Chapter 17

The unexpected encounter with James left Isobel in an unremittingly grouchy mood. She accompanied Percival back to his dorm room and sat slumped on his desk chair, while he tried to engage her with stories of late-night pranks in the computer lab. Percival was a deft storyteller, and under normal circumstances she'd have been entertained. Without his usual enthusiastic audience, he eventually ran out of steam, and when one of his suitemates came back, Isobel took the opportunity to excuse herself. After hugging her good-bye, Percival held her back a moment.

"You know, you were kind of rude to James," he said.

She gave a harsh laugh. "Oh, and he was all warm and fuzzy?"

"I got the sense he was trying."

"Yeah. He was very trying," she snapped.

"Iz."

"What."

"James is obviously concerned for your well-being," Percival said. "He just wants to make sure you don't put yourself in danger. That tells you something."

"It tells me you're on his side," she said and left in a huff.

On her way home, she grew even more irritated with Percival for being right and with James for prompting an uncharacteristic argument with her brother.

A restless night's sleep didn't help matters, nor did Delphi's noisy, pre-dawn preparation for an audition, which included an array of rapid-fire tongue twisters and a sotto voce recitation of Helena's "O spite! O hell!" from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Unable to grab the last hour due her, Isobel reluctantly rolled out of bed, dressed, and took herself to work early. Sarah wasn't due in for another hour, so Isobel busied herself straightening up her desk, reading Sarah's copies of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and researching upcoming auditions. She hoped Percival would still look up the names she'd given him, realizing guiltily that if the situation were reversed, she'd probably hold off until he apologized. But Percival was more evolved, and she was pretty sure she could trust him to make good on his promise.

She thought back to their chance meeting with James. What Percival either hadn't picked up on or was choosing to ignore was that James had clearly been trying to escape. He had spent the entire conversation trying to end it. If she'd been rude, she was only taking her cue from James. He was practically panting with relief when they finally parted ways.

She pushed away from her desk and wandered into Sarah's office. It was only eight thirty, and Sarah rarely materialized before nine. Isobel opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet and flipped through the folders until she found Candy's. Tucking the file under her arm, she returned to her cubicle, where she sat for a moment, her hands on the cover, pondering the legality of what she was doing. Sarah had already given her plenty of detail about what was in the file, and she had signed a confidentiality agreement.

Fighting the nagging suspicion that she was still somehow out of bounds, she opened the folder. Clipped to the email from Sarah's colleague at surrogate's court was a full copy of Harrison's will. She flipped through until she found the page of bequests. It was exactly as Sarah had said. Not that Isobel thought she'd been lying, but she was hoping Sarah had inadvertently left someone out. The rest of the will yielded nothing interesting, so she moved on to the correspondence between lawyers from the divorce proceedings. These proved more compelling, largely because they revealed a jocular sparring tone between them that Isobel found surprising, given the contentious aspect of the divorce and Sarah's avowed dislike of Gordon Lang.

The letters were mostly about the mystery woman seen on Harrison's arm at the opera and, interestingly, Candy's accusations of cruelty toward his sons, although that didn't appear to factor into the official grounds for divorce. Still, Isobel found the inclusion intriguing and turned to the next document, which was the actual divorce agreement. She was engrossed in the finer points when she heard Sarah greeting a colleague down the hall. Isobel hurriedly closed the file and stuffed it in a side drawer of her desk. She turned to her computer and was deleting junk from her inbox when Sarah's face appeared over the cubicle wall.

"You're in early," Sarah remarked.

"Delphi was up for an audition, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I figured I might as well be productive."

"Good for you." Sarah bit into a chocolate croissant. "What'd you get done?"

"Oh, I..." Isobel hesitated. "Cleared out my inbox. Straightened my desk. I'm not moving all that quickly, I guess. How was court yesterday?"

Sarah's face darkened. "I can't tell you how much I want to strangle this asshole. I'm back again at ten. I just came in to take care of a few things. Think you can hold the fort for another day?"

Isobel saluted. "Absolutely."

Sarah smiled gratefully. "It's so nice to have an assistant I can trust."

Isobel felt a pang of guilt as she thought of Candy Harrison's file. All Sarah needed to do was slide open Isobel's desk drawer to see how misplaced her trust was.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Isobel said. "I looked up Angelina Rivington."

"And?"

"She runs a commercial real estate company in New Jersey. Does that suggest a connection between her and the judge?"

Sarah shook her head. "Not offhand."

She continued on to her office, and Isobel quickly pulled open the drawer and piled some other papers on top of Candy's file so it wasn't immediately visible. Then she returned to her computer and pulled up the website for Rivington Properties, which she hadn't finished exploring.

Angelina's bio yielded only the most basic personal information: education (Rutgers), prior work experience (several other investment companies), and charity work (Head Start). Nothing about where she was from or whether she was married or had a family. Isobel clicked on the portfolio tab and ran down the list. Their investments included hotels, office buildings, retail centers, and industrial properties. She clicked on each category, but none of the company names meant anything to her. She scrolled over the executive photos, pausing over Mason Crawford, Vice President. She enlarged his photo and looked more closely.

He was wearing a gray pinstripe suit instead of a navy blue one, but Isobel recognized Mason Crawford as the pasty-faced man at the judge's table. Why hadn't he questioned his colleague's whereabouts that night? Surely he realized the empty seat was for her. But Isobel barely remembered hearing him speak at all. She closed her eyes and tried to envision the table at the critical moment. If only she could remember whether or not he was there.

"I'm leaving."

Startled, Isobel opened her eyes. "Oh, okay. Anything you need me to do today?"

"Here are a bunch of notes I need you to type." She handed Isobel several sheets of yellow legal paper covered in a semi-legible scrawl. "Also, I need a contract drafted for a new client. Name is Wendy Mazzola. Use template two. And if you could get started on this month's billing, that would be great."

"Sure. Good luck today," Isobel said. "Is this the end of it?"

"I'm going to push for a settlement. If opposing counsel doesn't agree" - Sarah gave a wicked smile - "I've got a little something up my sleeve that might change his mind."

Isobel watched her go, wishing she could observe Sarah in action, and wondered what she'd had up her sleeve to get Candy Harrison that cushy divorce settlement.

She gave Sarah fifteen minutes in case she forgot something and came back. When she didn't, Isobel figured the coast was clear. She scooped Candy's file from the drawer and hurried into Sarah's office to replace it. As she slammed the file drawer shut, she promised herself she wouldn't do anything else that would give her boss a reason to distrust her. After all, Sarah had proven forthcoming whenever Isobel asked for help. Perhaps she would have shared Candy's file if only Isobel had bothered to ask.

She turned the corner to her cubicle and felt a crunch of paper underfoot. A glossy black-and-white photograph lay on the carpet. It must have slipped from Candy's file. Her heart picked up speed at the thought that it might have been lying there all morning, where Sarah could have seen it. She stood where Sarah had been, looking over the cubicle wall, and was relieved to discover that her desk hid the photo from view. She knelt to pick it up and realized at once that it was the compromising photo of Harrison on the steps of the Metropolitan Opera House. Given that, she was hardly surprised to see Harrison in the picture.

What made her gasp was the distinctive heart-shaped birthmark on the cheek of the buxom, flame-haired woman he was kissing.