Free Dead Ringer by Lisa Scottoline

it.” The chief waved hello at a passing group of lawyers, then returned her attention to Bennie, her whisper thinned to a hissing. “I’d advise more prudence in public. I know you were on your own time, as were we, but really, everybody noticed. You are well known and you represent all of us.”
    “But, Judge, I didn’t get thrown—”
    “Judge Eadeh saw you, and so did Judge Sherman. Are you saying they were lying?”
    Judge Sherman, too? “No, of course not, but they must have made a mistake. The bar was crowded. Maybe it was someone who looked like me, but it wasn’t me, I swear it!”
    “Bennie, I tell you as a friend. If you have a drinking problem, attend to it. Now, I must go.” The chief judge pivoted on her patent pumps and left bearing her briefcase.
    Bennie stood stunned, her face aflame. What was the judge talking about? She hadn’t had more than one glass. She hadn’t made any scene. She hadn’t been thrown out. The line shifted forward, and she shifted with it, on autopilot. She couldn’t understand it. There had been a crowd at the restaurant’s bar. Maybe someone in the bar area had made a fuss, and the judges had mistakenly thought it was her. Maybe it was someone who looked like her. That had to be it. But what could she do about it? Go to each judge and explain? Excuse me, Judge, I’m not an alcoholic?
    Bennie passed though the security checkpoints, shoving her briefcase and bag onto the conveyor belts and flashing her laminated court ID, completely preoccupied. There must have been some sort of misunderstanding, simple as that. Best to let it go. Say nothing, and pray that St. Amien’s complaint wasn’t assigned to a judge who thought she needed Alcoholics Anonymous. It gave a whole new meaning to the term “judicial intervention.”
    Bennie grabbed the escalator to the second floor, and by the time she reached the blue rug of the landing, she had another theory. She’d said it herself earlier, the thought coming out of its own volition: Maybe it was someone who looked like me . Because there was someone who looked like her. It was possible that Alice, her twin, had come back to Philly. They looked identical, but Bennie hadn’t seen Alice since the day she’d left town two years ago, and given Alice’s lifestyle, Bennie had even wondered if she were still alive. Alice hadn’t wanted a twin, and Bennie hadn’t either—after she’d met hers. The two women hadn’t grown up together, and one had become a lawyer, while the other had become a criminal. It had all come out in court, when Bennie defended Alice on a murder charge. Was Alice back in town? And why would she be in the same Chinese restaurant last night?
    Bennie walked distracted down the corridors of the building, through a warren of bright white halls and past the door to the United States marshal’s office, flanked by framed movie posters of Kevin Costner as Wyatt Earp and Tommy Lee Jones in U.S. Marshals . Evidently everybody was having trouble separating fiction from reality this morning. Bennie walked on, considering her situation. It couldn’t have been Alice in the restaurant, could it? She hadn’t seen her there, and she would have noticed her doppelgنnger eating dim sum. It seemed impossible, or at least unlikely. No reason to jump to conclusions. Alice had no business in town, and she’d said she’d never come back. The judges had simply made a mistake. They did that all the time, whenever they ruled against Bennie. She tried to laugh it off, but she wasn’t laughing.
    She reached the office of the district court clerk and opened the double doors into the large office, buzzing with characteristic activity. Facing the entrance was a long Formica counter of fake wood, and behind it fifty-odd court employees hustled back and forth with court documents or keyboarded at their desks in maroon cubicles covered with American flags and Eagles calendars. Bennie never lost sight of the fact that even the biggest