Accused: A Rosato & Associates Novel (8 page)

Mary shook her head. “I’m sorry, but no. Our conversation with Allegra is confidential and privileged.”

“Allegra can waive that.”

“I won’t ask her to, at this juncture.” Mary glanced at Judy, who looked like she was ready to bite. “It’s our understanding that Allegra’s parents were aware that she was seeking counsel, so I’m at a loss to understand why we’re conducting litigation on the driveway.” Mary faced John. “You did know she was interviewing law firms, correct?”

“Admittedly, yes,” he answered, and Jane looked upset, pursing her lips. “But we didn’t believe she would really go through with it, and it’s gone too far. We don’t want outsiders poking their nose into our family, and we’ll put a stop to it, here and now.”

“We’re not here to interfere with your family.”

John stiffened. “Yet you are, and my counsel are prepared to file an injunction against you, if you persist.”

“On what basis?” Mary recoiled. “There’s no grounds for an injunction.”

“Invasion of privacy. Harassment.”

Judy scoffed, stepping forward. “None of those grounds would prevail, and your counsel has probably told you as much. Again, we will defend in court, and all that would accomplish is to make this public.”

Mary wanted to reason with him. “John, you can’t solve a problem legally unless you have a legal problem. You can’t stop your daughter from asking questions, whether you tell her not to, or a judge does. Allegra hired us to look into the conviction of Lonnie Stall, and we intend to confine our investigation to the court case—”

“Investigation?” Jane frowned, deeply, and Mary turned to her.

“Jane, we can explain this to you, calmly. Why don’t you let us see Allegra, then we’ll all sit down, okay? There’s no reason for this to be adversarial. It’s difficult enough for you.”

There was a happy shout from the evergreens, and they all turned to see Allegra hustling toward them, waving. She was wearing a white T-shirt that read
DON’T WORRY, BEE HAPPY
with white shorts and sneakers, and her long, wavy hair flew out behind her. “Mary! Judy! Hi!”

“Hi!” Mary waved back, and so did Judy, before they could be enjoined not to.

“What are you guys doing here?” Allegra’s smile faded as she reached the tense group, and Mary felt for her.

“Sorry to surprise you, Allegra. We thought we’d come by, see you, and talk with your parents about the case, to keep them in the loop. I called you and told you we were on the way. Did you get the message?”

“No, sorry, I didn’t have my phone on me.”

“Is it okay with you if we talk to your parents, with you present?”

“Sure.”

“And can we meet with you alone first, before we do that?”

“Yes.”

“No,” John answered, at the same time. Neil Patel opened his mouth to say something, but John waved him into silence. “No, no, no.”

“Daddy?” Allegra looked over at her parents, her expression anxious, but not completely surprised. “Why can’t they? They can’t talk to me?”

“Allegra.” John placed a hand on his daughter’s knobby shoulder. “Your mother and I wish you would stop right now. We’ve been over and over this, but you’re taking it to a new level. Getting lawyers involved is very extreme. It’s not good for you, and it’s too intrusive to us, to have outsiders in our family life.”

Jane came around Allegra’s other side, her expression pained. “Honey, Daddy’s right. Why don’t you tell Mary and Judy to go back to their office, and we’ll go inside, have some lemonade and cookies, and talk this over. You know we love Fiona, and if you still have questions about her, well, what happened to her, I promise you we can find a way to answer them.”

Neil Patel turned to Allegra. “Legally, your parents are right, and we don’t believe that you have the capacity to engage outside counsel with respect to your sister’s murder.”

Allegra squinted against the sunlight, looking up at her father. “Is that why you were mad when I came home early from Home Depot? And that’s why the lawyers are here?”

“Honey, we can explain that.”

Allegra frowned. “Daddy, if I can’t see them here, I’ll see them at their office. You can’t stop me from talking to them, or anyone.”

“Yes, we can.” John’s tone remained firm. “You’re our daughter.”

“Right. I’m your daughter, not your property,” Allegra shot back, equally firmly. “Now let me go talk to my lawyers.”

Chapter Nine

Mary and Judy followed Allegra across the immense, dappled lawn of the backyard, leaving the Gardners and their lawyers on the driveway. They passed a swimming pool with a flagstone surround and headed for an out-of-the-way, weedy patch near a wooden-sided compost pile, and Mary noticed that Allegra was walking with her head down.

