42
When Laurie and Ryan arrived at the address Penny Rawling had given them, they were surprised to find one of the new, modern condo buildings that were popping up along the narrow cobblestone streets in Tribeca. Penny was only thirty years old. She had certainly come a long way since working as Virginia Wakeling’s personal assistant only three years earlier.
“This view is amazing,” Laurie said once they were done with introductions. Penny’s apartment was large, with high ceilings and a wall of windows overlooking the Hudson River. Snow still lined the river’s edge on the New Jersey side of the water.
“Summer sunsets on the terrace are the best part,” Penny said. “Please, have a seat. Ryan, I didn’t realize you’d be here, too. I’ve seen you on television. This is very exciting.”
Laurie was accustomed to people misunderstanding the roles that various people played on her show. Everyone assumed that the face they saw on the screen was the one doing all the heavy lifting. She had used that perception to her advantage on more than one occasion. People had a way of underestimating her friendly smile and unassuming demeanor.
Laurie had not seen any photographs of Penny, so this was her first chance to take in her appearance. She had dark hair, almost black, with crystal-blue eyes and pale skin. She was a natural beauty. Laurie found herself wondering again about the mystery boyfriend Ivan suspected she’d had at the time of the murder.
Ryan thanked Penny for taking time off in the middle of the day to meet with them. “What did you say you do again?” he asked.
Laurie assumed that Ryan was wondering the same thing she was: how could Penny afford this apartment?
“I’m working in real estate,” Penny said vaguely.
“Well, it must be treating you well,” Ryan said. “We don’t want to waste your time, so I figured we’d get straight to the point. We’ve spoken at length with Ivan Gray, and a couple of things aren’t lining up for us. The police got the impression that you were suspicious of Ivan’s motivations for dating Mrs. Wakeling, but Ivan swears to us that you saw the two of them together and knew they were truly in love. Which is the right story?”
“Both of them, actually. Do I think Ivan would have given a woman twenty years his senior the time of day if she’d been strictly middle class? No, I don’t. I suspect he had certain parameters for a romantic partner, and that probably involved financial security. But I also think they loved each other.”
“You make love sound very . . . transactional,” Ryan observed.
“I mean, think of it this way: I have plenty of friends who are only willing to date men with good jobs and stable incomes. Is this really any different? If Virginia was the man, and Ivan was the woman, no one would think twice about their relationship.”
“But that’s not the way the Wakeling family saw things,” Laurie said.
Penny shook her head. “Her children all thought she was behaving like a fool. I’ll never forget the time that Anna told her mother, ‘Daddy’s the one who worked for this money. He would be destroyed if he could see the way you are spending it.’ ”
Penny sighed. “I was tempted to step in and remind Anna that she’d had everything handed to her by birth, but Virginia didn’t need my help defending herself. She said, ‘Anna, you witnessed firsthand how angry your father could be. For once, I’m finally having fun. This is my second chance at life.’ I thought Anna was going to stomp out of the room. It turned into a huge argument about whether Anna had a right to judge her mother’s choices. It was as if they both forgot I was there.”
So far, Penny hadn’t said anything to directly contradict what she said to the police, but she seemed to be painting a more nuanced picture of the Wakeling family dynamics than she did at the time, Laurie thought. “Did you mention that particular argument to the police?” she asked.
Penny looked up at the ceiling as if searching her memory. “I don’t recall. Probably not. I mean, Virginia had just died. There was no reason to air her family’s dirty laundry.”
“Unless it related to her murder,” Ryan suggested.
“But I’m sure it didn’t. The Wakelings argued like any family—maybe more, since there was the business to consider—but they were loyal to each other to a fault. The very thought of Anna or Carter hurting their mother is unimaginable to me.”
“Yet you can picture Ivan hurting her?” Laurie asked.
“No, not really. But statistically, aren’t husbands and boyfriends the usual suspects? And he did take all that money for his gym.”
“According to Ivan, Virginia gave it to him as an investment,” Ryan said. “Isn’t that something you’d know about?”
“No. I didn’t get involved in the finances unless you count doing her shopping and picking up the dry cleaning.”
“What about her plans to marry?” Laurie asked. “Her kids seem to think she never would have gone through with it.”
Penny answered immediately. “Oh, I think she was going to marry him. My guess is she was just waiting awhile, hoping that Anna and Carter would come around to accepting him and wishing them well.
Laurie could see Penny thinking, as if she was pondering whether to say more.
“It would be understandable if there were things you didn’t mention three years ago out of loyalty to your boss,” Laurie said. “But now that her murder remains unsolved, it’s important that we know everything.”
