Blowout

Margaret smiled at her daughter. “Do you know, I think Stewart would like that.”
    “Good. It’s done.”
    It was pretty clear to Ben that the women would as soon see the back of him, but they were all nodding and smiling, polite to their undoubtedly beautifully polished toenails. It was Bitsy who said, “Anchovies for me, Callie.”
    “As if I didn’t know,” Callie said.
    Janette said, “I want double pepperoni.”
    Ben nodded. “A woman after my own heart—make that two.”
    Callie ended up ordering seven pizzas, including a large caper and olive for herself.
    It was Margaret’s first night home. Callie was going to stay with her for a while, but Ben got the distinct impression that her mother really didn’t need her to stay or particularly wanted her to stay either. She had her four friends. Were her friends closer to her than her own daughter? They were all of an age, all of them had shared so many years of their lives together, each other’s pain as well as happiness. He supposed they knew each other as well as old married couples must.
    He turned to Janette Weaverton, who’d gone to open the drapes a bit to look out. “No more media,” she said over her shoulder. “Margaret did an excellent job with them.”
    Ben joined her at the window. “Yes, she did. I understand from Callie that you taught her how to knit.”
    Janette didn’t look at him. “She’d be quite good if she applied herself, but Callie’s young, she’s got so much stuff to do—and her career is really taking off. I think a Pulitzer might mean more to her than a knitted afghan.” She turned to face him, her arms folded over her chest. “She knit me a sweater—her very first effort. I still have it.”
    “Does it look like a sweater, or is it one of those stereotypical things you see that goes on for yards and yards?”
    “Nope, it’s a sweater. She was good when she was twelve. Haven’t you been to her apartment?”
    He shook his head. “She’s a civilian, ma’am. She was assigned to me. None of this is social.”
    “What a waste that seems, Detective. Callie’s a special girl, always has been.”
    “So special that Mrs. Califano didn’t marry Justice Califano until Callie went off to college?”
    Janette Weaverton shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. What happened to her sister’s girl really affected her, affected all of us. None of us encouraged Margaret to change her mind about it. The thing is, though, Callie has gumption—she would have kicked her stepfather’s ass if he’d ever tried anything with her. And she really liked Stewart, admired him tremendously.”
    Hearing a blueblood like Janette Weaverton talk about kicking ass made Ben choke. He coughed into his hand.
    She laughed. “Oh, I see. You think I should speak more demurely, to match my St. John suit?”
    “What’s a St. John’s suit?”
    Janette smiled. “That’s what I’m wearing. It’s a designer label. Did you know Callie has a black belt in karate?”
    “Yeah, she might have mentioned it once when she wanted to boot me out the car window.”
    “The first thing Margaret did after her sister’s daughter was molested was to enroll Callie with an excellent instructor, to be sure that Callie would never be a victim.
    “You seem like a good man, Detective Raven. You’re interesting, you’re also an excellent listener. I’ll bet you manage to get information out of the most obdurate of perpetrators, don’t you?”
    “I try, ma’am. Actually, I hear it’s Agent Savich who’s the master at it. They give lots of classes on interviewing at Quantico. One day I might go see what it’s all about.”
    “You really think Agent Savich is all that good? It’s been nearly a week since Stewart’s murder and nearly four days since Danny O’Malley’s murder, yet he doesn’t seem to have turned up anything.”
    “He will. Justice Califano interacted with a great many people, so many it makes your head ache, and everyone has something quite different to say. Lies? Just differences of perception? Sheer perversity?”
    “I see what you mean. Well, you’d expect that, wouldn’t you? It would be like Bitsy and me being married to the same man. We’d both experience him as very different men.”
    “I never thought of it like that. Do we change our behaviors so much with each different person we know?”
    “I’d rather eat pizza than think about that,” Janette said.

CHAPTER
24
    T HE DOORBELL RANG , and the delivery boy stood