Blow Out

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

THE DOORBELL RANG, and the delivery boy stood grinning from ear to ear with seven pizza boxes piled up to his nose. Callie, charmed by that grin, gave him a big tip.

Bitsy St. Pierre said between mouthfuls of her anchovy pizza, “This is delicious. Eat, Margaret, I don’t want to have to tell you again.” The other three women nodded. Ben watched them, his head cocked to the side. He was eating with six women, five of them his mother’s age, something he couldn’t remember ever doing before in his life. He decided he liked it.

Margaret took a small bite, chewed on it forever before finally swallowing it. Bitsy said matter-of-factly, “We buried Stewart today. It was a grand send-off. The President spoke, the Vice President spoke. You dealt magnificently with the media, Margaret. We’ve given Stewart a wonderful toast with his favorite champagne. He would have made one of his decision matrixes and concluded he was proud of you. Now, eat.”

He’d heard them say such things to Margaret at least three or four times that evening. Did it help? Evidently so. Margaret Califano took a bigger bite of pizza and actually looked like she might be enjoying it.

Janette Weaverton appeared to be the quietest of the five women, although he hadn’t found her reticent or shy at all. It was just that the others seemed more forceful in their opinions, bigger in their laughter. She seemed preoccupied. Yes, that was it.