Page 123 of King’s Ransom

‘And?’

‘Shelby’s been living her best life far away from Aristo King. Doesn’t miss him at all. Richer than Croesus, thanks to her excellent pre-nup. Got a whole new friend group in Vail.’

‘How did she feel about the fact her son Ajax died on December 21st? He fell down the side of the building,’ I said.

Heidi shrugged. ‘Ajax was tight with his father; worked with him at one of his businesses. Shelby didn’t approve, so she wasn’t really close with Ajax. She also thought he took too many drugs and partied too much. She said and I quote: “Ajax made his choices. It was those choices that put him in 59West on that day.”’

‘Cold,’ I said. ‘You believe her?’

‘Actually, I do,’ Heidi said.

I trusted Heidi’s instincts. She could see through people very well.

‘What about the daughter, Cassandra? How’s she faring after being rescued by Merritt Garrett from the side of the tower?’

‘Now, that girl is a fucking piece of work,’ Heidi said. ‘The dumbest, most vacuous, self-centred, attention-seeking spoilt brat I’ve ever seen. When I met her, she was, let’s say, rather distracted.’

‘With grief?’

‘Fuck no, with trying to secure a book deal, TV interviews and new endorsements for her social media. She’s milking that day at the tower for all it’s worth. Didn’t you see her after Ajax’s funeral?

‘Oh, and by the way, she got her personal assistant to write her eulogy using AI. Seriously, she bragged about that,’ Heidi said. ‘She even said she didn’t like Ajax much anyway; she resented sharing her social media celebrity status with him because she felt she did all the work. Sam, if that shallow-ass bimbo is behind all this, then I’ll suck dick every day for a month.’

(Whoa. That was Heidi’s greatest insult. Heidi is 100 percent lesbian. She’d rather die than give a man oral sex.)

‘And the nanny?’ I said. ‘The one who lived on the 44th floor with her illegitimate son to Aristo King?’

‘Yeah, Madison Barnes, Maddie to her friends. 23 years old, got pregnant to Aristo when she was 18. Didn’t waste any time on that front.’

I recalled the furious look in Yasmina’s eyes when the subject of the nanny had come up on both December 21st and at Rikers Island.

Her husband had been banging the nanny while Yasmina had been pregnant with their second child, their daughter, Katya.

Heidi said, ‘In short, young Maddie had a plan and executed it with laser focus: get a job babysitting Aristo King’s kids, sleep with Aristo King, get pregnant to Aristo King, get set for life. Not a complex plan, but one that pretty young things have been doing for centuries with unfaithful wealthy men.’

Heidi shrugged. ‘Basically, she’s a very uncomplicated gold-­digger, Maddie. I don’t see her as a suspect here. She’s not smart enough to pose as a victim; she’s also just not the type to risk her own life. If anything, I see her as an unwitting participant in the plan to make it look like Yasmina Ivanova did it all.’

‘Hmmm.’ I pulled out my notepad and crossed off some names on the diagram I’d made:

We were running out of connections. The only three names not crossed off were Aristo King, his first wife, Winnie Tan, and the sauna guy.

‘And the first wife never even met Yasmina before the 21st, right?’ I said. ‘I can understand the second wife, Shelby, disliking Yasmina, but there’s little reason for the first wife to hate the third wife.’

Heidi said, ‘Like a lot of first wives, it seems that Winnie Tan is now on pretty good terms with her ex-husband. She’s even helping him host a fundraising event on New Year’s Eve to honour Ajax and to launch his new foundation for the families of the law enforcement people who died on December 21: a cocktail party for some of their richest friends. Since Aristo’s penthouse at 59West is unavailable, Winnie’s letting him use her 77th-floor condo in the nearby Steinway Tower for it. Cassandra was invited but Shelby wasn’t.’

‘What about King himself?’ I said. ‘This whole thing has been something of an image reset for him.’

‘He wouldn’t be the first guy to frame an inconvenient wife,’ Heidi said. ‘But do you really think he’d do that?’

‘Right now, I don’t know what to think. I’m clearly missing something,’ I said. ‘It just doesn’t make—’

A buzzing sound cut me off.

Someone’s phone.

It was Audrey’s. She looked at the caller ID.

‘Damn, it’s Trey.’