by Lauren Lane
Walking down the concourse, she consoled herself that if the coffee break hadn’t worked, at least she had a business class seat reserved on the plane and a hotel suite waiting at her destination. She’d indulged in both, rationalizing if she was making this trip at least it should be comfortable. Interesting concept, that; comfortable discomfort.
As the plane taxied out to the runway, she pulled out her BlackBerry to review her schedule for the next ten days, hoping some magic wand had been waved over it, making it all shiny and fun. However, as usual, her fairy godmother was AWOL. She put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. What the hell had she been thinking, saying yes to this? Ever since she’d moved to Portland, she’d restricted her Philadelphia visits with her mother to long weekends in the spring and fall. It got her points for being a good daughter, avoided too much time being fussed over and kept her out of the two East Coast seasons she didn’t like. This trip? Ten days in mid-June when she’d just been there two months before.
Checking the airline schedule online, she found a flight home the day after the presentation she was to give the following week. That would cut three days off the trip. But before she could change her reservation, the flight attendant asked her to turn her phone off.
Nothing left to do but work. She opened her stuffed-to-the-gunnels messenger bag and took out what she’d brought to help her craft her speech. It looked like she’d included everything in the courthouse except the old law library. Being tapped as the last-minute stand-in for your boss at an important conference will make you do that.
While trying to organize it all, she lost track of her jacket. She eventually saw it too far under her seat to grab and asked the person sitting behind her to get it for her. A man threw it back. When she turned to thank him he added a dirty look — a familiar dirty look. Shit. The man in the blue blazer from the coffee stand.
Finally settled, she began to review case files. Unfortunately, the steady stream of orders to the flight attendants from the seat behind her distracted both her and the cabin crew. When she’d read the same report three times and still didn’t know what the hell it was about, she gave up trying, put her work away and replaced it with her iPod. By plugging in the ear buds she could drown out ABB (“Asshole in Blue Blazer,” as he had now morphed into being) with Pink Martini, Colbie Caillat, Suzanne Vega and Alicia Keys.
By the time she’d worked through most of her current favorite albums, the pilot announced their imminent arrival in Philadelphia. Winding the cord for the ear buds around the iPod before stashing it away, the thought occurred that ABB had now wrecked a second part of her day. Two strikes against her and she hadn’t even gotten to the hard part yet.
The man jumped up as soon as the plane’s wheels hit the ground, arguing with the flight attendant when she insisted he get back in his seat. He sprang into action again as soon as they arrived at the gate, rooting around in the compartment above Margo like he was hunting for truffles. Fearful he’d dump out the contents of her messenger bag she stood, too, and removed it from the overhead.
“Out of the way,” ABB said. “I’m in a hurry.”
“We all are,” Margo said. “But they haven’t opened the door yet.”
“I have to be out of here when they do. Move, bitch.”
“Excuse me? What did you … ?”
The man grabbed his briefcase and pin-balled his way through passengers and cabin crew to the door, which was still closed. “Asshole in Blue Blazer” moved ahead of “walking across the country pushing heavy beverage carts” on the list of reasons she was glad she hadn’t followed up on that girlhood fantasy of being a flight attendant so she could get paid for traveling.
At baggage claim, still thinking of comebacks for ABB, some of which were anatomically impossible, most of which were too obscene to say out loud and many of which were both, she let her bag go past a couple times before she realized it had made an appearance. Off balance when she snagged it, she swung around awkwardly, smacking into someone behind her. When she started to apologize she saw, much to her consternation, she’d whacked — guess who? — talking again on the phone.
Echoing her sentiments, ABB said, “Oh, hell, you again. Just what I need,” and elbowed past her. He grabbed the briefcase leaning up against the luggage belt in front of her, and ran toward the taxi stand, leaving her apologizing to empty air. “Welcome to Philadelphia, Margo,” she muttered to no one in particular as she pulled out the handle from her suitcase.
At the exit for the rental car shuttles, she hesitated long enough to inhale one last little bit of cool, clean air. Thus prepared, she forced herself out the automatic door into the wall of hot, wet vapor, which, laced with vehicle exhaust and the effluvium of the nearby oil refineries and storage facilities, was what passed for air during summer in her birthplace.
Oh, yeah, welcome to Philly.
• • •
A short, stocky man in a business suit paced on the spongy ground, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and swatted away a bug. He hated this weather. When he delivered what he was about to get, he’d be on the next plane out of here.
A taxi approached and he stepped back into the shadow of the trees. The car’s interior light illuminated a man in a dark blue blazer paying the driver. After the cab peeled off, the stocky man emerged from the shadows and beckoned.
The two men walked silently into the copse of trees. When they were hidden from the road, the stocky man asked for what he’d contracted to purchase. The man in the blue blazer said he had another offer that the buyer had to meet or the deal was off. The stocky man shook his head. The man in the blue blazer pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. He handed the phone over after the call was answered. The stocky man said a few words in a foreign language before handing the phone back to its owner.
