Chapter 12

"What a tramp!" Delphi's exclamation was so loud that Isobel had to pull the receiver away from her ear.

"The peep show doesn't bug me as much as my sense that she's lying." Isobel flipped through the pile of contracts on her desk. She was supposed to be sorting them for Sarah, but she was much more interested in Delphi's reaction to her report on Jemma.

"You always think everyone is lying."

"Because most of the time, in a murder investigation, everyone is. Damn!"

"What?"

"Paper cut." Isobel sucked her finger. "I think she just made up what she overheard."

"Will you take your finger out of your mouth? I can't understand you."

Isobel waved her finger in the air. "I said I think she made it up. It smacks of B-movie dialogue."

"What did you expect her to say?" Delphi imitated Jemma's breathy rasp. "Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, I left that dining room where nobody was watching me, snuck into the big room, shot the judge, and then - "

Isobel stopped air-drying her finger. "Wait a second."

"What?"

"What happened to the gun?" Isobel asked.

"Search me."

"Well, they didn't. Remember what Officer Gonzalez said? Not without cause."

"They must have conducted a search of the premises at least."

"Maybe Andrew took it with him."

"Why are you so sure Andrew shot the judge?" Delphi asked. "Just because you saw him running out of the restaurant? He could have done that for any number of reasons."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Maybe he was just freaked out by the whole thing. Weren't you?"

Isobel could hear the impatience in Delphi's voice. Her tolerance for endlessly rehashing clues was significantly lower than Isobel's.

"Besides," Delphi continued, "you don't know that the police didn't find the gun. You probably weren't the first person on their need-to-know list."

"If they did find the gun, they haven't made an arrest. That would be in the paper. That I would know about."

Delphi paused. "If I had to guess, I'd say the murderer ditched the gun in all the chaos. And I'll bet you anything it turned up in some poor busboy's bin, butt up in a champagne flute. With no fingerprints on it, because our man - "

"Or woman - "

"Our person obviously planned this ahead of time. He or she must have had an exit strategy, at least for the gun."

"Maybe Andrew wasn't the only person who ran out of the restaurant," Isobel said thoughtfully. "Every dining room I saw had an exit into the park. I think the Jewel Room had two."

"What do you do, check the exits every time you go into a room?" Delphi asked.

"These days? Yes, I do," Isobel said somberly. "And you should, too."

Delphi sighed heavily in Isobel's ear. "Either the murderer fled, gun in hand, or the police found it but aren't a hundred percent sure who it belonged to. Those are your choices. Listen, I gotta get ready for work. See you later."

Isobel disconnected her headset and looked down at Sarah's contracts, which unfortunately hadn't sorted themselves while she was on the phone. If Delphi was right and the murderer had fled with the gun, and it wasn't Andrew, surely somebody else would have reported a missing dinner companion. And then there were the waiters. Would anyone have noticed if one of them had slipped out?

"Not done yet?" Sarah leaned over Isobel's cubicle wall and clicked her tongue in mock disapproval. "I'm not sure I should give you this, then."

Isobel sat forward eagerly. "What is it?"

"An email from my friend in surrogate's court. About the judge's will. Very interesting stuff." Sarah held the paper teasingly out of reach.

"I'll never be able to concentrate on sorting these if I'm wondering what it says," Isobel protested.

"Promise you'll sort them as soon as you're done?"

"Promise!"

Isobel took the email from Sarah and scanned it eagerly. She frowned and shook her head.

"Can you even do that?"

"Absolutely. You can put in whatever restrictions you like."

"So if either son is caught using drugs, all money in trust to that son reverts to..." She looked up at Sarah. "Candy?"

"I have to say, I'm surprised. Did you read the rest?" Sarah asked. "The trust for the boys is what reverts to Candy, but only if they haven't stayed clean. That's one-third of the estate. The second third goes to - "

"Gordon Lang." Isobel made a face. "Who leaves money to their lawyer?"

"Nobody I represent," Sarah grumbled. "He's also a trustee and executor."

"What happened to Harrison's first wife?"

"No longer living."

Isobel pointed to the page. "So who is this Angelina Rivington who gets the rest?"

"No idea. But no investigating now. You promised you'd sort my contracts."

"Wait! How come you weren't notified about the will as Candy's lawyer?"

"They first have to determine whether the boys are eligible. She's a contingent legatee."

"Do you think the boys know about this clause?"

"What would be the point of that? Dad dies, you know you'd better clean up - and fast."

"Have you ever seen this sort of restriction before?"

"Once or twice. It's generally reserved for when the maker of the will has a particular reason to think it might happen."

"Did Harrison?"

"In this case, it could simply have been awareness of how easy it is to follow the wrong path. He was a family court judge, remember."

"And one of the sons already had run-ins with the law." Isobel rattled the paper thoughtfully. "You'd think if he were going to include a restriction, it might have been about stealing, since that was his crime."

"It's not that stealing is okay, but drugs impair your ability to make decisions. This clause is to keep you from blowing through all the money to support your habit. Or if you're being held to the wall by someone you owe that kind of money to." Sarah threw up her hands. "I thought you were going to do my sorting."

"I am!"

Isobel let Sarah go and forced herself to focus on the contracts. It took longer than she expected, partly because her mind kept wandering. When she finally finished, she knocked on Sarah's door with two neat piles and a question.

"Are you going to tell Candy about the will?"

Sarah leaned back in her chair. "I haven't been notified officially, but there's no reason not to. I suspect she knows what's in it, at least to a point."

"If you talk to her, I'd love to know who was supposed to be sitting next to her. There was a place card there, but I didn't clock the name."

Sarah shook her head vigorously. "I don't see how I could reasonably ask that question."

"You could tell her that I work for you," Isobel suggested.

Sarah opened her briefcase and added some documents. "Does she know your real name?"

"No."

"If I were you, I wouldn't want anyone at that table to know who I was, where I worked, or why I'm asking questions." Sarah snapped her briefcase shut.

"I want to know who didn't show," Isobel pressed.

"I'll see what I can find out." Sarah held up her hand before Isobel could speak. "But only if it comes up naturally. Got it?"

"Got it."

"Good." Sarah stood and reached for her coat on top of the filing cabinet. She paused on her way out with her hand on Isobel's shoulder. "I'm just looking out for you. I don't have any idea who killed Willard Harrison, but from the balls-to-the-wall way this thing went down, I doubt the killer would think twice about getting rid of a nosy witness."