"Devil's corner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Scottoline Lisa)

FIFTEEN

"Honey, I'm home!" Vicki called out, unlocking the front door, which opened to the shrill barking of a dog and the warning beep of a burglar alarm, set in case a psycho killer dropped in for Glenlivet, neat. She went to the keypad to disable the alarm before it went off, while her parents' Welsh corgi sprinted into the entrance hall and attacked her shoe.

"Ruby, no!" Vicki said over the beeping, shaking her toe to get the dog off. She punched her mother's birthday into the white keypad, but the alarm went off, erupting into earsplitting sound. She shook her foot but the corgi hung on, a nasty blur of tan and white. Her startled parents rushed in from the kitchen.

"Mom! Dad! Did you change the alarm code?" Vicki yelled over the din.

"Yes, it's my birthday now!" her father shouted, wincing. Vicki was trying to remember her father's birthday but it was too noisy to think. Her father hurried past her to the keypad and punched in the new code, mercifully silencing the alarm, if not the corgi.

"Ruby, no!" her mother said, but the dog growled and shook her head, with Vicki's toe still in her teeth. "Ruby, no!"

"Why does she do this?" Vicki couldn't help but laugh, finally freeing her pump. She had no idea what had possessed her parents to buy this dog. Every time she came home, the dog attacked her toe, heels, and ankles. Either the animal had no long-term memory or her name was Ruby, no! "Mom, doesn't she know me yet?"

"She's a herding dog."

"So?"

"Ruby, no! Ruby, no!" Her mother bent over in her white silk blouse and full navy skirt, tugging the determined dog by her red leather collar.

"Why does she bite me? I'm family."

"That's why she's herding you."

"She's insane," Vicki said, reaching down to pet the puppy, who only scampered away, barking and play-bowing on her short legs. She had eyes like brown marbles, legs like stumps, and a body like a Tater Tot. She kept nipping, trying to bite Vicki's toe. Adorable, for an attack dwarf.

"Why didn't you call first, Victoria?" her father asked. He was still dressed from work in suit pants and a starched white shirt, but his Brioni tie was loose, which qualified for him as casual dress. His straight, dark hair, growing sparse on top, matched dark eyebrows that capped small brown eyes. His nose curved like a hawk and his lips were thin, with a small scar on the top lip that appeared when he frowned, as now. "We didn't know you were coming."

"I have only the four lamb chops, honey," her mother added, with plain regret. Her greenish eyes softened in spite of the surgically enhanced lift at their corners, and her hair, chin-length, curved gently under her chin and shone like jet in the light of the entrance hall's chandelier. "We're on the South Beach Diet, so we have to watch. I would have bought more if you'd called ahead."

"Sorry, I didn't get a chance." Vicki wouldn't tell them she'd been stalking crack addicts. She had long ago stopped telling her parents anything. In fact, she was hoping she'd get to eat a full dinner before her father brought up what happened last night. "I was close by and figured I'd stop in. If there's no dinner, that's okay."

"Nonsense, you can have one of my chops," her mother offered, putting a silk-swathed arm around Vicki and giving her a brief hug. "Come in, we were just about to sit down." She smelled like Chanel and felt just as elegant, but it freed the dog to bite Vicki's foot.

"Mom, your dog hates me," she said as they walked into the dining room, which had an oval walnut table as its polished center, surrounded by Chippendale chairs and red wallpaper blooming with etched Chinese poppies. Against the far wall sat a mahogany sideboard, and the rug was a silk Oriental, a red-and-white pattern that complemented the Mandarin-hued borders of her parents' china, now set with cooling food in two place settings.

"Ruby just wants you to stay with the group."

"She bites!"

"Herds," her mother corrected, and they fell into step, with the dog herding Vicki's heel.

"Why doesn't she just lick my face like a normal dog?" Vicki remembered the neurotic poodle from her childhood, which looked like a saint next to this one. "Peppy never did that."

"Ruby has different instincts. She bites you only so you'll do what she wants."

"The control freak of dogs."

"Oh, hush." Her mother released Vicki with a smile and turned to the swinging door to the kitchen, in the back of the house. Ruby let go of Vicki's heel and scooted after her. "Sit down while I get you a plate. I'll be right back."

"Can I help?"

