43
Laurie and Ryan rehashed their interview of Penny in his car on the way back to the office.
“Did you see how many times she checked her watch? She was expecting someone she didn’t want us to meet.”
Laurie had had the same thought.
“And how did she pay for that apartment?” Ryan asked. “Her seventy-five-thousand-dollar inheritance from Virginia wouldn’t touch the down payment. Even if she’s renting, that place has to be at least six grand a month. And when I asked about her job? She barely gave an answer. Real estate? That’s like us saying ‘media.’ Totally vague.”
Laurie tried not to be irked that he clumped their jobs together. “Maybe she moved in with a boyfriend,” she suggested. “I didn’t see a wedding ring.” She began to look up Penny’s address on her phone to see what she could find out about the cost of the apartment or the owner.
“Well, I solved one part of the mystery,” Laurie announced, holding up her phone. “The apartment? It’s listed online as ‘in contract.’ The asking price was an even four million.”
Ryan let out a whistle. “So Penny came into money well beyond Virginia’s will.”
“Nope. I’m looking at the original real estate listing here. The agent’s name is Hannah Perkins. She has her office phone, cell, and email address listed. And if all else fails, she also has a number for her assistant. Want to guess the assistant’s name?”
Ryan’s eyes widened. “Penny?”
“You got it. No last name, but the phone number’s a match.”
“So it’s not even her apartment? It’s a client’s? Why would she fake that?”
Laurie thought it over, trying to place herself in another person’s shoes. “Because she’s ambitious. She didn’t want us to know that her current position’s no better than the one she had three years ago.”
“I noticed how annoyed she seemed when you told her the nephew, Tom, has a good job at Wakeling now.”
“Exactly.”
“So if she found out Virginia was going to cut her out of the will instead of giving her the kind of job she felt entitled to, maybe she got mad enough to do something about it.”
Laurie shook her head. “No, I can’t picture it. Seventy-five thousand dollars is a lot, but it’s not life-changing. And Virginia’s death meant she wouldn’t have any job at all. It would also mean she lost entree to a world she desperately wanted to be part of. I doubt her current boss lets her tag along to the Met Gala, for example. If she’s lying—”
“Oh, she’s definitely lying,” Ryan said.
Laurie found herself agreeing with him again. “Ivan believed Penny was hiding a boyfriend. And then, completely separately, Tiffany Simon got the feeling Penny had her eye on someone in the family. It lines up. If Penny were secretly seeing either Carter or Peter, she could have mentioned those notes about the will, not realizing the damage that might be done. She looked scared when I mentioned the possibility. I think it honestly never dawned on her that the family might be involved.”
“If they were, it’s possible Penny’s the one who got Virginia killed, all because she snooped in her garbage. If only we knew for sure what was scribbled on those notes.”
“We do know what Virginia wrote in her own will,” Laurie said, thinking aloud.
“Right. I saw a copy of it in that big notebook you got from the NYPD.”
Irritated, Laurie wanted to tell Ryan she had been trying to make a point. “What I’m trying to say is that the will was hers, written solely for her purposes, shortly after her husband passed away.” Laurie’s eyes clouded, remembering how she had rewritten her own will more than a year after Greg was killed. It was another reminder that he was really gone. Her father had said he felt the same way after getting nagged by his lawyer to redo his will after her mother passed away.
Ryan was following her train of thought. “The original will written when Robert Wakeling was alive would have reflected what the two of them jointly decided, in the event something happened to both of them at the same time.”
“We should compare that to Virginia’s will. It’s a long shot, but maybe it will give us some indication of if and how she revised it.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“I don’t think I want to contact the Wakelings to ask for a copy,” Laurie said.
“Not a problem. I’ll get in touch with the Surrogate’s Court as soon as we get to the office. It’s public record once the estate’s in probate.”
“You’re willing to do that?” She would have thought that Ryan would see such a menial task as beneath him.
“Consider it done. Teamwork, right?”
• • •
When they returned to the studio, they nearly bumped into Brett Young as they stepped out of the elevator. He was carrying a mini-bag to transport what looked like three golf clubs. Laurie knew that Brett, in addition to annual winter trips to Scottsdale and the Bahamas to work on his golf game, kept his swing in check with regular lessons indoors at Chelsea Piers.
“Looks like a short game session today,” Ryan said, holding out a palm to stall the elevator doors while he chatted with the boss.
Laurie had no idea how Ryan could tell that from what she was seeing, but she guessed it was related to the fact that none of Brett’s clubs had cute, fluffy covers on them.
“Just sand, fringe, and greens,” Brett said.
He may as well have been speaking Farsi from Laurie’s perspective, but she knew that Ryan—as the nephew of one of Brett’s closest friends—was a frequent golf partner. “My handicap would be several strokes lower if I didn’t regress over the winter,” Ryan said.
“Let’s go, then,” Brett said, waving Ryan back into the elevator.
Ryan started to follow and then paused. “I need to get a document for our show,” he said.
“Laurie can do it. Can’t you, Champ?” The elevator was starting to buzz from being held, but Brett was planted firmly between the doors.
She watched, speechless, as Ryan stepped from her side to Brett’s.
“By the way,” Brett added, “we had to pull our Valentine’s Day special because Brandon and Lani are announcing their divorce tomorrow in People. Oops.”
Laurie recognized the name of the C-list reality-star couple that got married a mere two years ago after meeting on one of the studio’s multiple matchmaking series. “I swapped in your next special for the time slot. When love proves deadly—thought it might be a good tagline,” he called out as the doors finally closed.
When Laurie got back to her office, she started to look up the process for ordering a copy of a will that had gone into probate, and then decided that this ‘champ’ was absolutely not going to do it. She picked up her phone and left a message for Ryan, reminding him that he was tasked with the assignment. Reviewing the Wakelings’ joint will from more than seven years ago was a shot in the dark. She wasn’t going to slow herself down by doing an errand that belonged to Ryan, especially now that his buddy, Brett, had set an arbitrary deadline.
She had real work to do.