had postponed. She was grateful for the chance to be busy, thus removing thoughts of Joanna from her mind. Until she returned from feeding her neighbor’s cat and picked up the phone to order a pizza. There was a message for her from the law firm representing Joanna Barnes.
Kate sat down on the armchair next to the phone and listened. The cheery voice on the line requested her to attend a reading of Joanna’s will the next day at ten in the morning. Please bring some identification. After the message finished, Kate sat and stared into space, her sweaty palm clamped onto the receiver.
WHEN THE ELEVATOR DOORS parted, the man who’d spoken to her in the church after Joanna’s funeral was standing on the other side. The look of incredulity in his face must have matched her own, Kate thought, for they stood gaping at each other until she murmured a faint “hello” and stepped out onto the carpeted hall.
He’d obviously been about to enter the elevator, but turned on his heel to follow her into the reception area.
“Miss, uh…”
“Reilly.”
“I don’t know if you remember me—Matt Sinclair, from Joanna’s funeral.”
“It was only four days ago.”
He looked offended at her brusque tone. “Right. So you’re here for…?”
Kate flushed with annoyance. Subtlety definitely wasn’t his style. “I’ve an appointment with Collier and Associates. Why do you ask?”
“Sorry. I suppose I’m being rude, but I’m just curious. Are you here for the reading of Joanna’s will?”
Kate raised her chin to stare directly into his face. A handsome face, in spite of the knotted eyebrows and the glint in his eyes. Too bad he was so irritating.
“Yes, I am, Mr. Sinclair. Not that it’s any concern of yours.” She started to walk toward the reception desk where a young woman was watching them with interest.
He reached out a hand to her elbow. “I take it, then, that you’re more than just an acquaintance of Joanna’s, after all. Since you’re a beneficiary.”
Kate stared blankly at him. She’d been tormented by that very realization all night. What exactly was I to Joanna? But she wasn’t about to confide in someone like Matt Sinclair.
“And I suppose, since you were about to leave, that you are not. A beneficiary,” she clarified, and looked pointedly at his fingers splayed lightly on her arm.
Coloring, he dropped his hand. “No. I’ve been to see Marchant—his offices are farther along.”
Kate swung around to head for the desk.
“You just seemed different, that’s all.”
She stopped and faced him again.
“From Joanna’s pack of friends,” he said.
Kate’s eyes swept over him from head to toe before she resumed her course to the receptionist and asked for Mr. Collier. From behind, she heard the elevator door open and close. When she turned to head for the man’s office, Matt Sinclair was gone.
The brief walk down the hall was long enough to calm her, although Kate knew her face was still warm when she tapped on the lawyer’s opened office door.
“Miss Reilly? Come in, please.” Greg Collier rose from his desk chair.
He was in his mid-fifties and had the air of a suave used-car salesman. Or so Kate thought after a mere five minutes into their conversation. When he asked her if she’d known Joanna long, she derived some satisfaction from his surprise when she replied, “About nineteen years.” She followed him into a small boardroom where a handful of people sat around an oval mahogany table. Lance Marchant was pouring coffee from a stainless-steel jug at the head of the table and glanced up as Kate walked into the room.
Her arrival appeared to puzzle him momentarily, but he recovered almost instantly, setting down the jug and beaming in her direction.
“Kate Reilly?”
When she nodded, he moved around the chairs to her side, extending his right hand as he did so. “I’m Lance Marchant, Joanna’s husband.”
“Yes,” she murmured.
He frowned, studying her face. “Have we met?”
“I was at Joanna’s funeral,” she explained.
“Aah.” He nodded his head thoughtfully, obviously conducting a quick mental search of the day and still coming up blank. He was about to say something more when Joanna’s lawyer went to the head of the table, pushing aside the tray of coffee items as he withdrew a sheaf of papers from a briefcase. He put on his reading glasses cleared his throat and gestured toward the table.
“Shall we begin?” he asked, pausing while Lance returned to his chair and Kate sat down. “As all of you know, you’ve been requested to be here today for the reading of the late Joanna Barnes’s will, dated April 1, 2001.” He glanced over the rim of his glasses to smile. “Yes, that was Joanna’s idea of a little joke, though she assured me the will’s contents were quite serious.” He then began to read the legal preamble and Kate found her attention shifting to the others around the table.
Lance Marchant took a place to the right of Greg Collier. The lawyer’s secretary sat on his left and was jotting on a steno pad. The elderly woman sitting across from Kate had been introduced as Joanna’s housekeeper, and the thin, nervous-looking man with an earring in his right ear and a designer scarf knotted with a flourish around his neck had been her assistant at the fashion magazine where Joanna had worked as staff writer for the past five years.
Where were her other friends? Kate wondered. All the people she’d seen draped around Joanna in the newspaper and magazine pictures she’d clipped over the years? And family?
Kate peered down at her hands, clenched together on her lap. Her eyes filled with tears—as much for herself as Joanna. She’d thought herself immune to the sense of alienation that having no family produced. But here it was again, her pain on display for this roomful of strangers.
If only Joanna had called, made some kind of personal contact. But then what? Would we have had a real friendship? Would it have been a substitute for the family I’ve never had?
She chomped on her lower lip, forcing her mind back to Collier’s recitation of the will. There was a mild gasp from the older woman when the lawyer revealed Joanna’s bequest of a few thousand dollars. Likewise for the assistant, who received a smaller sum and all of Joanna’s office furniture and equipment. Kate almost missed her own name, except that everyone at the table looked at her.
“‘To my dear friend and co-conspirator, Kate Reilly, I leave Camp Limberlost and all its assets, in hope that she will rediscover the magic of a summer long ago. Kate, I can’t tell you how much our contact over the years has meant to me, and wish you all the best for a wonderful life. I have complete confidence in your continued success.”’
Kate stared blankly at the others. She was stunned as much by Joanna’s personal message as by the bequest. Tears welled up again and someone handed her a tissue, with which she quickly dabbed at her eyes. Joanna’s lawyer was clearing
