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“What happened to number one?”
“Marriage fizzled early on. No substantial funds to divide. He remarried before she did. Mr. Conner was an older widower, pillar-of-the-community type, died of cancer. They were married for thirteen years.”
“Kids?”
“Not together. He had one son, who was killed in a car wreck on his twenty-first birthday. Lost his son before his wife died.”
“So Elaine inherited everything?”
“Right,” Mike said. “But the net worth isn’t as staggering as we estimated. She’s rich. She’ll never have to clip coupons. But she’s not über-wealthy. Nowhere close to Marian Harris or Pixie, or to most of the others, now I think about it.”
“How do her assets compare to Talia Shafer’s?”
“Exactly which assets are you referring to?”
“Back off, Gif,” Drex snapped. “I’m working here, not pining over a married woman. Don’t start with that crap again.”
“Is it crap?” Mike said. “Her name comes up, you act like you’ve been goosed with a cattle prod.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Make that two cattle prods,” he continued. “Why is that? Why so touchy?”
“I’m not touchy.”
“I stand corrected. More like hot under the collar.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
“If I’m hot,” Drex said, “it’s because there’s no AC in this fucking apartment. And every once in a while, I catch a lingering whif
f of dead rodent. All I do all day is pretend to be writing a book, which entails sitting in a kitchen chair till my ass goes numb.”
“I suppose that could explain your bad mood.” That from Gif.
“I’m not in a bad mood.”
“Well, whatever,” Mike said. “What I’m about to tell you isn’t going to improve it.”
Drex pinched the bridge of his nose, only now realizing how exhausted he was. The unrelenting tension—guarding against making a mistake that would give him away, the constant observing and being under observation, not to mention lying by omission to his friends—was taking a toll on him physically.
Fatigue had no place is this undertaking. Shaking it off, he took a deep breath. “What now?”
Mike said, “That woman you got to type your faux manuscript?”
Drex had been prepared to hear much worse. “Pam? What about her?”
“She called me today. Said you’d given her my number.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Because for obvious reasons I didn’t want to give her mine. I told her that if something urgent came up in the office and she needed to reach me, you were my go-to person.”
“Well, something came up in your office.”
