Bingo! Cate passed the mouse over Gilbert’s name, and another page popped up, with a large photo of the lovely Micah in a tight black pantsuit, next to a short biography, which Cate read:
Micah joined the posse two years ago and before Micah joined us, she worked forever-okay, only five years but that’s like twenty in publicist years-as a liaison slash consultant for the Philadelphia Film Office. Micah is all about Philly and her city savvy helps make Attorneys@Law rock on Sunday nights! Micah works way too hard, so she can be reached anytime at our Philly office.
Cate picked up the phone and pressed in the number.
After two rings, a woman picked up. “Attorneys@Law.”
“Micah?”
“Yes?”
“Sorry, wrong number.” Cate pressed the hook to hang up, feeling her juices start to flow. She hit the intercom button, and Emily answered. “Can you please come in?” Cate hung up, then went back to the table, grabbed Simone’s chronology, and stuffed it in her purse. Then she called out, “Come in, Emily!”
The door opened. “Hi, Judge.”
“Hey, girl. Close the door and come back here, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.” Emily swished into the room in her flowing black skirt and black Doc Marten boots and took a seat in the chair opposite the desk, looking nervous.
Cate began, “First off, I’m sorry I was so rude to you and Sam this morning. I lost control and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. I think it’s nice that you care so much about Marz and Simone. It shows you have a good heart.” Emily smiled shyly, a dark maroon slash of lip gloss, and Cate felt touched.
“Thanks. Did you get my final opinion in Simone? I e-mailed it to you last night.”
“Yes, I just finished checking the cites.”
“Great, thanks. Please print me a copy and leave it on my desk. You did a great job on your draft, and I really appreciate it.”
“Thanks.”
“Now I have to ask you to do some extra research for me, on a different issue, and I need you to keep it to yourself. Don’t tell Sam.”
“I don’t really talk to Sam, anyway.”
“Or your clerk friends in the other chambers.”
Emily nodded gravely. “I don’t have any clerk friends in other chambers.”
Ouch. “Okay. As a hypothetical, let’s say that someone is being followed, without their knowledge, for a period of six months or so, in Philadelphia. Every movement followed, like surveillance. You need to plug into the harassment cases.”
Emily began taking notes.
“I think that’s legally actionable. I think the person being followed can get a restraining order. I also think it might be actionable criminally, under the new stalking laws, and I think there is some kind of tortious breach-of-privacy action that can be brought.” Cate was thinking out loud. “Something with major damages. Punitive damages.”
Emily kept writing.
“Also, if you have time, check into the false-light cases. I want to know if the whereabouts of a public official can be made into, let’s say, a movie. Or a TV show.”
Emily’s head snapped up, her lined eyes wide. “Are they making a TV show about you?”
So much for secrecy. “I don’t know, but I want to be ready. One last thing. Don’t do the research or the writing in chambers. Go to the library.”
“How about the downstairs library?” Emily meant the courthouse library that all the clerks used, and occasionally a judge or two.
“No. Get off the reservation. Go to Jenkins Law Library. Take your laptop. Got it?”
“Sure,” Emily said, her young face worried. She finally rested her ballpoint. “Are you okay, Judge?”
“Of course.” Cate flashed a convincing smile and stood up. “Now, let’s go!” She got up and Emily followed, and they walked together to the clerks’ office, where Sam was bent over his computer keyboard, his back to the door.
“Sam?” Cate said. He turned in his swivel chair, his expression cowed, still. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. It was uncalled for, and I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right, Judge.” Sam’s lower lip trembled, and for a minute he looked like he might cry. “I know I’ve been kind of a…disappointment to you.”
“No, you haven’t, Sam. Not at all.” Cate felt a twinge for the kid, but she didn’t have time for this now. “You and I, we’ll have to talk about this when I get back. I have an errand to run. Okay, pal?”
“Okay.” Sam managed a shaky smile, and Cate ducked out of the clerks’ office and headed for Val’s desk.
“Hey, lady,” Cate called out on the fly. “Please tell me my calendar’s clear this morning.”
“Let me see, Judge.” Val turned to her computer, which set her long amber earrings swinging. A beige pashmina draped around her shoulders, on top of a brown patterned dress. She hit a key on her keyboard and slid her eyes upward while she typed. “You didn’t have to say you were sorry, you know. You gotta teach ’em.”
“Nah, it was right.” Cate grabbed her trench coat from the rack and slid into it as Val frowned at her monitor screen.
“You have a pretrial motion at eleven-thirty. Schrader v. Ickles Industries.”
“Damn.” Cate had meant to read those papers, too. She’d never been so behind on her work. “Please call and cancel it. Tell the courtroom deputy and stenographer, too. I won’t be back until after lunch.” She leaned over the top of Val’s cubicle and lowered her voice. “Marz killed himself with the murder weapon.”
“So it’s over.”
“Yes.”
“Hallelujah. Where’re you going?”
“You don’t want to know.” Cate hurried for the door.
CHAPTER 18
Cate hustled down the sidewalk under the cold sun, holding her coat at her neck against a biting wind. Bundled-up people hurried this way and that, their breaths making cotton puffs in the frigid air. Morning traffic clogged the narrow street, stop-and-go, mostly business deliveries at this hour, and a white Liberty Fish van honked, stalled by a UPS truck making a delivery. Cate lived only six blocks east of this neighborhood, and if Society Hill were the residential side of colonial Philadelphia, Old City had been the commercial, characterized by large industrial spaces that later proved perfect for restaurants, art galleries, lofts, photography studios, and furniture-design showrooms. And evidently, the Philadelphia production offices of Attorneys@Law.
Cate stopped when she reached the address, only a black-stenciled number 388 on a dented metal door wedged between a closed restaurant and a wholesale restaurant-supply outlet. She stepped back and looked up at the brick building, two stories above the restaurant-supply outlet. Fluorescent lights paneled the ceiling on the second floor; the storefront window bore no sign. The sign on the window of the third floor read TATE amp; SON, INDUSTRIAL DRAWING. The Attorneys@Law office had to be the second floor, and in this brick sliver of a building, it couldn’t be more than one room wide.
Cate eyed the door frame, dirty and peeling gray paint, home to two black buzzers recessed in grimy brass, unlabeled. She hit the top button, assuming it was the third floor, and the door buzzed loudly. She slipped inside, into a tiny entrance room, then went upstairs and stopped at the second floor, at a security door that read ATTORNEYS@LAW. Cate knocked.
No answer. But she knew Micah was inside, from the phone call. She knocked again, then again, and was about to kick the door down when it flew open.