoke to her yesterday, and she really liked you. She seemed to think you’d head right for this Saracone.”

Die, asshole! “Nah, I have to get back to work. Please, I gotta go.”

“Call me ASAP!” Mac called out as Mary hurried away.

She escaped into Judy’s office, where she closed the door with herself on the inside. When she turned around, she let out a little yelp of surprise. Judy was sitting behind her cluttered desk, and leaning against the wooden credenza opposite her was Bennie Rosato herself, her blonde hair up in its tangly twist and her arms folded in her trademark khaki suit.

Help! “Bennie, you’re back!” Mary tried to sound delighted, but her cheek wound and true emotions combined to thwart her. “Did you win, boss?”

“DiNunzio?” The boss’s eyes widened when she saw the bruise, and Judy’s jaw dropped open.

“Mare, are you all right?” the associate asked, rising alarmed from her desk chair. “What happened?”

Mary quickly considered her options, and there were none. One woman was her boss and the other her best friend. She was fresh out of lies, even lousy ones. Busted. So she wasn’t bulletproof after all. She dropped her bag, set down her messages and mail, and sank into the chair opposite Judy’s desk to give her second confession of the day. When Mary was finished telling them everything, both Bennie and Judy looked terribly grave, their lips set in almost identical hyphens, so that side by side their mouths formed a dotted line. At times like this, Rosato amp; Associates would morph into the Supremes; Bennie would became Diana Ross, so she’d yell in the lead, and Judy, or any other associate, would yell backup, like Cindy Bird-song.