Betrayed: A Rosato & DiNunzio Novel (Rosato & Associates Book 13)

by Lisa Scottoline

  “Judy,” her mother said quietly, “you should be on your way now. She’s resting comfortably.”

  “Right.” Judy rose and kissed her on the cheek, touching her shoulder, fleetingly reassured by the warmth of her aunt’s skin through the thin gown. “Aunt Barb, I’m going to go now. I love you.”

  “Love you, too,” her aunt said, drowsily. Her eyelids fluttered, and she smiled. “See you later.”

  “See you later,” Judy said, too, because good-bye sounded too final. Tears came to her eyes, and she was glad that her aunt didn’t see. She picked up her handbag and messenger bag, then gave her mother a quick wave. “Call me as soon as you know anything, okay, Mom?”

  “Sure, don’t worry.” Her mother flashed her a brittle smile, and Judy turned away and walked the gleaming corridor to the elevator. She got off the elevator on the lobby floor, and the stainless steel doors rattled open onto a crowd of hospital staff, doctors, nurses, and visiting family. She was just about to step off when her cell phone started ringing.

  “Excuse me.” Judy wedged her way through the crowd, digging in her purse for her phone. She worried it was a nurse or doctor upstairs, or even opposing counsel calling about the deposition. “Hello?”

  “Judy, it’s Father Keegan. Do you remember me from Madre de Dios Church in Kennett Square?”

  “Of course, Father,” Judy answered, relieved. “How are you?”

  “Fine, but my question is how you are. I read on the local patch online that you were assaulted at your aunt’s house last night. Is that true?”

  “Yes, thanks, but it wasn’t serious. Thank you for asking.” Judy switched mental gears, crossing the lobby and leaving the hospital for the bustling street. People hurried this way and that, heading to work, and Seventh Street was clogged with traffic. Pewter clouds covered the sky, and the air was chilly.

  “Do the police have any suspects?”

  “No, not that I’ve heard yet.” Judy looked around for a cab, wondering how much to fill him in on about Iris. “They think that it was prowlers in the area, but I’m not so sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “We made an unfortunate discovery, that Iris seems to have been hiding a large amount of cash in my aunt’s house.” Judy went to the curb to hail a cab, but there was none in the rush-hour stream of cars and buses.

  “Really?” Father Keegan said, his tone hushed. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “It’s true. I saw with my own eyes.” Judy had to get going if she wanted to prepare for the deposition. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but I’m afraid that Iris might not be as innocent as we all thought she was.”

  “She is, I know her.”

  “We’re talking about $50,000 in cash, Father.”

  Father Keegan gasped. “Something’s wrong. I’ve known Iris for as long as she’s been in the country.”

  “I hear you, and I had a better impression of her, too. So did my aunt. She’s heartsick over this, betrayed by a dear friend, and it comes at a difficult time for her.”

  “I’m sorry, but you must be mistaken. Judy, something is very wrong with this situation. There’s another reason I called you this morning.” Father Keegan’s tone turned grave. “It was to let you know that last night, someone broke into Iris’s apartment on Point Breeze.”

  “Oh no,” Judy said, surprised. “Was anybody hurt? What about her roommates?”

  “No one was home.”

  “Thank God. What time did this happen?” Judy spotted a Yellow cab in the distance and hustled toward it, waving.

  “Maria Elena came home around eight o’clock, and the place was a mess. The lock had been broken on the exterior door, and the interior door was broken, too.”

  “So that must’ve been directly before they went to my aunt’s place.” Judy’s thoughts raced. The cab flashed its headlights at her. “They tried Iris’s apartment first, then my aunt’s. Was anything taken?”

  “Some of the girls’ jewelry, but it wasn’t valuable. Iris’s bedroom and the entire apartment had been ransacked.”

  “They were looking for something. The money.” Judy reached the cab, her thoughts racing. “So this confirms what I suspected. That no matter what the police say, the prowlers at my aunt’s house were not random. Iris was involved with some very bad actors, who must have known she was hiding money. Now that she’s gone, they’re trying to find the cash.”