"No, thanks. Keep your father company," she called back airily, her navy silk skirt billowing gracefully behind her, her waist still svelte. Vicki became aware that her father was watching her mother with similar admiration. They stood in the large dining room, saying nothing, and she wondered if there would ever come a time when she felt completely comfortable alone with her father, without her mother to fill in the silences. There was only one subject that she and her father ever agreed on:

"Mom looks great, doesn't she?" Vicki asked, but it wasn't a question.

"Absolutely. She goes to Curves now."

"There's a Curves here? Where?"

"On Lancaster Avenue, near the tile place. And Eadeh, the rug place."

"I see those Curves commercials all the time." Vicki was putting herself to sleep with her own conversation. She was filling up the air with words until her mother got back and rescued them from each other. What was taking her so long?

"Eadeh has very nice rugs. Very nice Oriental rugs."

"I heard that."

"She loves Curves. She goes three times a week. Here. Let's sit. Dinner's getting cold." Her father pulled out his chair at the head of the table and sat down behind his plate, which held two medium-rare chops of New Zealand lamb, three florets of barely steamed broccoli, and a portion-controlled tossed salad, sparingly dressed with vinaigrette. Vicki sat down, and he gestured at his plate. "Your mother put us on South Beach, and she's right. We eat twenty grams of carbs a day, no more. It's much healthier than Atkins."

"I'm sure," Vicki said, but she hungrily wished she belonged to one of those Italian families in the Olive Garden commercials, who ate piles of spaghetti with hearty red tomato sauce. Her parents wouldn't be caught dead in an Olive Garden and now they were the only Italians in the world who didn't eat pasta.

"Our cholesterol was too high, and so was our blood sugar."

"Really."

"Now our levels are a lot better."

"Good." Vicki hid her smile. Her parents spent every minute together; driving to the office, working across the hallway from each other, then driving home in the same car. They had met at Villanova Law School, married upon graduation, and gone into practice together. Their marriage was all the more solid for their togetherness, although now that they were sharing the same blood sugar, Vicki suspected that they were physically fusing and soon would become conjoined twins.

"We use only Splenda now. It's a sugar substitute." "Splenda. It sounds so cheery." "Make fun, but I lost five pounds the first two weeks." Vicki blinked. "I wasn't making fun, Dad. That's great, that you lost five pounds." "No, it isn't. The book says you should lose seven. I listened to it in the car, on CD. Your mother lost seven."

"Five isn't much less than seven. It's only two." Math genius.

"Fewer."

"Huh?"

"You said less. You meant fewer."

"Oh. Sorry." English genius, too. "In any event, two fewer pounds doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

"Oh." Vicki sighed inwardly. It was almost impossible to agree with her father, even when you were faking it. He was a man who never took yes for an answer. She suddenly regretted coming home. She should have gone to Olive Garden.

"Sugar is poison," her father added. He unfolded his napkin and set it on his lap, then rested his arms on the side of the table. The strains of The Marriage of Figaro lilted from a CD player in the kitchen, followed by her mother, humming along. Her father tapped his index finger in time, though he would never sing, as much as he loved opera. He seemed preoccupied, and Vicki knew he had to be thinking about Morty and Jackson's murders.

"Dad, about last night-"

"Let's wait until your mother comes in. I know she wants to hear, too."

"Okay."

"This way you won't have to repeat it."

"Or repeat it all over again." Vicki smiled at her own joke, because somebody had to. Her father was listening to the opera wafting from the kitchen, tapping his finger. She changed subjects. "Dad, guess where I was tonight?"

"Where?"

"Washington Street."

"Washington Street?" Her father's eyes flew open. "In Devil's Corner?"

"Yes, I even saw your old house."

"Really." His eyebrows lifted higher, just as her mother returned with an empty plate, which she set in front of Vicki and filled quickly with one of her own lamb chops and two broccoli spears. Between them, it wasn't enough food for a corgi, and Vicki felt a wave of guilt.

"Mom, that's all right. I'm not that hungry."

"I won't hear of it. I had a huge lunch." Her mother smiled and went around the table to her seat. The barber of Seville was bragging in the background. The dog returned to gnawing on Vicki's shoe.

"I was saying that I was on Washington Street today, Mom. I saw Dad's old house."

"Really?" Her mother tossed her shiny helmet of dark hair. "How did it look?"

