Beep, went the tone, and Judy spoke from the heart:
“Call me. I think of you every minute,” she said, and hung up.
It was dark outside Judy’s office window, and the law firm was quiet. The receptionist and secretaries had gone home, as had all of the lawyers except Judy. Bennie had gone to give a speech to the local ACLU chapter, but said she’d be calling to check in. Judy knew she was worried about her safety, which was a nice feeling, since Judy was worried about her safety, too. She’d taken the scissors from her office drawer and set them conveniently on her desk, just in case she had to make paper dolls of a crazed contractor. Between makeup and her personal defense, Judy was finding whole new vistas for office supplies.
She slurped the last of her take-out lo mein out from a white carton and put out of her mind that nobody she was lusting after or suing had called her back. The phone hadn’t rung for hours, but she was going to stop thinking about it. That resolved, Judy scrutinized the thirty-two photos tacked to the corkboard on an easel in front of her.
It was an array of the photos she’d taken in front of the funeral home this afternoon, which she’d had one-hour-developed across the street. She’d posted them in the order in which she’d taken them, and they made a story in still pictures of the people arriving at the Coluzzi viewing. Judy finished eating as her gaze went from one shot to the next. It was dinner theater for lawyers.
She set down her pull-apart chopsticks and got up. The first shots were of the Coluzzis, John and Marco, and their wives, then, evidently, other family, then mourners arriving in cars and on foot. There were shots of mourners parking in the lot beside the funeral home and on the median on Broad Street. There were crowd scenes on the sidewalk, and many more of them mounting the long marble stairway to the entrance or gathering in groups out front or at the top of the stairs. Interestingly, the camera had recorded much more than Judy had realized she had seen. It was the power of the art, and it was working for her.
Judy scanned the dark images. She didn’t know the faces, but by the end of the case she would. She walked back and forth before the photos, trying to fix each image in her mind. She’d already had the full set scanned and e-mailed to Dan Roser, who would be able to identify many of them, hopefully subs on the Philly Court project. She’d put in two calls to Roser but he hadn’t gotten back to her yet. Not that she’d sit on her hands in the meantime. She shoved them into her skirt pockets and stopped before the fifteenth photo.
A flash of strawberry-blond hair appeared in the photo, an unusually bright spot in a canvas of dark hair and black suits, apparently of men at the top of the stairs to the funeral home.
Judy leaned over and squinted at it. The awning cast a shadow that obscured the people, and the image was way too small to make out. Judy couldn’t see it well enough and she didn’t have a magnifying glass. But she did have a computer.
She hurried back to her desk, logged on to her e-mail, and called up the scanned computer photos she’d sent Roser, pausing at the fifteenth. There was the tiny strawberry swatch. Then Judy opened the Photoshop program, marqueed that section of the photo, and enlarged it once, then again. The strawberry head filled up half the screen. It was Theresa McRea, as Judy had suspected. But who was Theresa with?
Judy moved the photo to the man beside her and clicked the magnifying-glass icon to enlarge the image. The pixels went blocky on her and she stepped it down. A dark-haired man held Theresa’s hand. He had to be her husband Kevin. She clicked the icon again. His forehead was wrinkled, and his head close to another man’s, as if in confidence. Then Judy rotated the image to see who they were talking to. Only his profile was visible to the camera’s eye. Judy clicked the icon, and the image grew into itself, like the child to the man.
The man was Marco Coluzzi. Judy eased back in her chair. She had a shot of Kevin McRea talking to Marco the day the complaint was filed against them. And Marco had evidently come out of the viewing to greet him. Judy moved the image down and spotted a white line at the bottom. A cigarette, in Marco’s hand. He had wanted a smoke, but he was also, in the vernacular, showing McRea respect.
McRea had built the driveway for one of the Coluzzis, but Judy couldn’t remember which brother; she’d been so tired when she drafted the complaint. She closed Photoshop, opened Microsoft Word, and found their complaint, then skimmed down to allegation 55: It is alleged that the above-named defendant Kevin McRea did excavate, construct, and pave a driveway for the defendant Marco Coluzzi, at an estimated value of $130,000, in return for . . .
So it had been Marco, not John, who got the fancy driveway. Judy reasoned it out. It made sense that Marco had the alliance with Kevin McRea, not John. After all, John apparently hadn’t recognized Theresa as Kevin’s wife when he stuck his head into the lounge, or he might have wondered why the wife of one of his subs was so broken up over his father’s death. Or maybe he had and didn’t want to show his hand. Judy had no way of knowing, which made her worry for Theresa.
Judy glanced at the phone. Theresa hadn’t called. Judy was worried that she wouldn’t and equally worried that she would. What had she gotten the McReas into? Judy squirmed in her seat. She didn’t like waiting for witnesses to call any more than she liked waiting for men to call. Not that she was waiting for a man to call. Damn!
Judy scrolled to the top of the complaint, to the caption naming the parties. There was Kevin McRea’s name, right over his address. He lived in Glenolden, Delaware County, which wasn’t that far from the city. She considered going there, but Bennie would kill her if the Coluzzis didn’t. Judy opted for the safer and more boring approach. She picked up the phone, called information, got the McReas’ phone number, and called it.
Her heart was pounding as a woman picked up, but she didn’t have an Irish accent. Judy paused. “Hello, may I speak to Theresa or Kevin McRea?”
“They’re gone,” the woman said flatly, and Judy started.
“Gone? Gone? What do you mean?”
“They just moved out. Right this afternoon. I thought their new house mighta been finished early but it ain’t. They left all of a sudden.”
Judy felt only slightly relieved. “They moved out? I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it, baby. I’m the landlady, and I’m just as surprised as you.”
“But Theresa’s a good friend of mine. I just saw her today. She didn’t say she was moving.”
“Well, she’s gone. They came home together this afternoon, packed their clothes, and left. Paid off the whole year lease plus the security deposit, and I got no complaint with that. They were in a real big hurry. Left all their furniture and kitchen stuff, and they’re payin’ me two hundred bucks to pack it up and put it in storage.”
Judy tried to think. Theresa must have told Kevin that Judy had approached her at the viewing, and they got the hell out of Dodge. He didn’t want to get caught between the Coluzzis and the lawsuit. “Did they leave you a forwarding address, or a phone number where they can be reached?”
“Nothin’. Said they’d call later. Now, no offense, I got to get back to work here. Theresa kept a real neat house, but she had knickknacks out the wazoo. Shamrocks. Linen tea towels. Leprechauns carved outta Connemara marble, whatever that is.”
Judy thanked the landlady and hung up, thinking about leprechauns and shamrocks. Unless she missed her guess, Theresa and Kevin were halfway to Ireland by now. Judy smiled in spite of her lawyerly instincts. The McReas were out of harm’s way, and she’d find another way to win her suit. She sat motionless with her hand on the phone, trying to process this new information. It made sense they’d take off, because a baby was portable, but how about a business? How could Kevin McRea leave his business? And for how long?