20
By the time Laurie got to the corner of 133rd Street and Broadway, her father was already standing outside the nondescript, unnamed building that housed the Manhattan North Homicide Squad, talking to a well-dressed Asian-American man with slicked back hair and wire-rim glasses. Leo waved as he saw her approach, and his new acquaintance offered a hand for a quick shake. They both had their coat collars flipped up against the cold.
“You must be Laurie. I’m Detective Johnny Hon.”
“Thank you again for taking the time to speak with me, Detective. I’m sorry I kept you in the cold waiting.”
“Not at all. I came down to sneak a smoke before you arrived. Don’t tell my wife. I’m supposed to be quitting.” She noticed a binder, about four inches thick, tucked beneath his left arm. “I hope you don’t mind, but I figured I’d bring the work down to you. Commissioner Farley deserves better treatment than a dusty conference room in need of fresh paint.”
Her father raised his eyebrows, knowing the description was accurate. “I told you to call me Leo, and you’re calling the shots, Johnny. Where you go, we follow.”
“A perk of being in Harlem’s the food, and I still haven’t had lunch thanks to a court hearing that went long. I’m starving. There’s a spot called Chinelos around the corner. Killer tacos, only three bucks a pop. Okay by you?”
Laurie flashed him a thumbs-up. She was happy to have a second lunch if Detective Hon could help her figure out who killed Virginia Wakeling.
• • •
Hon’s chosen lunch spot was a hole in the wall with fluorescent lights and tile floors, more like a deli than a restaurant, with a counter for ordering and a few tables in the back. But, at least at this time in the afternoon, it was private, pin quiet, and, as Hon promised, served delicious Mexican food.
Hon was adding a generous amount of extra hot sauce to his tacos when he asked about Laurie’s meeting that morning with the Wakeling family. “I’m surprised they even agreed to speak with you.”
“Not only that. They’re going to appear on our show.”
He let out a whistle. “Wouldn’t have guessed that one. I’ve watched your show with Alex Buckley putting suspects in the hot seat and asking hard questions. Man, I’d like to see him make the Wakeling family squirm.”
“We have a new host now,” Laurie said, trying not to show the emotion in her voice, “but, yes, we like to think that we’re thorough with our interviews.”
Leo leaned forward toward Hon. “You make it sound as if they’ve been less than forthcoming with you, Johnny.”
He shook his head. “Not in a suspicious way, nothing like that. But all three of them—the son, the daughter, the son-in-law—are hell-bent on seeing Ivan Gray behind bars. If you ask them any question other than ‘Just how guilty do you think your mom’s boyfriend is?’ they get impatient, like you’re nosing around in their business.”
Laurie remembered the certainty in Anna’s voice when she repeatedly accused Ivan of her mother’s murder.
“Ivan thinks one or more of them killed Mrs. Wakeling because she was planning to change her will. According to Ivan, she was leaning toward leaving almost everything to charity. The kids would still have the business but they’d need to accumulate their own wealth.”
Johnny Hon was nodding, clearly already familiar with the theory. “Problem is, until we develop a way to speak to the dead, we have no way of knowing her intentions. What we have is the will that was put into probate when she died. Ivan says she was talking about changing it, but no one backed him up on that. I called the lawyer who wrote the will. He said he hadn’t spoken to Mrs. Wakeling for at least a year.”
“Anna’s husband, Peter, was the executor of the estate and, by all accounts, a trusted advisor,” Laurie said. “When I asked him whether Virginia mentioned changing her will, he—”
“Claimed attorney-client privilege.” The two of them finished the sentence in unison.
“I can understand why Virginia Wakeling would find it awkward to talk to her attorney about changing her will,” Leo observed. “Her executor was her son-in-law. In essence she would have been telling him that instead of the money going to his family, the Wakeling fortune would be left to charity.”
“Maybe that’s why she never got around to making the change,” Hon added.
“Or maybe she was prevented from going through with it,” Laurie opined.
Laurie broke the brief silence that followed. “You seem pretty confident that the only thing I’m doing is duplicating work you finished three years ago.”