"How do you think it looked?" her father interjected. "We can't all be from Hilltown." Hilltown was her mother's old neighborhood, which was nicer, some ten blocks east of her father's. Her mother let it pass, but Vicki was puzzled by his grumpy reaction.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"Of course not, Victoria." Her mother's green eyes lit up. "You know your father doesn't like to be reminded of his humble beginnings."

"It's not that, Lily," her father said, turning to her mother. Vicki couldn't see his face from that angle, but she knew what it would look like. "It's a horrible neighborhood now. A ruin."

You don't know the half of it.

"Washington Street, my block, it's a slum now." Her father sipped water from a glass frosty with ice.

"Did you know the alley behind it, Cater Street?"

"Of course. How do you know Cater?"

"I get around," Vicki said, to make him smile, which it didn't. "I was driving through Van Buren and Lincoln Street."

"All the best places. Hope you kept the windows rolled up." Her father stabbed a spear of broccoli, and her mother avoided anyone's eye.

"Dad, was there a vacant lot on Cater when you were growing up?"

"I don't remember."

"Do you have any old pictures of Washington Street or the house? Maybe in Grandma's stuff?" Vicki's grandmother had died ten years ago, and her grandfather well before that. As soon as her father had had the means, he had them both moved into a gated retirement community in Chester County.

"No. I don't even know where your grandmother's things are."

"In the attic?"

"No. I didn't save those things, did I, Lily?"

"You saved nothing," her mother answered.

"Too bad." Vicki thought a minute. "You went to Willow-brook High School, right?"

Her father set down his fork. "Why the questions?"

"I was just asking."

"Victoria, it wasn't high school like you went to high school.

Like Episcopal or another private school with nice green fields. Lacrosse, Parents' Day. It wasn't pleasant. We were poor. You can't imagine how poor."

As poor as the people who live there now?

"My father worked day and night, three jobs, to make ends meet. I don't think I ever saw him sit down in a chair, not once."

"You've been crabby all day, Victor," her mother said softly.

"No, I haven't."

"You have, too." Her mother faced Vicki. "We lost a house client this morning. Remember Carlon Industries, the dry cleaners?"

"Sure. Jerry Solomon, right?" Vicki's parents did so much business entertaining that she had grown up around their clients and their wives, like Olive Garden families had uncles and aunts. Michael, Sam, and Carol clustered around the Allegrettis' dinner table. They counted as family, evidently until they fired you.

"Yes. Yes. Good for you."

"It wasn't Jerry, it was the son," her father said, but her mother waved him off.

"Please, it was Jerry. He's hiding behind his own son, the coward." Her mother turned to Vicki. "Anyway, Jerry had eleven locations. As you know, we've done all his closings for years, and he let us go today. It was a blow for us."

"We'll do fine without him," her father said, gruff. "The son was a slow pay anyway. Receivables of six months' standing. It's enough, already." He turned to Vicki, miffed but trying to hold it in. "That's not what I want to talk about, anyway. Your mother and I want to know what happened last night. If I've been crabby today, that's why."

"That's not completely why, Victor," her mother corrected, but her father ignored her.

"We pieced together what we could from the newspapers.

Why don't you fill us in? Our only child is on the news, involved with violence, a multiple homicide, a shooting, and we hear nothing but a phone message."

"I told you we should have stayed up for the news," her mother interjected. "Were you on the eleven o'clock news?"

"I was. A case agent I've been working with was killed last night." Vicki gulped chilled water, hoping it would get past the sudden lump in her throat. The barber was singing happily in the kitchen, an ironic soundtrack to Morty's shooting, flashing through her head. "His name was Bob Morton."

"I saw it in the newspaper account, and online. I thought I knew that name."

"We won that case together, Edwards? Morty was his name."

"Yes, I remember now. He was killed, and a pregnant woman, a black, was shot in a house." Her father's dark eyes grew hard as onyx. "It said you were inside the house at the time of the shooting. Were you?"

"No, I wasn't inside when it happened." Vicki reflected that maybe she hadn't learned to lie in law school. Maybe she had learned it at this color-coordinated table. "I was outside at the time and I'm fine."

"The newspaper said you were inside." Her mother set down her fork, waiting.

"The newspaper got it wrong. They want to sell papers."

"But you were there at the house last night, weren't you?"

