Free Courting Trouble by Lisa Scottoline Page A

watching, but she couldn’t help herself. It was such good gossip, the fact that it was about her was almost beside the point.
    “I am upset!” Judy insisted, but Mary was out of control.
    “You are not! That whole time I was out sick, you avoided her. She asked you out to lunch, you turned her down all the time. You didn’t like her from the beginning. And you know why? Because she was so gorgeous! You thought she wore too much makeup, with the lipstick all the time.”
    They talk about my lipstick? Anne couldn’t believe the irony.
    “She did wear too much makeup!” Judy was going red in the face, too. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not upset—”
    “Why were we that way? I swear, it’s some kind of biological thing, to compete with other women for men, even when there are no men around. It’s sick! And when are we gonna rise above it?”
    “It wasn’t just her looks—”
    “You thought she used her looks!” Mary erupted, pointing. “You said it yourself, Judy! That Anne never would have gotten Chipster if she weren’t so hot.”
    Yikes! Upstairs, Anne couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She wasn’t supposed to know any of this and suddenly didn’t want to. Kind of.
    “Well, that much is true!” Judy finally shouted back. “How does a rookie get a case that big? The client knew her in law school? Gimme a break! You want to get real, Mary? Okay, let’s get real. Gil Martin never would have hired Anne if she hadn’t looked the way she did.” Judy’s head snapped around to Bennie, the bandanna flopping. “You had to wonder about it, Bennie. Why did Gil hire Anne, the youngest of all of us? The lawyer with the least experience? How many cases has she tried? One?”
    But Bennie was already waving her hands, trying to settle the fight. “Calm down, both of you,” she said, her voice even as a judge’s. “Mary, you know, you’re right. We all could have been more welcoming to Anne, and we weren’t. We were busy—as Judy says—but that’s no excuse.” Bennie leaned over, squeezed Mary’s shoulder, and gave her a gentle shake. “But blaming each other won’t help Anne now. It didn’t cause her murder.”
    “Can you be so sure?” Mary looked up at Bennie, her forehead creased with fresh grief. “Who knows what difference it would have made? If we had talked to her, taken her to lunch even once, maybe she would have told us about this stalker. Or if we’d been friends, maybe we would have been with her last night when he came. She’d be alive now, if we’d been together.” Mary almost started to cry again, and even Judy was looking regretful.
    “That’s true,” she added, her bandanna droopy. “That much is true.”
    I can’t stand this. Anne couldn’t watch them feel bad for nothing. First, she was alive. Second, not everything was their fault. She wasn’t any good at women. She always had tons of dates, but no girlfriends. For as long as she could remember, she’d thought of herself as Lucy, without Ethel.
    “I’m not pretending anything,” Bennie was saying. “We did wrong by Anne, and we can all mourn her in our own way. For me, the best way is to find whoever killed her. I suggest you follow suit.” She gave Mary a final pat. “I want to check out the back. You stay here, okay? Carrier, stay with her.”
    “I need a Kleenex.” Mary rose slowly, her hand cupping her nose, and she looked around the living room. “Anybody see a box?”
    Maybe I can tell them I’m here. Anne had to be able to get their attention without tipping off the cops. She eyed the front door. The detectives were outside, and something down the block was holding their attention. She decided to go for it. She shifted Mel to her right arm, tore off her red-white-and-blue stovepipe, and waved it wildly.
    “Mary! Mary!” she called out in a stage whisper, but the women didn’t look up. “Mary!” she whispered again, but Mary was preoccupied with her drippy nose and Judy was looking for