“Allegra, you okay?” she asked, with a sympathetic pang.

“I guess so.” Allegra kept her head down. “That weirded me out, sorry.”

“No need to apologize.” Mary glanced back to see that the Gardners and their lawyers were still on the driveway. She gathered they were going to stay and glare at them from across the lawn. “I should have kept trying to get you on the phone.”

“No, it’s my dad. He’s freaking out.”

“It’s understandable.”

“Not to me.” Allegra pressed her lips over her braces. “I guess my parents made a secret plan to get me out of the house while you guys came over. They knew I wanted to get some things for the hives, and that must be why they had the driver take me. They said they couldn’t because they had work to do.”

Mary exchanged a quick glance with Judy. “Well, try not to blame them. They’re trying to deal with a hard situation, and it will take some time to sort it all out. It’s new for them, and it’s topsy-turvy, a daughter calling the shots. Most parents would feel the same way.”

“I’m not giving up.” Allegra faced forward, brightening as she motioned to some wooden boxes ahead. “Check out my new hives. What do you think?”

“That’s a beehive?” Mary eyed the boxes, which looked like nightstands, with three drawers.

Judy looked over with a crooked grin. “Mare, what did you think it would look like?”

“A hive, you know like a big curved thing that’s wider at the bottom and comes to a point at the top, like in the cartoons.”

Allegra smiled. “This is a Langstroth hive, which was invented by a man from Philadelphia, Lorenzo Langstroth. It’s the best-selling hive in the world, but it’s sad, he never got royalties from the patent. That bugs me.”

“No pun.”

“No. Bees aren’t bugs
per se.
I prefer to call them insects.”

“Oh.” Mary stepped to the hive, then stopped herself. “Wait a minute, there’s no bees here, right?”

“No, they come in the mail this week.”

Judy turned. “You can mail bees? No wonder the Postal Service is so cranky.”

Allegra smiled. “It took me all morning to assemble this, and I’ll paint it tomorrow.”

“How does it work?”

“The trays slide out so you can keep them clean, like this.” Allegra pulled one out. “Langstroth discovered the concept of bee space, which means that the trays are only as far apart as a single bee, so the honeycombs don’t get gummed up with propolis.”

Mary didn’t ask her what that meant, because she wanted to get the conversation back on track. Between
Houyhnhnm
and
propolis
, the place was a vocabulary nightmare, and the Gardners and the lawyers were still watching them from the driveway. “Allegra, remember in our meeting when you said that there was a reason you think Lonnie Stall is innocent? What was the reason?”

“I think Fiona knew Lonnie.” Allegra straightened up, brushing brownish hair from her glasses, where a few strands had gotten caught in the hinge. “Everybody believes he was a total stranger to her, like he was just one of the waiters hired by the catering service, but my parents used that catering service all the time and they entertained a lot. There were always parties. Even I got to know those guys.”

“Okay, so why does that matter? Would Lonnie hurt Fiona? Do you think there was a problem between them?”

“No.” Allegra’s faced changed, her eyebrows slanting unhappily down. “I think Lonnie didn’t kill Fiona. I think he loved her. I think they were in love. I even think they were having sex.”

“What makes you say that?” Mary gathered the birds-and-the-bees lecture was a moot point, especially for a bee expert.

“Because when Fiona babysat me, Lonnie came over to visit.”

“You mean, at the house?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you have a nanny or a sitter?”

“We have a housekeeper, but Fiona sat me, too.”

“Did your parents know that Lonnie was coming over?”

“No.”

“You’re sure it was him?”

“I am, I remember, and he was such a nice guy.”

“How do you know it was him? You were so young at the time.”

“I remember him. He was nice to me, he talked to me, and introduced himself. He didn’t treat me like a baby. I remember his voice, even.”

Mary was confused. “How many times would you say you saw him, when she babysat?”

“Maybe five times, when she babysat, but more at my parents’ parties.” Allegra glanced over at her parents, but they were well out of earshot. “My Mom and Dad like to entertain at the house and the office. It’s a Gardner thing, because it’s a family business, so everything’s kind of together.”

“I get that,” Mary said, though her experience had been the opposite, growing up. The DiNunzios barely socialized, except with blood relatives or neighbors in the same parish, which was Epiphany. In fact, Mary had an epiphany when she realized there was an outside world.