"It's part of the job." Vicki checked her temper, and her father tugged the napkin from his lap and set it down on the table. She knew he wouldn't be eating another bite tonight. He could lose those extra two pounds in no time. The corgi, on the other hand, was making a meal of her shoe.

"You're in the wrong job, Victoria." Her father shook his head. "Two people killed. If this experience doesn't change your thinking, I can't imagine what will."

Morty.

"I don't know why you don't just come to work for us. This is getting ridiculous. My God, what does it take to wake you up?"

Here we go.

"If you like criminal law so much, you can practice criminal law with us. We have only the four associates now, with Rachel going on maternity leave. You can do white collar defense. We get those matters all the time, referrals from the big firms."

"That's criminal defense, not prosecution."

"Don't be so picky!"

"I'm not being picky!"

Her mother raised a hand, her mascaraed eyes widening in alarm. "Wait, Victoria. Am I to understand that you were at a home when two people were shot to death?"

"I told you, Lily!" her father exploded, turning on her mother.

"Dad, please don't yell," Vicki said, but he wasn't listening.

"Of course she was, Lily! That's what she's saying! That's what she does! She's in the gun and violent crime unit, or whatever they call it! It puts her directly in harm's way!"

"You could have been killed?" her mother asked, shaken.

Vicki felt stunned at her mother's pain, which appeared as unexpectedly as a tornado in the middle of Broad Street. She must have been tense the whole day, her anxiety an undercurrent to the quotidian tasks of answering e-mail, taking phone calls, and attending closings. They had probably fought about it on the way home.

"Victoria, I simply don't understand you anymore." Her mother's light eyes glistened. "How can you do that? How can you? It's as if you intentionally want to hurt us."

"Mom, that's crazy, it's not intentional-"

"I beg to differ," her father interrupted. His skin flushed so brightly she hoped he'd taken his Pravachol. Seville seemed far away, but the dog wasn't. "At this point, isn't it intentional?

To persist when you know how we feel?"

"Dad, it's not about you."

"No, it's about you. Because you, for some reason, want to hurt us, when we have given you everything. You even make much less than you could earn with us and you've no equity! You're not even building toward anything!" Her father stiffened, struggling to keep a civil tongue. "You know, if we owned a family farm, you would take it on, no questions asked. But we own a family law firm, and you refuse. You feel justified in refusing. And to add insult to injury, it's not that you don't want to practice law, which perhaps I could understand. No, it's that you don't want to practice our kind of law. That's like saying, I'll grow alfalfa for my family, but not corn!"

"It's different from-"

"No, it isn't! You're a lawyer, Victoria, and you know about foreseeable consequences. If you can foresee the consequences, you are charged with intending them, are you not?"

"Yes, but-"

"So it's foreseeable that our firm, without anyone to leave it to, will simply be"-her father was so angry, he was at a loss for words, which was as angry as he ever got-"defunct. The Allegretti firm will simply cease to exist. And you know this and you persist nonetheless, so you are charged with intending that consequence. And why? Because it's not your kind of law!"

"Dad, can we seriously be having this argument again?" Vicki asked, finally getting angry. "I should have a choice, don't you think?"

"Not when you have an obligation! To us, to me and your mother! And not when it can get you killed! If a choice is what you want, then you have it! And if you want to live like a pauper, then do!" Her father rose and gestured to her mother. "Look! Look at what you're doing to her!"

Vicki looked. Her mother's glossy head bent slightly over her plate and her lips, their gloss finally worn off, pursed in pain. She was trying not to cry.

"Mom, I'm sorry, don't cry," Vicki said, feeling a tug, not for the first time. Morty was dead, and now her mother was upset. It had all gone to hell in a handbasket. She didn't want to quit. She didn't think they were right. But she was so very tired. Suddenly the phone in the kitchen started ringing.

"I'll get that." Her father rose and went into the other room, leaving them in miserable silence. Vicki knew that her mother was listening to the phone, to hear if it was a client; like most self-employed people, they worked around the clock. The two women sat in suspended animation until her father returned, his bearing erect, his features emotionless.

"The phone's for you, Victoria," he said.

"Me?" She rose stiffly, with a dog attached to her toe, which was when it struck Vicki that maybe her parents were herding her, in their own way. Biting her to keep her close. She knew that they loved her, and she loved them, too, despite their best efforts to the contrary.

"Be right back," she said, wondering who was on the phone.