Her Frozen Cry (Detective Amanda Steele)

“Okay. I thought you were going to be looking at her will.”

“I’ll get there,” he said coolly. “Her career path and all her accomplishments were incredible. She started New Belle while she was in college, as we know, but she wasn’t shy at all about approaching big-name investors to help her get things rolling. Reborn, that cream, established her in the women-over-forty market.”

“She was certainly impressive.” And she seemed to have it all… Until she didn’t. So who would want to strip that from her? “In your time playing on the internet, did you get a chance to look into Eve Kelley and Pixie Winks, by chance?”

“Playing?” he volleyed back.

She smiled. “Just giving you a hard time.”

“Well, the answer is while I was working, I did look into Eve and her company. I never found any public allegations against New Belle from either.”

“Huh. Why would Eve have kept quiet about that?” If it had been Amanda in Eve’s place, she’d have hired lawyers and gone to the press.

“I think we’ll need to ask Eve Kelley. As for her company, Pixie Winks, it serves a younger market than New Belle. Their focus is women in their early twenties, even teenage girls. They offer bright colors and glimmery shades…”

Amanda stifled a laugh.

“Something funny?” He cocked his head.

“You talking about glimmery shades. Sorry, continue.”

“That’s about it. But why would Alicia Gordon want to sell the business she worked so hard to build to Eve Kelley when they didn’t even have the same target demographic?”

“Another good question. One we’ll need to ask Eve. After all, she wouldn’t have experience with the more mature market.” She refused to say older market, as she was creeping toward forty now that she was on the other side of thirty-six.

“Something else you should know. I flipped through the threats sent to Alicia. I’ll need to go through them in more detail, but one already stands out to me. ‘How dare you sell what isn’t yours to sell? You’ll pay for this.’”

“Whoa. Interesting, given what we know now about Eve. Did she send the threat? Possibly kill Alicia?”

“She could have motive.”

“But Alicia was in the process of giving Eve the opportunity to get it all back.”

“What Eve probably already saw as hers, and she was being forced to pay for it.”

“I see where you’re going with this. No doubt we need to pay Eve Kelley a visit. First, since we’re here, let’s look at Alicia’s will.” She walked over to her cubicle, sat down, and thumbed through the paperwork—one hundred pages long. She found where the beneficiaries were listed, along with what they inherited. She split it up, handing half to Trent over the low divider. “Make a note of who stands to inherit what. I’ll do the same with this.” She held up her equally high stack.

“Wow. That’s a lot to leave behind.”

“That’s a lot of potential suspects,” Amanda mumbled as she dug in. She finished her half by quarter to five. Trent lifted his head and looked over at her. “Highlight reel?” she asked.

“The listing of her business assets: the company and all its holdings, vehicle fleets, its buildings, a few warehouses, etcetera.”

“A few warehouses?”

“Three throughout the US.”

“My portion covered her personal assets,” she said. “Vehicles again, the residential property in Woodbridge, a vacation home in the Bahamas, investments…”

“The value of all of this must be in the tens of millions. If not more.”

“So hit me with some names of beneficiaries.”

“Tony Bishop, Brad Slater, Leo Rossi.”

“Her family. Not surprising. What I found too. Leo stands to inherit a vast sum, which won’t be accessible until his twenty-first birthday. Then there is money there to be distributed as a monthly allowance for the rest of his natural life. Same provisions were made for Brad Slater. Alicia also left donations to numerous charitable organizations.”

Trent nodded. “Now I did find one particularly interesting clause relating to the business. And I’m guessing that given Tony has plans to sell New Belle, he may not be aware of it.”

“What is it?”

“We’d do well to ask the executor of this will to be sure, but it reads to me like Tony would have no right to sell the business.”

“Yet he sounded like that’s what he planned to do.”

“Exactly. So I don’t think he was familiar with this clause.”

“We’ll need to meet with the estate lawyer to get clarification. I have a feeling there’s something we’re missing.” She glanced at the clock, and it told her it was five. She had a shot of getting home to Zoe on time. She stood. “We’ll start up again tomorrow. We’ll visit the executor of the will to get some clarification on that clause you found and have a chat with Eve Kelley at Pixie Winks.”

“Sounds good.”

“Night.” She offered him a smile before leaving. Tomorrow was a new day, the opportunity for a fresh start.