  “That can’t be what’s going on.”

  “It is.” Judy climbed into the cab and closed the door behind her. She reached into her wallet, slid out a business card, and handed it to the older cabbie, so she wouldn’t have to interrupt Father Keegan. “What do the police say?”

  “They don’t know, of course. Maria Elena didn’t report it.”

  Judy realized belatedly that her question was naïve. “How did you find out about it then?”

  “Through the grapevine, then I confirmed it with Maria Elena, whom I think you met.”

  “Were there any witnesses? Did anybody see anything?”

  “If they did, nobody’s telling Maria Elena. This is not a community that snitches. They’re afraid of retaliation. It’s like the inner-city, even though it doesn’t look like the inner-city.”

  “Father, you should tell Maria Elena and the other roommate to get out of that apartment. Whoever Iris was in cahoots with hasn’t found the money yet. They might come back or even hurt those girls.”

  “That isn’t possible,” Father Keegan said, incredulous. “Iris would never break any law. She wasn’t in cahoots with anyone. What do you believe she was involved in, exactly?”

  “I have no idea. I’m guessing it was some sort of drug dealing, if not hard drugs like heroin, then prescription pills, or maybe just trafficking in pills that you could buy cheaper in Mexico and bringing them into the United States. How often did she go back home?”

  “Never,” Father Keegan shot back, firming his tone. “She never missed Mass, and she was always working at the mission. Your theory is simply wrong. You don’t have any proof, do you?”

  “No, but I have $50,000 in cash I can’t explain, and she endangered my aunt and my mother.” Judy could hear in the priest’s voice that he simply didn’t believe her, but she understood that. It was his nature and calling to believe the best in people. He had faith.

  “Where is the money now?”

  “It’s in a safe at my office, and I have to get to an estates lawyer to put it in a bank, for Iris’s estate.” Judy had already emailed her friend and she’d get to his office after her deposition. She held on to the greasy leather strap as the cab braked in stop-and-go traffic. “Even if you don’t believe me, I think you should pass the word to Iris’s roommates.”

  “You think they’re in physical danger?”

  “Absolutely.” Judy reflexively touched the goose egg, which had looked redder than yesterday in the bathroom mirror this morning, like she majorly needed Pro-Activ.

  “Judy, you have all this wrong. You’re judging Iris without knowing her.”

  “I don’t think so, Father. I got my aunt out of her house until we can figure out what’s going on.” Judy glanced over her shoulder as the cab turned left onto Pine Street. She wondered if her aunt was being wheeled into the operating room right now, if the plastic mask was being put over her face, or if she was under the knife this very minute. Tears came to Judy’s eyes but she blinked them away.

  “Judy, are you there? Hello?”

  “Father?” Judy said, speaking from the heart. “May I ask you to pray for someone?”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Judy hit the office running, her head buzzing with Aunt Barb, Iris, the deposition she had to get ready for, and the fifty grand she had to get rid off. She had almost forgotten about the damages cases, but the cardboard boxes dominated the reception area. She hurried past them to the desk, where their receptionist Marshall Trow was talking with Allegra.

  “Hi Judy,” Marshall said, with an easy smile.
She was in her early thirties and had a wholesome, natural prettiness, with bright blue eyes and light brown hair pulled back into a long braid. “What happened to your forehead?”

  Allegra’s eyes widened behind her big glasses. “You look like a Cyclops! How did you hurt yourself?”

  “It’s a long story, ladies, but I don’t have time to tell it.” Judy looked at Allegra. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “It’s a teachers’ in-service day, so I thought I’d come in. Bennie said you could use me on some new cases.”

  “Did she?” Judy held her tongue, and Marshall handed her a pink stack of phone messages.

  “You got a bunch of calls on Friday, and about those boxes”—Marshall gestured at them—“Bennie asked me to get them out of here. She didn’t want them cluttering up reception for the start of business. The building guys are on the way to move them. Where should we put them?”

