In fairness, he was basing this assessment on a sample of two people. The dour young Frenchman who had issued him his visitor’s pass and led him to the office of the man he’d flown halfway across the world to see, and that man’s secretary, a woman whose battle-ax features exuded about as much warmth as a Siberian nuclear winter.
“D’you think he’ll be much longer?” Matt asked.
The secretary shrugged contemptuously and returned to her computer screen.
Matt thought of his father. Harry Daley had never been to France, but had always admired Frenchwomen from afar for their poise and charm and sexiness. Boy, would Rosa Klebb over there have shattered his illusions!
Thinking about his dad made Matt smile.
If it hadn’t been for Harry Daley, he wouldn’t be sitting here.
HARRY DALEY HAD BEEN A WONDERFUL father, and an even better husband. Harry and Marie, Matt’s mom, were married for forty years and had been everything to each other. At Harry Daley’s funeral last year, scores of friends had lingered at the graveside, sharing their memories of the man Matt and his sister, Claire, had loved for as long as either of them could remember.
During the ceremony, Matt got terrible giggles when the Croatian priest’s “May he rest in peace” came out quite clearly as “May he rest in piss.” Given that Harry had died of cancer of the bladder, this struck both Matt and his sister as hilarious.
Raquel, Matt’s glamorous South American wife, didn’t see the funny side.
“My God,” she hissed in Matt’s ear, “what is wrong with you? Have you no respect? It’s your father’s funeral.”
“Oh, c’mon, honey. ‘May he rest in piss’? It’s funny. Dad would have seen the humor. Imagine what Jerry Seinfeld would’ve done with a line like that.”
Raquel said cuttingly, “You are hardly Jerry Seinfeld, honey.”
It hurt because it was true. Matt Daley was a comedy writer, but in recent years not a very successful one. Handsome in a boyish, disheveled sort of way, with a thick thatch of blond hair and apple-green eyes, his most distinctive feature was his contagious smile, a facial event that seemed to fold his entire physiognomy into one giant laugh line. In the early days of their relationship, Raquel had been attracted to Matt’s sense of humor and was flattered when amusing incidents from their life together made their way onto the hit TV show Matt worked on briefly back then. But after eight years the novelty had worn off, along with the hope that Matt’s residuals were ever going to earn them the glitzy Hollywood lifestyle Raquel yearned for. Matt now worked for a cable network that paid their bills but left them with little for the finer things in life.
“What’s she bitching about this time?” Matt’s sister, Claire, was not a fan of her sister-in-law.
“She doesn’t like funerals,” said Matt loyally.
“Probably scared somebody’s going to shine perpetual light upon her and we’ll all get to see the scars from her latest eye lift.”
Matt grinned. He loved Claire. He loved his wife too, but even he was beginning to come to the painful realization that the feeling was probably no longer mutual.
On the drive back to L.A. after the funeral, Matt tried to build bridges with Raquel.
“I’m about to start working on a new idea,” he told her. “Something different. A documentary.”
The faintest flicker of interest played in her eyes. “A documentary? Who for?”
“Well, no one yet,” Matt admitted. “I’m writing it on spec.”
The flicker died. Just what we need, thought Raquel. Another unsold spec script.
“It’s about my father,” Matt pressed on. “My biological father.”
Raquel yawned. To be honest, she’d forgotten that Harry Daley wasn’t Matt’s real dad. Harry had married Matt’s mom when Matt was a toddler and Claire a baby in arms.
“I found out recently that he was murdered more than a decade ago.”
If this piece of news was intended to shock Raquel, or even pique her interest, it failed. “People get murdered every day in this city, Matthew. Why would anyone want to sit through an hour of television about your unknown father’s demise?”
“Ah, but that’s the thing,” said Matt, warming to his theme. “He wasn’t unknown. He was an art dealer in Beverly Hills. Famous, at least in L.A. And seriously rich.”
Now he had Raquel’s attention. “You never mentioned this to me before. How rich?”
“Filthy rich,” said Matt. “We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“Hundreds of millions? My God, Matt,” Raquel gasped, swerving dangerously across lanes of traffic. “What happened to all the money?”
“It went to his widow,” said Matt, matter-of-factly.
“What, all of it? What about you and Claire?”
“Me and Claire? Oh, come on, honey. We hadn’t had any contact with him for over thirty years.”
“So?” Raquel’s pupils dilated excitedly. “You’re his children, his blood relatives. Maybe you could contest the will?”
Matt laughed. “On what grounds? It was his money to leave as he chose. But anyway, you’re missing the point. The story gets juicier.”
Raquel struggled to imagine anything juicier than a payout of hundreds of millions, but she forced herself to listen.
“The widow, who was only in her early twenties at the time, and who was violently raped by whoever killed my old man, gave all the cash away to children’s charities. Every last penny. It was the biggest single charitable gift in L.A. history. But barely anybody knows about it because instead of sticking around to bask in the glory, this chick hops on a plane just weeks after the murder and disappears. Literally vanishes off the face of the earth and is never heard of again. It’s wild, isn’t it? Don’t you think it’s a great story?”
Raquel didn’t give a damn about Matt’s stupid story. What sort of man didn’t lift a finger to stake his claim to a multimillion-dollar fortune? She’d married a cretin.
“How come you never brought this up before?”
The anger in her voice was unmistakable. Matt’s spirits sank. Why do I always seem to make her angry?
“To be honest, I sort of forgot about it. I heard about it a few months ago, but I thought it might upset Dad if I showed too much of an interest, so I let it go. But now that Harry’s gone, I figure it couldn’t hurt to explore it. Networks are really into ‘personal history’ right now. And murder and money always sell.”
The rest of the car ride passed in silence. By the time the Daleys reached home, two obsessions had been born.
Raquel’s was with a four-hundred-million-dollar fortune.
And Matt Daley’s was with the unsolved murder of his biological father: Andrew Jakes.
OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS, WHILE his wife spent fruitless hours consulting lawyer after lawyer, hunting for the loophole that would restore “their” fortune, as she now thought of the Jakes estate, what started as a research project for a documentary became the all-consuming focus of