All Dressed in White

26

Laurie found herself whispering as though she were in a library. “Your office is never this quiet,” she said to Alex, who was seated next to her.

Alex shared office space with five other attorneys each of whom had his own administrative assistant and shared with them a pool of eight paralegals and six investigators. “And I would never leave someone waiting this long.”

Laurie looked over to the gum-chewing receptionist to make sure she hadn’t heard the comment. “Don’t forget that we’re here, hat in hand, begging for help he’s not obligated to provide. We don’t want to offend the man.”

The man in question was Mitchell Lands, Esq. Laurie was enjoying the absolute silence of the sole practitioner’s office, and she was savoring the excuse to read the trashy celebrity magazine she’d found on the coffee table.

Alex was not so patient. “If I were a paying client, I would have walked out ten minutes ago.”

“Be careful, Alex. Stress is bad for you. I might tell Ramon that you need some more yoga in your life.”

Ramon was Alex’s butler. Alex had made numerous attempts to find an alternative title: assistant, house manager, scheduler. But Ramon had finally won the battle. He was a butler. In addition to running errands and preparing meals, Alex’s live-in helper also had come to care for Alex like a son. When he learned recently that Alex’s blood pressure was on the borderline of high, he had reduced the sodium and red meat in Alex’s diet. But when Ramon had tried to enroll Alex for weekly “stress-reduction” yoga sessions, Alex had put his foot down.

“Just in the knick of time,” Alex muttered, as they saw a door open.

“My girl said that you’re here about Amanda Pierce’s will.” Mitchell Lands was a short man with unruly gray hair and glasses that were much too large for his face. Laurie felt herself blinking in shock that anyone still referred to his assistant as “my girl.”

Alex jumped in before she could say anything to start an argument. She, after all, had been the one to warn him that they were here asking for a favor. “We already have considerable information from Amanda’s family,” Alex said, “but we can still use your help.”

They had a copy of both the will and the prenuptial agreement between Amanda and Jeff. According to Alex, the prenuptial agreement was one of the least generous among standard terms for such documents. According to Sandra, Walter Pierce insisted on it to ensure that Jeff could not possibly assert any claims to the family company.

But the will was another question. Amanda had left her modest personal belongings and checking and savings accounts to her one niece at the time-Henry’s daughter, Sandra-but bequeathed the entirety of her trust fund to Jeff.

“Did it strike you as unusual,” Laurie asked, “that she’d leave so much money to her fiancé before they were actually married?”

Lands smiled. “I want to help you. Amanda was a lovely woman. But I’ve got attorney-client privilege to worry about.”

“Of course,” Laurie said, realizing she probably should have left the questioning of another lawyer to Alex. “Not as to Amanda specifically, but is it unusual for an unmarried person to name a fiancé in the will?”

“Good job presenting the question,” Lands said. “No, at least not where the individual’s other family members have significant assets, and where the couple is about to be married and have no children yet. I think I can safely add that it’s especially common for fiancés to revise their wills as a way to make up for a prenuptial agreement that their family is insisting upon. Parents tend to care about prenups, but never imagine that their children will ever predecease them. If you know all the terms of Amanda’s will and prenup, I’m not sure how much more I can add.”

“What we really want to know,” Laurie said, “is whether Jeff knew about the terms of Amanda’s will prior to her disappearance.”

Obviously Jeff knew about the prenuptial agreement, Laurie thought, as he was a party to it and had signed off on it. But it was possible that he had no idea until after he returned from the Grand Victoria that Amanda had also written a will, naming him as the primary beneficiary. The inheritance wasn’t a motive for murder if he didn’t know about it.

Alex had been the one to notice that Amanda’s will was signed on the same date as the couple had signed the prenuptial agreement. Now Alex pointed out that fact to Lands.

“My guess is that they came here together to sign,” Alex said. “If you went over the terms of Amanda’s will in front of Mr. Hunter, then attorney-client privilege wouldn’t apply. Amanda was the client, not Jeff.”

“Very clever,” Lands said. “And, yes, that’s precisely what happened. Amanda was quite comfortable speaking about these matters in front of Jeff. Not that I’m an expert in such things, but they seemed very much in love. You don’t really think he killed her, do you?”

“We haven’t committed ourselves to any one theory,” Laurie said. “But working with families on their legal matters, you must understand why we’d at least want to consider Jeff as a possible suspect, and why the terms of Amanda’s will might be relevant.”

Lands smiled knowingly. “Oh, I certainly do understand, but I also knew my client. I think you’re overlooking another possibility.”

He kept looking at them, waiting for them to follow his train of thought. He seemed amused at their befuddlement. “When Amanda first disappeared, many of the news outlets called her the Runaway Bride. Cold feet, etcetera. My guess is that your show will assume that five years with no word makes a voluntary disappearance less likely.”

Laurie nodded. “That’s a good assumption.”

The knowing smile returned. “Unless it’s not.” He added another hint. “Maybe the will is relevant in a way you haven’t considered.”

As she often did when it came to legal issues, Laurie found herself looking to Alex for guidance. But on this one, she had more knowledge than he did of the personalities involved. It wasn’t a legal puzzle. It was a puzzle about human motivations.

“Both Jeff and Sandra say that Amanda would have never just walked away without a trace. But if she wanted to start over again, and felt like she owed something to Jeff-”

Alex finished her thought. “Naming Jeff in her will and then disappearing was a way to eventually give some of her family’s wealth to him, despite her father’s insistence that he sign a prenup.”

Lands was nodding in agreement, pleased that he was being given the opportunity to share his thoughts. “I’ve said as much as I probably can about my own dealings with Amanda, but I can say that in general, sometimes when people have been very sick and could have died, they become keenly aware of their mortality. They want to make the most of every day. Maybe breaking your family’s hearts is worth it if you can spend the rest of your days living on the other side of the world, doing exactly what you want.”