“I’ve got no big ego about these things, Laurie. I want answers, whether they come from me or from a television program like yours,” Hon said. “It’s a little funny to hear about you walking through the same exact steps I took.” He looked at Leo. “You’ve been in police work most of your life. You know how some cases are.”
“My nine-year-old son can’t wait to join the police force.” Laurie smiled. “He told us he was planning to get the records of unsolved cases and solve them one by one.”
“The Farley name goes on,” Hon said. “Anyway, the son-in-law, Peter, remained poker-faced when I asked him about impending changes to the will.”
“That didn’t seem suspicious to you?”
Hon shrugged. “I figure, someone willing to kill their mom—or mother-in-law—for money would just as soon lie and tell me, absolutely not, she’d never change her will. I think Anna and Peter are all about protecting the Wakeling name. If Mrs. Wakeling was going to change the will, they may not want the public to know about it. Their fortune would seem like ill-gotten gains, so to speak. So, if they don’t think it’s relevant to her murder, they find a way not to talk about it. This is what I meant when I said it would be interesting to see them getting cross-examined on TV.”
“But you didn’t consider them suspects?” Leo asked.
“Technically, everyone’s conceivably a suspect until the case is solved,” Hon said matter-of-factly.
“They don’t have alibis, right?” Laurie asked.
“No. Multiple witnesses placed them all in the main hall when rumors began to spread about a death, but anyone could have made it from the roof back down to the crowd very quickly. Anna said she had gone to the ladies’ room, and Peter and Carter were both working their way around the crowd, saying hello to various guests. It was impossible to pin down anyone’s location to the very second. Did someone explain to you that the video cameras were down that night for servicing?”
Laurie nodded. “I met with the head of museum security yesterday, a guy named Sean Duncan.”
“He’s a good man. Runs a tight ship there,” Hon said emphatically. “Unfortunately, he didn’t have much firsthand interaction with the Wakelings on the night of the gala. The guard assigned as Virginia Wakeling’s contact no longer works there. His name is Marco Nelson.”
“I assume you must have interviewed him?” Laurie asked.
“Oh sure. He was the last one to see Mrs. Wakeling alive, other than her killer, of course. I was surprised when the Met let him go.”
“He was fired?” Laurie exclaimed. “Sean made it sound like Nelson had moved on to private security where he could make more money.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it, but he was encouraged to look elsewhere. Bob Grundel—that was Sean’s predecessor as the head of security—told me Marco was suspected of stealing high-end merchandise from the museum’s retail store. Apparently, he was dating one of the assistant managers and had a tendency to sign up for purse-checking duty on nights when she was working. The theory is she was sneaking items out under his watch. A straight arrow like Sean would probably set up a sting operation and build a case. The former boss played his hunch by giving both of them a warning they might want to look for work elsewhere. Or at least that’s what I’m told.” Hon shrugged, knowing he was repeating gossip he’d learned on the job.
“You said before that Marco was the last to see Mrs. Wakeling, except for her killer,” Leo said. “Is there a reason you used the singular of that word? Is it possible more than one person was involved?”
“I should have said ‘killer or killers.’ Correction duly noted.” Hon looked at Laurie. “You have a theory?”
“As you said, everyone’s a suspect. But I saw the roof. It’s highly unlikely a woman would have had the strength to push Mrs. Wakeling over that wide ledge. ‘Push’ may not even be the right word to describe what happened. That railing is three and a half feet high and there is shrubbery on the other side of it. Whoever did this pushed her over the railing and then shoved her off the shrubbery. Or she was lifted up and thrown over in one motion. But I suppose if either Anna or Virginia’s assistant, Penny, were involved, they could have had a male accomplice.”
“You’re casting a wide net. The personal assistant?” Hon asked.
“Ivan thinks Penny may have been worried about getting fired if Virginia and Ivan had gotten married. He apparently had strong thoughts about her work ethic, or lack thereof. And my understanding is that she did inherit under the will. He didn’t understand why Penny didn’t defend him to the police. According to him, she was in a position to know they were a happy couple, and that he wasn’t using Ginny for money. And by the way, Ivan called Mrs. Wakeling ‘Ginny,’ ” Laurie said, her tone reflective.
