“No problem,” Jules smoothly lied now in response to both of theirnos, somehow managing to maintain that pleasant, soothing charm that made him so damn good at this. “Just... ticking off all of the obvious-question boxes while I’ve got you both here.” He turned his focus back to the legal document and its attached note which lay on the conference table in front of them. “Someone connected to this document knows who Emily Johnson is, and eventually we’ll find them—and then her.”
His words were optimistic, and yes, Sam agreed that they would find her, but probably not through anyone connected to this will. It appeared that there was no one left alive to ask about the document, or about the handwritten note that Milton Devonshire had written and included in an unsealed envelope clipped to it.
Thanks for the new experience, Emily.
Oh, except this document I’ve just signed makes it the same old-same old, doesn’t it? Money. It’s always about more money.
So I win. Too bad for you.
Enjoy the freaking work of art—or burn it to the ground. I’ll be dead and will care even less than I currently do.
He’d signed it,The asshole who just left you a fortune.
Her address wasn’t on the envelope—just her name,penned in that same spidery handwriting that matched the signature on the will.
The note was clearly meant to be private, but the envelope wasn’t sealed and Harper had opened it in hopes it would provide info on who Emily was and how to locate her. Instead they got more shards of this mystery, although the cryptic wordingdidstrongly suggest that Emily had been a sexual companion of some sort.
New experience, same old-same old, always about money...
Jules had asked for a copy of the note, and Sam knew that later they’d be breaking it down, word by word.
But right now, they were focused again on the will itself, dated five years ago.
When they’d first come in, Harper had gone into a big song and dance about how he’d been in the hospital when Dead Milt had rewritten his will. Harper’s condition had been critical—apparently his heart attack had been a bad one—and he’d been out of the loop for quite some time.
No one—not even Dead Milt himself—had informed him of the updates made to the document, and it had been a genuine surprise, upon the old man’s death, to find the dramatic change—or so Harper claimed. There was a lot of whiny-assnot my faultsubtext to his words as he made it clear that if he’d known,hewould’ve made sure to find out from Dead Milt exactly who this Emily Johnson was. Sniff.
They’d already determined that the underling from Harper’s office who’d revised this last and final version of the will had predeceased Dead Milt by a solid eighteen months.
And the two witnesses who’d signed the will were believed to be even longer-dead, although Sam knew for sure that he and Jules were going to verify that—and even check in with surviving family members.
Because if Dead Milt had called his equally-elderly golfing friends, Skipper and Bunny, to ask them to witness the new will he was drawing up that gave the bulk of his fortune to someone other than his son, they might’ve made a comment or two about that at the dinner table.
According to Harper, the notary who’d... done whatever notaries do for things like wills was dead, too. Sam used his phone to quickly google the guy’s name and his obit came up first.
He took a few seconds then to google “milton devonshire emily johnson,” just in case, because he hadn’t done any googling of anyone yet, but nothing came up and he put his phone down and focused back on the topic of the will.
Everyone connected to the making of this document appeared to be conveniently dead. Which made sense. Old people knew other old people, and old people died as old people do.
Jules, meanwhile, had turned to the last page, where down at the very bottom there were a series of initials. The first three letters were those of the unalive underling lawyer, but a slash was followed by three more letters: DMP. He pointed to it now. “Does DMP still work for your firm?”
Harper looked startled—it was possible he never realized that the letters at the end of his written correspondences identified the hapless assistant or secretary who’d typed up the document for him. It was possible he never really thought about the fact that his assistants and secretaries had names. And, you know, actual lives.
“I’ll... have to check,” he said. “But it’s unlikely a secretary would be privy to the details of a legal document. It seems a long shot.”
Was that the third or fourth time he’d said that—long shot—his voice heavy with doom and gloom? Like he wassecretly hoping this investigation would be a complete dead end; that they’d never find Emily.
Or maybe not so secretly. Harper had informed them that he’d met with Dead Milt regularly in their years-long relationship, and in the more recent years, as the producer had gotten older and more frail, Harper took on power of attorney. He’d handled the old man’s finances, paid his bills, and organized his nursing and security staff. He was, he insisted, shocked—shocked!—to discover that the Devonshire fortune wouldn’t be going to Milt the Junior as the previous version of the will had clearly stated.
Wig-Milt, however, had made a stepped-in-dog-turd face at that point, and basically called the lawyer an idiot for thinking that.Heseemed convinced that his break with his father had been mutual. That the bad blood between them was, in his words, irrevocable.
Sam now risked another look at the man, but the glare from that maybe-a-wig violently burned his eyeballs, so it was hard for him to tell if Milt was lying his bewigged ass off. Sure, he’d authorized his father’s accountant to pass along financial information, but that could well be a dead end. Itwasentirely possible—quite feasible, in fact—that hiring investigators to find someone unfindable was the first step in taking the will to probate court and sincerely telling the judge, “We tried our best to find her, your honor, but I guess the money has to go to lil ol’ me instead.”
“We’ll start the investigation focused on things that are less of a long shot.” Jules smiled as he looked from Harper to Milt—only glancing briefly at Sam, no doubt afraid to make any kind of real eye contact because the WTF meter in this room was fully pinned toAre you fucking serious, and not just about Milt’s bad wig.
“What exactly is your plan?” Harper asked. “Knock on the door of every Emily Johnson in California?”
Jules chuckled. “If we have to, yes. Our support team—” he made it sound impressive, but their current “team” was former CIA agent Dave Malkoff, working in his very sparse spare time with new TS recruit and former SEAL Jay Lopez down in the San Diego office “—is compiling a list of Emily Johnsons who live in the immediate area. That’s one way to find her—if our other leads dead-end.”
