Final Appeal by Lisa Scottoline Page A

right? Are you all right?
    The room is spinning, and fear runs cold in my stomach. “No, no,” I hear myself saying.
    “God, Grace, I’m so sorry! Here, wait,” I hear Sarah saying, as if through a fog. The next thing I feel is a warm splash on my face. Wetness dribbles down my cheeks and onto my blouse. Sarah comes into hazy focus as a familiar odor brings me around. “Are you okay? Are you conscious?” she asks.
    I wipe my face, then smell my wet hand. “Is this coffee?”
    “Yes. Here, sit up.” She helps me to a sitting position against the bookshelf and kneels on the rug opposite me.
    “Why did you throw coffee at me?” Dazed, I watch as a full cup sets into a brown Rorschach blotch on my white blouse.
    “I thought you were going to pass out. It was the only thing around. Not that you didn’t deserve it,” she adds, a trace of resentment wreathing her voice.
    “I deserved it?”
    “You shouldn’t have said I loved him.”
    “You did, didn’t you?” I wipe my cheeks on my sleeve; the blouse is a goner anyway.
    “Don’t say that, it would hurt Artie so much. And what you said, about me killing Armen, that was awful.”
    “I didn’t say you killed him.”
    “You were about to.” Her eyes well up as suddenly as Maddie’s. In all her bravado, inside she is a child. A sheltered, spoiled child. “I would never kill Armen. I would never kill anyone. It’s inconceivable.”
    I consider this. “I do think Armen was murdered,” I say, hearing it out loud; it sounds right and horrible, at the same time.
    “Do you really?” She blinks back her tears.
    “You know Susan, right? If she came in from Washington and he told her about me, could she have killed him, in a jealous rage? A crime of passion?”
    “Never. Never in a million years. She’s not like that, emotional like that.” She shakes her head.
    “I want to talk to her.”
    “She’s leaving for a fact-finding mission.”
    “Fact-finding? When?”
    “Any day now, she’s not sure.”
    “Where?”
    “Eastern Europe, Bosnia. Investigating the genocide there.”
    A regular genocide hobbyist, that woman. “Don’t you think it’s odd for her to leave the country right now?”
    “No. I think it’s good for her. She needs to get away.”
    Suddenly I hear Bernice barking loudly, a fierce, threatening bark, one I haven’t heard before. Someone shouts in the hallway; then a louder voice, Eletha’s, screams, “No! No!”
    “What’s that?” Sarah says, alarmed.
    “Trouble.” I scramble to my feet. Sarah’s right behind me as we tear toward chambers.

11
     

    “B ernice, no!” I shout, but she pays even less attention than usual. Driven by instinct, her brown eyes lock onto her quarry, whose pin-striped back is quite literally against the wall.
    “Somebody get this animal!” Galanter bellows, jowls flapping, arms splayed out like the Antichrist. A half cigar smolders between his fingers.
    “Bernice, no!” I shout again, but her glistening black lips retract to display a lethal set of canines, only three feet from Galanter’s belt buckle. She growls, and I feel a bolt of fear inside. She has the power to tear him to pieces and, apparently, good cause.
    “Rossi, control this animal! Now!” Galanter sputters, his face a hot red.
    “Just relax, Judge,” I say, approaching Bernice slowly from behind. I have no idea if she’ll bite me if I try to stop her.
    I call to her softly, but she growls again and drops her head to crotch height. Galanter’s blue eyes flare open in fear, and Artie begins to laugh.
    “Hold still, dude,” he says. “You got nothing to lose. She won’t even find it.”
    “You’re out of a job, mister!” Galanter says.
    “Tell me about it,” Artie says. “Grace, be careful now.”
    “Bernice won’t hurt me. Will you, Bernice? You wouldn’t hurt your mommy.” I reach her glossy hindquarters with my fingertips and stroke my way up her back to her collar.
    She growls again, baring more of her