“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.
44
Margaret Lawson, the woman who was buying the Tribeca apartment Penny had tried to pass off as her own, arrived earlier than scheduled, less than five minutes after Laurie and Ryan left.
Thanking her lucky stars that she hadn’t been caught in an outright lie, Penny patiently waited while Lawson went over revisions she intended to make on the layout when she met with her contractor.
“Take your time,” Penny assured her. “Like my mother used to say, measure twice, cut once.”
“Given what this guy’s charging, I want to be sure he gets all this straight,” Lawson said grimly.
Penny tried to push away a pang of envy. Margaret Lawson was only five years older than she was, but was already a successful banker. She could afford not only to buy this apartment, but to remodel its perfectly nice bathrooms to her precise specifications. Someday, Penny vowed to herself, I’ll have a home as nice as this one, plus a beach house in East Hampton, right on the ocean.
When she had called the Under Suspicion producer, she really didn’t think she had anything relevant to say. She just liked the idea of seeing her face on the television, with “Penny Rawling, New York City Realtor” written across the screen. She had intended to be charming and articulate. She would speak warmly about all that she had learned from the Wakeling family and the trust Virginia had placed in her. She would seem like the type of person who attends the Met Gala, the type of professional a person of means might entrust with a listing.
And the fact that he didn’t want her talking to the producers was the icing on the proverbial cake. She still couldn’t believe that he’d had the gall to call her after nearly three years, only to pressure her not to speak to a television show. After the way he dumped her, he was the last person with a right to ask a single thing of her.
But the interview with the producers didn’t go the way Penny had pictured. She thought it would just be a few questions about Ivan and the party that night. She didn’t expect them to ask about her, let alone her relationship with him. Maybe I should have just told the truth, she thought, but that would have ruined the image I’m trying to project for my television appearance. I want to be seen as “Penny the Successful Realtor,” not “Penny Who Got Dumped by the Guy She Was Secretly Dating Behind Her Boss’s Back.”
She didn’t see the harm in denying the relationship, because it had nothing whatsoever to do with poor Virginia’s murder. But then they had kept pressing her for answers—about her boyfriend, about the family, about those little balls of paper in the garbage can.
Penny kept replaying Laurie Moran’s final question: “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—”
After Margaret Lawson was finally finished with her renovation plans, Penny pulled up his number on her cell, still in her call list from when he had contacted her last week.
He picked up after two rings. “I’m surprised to hear from you,” he said. “Is everything okay?”
“That show called me, like you said they might.” She saw no reason to tell him that she was the one who had contacted them.
“I told you that you don’t have to talk to them.”
“Are you afraid of what I might tell them?” she asked.
“Of course not,” he said. “It’s just . . . no one really knew about us. Don’t you think that might be a complication?”
She felt all those old resentments returning. Of course no one knew about them. He had forbidden her from telling anyone, claiming that it could complicate her work for Virginia, that it could complicate the dynamics of the family, that his personal situation was complicated enough as it was. But the situation was never actually complicated. The truth is that he had been ashamed of her. She thought that after he saw her successfully mingling with all those fancy people at the Met Ball, he would see her in a different light. He would view her, finally, as an equal.