“She thinks she’ll finish today, at the library in Washington. She’s coming home a day early, on an afternoon train.”
“Good.” Bennie looked at the last message. “Mort Abrams,” she said, and did a double take. “Abrams? That’s very exciting. They’re all very exciting. And it’s time to celebrate.” She touched Marshall on the shoulder. “Come into my office. We’re having a little party.”
“We are?”
“Yep.” Bennie charged ahead, bearing her tray of hot glazed doughnuts, and she knew the smell would waft through the office and work its Krispy Kreme magic. “Carrier! Murphy! Breakfast in my office! I’ve been cooking all morning!”
“Huh? What?” Heads popped out of their offices, and the associates hurried after Bennie and Marshall. They all piled in, making hot coffee and passing around steamy doughnuts stuck to plates of legal pads. In no time, fresh coffee and hot pastry scented the room and they all gathered around the conference table with hot mugs and sugar highs.
Bennie raised her mug of coffee. “A toast to you, ladies. To your faith and hard work, and to DiNunzio, who will be home tonight! Our wonderful news is that Rosato amp; Associates is back in business! Julien St. Amien intends to continue the class action!”
“Yes!” Carrier said, setting down her coffee to throw her arms into the air, signaling a touchdown. She had on her favorite denim smock, with a hot pink T-shirt that matched her hair. “That’s so great!”
“Yeah!” Murphy hollered beside her. She cut her usual curvy figure in a tan jersey that skimmed her skinny knees, and her hair swung long and free. She butter-churned her way across the room, shaking her cute tan butt. “Awesome!”
“Go, us!” Marshall clapped from her seat at the table, and Bennie raised a hand.
“Marshall, please don’t explode,” she said, and everyone laughed, applauding and boogying. When they finally settled down, Bennie filled in the details, including her trip to see the suspect at the Roundhouse and Julien’s decision to become a solo practitioner. Somehow Julien was what they wanted to talk about first. “I’m having him over, so you can show him what you do and talk him out of wanting to do it.”
“We can’t do that,” Carrier said, munching a doughnut. “We love it too much here. Every friggin’ minute.”
Murphy laughed. “Yeah. We can’t get enough, now that the long distance is back on.”
Bennie smiled, despite herself, and Marshall said, “Can I go back to work, Bennie? Somebody has to.”
“Sure, thanks. You gonna be okay to walk there? You need a hand?”
“More like a chairlift,” Marshall mumbled as she waddled out of the office.
Bennie clapped her hands together. “Okay, moving right along, we do have other business to attend to this morning. The cops have a suspect in Robert’s murder, which I think is totally bogus.”
“I have a question,” Murphy said, her lovely face turning grave. “What happened to you last night, Bennie? I saw you on TV, bitching out the reporters.”
“I’m back on the sauce.”
Murphy raised a perfectly groomed brow. “This could be the only explanation for your eyeliner.”
“A for effort?”
“No. Anything more from Alice? I got you a hearing for next week.”
“I’ll take it. Meantime, no more break-ins, lots of new locks, and David surveilled the street last night and this morning.”
“That working out okay with him?”
“Good as can be expected,” Bennie answered. She suppressed: He food-shopped for me and I think I’m in lust. The kids didn’t have to know everything about Mommy and Daddy.
“Boss,” Carrier broke in, barely able to contain herself. “I did some research last night on Linette.”
“You did?” Bennie asked, surprised. It was what she had been going to call the associate about before David stopped her. “What did you learn?”
“I found out he lives in a town house in Society Hill, on Delancey. I have the address in my office. It’s one of those huge ones.”
“Really.” It would have been Bennie’s first question last night. Perhaps the world could turn without her. “Good for you, Carrier.”
“But wait, there’s more. What we want to know is what Linette was doing the night of the murder, assuming he didn’t hire anyone to kill Robert.” Carrier barely took a breath before answering her own question. “Dinner ended before nine, according to Abrams, and at that hour there are two basic possibilities for most lawyers in America. Back to the office, or give it up and go home.”
Bennie smiled.
“Now. We know that Linette didn’t go back to the office, because of what Murphy learned from the sign-in log at his building. So let’s give this jerk the benefit of the doubt and say that he intended to go back to the office, but changed his mind and went home instead.” Carrier’s voice took on a logical cadence. “Now, to get to his house from the Palm, it’s about ten blocks. We know he didn’t have a car, Abrams told us that. That means Linette could walk, go by bus, or take a cab.”
Bennie nodded. “Door number three, the cab. He’s too self-important to take a bus, much less walk.”
“I thought so, too.” Carrier held up a finger, her china blue eyes keeping a secret. “Now, we know that he didn’t go back to the office. So we need to eliminate the possibility that he went home.”
“How do we do that?”
“We do what I did. First question. What is the way that most lawyers, especially ones with major dough, get a cab at that hour?”
“They call a radio cab, Penn Call. We did it at Grun.”
“Right, and we did it at Stalling and Webb, too. It’s easiest. They come right away. You charge it to the firm, you sign a receipt for the fare and the tip. It costs nothing and it’s instant. So I made a basic assumption, that if Linette changed his mind about going to work, he would have taken a Penn Call cab home. You with me?”
“I don’t know.” Bennie was dubious. “It’s not that hard to get a cab at a hotel like the Hyatt, where the Palm is.”
“True, but Abrams would have seen Linette grab a cab there, especially because he had to wait for the valet to get his car. Abrams didn’t say he had seen Linette do that. So it’s logical to assume that if Linette got a cab, it wasn’t at the Palm.”
“Okay,” Bennie said. The reasoning held up.
“So let’s say Linette walks toward his office and then decides to go home. There are so few cabs in this city, it’s not New York, and I think he’d save himself the hassle and do what the rich lawyers do. Phone Penn Call.” Carrier paused. “So I called Penn Call, pretending to be Linette’s secretary. I told them that he’d left his Montblanc pen in the cab last night, and asked if they knew which cab he took from the Palm to his house.”
Bennie smiled. “Cute.”
“They said if he had taken a cab, the driver would have turned in the receipt. But guess what? They had no record he took a trip from the Palm to his house, and they checked all the receipts. They even asked the drivers. And yes, Linette does have an account with Penn Call. He uses them exclusively. The dispatcher told me he even keeps them on speed dial, on his cell.” Carrier couldn’t hide her pride. “And by the way, they also told me they didn’t take him anywhere else that night either. Linette was not in a Penn Call cab the night Robert was killed.”
Hmm. Bennie was worried about something. “What if the cab company-”
“Calls and tells Linette?” Carrier held up her traffic hand. “Don’t worry, I thought of that. I called back as the secretary, saying I’d made a mistake and please not to tell my boss I screwed up.”
“Smooth.”
Carrier grinned. “So let’s review. What have we learned? That Bill Linette didn’t go back to the office or to his house on the night St. Amien was murdered. So, where was he?”
“Interesting.” Bennie mulled it over. “Of course, there are other places to go.”