Free Legal Tender by Lisa Scottoline Page B

friends with Mr. Freminet, aren’t you, Ms. Rosato? Good friends?”
    Grady stepped forward into my field of vision. “I’m instructing my client not to answer.” He put his hands on his hips, pushing his jacket aside in a gesture that was as menacing as they got south of the Mason-Dixon line. And not to the cops, to me.
    “I refuse to answer on the grounds it may incriminate me,” I said obediently. But I was still thinking,
Sam
? He was a bankruptcy lawyer, not an estates lawyer.
    Azzic shook his head. “Isn’t Sam Freminet an attorney at Grun & Chase, where you and Mr. Biscardi used to work?”
    “I refuse to answer on the grounds it may incriminate me.”
    “When was the last time you spoke with Mr. Freminet?”
    I’d called Sam from the Roundhouse before this interview, but hadn’t reached him. Even that would make me look bad, now. “I refuse to answer on the grounds—”
    “Ms. Rosato,” Azzic said, his voice growing loud, “weren’t you jealous of Eve Eberlein?”
    I said my line. I refuse to answer on the grounds it may make me look like a smacked ass.
    “Didn’t you throw a pitcher of ice water at Mr. Biscardi in open court? Just yesterday morning, the day he was murdered? Because you were so jealous of Ms. Eberlein?”
    Oh, shit. “I refu—”
    “Detective Azzic, this interview is over,” Grady said abruptly. “I won’t let you harass my client.” He took my arm and I stood up, surprised to find my knees wobbly.
    Azzic stood up, too. “You’re gonna hide behind the Fifth Amendment, Ms. Rosato? Like the scum you represent?”
    “That’s it!” Grady announced. He started to hustle me out, but I wouldn’t budge, infuriated.
    “You don’t have any evidence against me, Detective, because I didn’t kill my partner. It’s simple logic, but maybe not simple enough for you.”
    Detective Azzic met my eye. “I’ll be working this case myself, and as soon as I have the evidence, you’ll see me again.”
    “I hope that’s not a threat, Detective,” Grady said, but I opted for a less mannerly response and delivered it with my usual aplomb.

10
     
    T he press mobbed the sidewalk in a dense pack, overrunning the curb and spilling onto the Roundhouse’s parking lot. Grady and I pressed forward as they scurried around us on all sides. I’d run this gauntlet with clients a zillion times, there was nothing to do but bear down and go forward. Cameras with rubber filters popped into my face, video cameras whirred beside me in stereo, and TV news-people pressed microphone bubbles at my lips. Each reporter shouted his own version of my name. “Bernadette, look this way!” they called. “Belladonna, just one picture! Benefaci, over here!”
    I stared straight ahead, my mind clicking away with the cameras. I knew how this would play out. I’d be the lead story on the local noon news, CNN, and Court-TV. The cops would leak the details about me and Mark, including the will, and by nightfall, I’d be labeled a murderer. My media clients would drop me quick as you can say “film at eleven.” My police abuse clients would find a lawyer who wasn’t under investigation. My career was crashing and burning around me. And Mark’s killer was free.
    Suddenly I recognized a couple at the curb on the other side of the crowd. The woman had her arm in a sling and the man was a strawberry blond. It was Bill Kleeb and Eileen Jennings, together. They stood with a heavyset man with slicked-back hair and a shiny Haliburton briefcase, hailing a cab.
    “Miss Rosato, did you do it? Miss Rosato, just one question! Please! Over here!”
    How had Eileen gotten out? What was she doing with Bill? Then I remembered the death threat to the CEO. “Bill!” I shouted over the sea of cameras, since I had the height advantage. “Bill Kleeb! Over here!”
    Bill turned vaguely in my direction just as a Yellow cab pulled up behind him. The man with the Haliburton ushered Eileen into the cab and climbed into the darkness