  “There’s so many, I’ll need two conference rooms. Let’s put the bulk of them in B, since it’s bigger, and put any leftover in A. A is free, right? I have to take a deposition.” Judy checked the modern glass clock on Marshall’s desk. “The dep starts at nine o’clock.”

  “It’s free. I’ll try to get the boxes put away before then.”

  “Great. Start with A so we don’t get interrupted, okay? Where’s Mary?”

  “A pretrial conference. She should be in in an hour, she said.”

  “Thanks. Allegra, come with me.” Judy took off with the intern, down the hall. She wasn’t as close to Allegra as Mary was, but she wasn’t as close to anybody as Mary was. “Let me get you started, then I have to get ready for my dep.”

  “Okay.” Allegra trotted obediently beside her, a slip of a girl with light footfalls, especially in her moccasins. Her long brown hair swung behind her, wavy and unstyled, and she was wearing black tights and a yellow wool sweater dress, which Judy suspected was as close as she could get to dressing like a bee, since the girl was a bee fanatic.

  “Here’s what I want you to do.” Judy slid her laptop from her messenger bag as she reached her open door, went to her messy desk, cleared a spot, opened the lid, and fired up the laptop. “I got an email last night from one of the paralegals at Leighton and Reese in New York, and I’m going to forward it to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Here we go.” Judy plunked down in her desk chair, scrolled to find the email, and sent it to Allegra. She couldn’t stop thinking of her aunt Barb, who must be on the operating table right now. Father Keegan had promised he’d pray for her, and if her aunt survived her dreaded illness, Judy would rethink her position on the deity.

  “Judy? You were saying?”

  “I just sent you an email that lists all seventy-five new matters.”

  “Wow! Seventy-five!” Allegra’s pale blue eyes lit up behind her glasses, and Judy wished she could share the intern’s enthusiasm.

  “Print the email, open the boxes, and use it as a checklist.” Judy checked her laptop screen, momentarily distracted by the sight of her other email piling onto her monitor screen by the dozen, making a hill she could never climb. She flashed on Bennie’s telling her last night that she didn’t have a client base. It was true, but today it seemed beside the point, because she sure had tons of work.

  “Then what?”

  “Then—” Judy looked up from her laptop to see that Allegra wasn’t taking any notes. “How are you going to remember this?”

  “I’ll remember.”

  Judy let it go. Allegra was allegedly a Girl Genius, but it was still a little hard to believe. “Make sure we have each of the files.”

  “Then what do you want me to do, once I see if all the files are there?”

  “We’ll have to organize them.” Judy slid her phone from her purse and placed it on the desk, so she wouldn’t miss a call from her mother at the hospital.

  “How? Alphabetically by plaintiff? By date of complaint? By trial date?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” Judy’s brain was too busy to deal with Allegra’s excellent questions and/or youthful enthusiasm right now. “I’ve never run litigation this extensive. You’ll probably be in college by the time we’re finished trying those cases.”

  “I’m already in college.”

  “What?”

  “I take college courses, at Penn State’s branch campus.” Allegra grinned. “Anyway, can I come to the deposition? Bennie said it would be good if I did. That’s why I dressed up.”

  “All right,” Judy said, though she was getting tired of Bennie running her practice.

  “Yay! What do I do?”

  “Just sit quietly and take notes, or act like you’re taking notes. Be unobtrusive. If they object to your being there, I’ll have to ask you to leave. Only parties and counsel are permitted at depositions, but I’m going to pass you off as a paralegal.”

  “I can act like a paralegal. Hard-working and underpaid. Same as an intern.”

  Judy smiled, for the first time that day. “Have you ever been to a deposition before?”

  “Yes, with Mary, but she was defending it, not taking it.”

  “It’s a very different purpose.” Judy got up, went to her credenza, and pulled out the case file while she spoke. “When you take a deposition, the purpose is to find out as much as you can from the witness, so you’re prepared for anything he says on the stand at trial. This is going to be boring, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s okay. I like to learn.”

  “Good. This is just a step in the process, the beginning of the exercise in delayed gratification that’s the life of the trial lawyer.”

