“You know Evan did this, right?”

“From what Tanya told me, yes, it seems he must bear some responsibility. I know Tanya was desperate because she did not want him to have custody of the child. And she was insistent that he wanted to harm her. I thought, well, to be honest, I suspected she was overreacting. Your sister was very … theatrical in that respect.”

“‘Theatrical.’ That’s a good word to describe Tanya. She was that in almost all respects,” Letty said bitterly. “But this one awful time, she was right to be worried.”

“I still can’t believe she’s gone,” Sammi said. “We’d meet for coffee—well, I had coffee, she had that vile herbal tea—about once a week, at the same place where you and I met that time. I still go, after yoga. And every time I walk in, I expect to see her waving at me from the corner table, calling ‘Yoo-hoo! Sammi!’”

“You said you needed to talk about Tanya’s estate,” Letty said, interrupting. She was still paranoid about using this phone, paranoid about talking to anyone at all about her sister.

“All right. I see your point. Tanya did have a will. She named you as a secondary beneficiary, and Maya’s legal guardian. The will is very specific on that point. All of her assets are to be put into a trust for Maya, until she reaches the age of twenty-one.”

“What assets are we talking about?” Letty asked. “I mean, Evan owned the brownstone she was living in, and supported her. She had some nice clothes and jewelry, but that’s it. Right?”

“Not quite,” Sammi said with a slight chuckle. “She had quite a large life insurance policy. Three million dollars. Again, Maya is the primary beneficiary, but those funds will be held in a trust. As it turns out, there were other assets too. A large ring? Do you know about that?”

“Yes.” Letty left it at that.

“The ring is to be sold, and the funds distributed to you,” Sammi said. “And then, of course, there’s the real estate.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your late sister holds title to several parcels of extremely valuable residential real estate properties in Tribeca, the East Village, and Brooklyn.”

“You mean, Evan owns them,” Letty said.

“Actually, there are seven apartments, including the one where Tanya resided, that were purchased over the past three years, by an LLC controlled by Evan Wingfield. It appears that he then transferred title of the entities to your sister, while they were still domestic partners,” Sammi said. “Strictly a tax dodge on his part.”

Another long pause.

“Letty? Are you still there?”