“You’ll call?” Ivan asked, tugging at the jacket of his Brooks Brothers’ suit to straighten it.

“I’ll call.” Mitch sighed the words.

Shay raised one eyebrow when Ivy informed her that the bank was calling. She couldn’t be overdrawn, could she? She’d just deposited the bonus check Marvin had signed before he left, making payment for the four commercials.

“Ms. Kendall?”

Shay drew a deep breath and set aside the stack of paperwork, also left behind by Marvin, that she’d been wading through. “Yes?”

“My name is Robert Parker and I’m calling in reference to your account.”

Shay tensed and then willed herself to relax. She had balanced her checkbook only a few days before, and her figures had tallied with the bank’s. “Yes?”

“It seems that a sizable amount of money has been deposited and, well, we were just wondering if a mistake had been made. This sum is well beyond what the Federal Reserve will insure in any single account, you know.”

“I don’t understand,” Shay said, resting her forehead in the palm of one hand. “Surely a couple thousand dollars—”

“A couple thousand?” The bank officer laughed nervously. “My, my, this deposit is many times that amount. I was certain that there had to be some error.”

Shay was a little stung that the banker could be so incredulous, even though she was incredulous herself. Maybe she’d never had more than eight hundred dollars in her account at any one time, but she wasn’t a deadbeat and if she’d been overdrawn a time or two, why, that had been accidental. “Wait just a moment, Mr. Parker, wasn’t it? Where did this deposit come from?”

“The check itself was drawn on the account of a Mr. Mitch Prescott.”

It was a moment before Shay remembered the book she and Mitch were supposed to be writing together; her mind hadn’t exactly been on the professional aspects of their relationship. “Then the money is mine,” she said, as much to herself as to Mr. Parker. “Would you mind telling me the exact amount?”

The sum Mr. Parker replied with made the pit of Shay’s stomach leap and sent her head into a dizzying spin. Mitch had told her that her share would be a “lot” of money, but never in Shay’s wildest dreams had she expected so much.

“We’ll have to verify this, of course,” Parker said stiffly, seeming to find Shay’s good fortune suspect in some way.

“Of course,” Shay answered. And then she hung up the receiver, folded her arms on the desktop and lowered her head to them.

She was rich.

The more Mitch thought about the Alan Roget project, the more it appealed to him. It would be a study in human ugliness, that book, but for once in his life he had something to counterbalance that. He had Shay.

Eager now to get the Rosamond Dallas book behind him, he began composing a comprehensive outline of the material he had on hand, working from his notes and the tapes containing Shay’s observations about her mother.