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CHAPTER 39
SOPHIE STOPPED IN her tracks, dismayed, as Jeremy kindly explained what happened:
“Josh Parks hit his mother with a hammer that night. It was the same weapon Amory Banks had used twice before, in two other murders. Dr. Parks went to the ER and survived her injuries. She came to. Gave statements. Spent a week in the hospital, in the good hands of her colleagues at UCLA. She was discharged, but three days later she suffered what they call a ‘traumatic’ late death.”
“Late?” Sophie said.
“A certain percentage of trauma survivors, they die later. From complications. Sometimes long after the event. After discharge from the hospital. Dr. Parks had a heart attack.”
“I didn’t know,” Sophie whispered. “Sorry to hear it.”
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”
“She was a nice lady. Kind. Giving.”
“And she liked you, too. And your son. Did Dr. Parks tell you she’d adjusted her trust a month before the night of the attack?”
“Her trust?” Sophie said. She was confused. What did this have to do with trust?
“A trust is a legal instrument, like a will,” Jeremy explained. “Without the courts.”
“No,” said Sophie. “She never mentioned something like that. Not to me. Why would she ever?”
“Well,” he said, matter-of-factly. “She left you her house. The land. The gardens. All of it now belongs to you.”
CHAPTER 40
THE SPRING BEFORE, this young paralegal from the downtown law firm had graduated from Stanford Law.
Jeremy Klein was clever.
Jeremy had called Sophie’s mobile every day for over a month. When she didn’t return and ignored his texts, he asked a female associate to call and pretend she needed a housekeeping service. The associate asked for a reference or two, and Sophie finally texted back.
She gave them Ellen Sumner’s number.
Jeremy then called Ellen Sumner.
As Sophie and Masha spoke to the lawyers, Sophie found it hard to focus.
It was hard to remember the details of all they said and explained, before Jeremy and his colleagues gave the cousins their business cards, walked off, and climbed back into the Escalade.
It was all a blur.
The whole discussion of how Dr. Parks had reverted her trust back to a will, how she and Steven had written Josh out of their wills, per his therapist’s request. Then there was something called probate, they said, and a three-month deadline to find and tell Sophie; how she could own real estate here, in the US, even as a foreigner, it was legal, and in California she could inherit property, too. Jeremy reassured her that US estate law doesn’t discriminate, and that even if Sophie were here illegally and did get deported, the house would remain, as an asset trust, hers.
Sophie had just one question.
“Anything at all,” said Jeremy Klein. “That’s what we’re here for. To get this all done for Dr. Parks. Whatever questions you have, we’re here.”
“What happened to Bandit?” Sophie asked. “Dr. Parks’s dog?”
Jeremy smiled ruefully. “Bandit went to live with Steven Parks. Dr. Parks’s ex-husband.”
“Oh,” said Sophie. “Oh, I see. I never met him.”
“I did,” said Masha, and nodded knowingly.
After this, the men drove off.
