Summer Of Joanna

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 his throat again, waiting a discreet moment before continuing.

The rest of Joanna’s estate had been left to Lance Marchant. Through the labyrinth of legalese, Kate gathered that Joanna hadn’t owned very much personally beyond whatever she’d possessed jointly with her husband. When Greg Collier was finished, he asked the beneficiaries to stay behind long enough to sign some papers. While the housekeeper and assistant were doing so, Lance Marchant sidled over to Kate.

Still reeling from the will, Kate missed the first part of his comment.

“Sorry?” She blinked.

He smiled. “I said that I’d no idea Joanna had such a good friend in someone so young. She seldom discussed her friends, unfortunately.”

Unsure what he meant, Kate gave a tentative smile. What was he really thinking after learning his wife had left property to a virtual stranger?

She was saved from responding when Greg Collier approached with some documents. “Miss Reilly? Congratulations,” he said, as if Kate had just won a lottery. “If I can get you to sign these papers…”

“Of course,” she murmured. “Then I have some questions for you, if you don’t mind.” She went through the motions, still disbelieving the whole morning from the moment she’d stepped off the elevator into Matt Sinclair’s insinuating face. She was half aware of Lance chatting politely to the housekeeper and assistant while seeing them to the door. When she finished signing on all the lines Greg Collier had indicated, she looked up at the two men smiling benignly down at her.

“Well, then,” Collier said, rubbing his hands together, “more coffee, anyone?”

“Please,” Lance replied, pulling out a chair across from Kate.

Collier spoke softly to his secretary, who took the papers Kate and the others had signed and left, closing the door behind her. “Coffee, Miss Reilly?”

She felt she was being set up for something. “Yes, thank you,” she said, waiting while the lawyer poured and handed round the coffee with a tray of cream and sugar. Then she spoke, deciding not to let the two men take the lead. “I’m as puzzled by Joanna’s bequest as I’m sure you both are. Although I met her nineteen years ago, I haven’t seen her since. We corresponded only sporadically.”

Greg nodded at Lance, then at Kate. “That’s pretty much what Joanna explained when she had me draw up this will in the spring.”

Kate flushed at the knowledge that people had been discussing her.

“I’m sure you must have some questions about the property,” he continued, stopping as Kate began to shake her head.

“Actually, I’ve questions about Joanna’s death that I’m hoping—” she glanced quickly at Lance, then back to the lawyer “—neither of you will mind answering.”

The smile disappeared from Collier’s face. He sat down beside Lance, who was staring into his coffee cup. “Of course, Miss Reilly,” he said. “Ask away.”

“It’s just that, you see, Joanna and I had this promise to meet on July 14. It was meant to celebrate our meeting nineteen years ago. W-well,” she stammered under Collier’s blank look, “it’s a long story and I won’t bore you with it. I just can’t believe that she’d…she’d commit suicide, knowing how much the reunion meant to both of us.” She stopped, unable to continue.

Someone cleared a throat—Collier, Kate guessed. But it was Lance who spoke. “Kate, I understand what you’re saying. I’ve been tormenting myself with the same doubts. I’d always considered Joanna and I to be the perfect match for each other. I loved her deeply, and I know she was very happy with me. That’s what makes it so hard for me to believe she could…”

Kate’s ears burned. This statement from a bereaved husband made her own disbelief sound like pathetic whimpering. She kept her head down, unable to look either of them in the eye.