While Blue Blazer was focused on winding up the phone conversation, the stocky man reached under his jacket and pulled out a gun. His problem eliminated, the gunman pulled the blazer-clad body further into the trees and covered it with branches.
Taking the phone and the briefcase, he returned to his car. When he searched the briefcase, he discovered that what he wanted wasn’t there. Nor, he found out when he went back and searched the body, was it in the fucking blue blazer. All he had was a flash drive with what he’d already seen and a pissed-off buyer waiting for what he now couldn’t deliver.
• • •
In her rental car and headed toward Center City on I-95, Margo went over, again, what she had ahead of her. The shoes she’d packed said it all — Manolo Blahniks for a high school reunion she’d been conned into attending, mid-heel pumps for the conference where she was to give the still-unwritten presentation and the flats she wore to please her mother who hated running shoes. No shoes were needed for the other thing niggling at the back of her mind.
In Portland, where she was a thirty-something deputy district attorney, Margo’s colleagues thought it was great she was going for a longer-than-usual visit with her mother. She’d explained her reluctance was because she didn’t like the summer weather. But it wasn’t just the weather she didn’t want to face. There was the world of Daisy Keyes to deal with.
“Daisy” was what her maternal grandmother, for whom she was named, had called her. It was the literal translation of Margherita, her given first name. Margo was grateful no one else had joined her abuelita in that folly. What the hell had she been thinking? Daisy? Really?
What made it worse was she thought of herself as a wilted daisy that last year of high school, at the mercy of people and events over which she had no control. Now Margo would be spending an evening with people she largely avoided when she visited her mother, all of whom she was sure remembered only too clearly what had happened that year.
But a suite at the Bellevue would help. No memories there. And, she noticed as she looked around the lobby while waiting to register, no guy in a blue blazer either. She crossed her fingers that she’d seen the last of him. All
she had to do was unpack and freshen up and she’d be ready to face whatever was waiting on Fir Street.
• • •
Margo and her mother, Dolores Campbell Keyes, had grown up in the same house in South Philadelphia. The three-story row house with a marble stoop and a deep-set entry had been her mother’s dowry when she married Kenny Keyes. Nothing about it had changed since her grandmother had lived there, except the rest of the neighborhood.
After circling the block for only five minutes, Margo found a semi-legal parking spot, made sure nothing valuable was visible and locked up the car. As she approached her mom’s house, a man called from the direction of the darkened entry immediately adjacent to it, startling her.
“Welcome home, counselor,” he said.
“Tony?” She stopped, her eyes searching the row of houses. “Is that you?”
Tony Alessandro — Anthony Salvatore Alessandro to the DMV, Detective Alessandro to his employer, the Philadelphia Police Department — stepped out of the shadowy entry of the house next to the Keyes’ residence. The boy-next-door for all of Margo’s childhood, Tony had grown up into one of the best looking men she’d ever known — classically handsome features that would be at home in a Roman temple; hair so dark it was almost black; brown eyes that could make her knees buckle with one look. A mouth that made kissing a sacrament.
He came down the steps with the easy grace of an athlete and met her at the end of the short walkway to his mother’s house. Greeting her with a hug and a lingering kiss on the cheek he said, “It’s been a long time since Mary Ellen’s wedding last fall.”
And there it was, the last thing making her nervous about this trip. Mary Ellen’s wedding. When he’d danced with her all night before sneaking her out of the parish hall to a dark Sunday school classroom where he proceeded to kiss her senseless, making her mouth burn for his, her breasts ache for him to touch them and her whole body melt into a wet and wanting puddle. If his nephew hadn’t dragged him away, she was sure they’d have ended up naked in his bed. Or on the floor of the classroom.
But she hadn’t heard from him since.
She knew the blush that was the bane of her existence was now creeping up her neck but hoped the dusky light concealed it. “Yeah, you weren’t around when I was here in April.”
“I was in DC, meeting with this task force I’m on. I hear you’re back for our class reunion.”
“My mother’s doing, not mine. She signed me up. The half-dozen people who emailed saying how great it was I would be there made me feel guilty enough that I didn’t have the nerve to back out.”
“Not like you to give in to social pressure.”
“Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age.”
“Better work on your argument, counselor. No one who’s ever met you will believe that one.” He’d kept his hand on her shoulder and was studying her face. “You look great. West Coast agrees with you, doesn’t it?”
“It does. As much as Philly agrees with you. Every time I see you, I wonder if there’s a portrait turning wrinkled, soft and flabby in an attic somewhere. I swear to God you still look like the guy the yearbook described. Let’s see: best athlete in the class with the body to show for it. A smile that would melt glaciers. Brown eyes every girl wants to get lost in.” She glanced over his broad shoulders and trim body in jeans and a denim jacket, and up at his handsome face. “Yup, all still there.”
He dropped his arm, laughed and made a very Italian gesture, one that even a non-Italian, at least a non-Italian from Philadelphia, would recognize. “Jesus, Margo, leave it to you to remember that shit.” He motioned toward her empty hands. “Not to change the subject but, no luggage? You’re not staying with your mom?”
