Dirty Blonde

CHAPTER 41

Odd. Despite the cold, the front door with the stenciled number 388 stood propped wide open with a brick, and Cate slipped through and climbed the stairs, almost banging into Micah as she descended, carrying a huge cardboard box that held papers and files, a chrome gooseneck desk lamp, and her white iBook.

“Judge?” Micah started behind the gooseneck lamp. “What are you doing here? I heard you were in the hospital, out of town somewhere.”

“I was, but I’m fine.”

“Detective Russo tried to kill you? That’s so random!”

“Yeah, ain’t it a bitch?” Cate smiled in a way she hoped was casual. “It’s a long story. Meanwhile, what’s going on here? You moving the office?”

“No, just me. I’m just not sure where yet. I’m out of a job.” Micah’s face fell, and the box slipped, but Cate grabbed the bottom.

“What happened?”

“Aw, they let me go.” Micah’s mouth made a flat line, devoid of lipstick, and she wore no eye makeup, either, revealing a clean look to her pretty brown eyes.

“Here, let me help you with the box. I’ll back down slowly.”

“Thanks.” Micah righted the lamp, gathering up its see-through electrical cord, and Cate eased back downstairs. They reached the bottom, waddled through the open door with difficulty, and stutter-stepped onto the cold sidewalk, with the box between them. Micah nodded down the street, from her side of the box. “My car’s the blue one, a few down. I got a great space.”

“You lead.” Cate let her go ahead, holding one side of the heavy box. “So how’d this come about, your being let go?”

“Gaone is cutting costs and he doesn’t think the show needs anyone in Philly anymore.”

“But Attorneys@Law has to be one of the most profitable shows on TV,” Cate said as they inched down the street with the stuffed box between them. It wasn’t the hard-hitting interrogation she had imagined, but she could make it work to her advantage. “Why do they need to cut costs?”

“Because he’s a greedy jerk?”

And maybe this’ll be easy. “But what about the Philly details? They give the show its realistic feel.”

“He’s willing to sacrifice that. He doesn’t care about the quality of the production, only the bottom line.” Micah’s brown ponytail swung left and right as they walked along. She wore a navy down vest over a thick fisherman sweater and jeans, with her red Converse sneakers. “I heard some of the writers are getting fired, too. Isn’t that terrible? Between crap like this and the new reality shows, there’s no work for writers anymore. It’s like all my friends are getting shoved out.”

“That’s a shame. A new broom sweeps clean, huh?”

“What?”

“It’s an expression. It means when a new guy comes in, he brings in his own people and he kicks all the old guys out, even if they’re good at what they do. It sounds like what’s happening.”

“Exactly.” Micah nodded. “Here’s my car. Can you hold the box while I get the keys?”

“Sure.” Cate glanced over at the car, then did a double take, unable to hide her surprise. At the curb glistened a brand-new navy blue Mercedes, the two-door coupe. Huh? “This gorgeous creature is your car?”

“Yes.”

“Wow! I’m jealous.” Cate almost buckled under the weight of the box as Micah dug in her pocket, retrieved the keys, and aimed them at the parked car. The trunk lid sprang open on cue, and the women struggled to dump the box inside and position it on the black-carpeted bottom. Cate was already wondering how the child owned a nicer Mercedes than hers, especially since hers was now an accordion. “I thought you said you had a Saturn.”

“No, you said I had a Saturn, with two years of payments.” Micah managed a laugh, and so did Cate.

“I’m overruled.”

“I’ll say.” Micah closed the lid and brushed off her hands. “Okay, that’s everything except the plasma TV.”

“That big one on the wall? They’re giving you that?”

“They are now.” Micah smiled bitterly.

“Will it fit in the car?”

“It’ll have to. Can you help me carry it? I’d really appreciate it.”

“I will, if you’ll have coffee with me after. I’ll tell you the story of how I almost got run over.”

“Deal,” Micah answered, her smile lingering unhappily.

“I guess I’m wondering about the night Art Simone was murdered,” Cate said, after they’d both been brought a Niçoise salad that barely fit on the round Tuilleries-type table of greenish tin, at a neighborhood bistro pretending it was located in a chic arrondissement of Paris and not across from an electrical-supplies wholesaler.

“What about it?” Micah asked. She picked up her fork and speared a slice of hard-boiled egg.

Cate flashed on poor Sarah, sitting shiva by herself, at this moment. We eat round food to symbolize the cycle of life.