“Well, he’s right about one thing: that is definitely not the impression that Penny gave us. She was right in step with the rest of the family. She said that Ivan was in a rush to get married, and she thought it obvious that his motives were financial. Even if he had signed a prenuptial agreement, he would have been far more comfortable as Mr. Virginia Wakeling than as a personal trainer,” Hon replied.
“Maybe she was just backing up the Wakeling family because she wanted to stay in their employ,” Leo suggested.
“Or here’s a simpler theory: maybe all of them were telling the truth about Ivan. He was using that woman for her money, and when she found out he was stealing from her, she was going to expose him,” Hon suggested.
Laurie was all the more certain that they needed to find Mrs. Wakeling’s former assistant before they started filming. “We haven’t been able to locate Penny. Can you help with that, by any chance?”
“Last time I spoke to her, she was working at Wakeling Development.”
“Not anymore.”
“Afraid I can’t help you, then.”
Detective Hon was already doing her father a favor by even meeting with her. She couldn’t expect him to turn over private location information about a citizen for her. “What about the nephew, Tom Wakeling? Did you look into him?” she asked.
Hon wiped his hands on paper napkins as he finished his last bite of food before answering. “Oh, I went there all right. No matter how hard he tried to hide it, it was real clear to me that he resented the rich half of that family. He said he went to the gala that night to impress his date, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he sort of enjoyed making his fancy aunt and cousins uncomfortable by bringing a date who clearly didn’t fit in. I take it the feeling was mutual. As I recall, he only inherited fifty thousand dollars from his aunt. Not exactly nothing, but more like pocket change given the fortune at stake.”
“He told me this morning that they’re all one big happy family now,” Laurie said.
Hon rolled his eyes. “Look at it this way. Your uncle makes a fortune off an idea that also belonged to your father, and you don’t get a piece of the action? Whether he shows it or not, no way that didn’t get under his skin.”
“And yet I never heard one word about him until I started digging into this case. Why was Ivan a suspect, and not Tom?” Laurie asked.
“Because Tom was the one member of that family who had an actual alibi. Unlike his cousins, he wasn’t mingling around in a crowd. He was with his date the entire time.”
“This is Tiffany Simon?” Leo inquired.
Hon nodded. “That’s the one. She provided a detailed alibi at the time of the murder. Apparently, the party was a bit stuffy for her tastes, so they snuck up to the second floor to poke around in the empty galleries. It was actually pretty cute: she said they were checking out all those stodgy old formal portraits on the second floor, mimicking their stilted poses and forced facial expressions. I confess, the next time I went to the museum with my teenagers, we gave it a try. Pretty entertaining if you’re not a big art aficionado.”
“Couldn’t Tom have asked her to lie to keep him out of trouble?” Leo asked, frowning in concentration.
“Except their versions of the story lined up perfectly,” Hon pointed out. “Some old general looked like Brad Pitt, an Italian heiress looked like Cher. Highly unlikely they cooked that up out of thin air. Besides, it was only their second date. Hard to imagine she’d lie to homicide detectives when they weren’t even in a serious relationship. Good luck with your show, Laurie, but I’ll make a bet with you. Come back here when it’s all said and done, and you’re going to agree with me about who killed Virginia Wakeling.”
“Ivan Gray?”
“He’s the guy. Tacos on me if you prove me wrong.”
Laurie noticed Hon glance at his watch and could sense that he was ready to wrap things up.
“I’ll kick myself later if I don’t ask you about that notebook, Detective. Any chance it’s about the Wakeling case?”
“Better than a chance.” He slid the binder across the table. “I had to redact a few names and numbers under privacy laws, but otherwise, that’s everything I’ve got. My investigation is your investigation.”
She began flipping through the pages. Virginia Wakeling’s will. Crime scene photos. Police reports. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“De nada. There’s not a cop on the job who doesn’t look up to your father, Laurie. And maybe you and your TV show can shake something loose after all this time. It’d be nice to see Ivan Gray behind bars at last.”
“If he’s guilty.”
“Oh, he’s guilty all right. It takes a certain kind of cruelty to kill a woman who loves you. There’s not a question in my mind that he’d hurt a complete stranger like you if he thinks you’re breaking new ground. Be careful, Laurie.”