“Braden, baby. Listen to me. You need to stop worrying. I love you and Cameron knows and respects that! He’s not going to try anything with me.”

“I do know and respect that! I really do! I would never touch her as long as you were together! I’ve only ever touched her once before! Well, a few times, but only one night, and it was eight years ago when I was nineteen years old!” Cameron said emphatically.

“You’ve slept with Gabrielle?” Adam asked. “You haven’t slept with her too, have you, Mark?”

“No!” Mark answered.

“Good, or I would have felt really left out,” Adam, who was apparently suicidal, added.

“It was when we were in college!” I seethed. “Before I even knew Braden.”

“Thanks for trying to protect me, by the way,” Cam said, looking at Jess. “Didn’t you wonder why Gabrielle was half na**d with me?”

“It’s Gabrielle and so I just assumed that there was some nutty reason for it. I’ve learned not to question why she does anything. It’s better that way,” she answered with a smile, collapsing into her desk chair.

“Okay, I’m sorry!” Braden said finally. “You have to admit it was kind of weird!”

“Well, that was fun,” Adam quipped.

“Braden, man,” Mark said, “you’re planning to marry this woman.” He looked at me and his eyes dropped to my chest for one second before he shook his head and looked away. “You really need to get used to walking in on weird shit, dude!”

“Did you say ‘nice tits, Gabrielle’?” Braden asked Adam with a hint of menace.

“So, we came by to see if you wanted to have lunch together!” Adam said cheerfully while slowly backing away from Braden.

“That’s a great idea! I need to talk to everyone about something anyway,” I said grabbing my purse and bolting out the door. Luckily, they did follow me.

We all sat around a table at Reading Terminal Market eating our lunch and chatting much more calmly. Probably because we were all fully dressed and nobody was in mortal danger.

“Should I be brave and ask Gabrielle what she wanted to talk to us about?” Mark asked, taking a bite of his sushi.

“I wanted to tell you about a napkin that we found on the floor,” I explained.

“You wanted to talk to us about litter, honey?” Jess asked. She didn’t really sound surprised, for some reason.

“We found it right in front of Braden’s door after someone had pulled a false alarm and we had to leave the building. It wasn’t there when we left.”

“Somebody must have just dropped it when people were evacuating,” Adam said, eyeing up his corn dog a little suspiciously. A corn dog? Really, Adam?

“It was a cocktail napkin,” I explained. “How many firemen do you know who go out for cocktails before going on duty?”

“Maybe another resident dropped it,” Mark suggested.

“It was right in front of my door,” Braden admitted a little reluctantly.

“It was from a place called Club 51 and on the back someone had written 7161030.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cam asked.

“I think it’s a date and time. This Friday at ten-thirty and I think we should go check it out!” I said excitedly.

“What do you mean ‘we’? Who do we look like? The Scooby Doo gang?” Adam asked, biting into his dubious looking food-like product.

“Oh trust me, man!” Mark broke in, “you haven’t lived until you’ve gone with Gabrielle on one of her little adventures. What should we dress up as this time?”

“Aliens,” I answered dryly. “The club has a conspiracy theme. The 51 refers to Area 51.” I took a bite of my veggie lasagna. All the adrenaline had given me a big appetite. I could probably eat a whole pan of this stuff.

“Uh oh! Conspiracies!” Adam said. “Maybe your litterbug read the article in the New York Times and is worried about the senator’s son dating the kingmaker’s daughter.”

“You know, even though you’re just being a wiseass, you may not be wrong,” I said thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s a message, and in more ways than one.”

“I think it’s a message that Braden should take you out on a date,” Jess said, playing around with her salad. “You two haven’t really gone out anywhere since the first time. Although, I’ll admit that it’s hard to top a kabob joint and a train station.”

“You want me to take you out?” Braden asked me. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“I hadn’t really given it much thought, but sure. That would be fun,” I said just before bending down to pick up my napkin and smacking my head on the table. Braden checked to make sure that I wasn’t bleeding. He was so sweet. He was always checking to make sure that I wasn’t injured too badly. That was true love.

“Personally, I think that if you want to marry her, you should at least court her a little,” Jess went on. She gave Braden a stern look before finally locating the elusive crouton she had obviously been searching for and popping it into her mouth.

“Court her? What is this, 1800?” Adam asked. “He banged her at a fundraiser. I think they’re a little beyond the ‘courting’ stage, Jane Austen.”

“I’m just saying that maybe it would be a good idea if they went out on a few dates before they got married,” Jess responded. “He should romance her. What kind of memories will she have otherwise?”

“Well, let’s see,” Cam said. “She can remember being covered in garbage, dressing up like a dominatrix and running around South Philly at night …”

“I would be happy to take you out,” Braden interrupted. “I don’t know about a club though. I would rather we didn’t go somewhere filled with players and women who are looking to hook up with them.”

“Uh, Braden? Wouldn’t that include the criminal courts building?” Mark asked.

“We work there,” Braden said testily. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Oh come on, Braden,” I broke in. “We’ll go as a group. We can invite our friend Lily along. I meant to ask if she could come to your parents’ place for the weekend too.”

“Oh no!” Adam said in a tone of voice most people reserved for discussing IRS audits, septic tank overflow or hemorrhoids. He tossed down his corn dog stick in disgust.

“What is your problem with her?” I asked.

“We don’t get along,” he said, sounding almost petulant.

“How can you not get along with her? She’s so nice,” Jess chimed in.

“She’s a bi … a bit overbearing,” he said catching himself just in time. He would be lucky if he lived through this day.

“When’s the last time you even saw her?” Jess asked, sounding annoyed.

“I don’t know. A year ago? It doesn’t matter! We don’t get along!”