“I’m wondering why you weren’t at the celebration dinner that night, after you’d won at trial. You were in court every day, and I saw you taking notes.” Cate was treading a careful line between overt flattery and over-the-top flattery. She had no other way to get the information without the proverbial rubber hose. “I figured you were Simone’s right hand, at least as important as a jury consultant, Courtney Whatever.”

“I am. I mean, I was.”

“So why weren’t you there? They were, but you weren’t.”

“I’m not sure, to be honest,” Micah answered, looking down as she ate. Her ponytail curled onto her shoulder. “Art said he thought it would be better if I weren’t, and I accepted that. He asked me to get the files back in order after the trial, which I did, back at the office.”

“All by yourself? Like Cinderella?”

“Exactly.” Micah laughed, hurt.

So, no alibi. “But why did he ask you to do that then? It seems like it could have waited.”

“Not for Art. He never waited for a thing.” Micah looked up, meeting Cate’s eye directly. “He wanted the decks cleared right away so we could get back to work, full-throttle. The lawsuit interrupted all of us and slowed the show’s production. That’s why I caved so fast when you threatened to sue me, that day in the office. Litigation sucks.”

“I agree, but the cleanup could have waited a night, couldn’t it? Isn’t it possible that you were intentionally excluded from the dinner?”

“By Art?”

Yes. “Not necessarily. By anyone else who was there?”

“Why do you ask? Why do you even care?”

Cate felt at a momentary loss. “I’m trying to understand everything about that night. Because I’m not sure Richard Marz was the one who killed Art Simone.”

“And you think I did?” Micah’s eyes flared with a shock that looked genuine.

Maybe. “No. You worked for Simone, and were loyal to him, I can see that. I’m just trying to understand what really happened that night.”

“The police know what really happened. Marz did it. They have him on security video, as if they needed that.” Micah scoffed defensively. “He tried to kill Art right in front of you, in court!”

“Marz’s wife doesn’t think he did it.”

“Of course, she wouldn’t.”

“But neither does Russo, who thinks I did it.”

“You? That’s ridiculous!” Micah said, incredulous. “Why would you?”

“Because I supposedly wanted to stop you and Simone from making a TV series about me.”

“By killing Art? Ha! That wouldn’t have stopped a single thing.” Micah’s eyes remained wide. “Look, Art is dead and they’re making it without him, me, or any of our old writers. If there’s money to be made, Hollywood makes it happen.”

Cate tried not to think of Gina and Warren, on TV, Sunday nights at nine. “But you’d have to be in TV to know that for sure. So, back to this celebration dinner, did someone want you not to be there? Like the jury consultant?” Cate was making it up as she went along, but Micah leaned forward intently.

“How do you mean?”

“Do you think someone, let’s say Courtney Flavert, asked Art not to have you there for some reason, when you rightly should have been?”

“Is that what you think?”

No. “Maybe. I’m trying to figure out her role. In my experience, jury consultants don’t always stay so involved after the jury is empanelled. But she was there all the time at trial.” Cate pressed ahead, putting her cards on the itsy-bitsy table. Sort of. “And, for example, I know that she was invited to Simone’s funeral, and so was George Hartford.”

Micah set her fork down, her lips parted slightly. “Courtney was invited to the funeral? That can’t be right.”

“It is.”

“I can’t believe Erika invited her. Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?” Micah asked, the question a challenge that Cate was happy to meet.

“George Hartford told me. They flew out together.”

“They did?” Micah’s eyes narrowed to streetwise slits, and her forehead knit unhappily, if not downright angrily.

“Yes. You told me it wasn’t supposed to be a big Hollywood funeral, but that’s exactly what it was. All sorts of celebrities were there.”

“I saw that on the news.”

“If there was room for Courtney, there was room for you.”

“That bitch!”

“Absolutely.” Cate couldn’t stop the questions. What was going on? Was Micah sleeping with Simone? Had he bought her that delicious coupe? Had he dumped her after the trial, when she was no longer useful? Had Erika excluded her from the funeral because she suspected an affair?

Micah was frowning. “Wait a minute. Why were you talking to George?”

“Confidentially, I was there to discuss my own legal trouble. I don’t know if you heard, but I got fired, too. That’s why I’m free today, to haul around plasma TVs.”

“I did read that. Sorry.”

“I thought I would be an episode already. ‘Judges Behaving Badly Within the Meaning of Article III.’” Cate made quote marks in the air, and Micah cringed.

