“Very. Things had gotten really bitter between them, with all the lawyers and everything. He’d made some nasty threats. But she said he wanted to talk things over between the two of them, to get things settled. Tanya thought that meant he was going to give in and let her take Maya with her to California.”

“She was moving to California?”

“Yeah. She wanted to get away from Evan, restart her acting career. She’d rented a house, found a new agent out there … she was begging me to move with her.”

“Okay, so what happened next?” Joe asked.

“She was supposed to text me that morning, to let me know he was gone. But when I didn’t hear from her, I got worried. I called and texted, then finally went over there. I had a key, so I let myself in. And that’s when I found her.…”

Letty ducked her head and began to cry. “She was…”

Joe leaned forward and grasped her hands. “It’s okay.”

Her chest was heaving as she struggled to get the words out. “Blood. Around her head. And then I looked up, and oh God. Maya was standing at the top of the stairs, crying.”

“Do you think she saw what happened?”

“I don’t know,” Letty said, her voice catching. “It all happened so fast.”

“Okay,” he said. “But why didn’t you call the cops, when you found her?”

“Because I knew, right away. It was Evan. Tanya told me, if anything bad ever happened to her, it would be Evan. She made me promise, swear, that if anything happened, I would take Maya and go.”

“Go where? Did she tell you to come down here, to the Murmuring Surf?”

Letty shook her head. “Not exactly.”

“How exactly?”

She dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her T-shirt. “You had to know Tanya. She was … complicated. She liked secrets. You never knew the whole truth with her. A few months ago, when things were really bad between her and Evan, she told me she was afraid of him. Because he wouldn’t ever let go of Maya. Not because he actually loved her, but because Evan thought she was, like, his property.”

“Did Wingfield physically threaten to harm her?”

Letty shrugged. “With Evan, it was more intimidation. Like, ‘You can never win against me. I’m rich, and I’ll mow you down.’ So she had a plan B.”

“Which was?”

“A few months ago, after Christmas, when I was at her place, she took me into her closet. She had this bag, hidden in one of her boots. She called it her ‘go-bag.’ It was stuffed with cash, and this big diamond ring Evan gave her as a push present when she had Maya. And she told me, if anything ever happened to her, to grab the bag and Maya and get the hell away from Evan and New York.