“Impressive analytic skills. No wonder you made detective on your first try. Congratulations on that, by the way. Where’re you working?”
“Thanks. I’m working with the white-collar crime unit.”
She looked embarrassed. “Good choice. You had a running start on the subject fifteen years ago, didn’t you?”
“Are you evading my question about where you’re staying, Madame Prosecutor? Can’t imagine you let witnesses do something like that.”
“No, sir, Detective Alessandro, I do not. I’m staying at the Bellevue. Between a conference in Center City next week and not wanting to go to the reunion feeling like the twelve-year-old I seem to turn into when I stay here, I thought it best.”
“Sounds like neither one of us is too anxious to go to this thing.” He looked away from her and stuck his hands in his jeans pockets.
“Why are you worried? I thought you went to all our class reunions.”
“This time, Nicole will be there.”
He didn’t need to say more; she knew the story. Nicole, who’d been his off-again, on-again high school girlfriend and then fiancée, broke their engagement to elope with a much older — and definitely richer — man, banging up Tony’s pride badly. Neighborhood gossip said it could only have been the promise of life on the prestigious Main Line that had won Nicole away from Tony. But then, the neighborhood always favored the Alessandro side of any story.
“I didn’t think she did reunions, either.”
“Not ’til this one.”
“I hope you have a supermodel lined up to go with you.”
“No date. You?”
“Surely the grapevine,” she nodded toward their mothers’ homes, “has already told you I don’t.” She pulled her gaze away from his and took a deep breath before blurting out, “Listen, not that I’m a supermodel, but I brought this fairly outrageous dress to wear with my new Manolo Blahniks. It might, I don’t know, give our classmates something to talk about other than her if you arrive with the woman no one’s seen in fifteen years, even if it is just me. And I wouldn’t mind having company when I walk into that restaurant. It’d just be, you know, old friends … ”
He held up his hand. “Slow down. So, you’re volunteering to be my date?”
“I just think it might be advantageous for both of us if we went together.”
“That sounds more like an offer to carpool.”
“Really, just old friends doing each other a favor.” She searched his face trying to anticipate his answer. “So … yes? No?”
“Now why would I turn down the chance to walk in with the class mystery woman in an outrageous dress and expensive shoes? Pick you up … when? ”
“How about I pick you up? I don’t think my new dress would fare well on your motorcycle.”
“I’ll bow to your transportation preferences. But the Bellevue’s right around the corner from my apartment. I’ll walk over so you won’t have to look for a parking space.”
“Great. Maybe come by at five and have a drink before we go so we can catch up?” The offer slipped out before she could think about it. “I’m in suite 832.”
“I’ll see you at five.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “Say hi to your mom for me.”
At her mother’s door, she dug around in her purse for the key, listening for the sound of Tony’s cycle taking off so she could relax. Her mother opened the door before Margo could get it unlocked. “Hello, dear.” She reached up and kissed her daughter. “Was that Anthony I heard?”
“Yes, Mom. He said to say hi.”
Dolores Keyes’ eyes lit up. “I’m glad you had a chance to talk with him. Did he say anything about the reunion? I hear he’s going alone.”
“He was, but we just made arrangements to go together.”
“Oh, good.” She pulled at her daughter’s hand. “How silly to stand on the doorstep talking! I like your hair. It’s a little longer than before, isn’t it?” She closed the door after Margo. “Oh, and don’t let me forget to give you the sticky buns I got for you.”
The evening had begun the way visits with her mother always did — a comment about her hair and a bribe of sticky buns. It continued in its usual trajectory with Margo talking about Portland and her mother talking about friends and family i
n Philadelphia.
There was no mention of what had obsessed Margo every time she thought about this trip. But then they never discussed that subject.
In the fall of her senior year of high school, her father had been arrested on federal racketeering charges along with some of his clients, members of the Philly mob. All through that year, as one trial after another hit the headlines, Margo and her mother had dealt with the humiliation of learning that Kenny Keyes was not the kind of lawyer they thought he was. He’d been convicted and sent to federal prison. Dolores Keyes hadn’t uttered his name since.
After they cleaned up the kitchen, Margo left, promising to join her mother and aunt the next day for lunch. But once at her hotel, she couldn’t settle down. She tried convincing herself it was jet lag or maybe nervousness about seeing people she hadn’t seen since high school. Eventually, she had to admit it was Tony keeping her awake.
Born a month apart to next-door neighbors, they’d been childhood playmates as well as high school classmates. His sisters were her best friends; she’d learned to dance with him when they were barely teenagers. He’d made sure she had fun down at the shore the summer after her father’s trial. They hung out when she was back in Philly between college and law school. But somehow they never got beyond a close friendship, dinner-and-movie dates and some unforgettable kissing.
Maybe it was geography. They had spent most of the past fifteen years on opposite coasts, after all. Maybe they were never in the same place in their lives at the same time. Whatever it was, she’d always told herself settling for a warm, affectionate friendship was a good thing. After all, a relationship between a police officer and the daughter of a mob lawyer probably wasn’t a match made in heaven.
Then his sister Mary Ellen got married.
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