“In front of all those people?”
He nodded.
“What else is there?” I said.
Stephanie drank the rest of her martini. She hadn’t yet eaten any of her salad.
“He left me ten thousand dollars in his will,” she said.
“Old times’ sake,” Jesse said.
“He left ten thousand dollars to Ellen, too.”
“And the rest?” Jesse said.
1 8 8
H I G H P R O F I L E
Stephanie was looking for the waitress. When she saw her she gestured with her empty glass.
“Lorrie,” she said.
“How much?”
“Thirty million, give or take. Plus the whole Walton Weeks enterprise.”
“Is that worth anything without Walton?”
“There’s always Alan.”
“TV, radio, the whole thing?” Jesse said.
Stephanie ate a bite of her salad. The martini came. She turned her attention back to it.
“I don’t know. You’d need to ask Tom about that.”
“Nolan, the manager,” Jesse said.
“Yes, and Sam.”
“Gates? The lawyer?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Nothing in the will about Carey Longley,” Jesse said.
“No.”
If the martinis were affecting Stephanie, she showed no sign of it. Except that she had slowed down on the third one, interspersing a sip with the ingestion of salad. The hotel coffee shop was not a place of lingering luncheons, and most of the tables had emptied.
“Do you know Conrad Lutz?” Jesse said.
“I’ve heard the name. He was Walton’s bodyguard, wasn’t he?”
“He wasn’t with Walton when you were?” Jesse said. 1 8 9
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“No.”
“Do you know any reason,” Jesse said, “why Walton would need a bodyguard?”