“So I think that Fiona and Lonnie were, you know, together, when she was babysitting me.”

“How many times? Five? Ten?”

“Five. I think she volunteered to babysit me so he could come over. And she knew him, they hugged and kissed. The night she was murdered, I think he went into the small conference room to meet her, to be together. He wouldn’t kill her. He had a major crush on her.”

Mary tried to process the information. “She was sixteen, right?”

“Right, and Lonnie was eighteen.”

“Where did she go to high school?”

“Shipwyn, in Bryn Mawr. It’s a private school. She didn’t board.”

Mary didn’t understand why Allegra boarded when Fiona didn’t, but she let that go for now. “Did she have a boyfriend at school? Was she popular?”

“Fiona was super popular.” Allegra brightened. “She was smart and funny and she was nice to everybody, not only the cool kids. Her school was very cliquey but she was never a mean girl, ever. All the boys were crazy about her, but she didn’t date anyone there except for Tim Gage.”

Mary made a mental note of his name. “Do you think Tim or the kids at school knew about Lonnie?”

“No.” Allegra shook her head, emphatically. “I don’t think anybody knows about Lonnie. Lonnie was Fiona’s secret.”

Judy, who had been listening quietly, stepped over. “Allegra, fast-forward to after your sister’s murder. Did you tell your parents that you thought Lonnie and Fiona were seeing each other?”

“Yes, but they didn’t believe me, and they still don’t. They think Lonnie was just one of the waiters. They don’t know that he knew Fiona.”

“When did you tell them?”

“After I heard that Lonnie was arrested. I knew his name, not his last name, but his first. I remember I even told the detectives, when they came to the house. I told my parents’ lawyers, too.”

“Your parents had lawyers, then?” Judy caught herself. “Of course, they would have.”

“Yes, totally. Mr. Patel.” Allegra permitted herself a tight smile. “My Dad is a really careful guy, and the lawyers are always around. That’s the weird thing about a family business. Like I remember when I was having a problem with one of the mean kids at school, Mr. Patel wanted to sue the parents.”

Judy paused. “So you don’t know what happened after that, if the police investigated whether Lonnie knew Fiona.”

“No, I don’t.”

Judy nodded. “The fact that Lonnie knew Fiona doesn’t mean that he didn’t kill her. In fact, it cuts both ways.”

Mary didn’t say what Judy was thinking, which was that, if anything, it gave Lonnie evidence of motive, making him look guiltier.

Allegra frowned. “I know, but I just don’t think it was him. He’s a quiet, shy guy. It’s just not him. He didn’t do it.”

“You didn’t go to the trial, did you?”

“No. My parents didn’t think I should. I was eight by then, but they thought I was too young.”

“Lonnie took the stand in his own defense and he didn’t say anything about knowing Fiona, or that they were meeting that night. He said he heard a noise and that’s why he went into the small conference room.”

Allegra pursed her lips. “I remember my parents telling me that, but I don’t understand that.”

“Maybe it was the truth.”

“Maybe not. That’s what I want you guys to figure out.”

Judy turned to Mary, her eyes narrowing against the bright sun. “Sounds like we have our work cut out with that for us.”

“Right.” Mary nodded, turning to Allegra. “To switch gears a moment, I have a question for you. Before I ask you, you understand that anything we talk about is confidential, right? That means we won’t tell your parents anything we discussed, without your approval.”

Allegra nodded. “Yes, I understand that.”

“You gave me a cell-phone number at our office that was different from the one your father gave me. Do you have two cell phones?”

Allegra flushed under her fair skin, and her eyes flared slightly. “Uh, yes. I have a cell phone that my parents don’t know about.”

“Why?”

“So I could set up the interviews with law firms and make the phone calls I wanted to make without my parents’ seeing. I’m still on the family plan with them on the phone they gave me, and I even think that comes from the company.”

“Okay, I get that. Obviously, I won’t say anything, and Judy and I will use your private cell phone to reach you. Does that make sense?”

“Yes. I’ll keep it with me more. I guess I’m just not used to getting calls.”

Mary patted her on the shoulder, on impulse. “Now, we do want to meet with your parents. It’s clear they’re not happy about your hiring us, or your going forward with your questions, but we think the best way to deal with this is to be as respectful as possible. That’s why we’d like to meet with them today and get their view of the case. You’re sure you’re fine with that?”