“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.”
21
Thirty-year-old Penny Rawling completed one last walk-through of the apartment. The property listing described a chicly renovated, turnkey-ready three-bedroom, two-bathroom condo in the heart of the West Village featuring a spectacular sunset view over the Hudson River. In reality, the third “bedroom” was a cubbyhole at best, used by the current owner as a tiny home office. The “chic renovations” used the kind of inexpensive but trendy finishings that inexperienced buyers easily mistook for high-end. And the “view” was from a single living room window, and only if one leaned a bit to the side to glance around a neighboring building.
Given what she had to work with, however, Penny thought the place was ready to show. Just as she knew what kinds of words to use in a listing to please her employer, she had mastered the finishing touches of staging an apartment for potential buyers. With the seller’s permission, she had placed all clutter and personal mementos in clear, plastic boxes that could be stored neatly beneath the bed in the master suite. Fresh flowers—a mix of lilies and roses were the best assortment at the corner delicatessen—had been arranged in a crystal vase on the dining room table. Every room looked like a page out of a modern furniture catalogue.
She removed the stack of flyers she had printed out with details about the apartment and placed them neatly next to the vase of flowers.
She stopped and looked at the lower right-hand corner of the printout, trying not to feel resentful. The woman pictured there was Hannah Perkins, a member of the firm’s elite “Titanium Club” for agents who had sold at least a hundred million dollars of real estate in the preceding year.
All on the backs of minions like me, Penny thought bitterly.
Penny was more than halfway done with the seventy-five hours of training she needed to sit for the exam to get a New York State Realtor’s license. In the meantime, she made twenty bucks an hour as an assistant, answering Hannah’s calls, printing out contract documents, preparing flyers, scheduling appointments, arranging appraisals, organizing co-op packages, and, yes, cleaning a lazy seller’s cluttered home—basically all the work except negotiating a selling price and cashing that big commission check at closing.
“Someday, I’ll be the star of the agency,” she promised herself, glancing in the mirror. She smiled as she took in her newly styled black hair. She had recently taken a friend’s advice to try a chin-length, layered bob and knew it accentuated her bright blue eyes. The new, expensive, but on-sale, Escada slacks and jacket were a perfect fit now that she had managed to take off ten pounds. I look like a Titanium Realtor, she thought proudly as she locked the apartment door behind her.
She was stepping into the building’s lobby when her cell phone chirped in her purse. Under Hannah’s orders, she no longer used the cheery, pop-song ringtones she had previously favored. “No offense, Penny, but no one takes a woman seriously when her phone sounds like it belongs to a teenybopper.”
Penny looked at the screen, expecting to see Hannah’s name there, micromanaging her as usual. Her heart nearly stopped when she saw the number. Nearly three years later, and she still recognized it.
Her finger lingered over the screen, knowing that she should decline the call. Nothing good could come of this. But just as her memory still knew that number, the person on the other end of the line still, apparently, had some amount of control over her.
“Hello?”
“You didn’t change your number.”
“No. I changed everything else, but not that.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m a real estate agent now,” she said, before realizing how silly it was to lie. He, of all people, would be able to check, if he were inclined to do so. “Well, almost. I’m about to take the exam.” That was just an embellishment on the actual timing, and not nearly so easy to disprove.