  “Okay.”

  “What that means in practical terms is that I want the witness to relax at the deposition. I’m going to ask open-ended questions. I’m going to let him yap. I’m not going to cross-examine him, like at trial. No pyrotechnics. No Law & Order.” Judy found the case file in the drawer, slid it out, and let the drawer roll closed. “It’ll be like watching someone lay bricks, one by one. I’m building a foundation for a case at trial. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “So if I act nice to him, don’t be fooled. On the stand, I’m going to make him wish he’d never met me.”

  “Whoa,” Allegra said, her eyes glittering. “It’s Dark Judy.”

  “Right.” Judy did feel bile course through her system, but maybe because she had so much on her mind lately, like Aunt Barb, Iris, and her mother. And Frank, who’d left the apartment last night with barely a peck on the cheek. “But not today. Today will be a snoozefest. His lawyer, who’s good, will try to stop him from talking. They will have met before the deposition, and his lawyer will have told him not to volunteer, answer only the question asked, and keep his answers to yes or no. This matters a lot in this case, because it hinges entirely on a credibility question.”

  “What’s the credibility question?”

  “This is a sex-discrimination case, and our client is Linda Adler, a financial consultant at PennBank, who says she didn’t get a promotion to branch manager because she’s a woman. The reason she thinks that it was discrimination is that she heard that her boss said to the witness, ‘there’s no room for women at the top at PennBank.’”

  “That’s terrible!” Allegra’s slim hand flew to her mouth, and Judy noticed her fingernails were bitten down.

  “It happens, still.” Judy closed the lid of her laptop, to take it with her, like a security blanket for grown-ups. “The witness today is Devi Govinda. He wasn’t the one who made the statement, that’s his boss Guy Morrell, but I’m saving Morrell for the last deposition.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to get as much information as I can before I meet Morrell, because he’s the person who decided not to promote Linda.” Judy slid her notes from the case file and skimmed them quickly while she spoke. “The only fact we have against us is that some of the comments in Linda’s employment reviews aren’t stellar, so the company is claiming that’s the reason they didn’t pro
mote her. She doesn’t believe that that’s the real reason and I don’t either, but under the law, I have to prove that it’s a pretext.”

  “Why don’t you believe it was her performance?”

  “Because Morrell reviews her performance and his view is tainted, and any employee review is subjective in itself.” Judy glanced at her phone to make sure her mother wasn’t calling from the hospital. “Also, when I look at the personnel files of other women in the department, they tend to be reviewed more harshly than men would be in the same position.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes. That’s not easy to prove, but that’s what makes it a lawsuit. Conflict. Difference of opinion. Dispute. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bottom line, I’m going to soften Govinda up and see if I can get him to wobble and give up a little of what Morrell said. It’s a long shot because it would cost him his job, and he’s not going to admit it. Unless he’s drunk, which actually happened to me once.” Judy looked over as the buzzer sounded on her desk phone, signaling a call from the reception desk, and she picked up. “Yes, Marshall?”

  “Opposing counsel and the witness are getting off the elevator right now. The court reporter’s already here. The boxes are in the conference room. What do you want me to do?”

  “Please set us up with some coffee and send out for the good Danish, so they feel the love. I’ll come out and greet everybody.”

  “On it.”

  “Thanks.” Judy hung up, rising. She gathered up her file, laptop, and phone, checking the screen for the umpteenth time. “Let’s roll, little one.”

  “Exciting!” Allegra popped to her feet.

  “Not hardly,” Judy told her, but she was already skipping out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Judy tried to pick up the pace after the preliminaries, like name, address, and employment history, even though she already had some of the information from the personnel file. She was getting a feel for Devi Govinda, a somber Indian-American man in his mid-forties, with a stilted air and round, excessively vigilant eyes behind beaded, gold-rimmed glasses. His glossy jet-black hair was neatly trimmed, albeit thinning, and he was slightly overweight, so that his neck spilled over the stiffness of the light blue collar, which he had on with a worn patterned tie and a nondescript dark suit.