Dirty Blonde

CHAPTER 20

Cate drove down Fifth Street in light traffic, heading back toward the courthouse, her emotions in tumult. A pack of Trident gum couldn’t overcome the taste in her mouth. She would never have dreamed that she could have caused so much harm, or set into motion a series of events that would hurt Gina and Warren. Their vulnerability upped the ante. She steered onto Market Street and, preoccupied, almost ran a red light. She had to keep that show off the air, and down-and-dirty legal research from a law clerk was only the beginning. She’d hire the best litigator in town, if not alive, and she’d wage the biggest, baddest court battle she could afford, which was plenty. Cate reached on the passenger seat for her purse and dug around for her cell phone.

Ring! Suddenly, the cell rang in her bag. She fished the phone from her purse and checked the number on the lighted display. It was a number she didn’t know, in the 215 area code. Funny. Almost nobody had her cell number. She pressed SEND to answer the call. “Hello?”

“Judge Fante?” It was a man on the line. “This is Vector Security.”

“Yes?” Cate said, surprised.

And by the end of the next sentence, she had swung the car completely around and hit the gas.

Cate pulled up to the unwelcome sight of a police cruiser in her driveway. She parked behind it, turned off the ignition, and jumped out of her car, then hurried up her front steps in the cold, readying her keys to unlock the front door, but it swung wide, having been opened by a uniformed cop standing on the threshold of her house. His blue eyes peered businesslike from under the black patent bill of his cap.

“You the judge?” he asked, his tone surprised. His build was short and stocky in a dark blue jacket, his gleaming badge worn under a black nameplate that read OFFICER THEODORE GILKENNY.

“Yes.” Cate stepped into the entrance hall, introduced herself and extended a hand, and they shook, his hand in a thick black leather glove. “How did you get in?”

“Through the gate in the back fence, then in through the back door. The way they tried to.”

Cate groaned. Vector was her burglar alarm company. They had said the alarm on the back door had gone off. “What did they take?”

“Nothing. You lucked out.” Officer Gilkenny closed the door behind them. “We figure they ran when the alarm went off.”

“Did anybody see them? Or him?”

“Don’t know. We just got here. We don’t usually canvass for a burglary, but if we have time, we’ll check it out before we leave.”

“Thanks.” Cate glanced around, relieved to see the entrance hall and living room looking untouched. “It just seems strange. Society Hill is such a safe neighborhood.”

“Come with me.” Gilkenny turned and walked Cate down the hall as if she were a guest in her own home. “It’s safe now, Judge. We walked through the entire house. No one’s here.”

Cate shuddered at the thought, as what had happened began to sink in. Someone had tried to break into her house.

“Dispatch told us you were a VIP. Said you have that case down the courthouse, with the cop show, right? My wife watches that show. Law amp; Order, SVU.”

“It’s Attorneys@Law.”

“My wife always calls it SUV. Like the car.”

“Yes.” Cate had no idea why she was having this conversation, much less correcting him. They reached the kitchen, where everything was in place. The granite counters glistened, the cherrywood table shone, and the coffeepot sat drying upside-down on a dish-cloth, the way she’d left it this morning.

“The kitchen looks okay,” Cate said, vaguely aware that she was comforting herself. She’d never been burglarized before, if you didn’t count her divorce.

“I can’t believe how many times a week they got that show on,” Gilkenny continued, chatty. She walked ahead of the cop, through the mud room to the French doors in the back of the house. Gilkenny was saying, “And my mother, she lives in Tampa, she watches the reruns on cable, too. She misses that Orbach guy. Did she love him! And Kojak, too. She loved Kojak.”

“Oh, no,” Cate said, when she saw the back door. The round knob hung loosely from its stem, and she reached automatically to shove it back in, then stopped. “I guess if I touch it, I’ll leave a fingerprint.”

“Yeah, but we won’t be dusting for prints. Not for a burglary. It’s not like on Law amp; Order. Besides, if we dusted for every burglary, this would be one dirty city.” Gilkenny managed a tight smile, but Cate barely listened, looking out the mullioned window and catching the eye of another uniformed cop, a woman, who was standing on her patio, making notes on a white paper pad. She reached for the knob, which fell off into her hand.

“Oops.”

“Shoulda warned you.”

Cate slid the doorknob uselessly back into the hole, pulled the door open by the wood frame, and stepped outside onto the patio. “Hello, Officer,” Cate said, squinting to read the nameplate on the cop’s puffy navy jacket while her eyes adjusted.

“I’m Jill Wiederseim.” The woman cop grinned and extended a gloved hand. “Morning, Judge. Pleasure to meet you. Nice house.”

“Thanks.” Cate looked past her, appraising the patio. Nothing had been disturbed. A gas barbecue was on the left, next to a table and four chairs, protected from winter with green plastic covers. Flower beds lined the sunny back of the patio, now patches of frozen dirt and ice-encased impatiens. A wooden privacy fence surrounded the backyard, and looked intact. The gate was even closed, probably by the cops themselves. “Everything looks in order. How did they get in?”

“Through the gate in the fence.” Wiederseim slid her notepad into her back pocket and gestured to the fence. “That’s about six feet high, correct?”

“Yes. Should I put a lock on it?”

“You can, but those coconuts will just jump it.” Wiederseim turned to the fence bordering the back of the patio. “There’s no alley back there, and all the backyards on the street are connected. You share that with the back-door neighbor, right?”

“Yes. The Marcotts. They work during the day, but maybe somebody’s home. Maybe they saw something.”

“We’ll check it out, Judge.” Wiederseim shrugged. “Good thing you had your alarm on. You’d be surprised, the number of people that have ’em and don’t use ’em.”

“I bet.” Cate still felt troubled, but kept it to herself. “How often does something like this happen in this neighborhood?”

“All the time, you just don’t hear about it. We had a burglary on Delancey Street last week. They got in through the back door, there, too.”

“Really?” Cate was thinking about Russo, but she wasn’t about to broach the subject with a member of the Philadelphia Police Department. “I wonder if we could keep this with the Philly cops. We don’t need to extend the jurisdiction, if you know what I mean.”

Officer Wiederseim smiled. “I’m not calling in the feds, if that’s what you mean. They’d turn this thing into a federal case.”

“Yes. I don’t want this blown out of proportion.” Cate nodded. Then the visit from Russo would come out, and the videotape with Partridge. “Come on, let’s go in. Too cold to stand out here.” Cate opened the door, and Wiederseim followed her inside, jiggling the broken knob. “I have to go back to court and I can’t leave the house open, like this. I guess I better get a locksmith, right away.”

Wiederseim cocked her head. “We can board it up for you for the time being. Then reset the alarm and you’ll be good to go. It’ll take about twenty minutes, tops. We’ll have you back in court in no time.”

Gilkenny nodded. “You got any lumber? A couple two-by-fours?”

Cate brightened, getting the hang of the VIP thing. “In the basement, I think. This way.” She led them to the basement stairs, off the kitchen.

Officer Gilkenny said, “Judge, what’s Mariska Hargitay really like?”

“She’s great,” Cate called back.

But that wasn’t the detective she was thinking of.