Mommy, I’m so glad you and Daddy are home now.” Vanessa bounced onto the sofa next to Anna. This was the third time her daughter had mentioned missing her last night when she and Peter had stayed at the family estate in Connecticut. Meanwhile, her big brother, Robbie, was completely unfazed by their absence and had hopped straight to his video games when he got home from school.
“I missed you, too, sweetie,” Anna said, giving her daughter a quick hug. Then, in an instant, Vanessa was running off to the kitchen again to help Kara put away the groceries. She wished her mother and father had lived long enough to know how kind and happy their grandchildren were.
She looked at her watch. It was five o’clock. Her cousin, Tom, would surely still be at his desk. He was always one of the first to arrive and the last to leave.
Sure enough, he picked up his office phone after two rings. “Did you and Peter have fun on your ‘hooky’ day?” he asked.
When she had called in this morning to clear her calendar, she had asked Tom to cover a site inspection for her on a project they were launching in Astoria. She had told him that she and Peter needed a personal day, not mentioning that she was trying to avoid Carter. Now that she was back in the city, her concerns about her brother felt like a temporary case of insanity. Ivan Gray killed her mother. She was certain of it, and she wasn’t going to let some television program get into her head again.
“I wouldn’t exactly call it fun,” she said. “Those people from Under Suspicion were in the office today to interview Carter. After dealing with them yesterday, I was happy to avoid them.”
“Carter looked upset this afternoon,” Tom said. “I asked him what was wrong, but he huffed away to his office. I wonder if the show’s producers got under his skin as well.”
Anna was too drained to discuss the roller coaster of emotions she’d been experiencing since that first phone call from Laurie Moran. “He’s probably angry at me for deciding it would be better for the family reputation to cooperate with the program. It’s been much more intrusive than I ever imagined. They really do turn over every stone. Can you believe they were even asking me about that wacky woman you brought to the party that night?”
“Tiffany.”
“That’s the one. They were even asking about you.”
“Weird. That female producer spoke to me one time in the office and then I never heard from her again.”
“We should all be so lucky,” Anna said wryly. “Anyway, I was just calling to see if there were any problems at the site inspection today.”
“Absolutely not,” Tom asserted firmly.
“Thank you, Tom. Truly. Sometimes I don’t know what I’d do at work without you.” In truth, she thought Tom brought more to the table at Wakeling Development than her own brother, but she pushed away the thought. She was still ashamed for even entertaining the possibility of Carter being involved in their mother’s murder.
“Anytime, Anna. You have nothing to worry about.”