“Sheila, as I told you before, the woman is squeaky clean. Do I disagree with her on this Nelson case the whole world is talking about? Absolutely. Does that make her a crook? Absolutely not.” He gesticulated effusively, emulating an argumentative tactic picked up from oral arguments. “Speaking of—I’ve been meaning to mention this to you but keep forgetting. So, we all had a holiday lunch with the mayor last week, all of Adams’s clerks. But Adams herself couldn’t make it at the last minute because she had some photo shoot with Philadelphia Magazine—she’s going to be on next month’s cover. So, it was just me, Walt, Jana, Betsy, and the mayor—who, by the way, is quite attractive. We were about to leave the restaurant when this guy walked over, patted the mayor on the back and introduced himself to all of us as Robert Nussbaum. Anyway, when we got back to chambers, Betsy giddily told us all that that was Peter—”

“Nussbaum’s creepy brother,” I interrupted.

“Yeah! How did you know?” Kevin asked, shocked.

“Because he’s called me twice to threaten me with ‘not letting the animal who killed his brother go free’ and I’ve received between two to ten hang-ups since oral arguments in the Nelson case. Did he seem to know the mayor?”

“Yeah, uh, yeah,” Kevin said as his eyes followed an attractive waiter. “Um, ah, so what were we talking about?”

“We were talking about New Year’s resolutions,” James seized the opportunity to change the subject. “Where’s Matthew? It’s already eight-thirty—we’ve been here for a half hour and I want to order.”

“He’ll be here, don’t worry,” I replied, trying not to sound as irritated as I was that Matthew was late. “So Kevin, did the mayor say anything about this Robert Nussbaum guy?”

Kevin shook his head. “Nope, the mayor said nothing. He just told some golf joke, the guy’s got lots of sports jokes. But I had a feeling you’d be interested, Sheila, you know, having worked on that case and being into gossip and all.”

The truth was, I was beyond interested, but not because of gossip. I silently chided myself for not having Googled Robert Nussbaum the first time he called me. An incredible oversight considering that I’d started Googling everyone I’d ever known in my life. I’d already polished off grades K through four (Stan Miller, the bully of third grade, was serving time for child porn!).

As our waiter came by, yet again, to take orders we couldn’t give without our fourth guest, my cell phone rang. It was Matthew.

“Hey, where are you?”

“Sheila, um, didn’t you get my other messages?!” he screamed over what sounded like Britney Spears in the background.