“Oh come on!” I said, again. “Adam, you can be civil for a little while and Braden, you and I will be together so there’s nothing to worry about. We should check it out. We might find out something important and it would be fun!”

“Fine.” Braden sighed. “If that’s where you really want to go, that’s where we’ll go, but you stay near me the whole time.”

“Okay, although the other women in the ladies room may not like it much. Let’s go on Friday at ten-thirty. Then we can see for ourselves if there’s anything to it or if it was just somebody’s trash.”

“I’ll take trash for twenty,” Adam said to Mark. “Tell me, Gabrielle, what does that cigarette butt on the floor say to you?”

“Do you really want to know?” I asked with a smile.

“Okay, I’ll take that action,” Mark told Adam. “Enough weird shit happens to Gabrielle that there’s always a possibility. Besides, she’s been wrong so far; she’s got to guess something right eventually.”

“Come on, Braden!” Cameron coaxed. “Take your girlfriend out on a date to the conspiracy joint with all of us. You can’t beat that for romance.” Braden shot him an amused, if exasperated, look.

“Okay! We’ll go check out that club Friday at ten-thirty. Saturday we can all meet at my parents’ place,” Braden said resignedly. “We’ll hang out by the pool, go to the festival that evening and then spend the night there.”

“And can we invite Lily?” I asked.

“Sure!” he said, smiling at Adam.

“This is because I said ‘nice tits, Gabrielle.’ Isn’t it?” Adam muttered, rolling his eyes.

After lunch Mark and I walked to his car together. He had to go out to the prison too so I was grabbing a ride with him. We were talking about some of the cases we had coming up, when I accidentally tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and fell on my ass. As Mark helped me back up, I turned around to pick up the pad I had dropped and noticed a figure that looked familiar some distance behind us. I couldn’t place him, though. There was just something about him that made me think I knew him. We were in a hurry and the guy turned a corner anyway so I just forgot about it. The whole thing probably only took about ten seconds. It was a few hours later when it came to me. I thought that it might have been the same guy I had seen in the alley the night before and it made me feel pretty uncomfortable. Even if it was mostly a convenient way for me to get Jess and Cam together, I did want to get to the bottom of this.

CHAPTER SIX

Tuesday

IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS OF PHILADELPHIA COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

Commonwealth v. Luchinsky

“Ms. Luchinsky,” Judge Channing began, “you understand that you are pleading guilty to criminal trespass and disorderly conduct?”

“Yes, judge.” My client, Tammy Sue Luchinsky, six feet and two inches of badass mama, with tattoos covering her arms, wild long dark hair and a gold tooth, did her best to sound contrite and ladylike. Good luck with that last one. That fact that she sounded like she smoked about three packs a day didn’t help. I shuffled around a little nervously. I couldn’t wait until the judge heard the facts of this case.

“And you understand that you have a right to a trial and you are waiving that right?” Judge Channing was eyeing her up suspiciously. He probably couldn’t wait to hear what Tammy Sue had done either.

“Yes sir.” She smiled and the light glinted off of her tooth. Lovely.

“Mr. Pierce, please summarize the facts of the case.” Here we go, folks!

“Your Honor, just after midnight on June first in the County of Philadelphia, alarms were triggered at the Curren Fromhold Correctional facility and the defendant Tammy Sue Luchinsky, was found by guards climbing a wall.”

“She was breaking out?!” Judge Channing cut in. Suddenly he looked very serious, but then it dawned on him. “Wait a minute! Curren Fromhold is a men’s prison!”

“That’s correct, Your Honor. She was breaking in,” Braden answered, trying to look very serious. The key word being “trying”. He set his lips in a firm line and looked like maybe he was reciting baseball statistics in his head in an effort not to think too much about this one.

“Breaking in to prison?!” the judge asked incredulously. I wondered how many times a day he wished that he could say, “What the fuck?!” Okay, time to tell Tammy Sue’s side of it …

“Your Honor.” I sighed. “My client was a bit intoxicated and she missed her boyfriend. A lot. The alcohol and the, uh, missing, clouded her judgment. I think that we’ve all had nights like that.” I nodded my head and tried to look sympathetic.

“Most of us don’t try to break into prison, though, Ms. Ginsberg. She was scaling a wall not drunk dialing,” he responded irritably.

“She’s voluntarily sought counseling for alcohol abuse, Your Honor, and she’s seeing a therapist about possibly going on anti-depressants. She just has to make sure that she can operate heavy machinery on them. She works on a loading dock. She also understands that she’s only allowed in to see Hank at visiting hours. It was a momentary lapse.”

“Ms. Luchinsky, why would you do something like this?” Judge Channing asked, shaking his head in wonderment.

“Well, judge, my man’s been locked up for six months now and that night, ‘I Changed Her Oil and She Changed My Life’ came on the radio. That’s our song, sir, and I guess that I had just drunk a few too many cans of Pabst. You know how it is when a gal’s been drinkin’ especially when she’s been alone for a while. I’m a hot-blooded woman and I got hot-blooded womanly desires! I’ve been alone too long! I need some lovin’ and I need it bad!” I saw Braden put his fist to his mouth and squeeze his eyes shut. Judge Channing looked slightly alarmed like he thought that Tammy Sue might be trying to tell him something. Hell, maybe she was.

“Maybe Ms. Ginsberg could try to get you some conjugal visits,” Judge Channing muttered, looking like he found the thought rather distasteful. I can’t imagine why. Tammy Sue coughed up a lung into her hand. “Is there an agreement in place?” the judge asked, appearing a bit ill.

“Um,” Braden cleared his throat. “The Commonwealth has agreed to the defendant completing her alcohol counseling program and serving two years’ probation with random urinalysis.” He didn’t sound like he was going to make it much longer without losing it. I figured we had better wrap this up.