“Sorry. I’m off the show. The scripts I helped with are done.” Micah looked sympathetic. “But you were a really good judge.”

“The winners always think that.”

“No, you cared.”

“Bet you say that to all the judges.” Cate faked a laugh. “Getting back to the point, George told me he stayed at the restaurant while Art went outside to catch his car. Who arranged for the car?”

“I did.”

“What was the car service?”

“Alpha. They’re good. We used them during the trial.”

“It was due to pick him up at six to make it to the airport by seven-fifteen, for a private plane.”

“Right.”

“But the car got there a little late, in the rain. Simone was waiting out there alone when he was killed.”

“Right, the traffic held up the driver.”

Cate made a mental note to double check. “Who made the dinner reservations?”

“George did, or probably he had his associate or his secretary do it. He picked the restaurant, too.”

Cate considered it. She couldn’t see immediately what George Hartford would gain by killing his own client, unless George was messing around with the jury consultant and Simone had found out. Still, would Simone tell George’s wife? No. And did it matter anyway, in one of those crusty upper-crust marriages? Cate thought of Prince Charles and Camilla, her only reference point for upper-crust marriages, since there weren’t many in Centralia.

“So you actually think Marz didn’t kill Art? But then why would Marz kill himself?”

“Maybe he didn’t.” Cate readied herself to watch Micah’s reaction, since she was about to tell her everything. “Maybe somebody did it for him and made it look like a suicide.”

Micah gasped. “You’re kidding!” she yelped, then covered her mouth.

Ten out of ten on the Shock-O-Meter. “It’s possible.”

“Who would do that?”

“Whoever killed Simone.”

“Why?”

“To set up Marz as the shooter. After all, Marz was easy to frame. He had attacked Simone in open court and lost a lot of money to him. He had motive and opportunity aplenty. Marz makes the perfect killer, except that I’m not sure he did it.”

“You’re like a real detective! That’s incredible!”

“Tell me about it.” Cate leaned over. “I’m asking you if you knew if George was having an affair with the jury consultant, Courtney. I mean, I’m not stupid.”

“Honestly, yes,” Micah answered, her tone ringing true. She leaned forward, only too happy to dish now that she’d been excluded from the funeral. Or perhaps because she could cast suspicion on someone else.

“Really?” Cate tried not to get excited. It only raised more questions. “How do you know?”

“It was obvious, from the day she was hired.” Micah’s eyes glittered. “Lots of touching, pats on shoulders, like that. And joking around. I think it’s been going on a long time.”

“Really. Where was she hired from?”

“The Flavert Agency, her own business. Courtney sells common sense for a hundred thousand dollars a pop.”

Cate laughed.

“I told Art we shouldn’t pay it, that I knew more about Philly than she ever could. But he didn’t want to take any chances, and George insisted she was the best.”

“Maybe she was,” Cate shot back, and they both laughed like girlfriends. Then Cate asked suddenly, “Do you think she was sleeping with them both?”

“What? Who?”

“Courtney. The jury consultant.”

“She was sleeping with George,” Micah said testily.

“But was she sleeping with Art, too?”

“Of course not! What makes you say that?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? Art Simone was a very attractive man, with a lot of power and money. And Courtney was the one they both wanted at dinner.” Cate paused, letting it sink in. “Remember the threesome plotline for the first episode of the new TV series? The one you told me about? The two judges and a law clerk, in a ménage à trois?”

“Right, the pilot,” Micah answered, her face reddening in a way that told Cate she’d struck a chord, however accidentally.

“Yes, the pilot. Two men and a woman. Whose idea was it for the threesome plotline? Yours or Art’s?”

“Art’s.”

“So is life imitating Art, or is Art imitating life? No pun intended.” Cate managed another fake laugh, but Micah looked stricken.

“But…Art would never cheat like that.”

On you. “On his wife, you mean.”

“Right. On his wife.”

Bingo. “We’ll never know, will we? And we know Art got his ideas from his life. Isn’t that what he testified to, on the stand? Remember?”

Micah reached for her water glass with a hand that trembled. Cate knew that Micah and Simone were having an affair. The girl’s reaction to the threesome clinched it-and the incredible Mercedes. Micah had thought she was Simone’s mistress; she never figured he’d cheat on his mistress with another mistress. Which left Cate with yet another question.

And a thought about someone who might know the answer.