“Well, I do know that she may have been considering changing her will,” Penny said haltingly.
This was the first time anyone other than Ivan had mentioned the possibility.
“And what makes you think that?” Ryan jumped in with the question.
“I would find these little pieces of paper balled up in her office trash. There would be names of people and various charities with numbers next to them. Almost everyone had a dollar amount listed next to their name—fifty thousand here, two hundred thousand there. But Ivan was usually listed first, with a portion noted instead of a dollar amount—a half, or a third, a quarter. That’s what made me think she was assuming they’d be married.”
“You didn’t by any chance save these notes from the trash, did you?” Laurie asked.
“No, I didn’t,” Penny replied.
“What about Virginia’s family?” Ryan asked.
Penny frowned. “It seemed as if they were almost getting cut out. I remember one version had two hundred thousand, but another one only had fifty thousand. That’s a lot of money to most people—and I assume she would have still left the company to them—but it’s a drop in the bucket to people like Anna and Carter. It seemed as if she was planning to leave most of her wealth aside from the real estate business to charity. The kids would have had to keep the company going on their own.”
This was consistent with what Ivan claimed she’d been planning. “Why didn’t you tell anyone about this earlier?” Laurie asked.
For the first time, Penny looked away from them, glancing at her watch while she answered. “I didn’t think it mattered. It was just little notes balled up in her garbage—the way I scribble down notes about vacations I’ll probably never take. If she had made up her mind, she would have called a lawyer to make it official. And I didn’t want it to cause problems for the family—if, you know, Ivan tried to challenge the will or something. I wanted them to get what was theirs.”
Laurie suspected that Penny didn’t want anyone to know that she snooped into her boss’s private notes, but Ryan was pursuing another possibility.
“And you to get what was yours?” he asked. “You inherited also, didn’t you?”
Laurie wished Ryan hadn’t moved to hostile territory so quickly. Until now, Penny had been extremely cooperative.
“Seventy-five thousand dollars,” she confirmed. “I was very grateful. That’s what I made in two years as her assistant.”
“And those little notes you found: was she planning to cut your part of the inheritance as well?” he asked, pressing the point.
“I—I don’t remember.”
“And yet you remember an awful lot about what Ivan and her children might have been inheriting,” he challenged her.
Laurie interrupted, sensing that Penny was a few questions away from asking them to leave. Looking at Penny, she could see that she wasn’t strong enough to have pushed Virginia from that roof on her own. If she was involved in the murder—which was a big if right now—she had to have had an accomplice.
“Do you remember Tiffany Simon from the gala?” Laurie asked. “She was Tom Wakeling’s date—Virginia’s nephew.”
“Oh yeah,” she said, as if the memory was coming back to her. “Virginia said she seemed like a perfect match for someone on that half of the family. She took Bob’s side regarding the split with his brother, Kenneth, so there was no love lost, even for Kenneth’s son. She said that her nephew was just like his father—he wanted all of the rewards without doing any of the work.”
“That nephew works at Wakeling Development now. He’s doing quite well from what I’m told,” Laurie said.
A flash of resentment crossed Penny’s face. “Nepotism, I’m sure. He probably wore his cousins down once Bob and Virginia were both gone.”
“Well, his date from that night seemed to think that you were seeing someone at the time—maybe someone who was at the gala?”
Penny shook her head, and once again, her gaze drifted to her watch.
“Maybe even someone close to Virginia?” Laurie nudged.
“That’s ridiculous. Virginia’s friends were three times my age.”
“Her son, Carter, wasn’t,” Ryan said. “Neither was her son-in-law, Peter Browning.”
“Now you’re suggesting I had an affair with Anna’s husband? I’m so glad I decided to try to help you,” she said sarcastically.
“We’re just trying to be thorough,” Laurie explained. “Ivan also mentioned that he’d heard you on the phone with a boyfriend. If we knew who that person was, we could be certain it wasn’t related at all to Virginia’s murder. We want to turn over every stone.”
Penny was on her feet now, heading toward the door. “I’m on a tight timeline, so I’m afraid I need to get back to work.”
Laurie tried one last time. “I’m sorry we offended you. I just need to know: did you tell Anna, Carter, or Peter—or anyone—about those notes you found? If they knew Mrs. Wakeling was going to change her will—”
A look of panic crossed Penny’s face, and she suddenly seemed even more rushed to end the conversation. “I’ve told you everything I know. Good luck with your production. I won’t be speaking to you anymore.”