Dead Ringer

“Good.” Be

“We are?”

“Yep.” Be

“Huh? What?” Heads popped out of their offices, and the associates hurried after Be

Be

“Yes!” Carrier said, setting down her coffee to throw her arms into the air, signaling a touchdown. She had on her favorite denim smock, with a hot pink T-shirt that matched her hair. “That’s so great!”

“Yeah!” Murphy hollered beside her. She cut her usual curvy figure in a tan jersey that skimmed her ski

“Go, us!” Marshall clapped from her seat at the table, and Be

“Marshall, please don’t explode,” she said, and everyone laughed, applauding and boogying. When they finally settled down, Be

“We can’t do that,” Carrier said, munching a doughnut. “We love it too much here. Every friggin’ minute.”

Murphy laughed. “Yeah. We can’t get enough, now that the long distance is back on.”

Be

“Sure, thanks. You go

“More like a chairlift,” Marshall mumbled as she waddled out of the office.

Be

“I have a question,” Murphy said, her lovely face turning grave. “What happened to you last night, Be

“I’m back on the sauce.”

Murphy raised a perfectly groomed brow. “This could be the only explanation for your eyeliner.”

“A for effort?”

“No. Anything more from Alice? I got you a hearing for next week.”

“I’ll take it. Meantime, no more break-ins, lots of new locks, and David surveilled the street last night and this morning.”

“That working out okay with him?”

“Good as can be expected,” Be

“Boss,” Carrier broke in, barely able to contain herself. “I did some research last night on Linette.”

“You did?” Be

“I found out he lives in a town house in Society Hill, on Delancey. I have the address in my office. It’s one of those huge ones.”

“Really.” It would have been Be

“But wait, there’s more. What we want to know is what Linette was doing the night of the murder, assuming he didn’t hire anyone to kill Robert.” Carrier barely took a breath before answering her own question. “Di

Be

“Now. We know that Linette didn’t go back to the office, because of what Murphy learned from the sign-in log at his building. So let’s give this jerk the benefit of the doubt and say that he intended to go back to the office, but changed his mind and went home instead.” Carrier’s voice took on a logical cadence. “Now, to get to his house from the Palm, it’s about ten blocks. We know he didn’t have a car, Abrams told us that. That means Linette could walk, go by bus, or take a cab.”

Be

“I thought so, too.” Carrier held up a finger, her china blue eyes keeping a secret. “Now, we know that he didn’t go back to the office. So we need to eliminate the possibility that he went home.”

“How do we do that?”

“We do what I did. First question. What is the way that most lawyers, especially ones with major dough, get a cab at that hour?”

“They call a radio cab, Pe

“Right, and we did it at Stalling and Webb, too. It’s easiest. They come right away. You charge it to the firm, you sign a receipt for the fare and the tip. It costs nothing and it’s instant. So I made a basic assumption, that if Linette changed his mind about going to work, he would have taken a Pe

“I don’t know.” Be

“True, but Abrams would have seen Linette grab a cab there, especially because he had to wait for the valet to get his car. Abrams didn’t say he had seen Linette do that. So it’s logical to assume that if Linette got a cab, it wasn’t at the Palm.”

“Okay,” Be

“So let’s say Linette walks toward his office and then decides to go home. There are so few cabs in this city, it’s not New York, and I think he’d save himself the hassle and do what the rich lawyers do. Phone Pe

Be

“They said if he had taken a cab, the driver would have turned in the receipt. But guess what? They had no record he took a trip from the Palm to his house, and they checked all the receipts. They even asked the drivers. And yes, Linette does have an account with Pe

Hmm. Be

“Calls and tells Linette?” Carrier held up her traffic hand. “Don’t worry, I thought of that. I called back as the secretary, saying I’d made a mistake and please not to tell my boss I screwed up.”

“Smooth.”

Carrier gri

“Interesting.” Be

“We’re talking about Philadelphia.”

Murphy’s lovely green eyes shifted to Carrier. “Judy, how many married men do you know?”