The Golden Girl. Erica Orloff

      Maddie shut her eyes at the memories. That Monday, at the office, Claire had desperately tried to see her. She’d dropped by Maddie’s office, her dark eyes welling slightly when she looked at Maddie’s desk and saw that all the photo frames of the two of them—and Maddie’s father—had been put away. Maddie had cut her friend from her life. Her father, she had to deal with professionally. But even that relationship had grown chillier. Of course, the ever-confident swagger of Jack Pruitt never faltered—and he never apologized or raised the issue with his daughter again. He and Claire became a visible couple, and all of the city—especially the gossip columnists—had buzzed. Had the beautiful corporate attorney, decades his junior, finally snagged the most eligible bachelor in New York? Could Maddie’s closest confidante end up her stepmother?

      Maddie winced at the memories and rose from her bed and went to the bedroom window, looking out on Manhattan, the city whose skyline she was helping to shape with her real-estate ventures. The waterfront warehouse where her father said Claire was killed was in New Jersey—and it offered a spectacular view of Manhattan across the waters of the Hudson River. Maddie had been bidding against Ryan Greene, her real-estate nemesis and flirting friend, for the land. But there was no reason for Claire to have been there. In fact, aside from Madison and Jack Pruitt, few ever knew for sure of the hush-hush dealings of Pruitt & Pruitt’s real-estate division. They were secretive because as soon as word got out as to what they were bidding on, competitors rushed to vie for the same building or land. But whoever had murdered Claire knew about the warehouse—and Claire knew about it, albeit without her needing to visit it.

      Maddie puzzled over this. Who would have suggested meeting Claire there? Who did Claire trust enough to meet in an abandoned warehouse? Though Maddie thought her father was capable of many things, murder wasn’t one of them. But she knew that wouldn’t stop him from being suspect number one when the police looked into the slaying of the beautiful Claire Shipley, his much-younger lover.

      Chapter 3

      “Madison, darling?”

      “Yes?” Maddie said into her private cell phone and sipped her coffee. Her voice was raspy from lack of sleep.

      “Renee.”

      “Hi, Renee…” Madison said a bit unsteadily. Renee had recruited her into the prestigious Gotham Roses, appealing to her sense of philanthropy. The Pruitt Family Trust was known for doling out millions of dollars in charity each year—and Madison was instrumental in choosing the charities. But Gotham Roses was more personal—a chance to actually go out and do something for the charity of her choice. Nonetheless, she and Renee were acquaintances only. And now, Madison guessed that she quite possibly was about to be kicked out of the Gotham Roses for dragging their name through the mud. Already the front pages of the two major New York daily papers were covering the murder—and her father’s affair with her former best friend—in gory detail.

      “I’m so, so sorry to read of your friend’s murder.”

      “Thank you,” Madison murmured.

      “Is there anything I can do?”

      “No. I’m skipping the office today and working from my home—the better to avoid the phalanx of reporters outside my place. Two nearly ran me off the road last night.”

      “They can be awful…. I felt like they were a school of sharks encircling me during Preston’s trial six years ago,” Renee said sympathetically, referring to her husband who Renee always maintained had been framed for financial misdealings at his family’s investment company. “Do you think you can slip away, though?”

      Here it comes, Madison thought. “Sure, Renee.”

      “Wonderful. I’ll expect you for tea then, whenever you can get here.”

      Madison hung up. She had told her housekeeper, who usually came twice a week, to stay home. A pot of coffee sat on the corner of her desk, and Maddie had been drinking cup after cup of the French roast. She hadn’t slept at all the previous night, tossing and turning and sighing. She wasn’t the crying sort—she had been raised to be coolheaded. But her heart ached.

      Maddie rose from her desk and stretched. She hadn’t needed to dress in her usual office attire. She most often favored Chanel suits, or black classic suits from other designers, with silk blouses—always with feminine details, whether that meant a sexier cut, or unusual buttons, or French cuffs. She liked heels that raised her from her usual five foot seven to close to five foot eleven. She mused that if you wanted to play tough in New York City real estate with the big boys, you had better be able to look them in the eye.

      “Casual Friday”—and today was Friday—meant nothing to Madison. She had power lunches and meetings every single day, and she never wanted to look less than her professional best. But today, working from home, she wore her typical weekend attire—Donna Karan—who had once espoused that one of the most essential wardrobe pieces was the simple black bodysuit. Maddie wore a black Karan bodysuit, dark blue jeans, loafers and a simple black sweater. For color, she wore a necklace with a large amethyst—her birthstone.

      Sighing, Madison looked at her watch. It was two. She dreaded seeing Renee, expecting to be “called on the carpet.” The Gotham Roses were supposed to represent the stars of philanthropy. White-collar crime was one thing. Murder another. But Maddie felt it best to get it over with. She was practical that way. She never felt it was worth putting off the inevitable. The police were scheduled to interview her at six that evening, which gave her plenty of time to get to the Gotham Roses Club on the Upper East Side, at Sixty-eighth between Park and Madison, and back again.

      She called down to the garage and told them to have her limo and driver ready. With its black-tinted windows, Maddie knew the photographers clustered outside would snap away, but she would be safely ensconced from their sight inside.

      She took another gulp of coffee, left her office, grabbed her purse from the dining-room table, set the alarm code at the door and descended in the elevator to the basement.

      Her limo was waiting, and her driver, Charlie, gave her a small smile, worry etched on his face. He had been her personal driver since her parents divorced when she was twelve. Charlie was the one to ferry her between the warring Jack Pruitt and Chantal Taylor, taking her from one penthouse to the other across Central Park, her beloved cat—and goldfish, Sam—in tow. Charlie was a former marine, who’d done a couple of tours in Vietnam. When her father hired him, Charlie had been putting his life back together again after his wife left him, starting with quitting drinking. He was older now, his hair streaked with gray. But Maddie knew, gray hair and bum right knee aside, he was loyal enough to do anything to keep her safe. And he was equally loyal to Jack Pruitt, who gave him a chance when no one else had.

      Charlie held open the door for her, and she slid into the back, the leather seats smooth against her touch. She smiled. Next to her usual seat in the back was a copy of the latest issue of Forbes. He knew her so well. Usually, he’d also have a copy of the morning’s New York Reporter, opened to the “In the Know with Rubi Cho” column. Charlie knew her newspaper reading at the office was limited to the Times and the Wall Street Journal, but he and Maddie would chuckle over the innuendos and blind items about people they knew in Rubi’s column. Today, no Reporter waited for her, because, she was sure, the murder was on page one and would fill the gossip columns for weeks. He would instinctively protect her from that.

      “I’m going to the Gotham Roses Club, Charlie,” she said when he got behind the wheel. “Just wait for me when we get there. I shouldn’t be all that long, and then I have to get back here…the police are coming to interview me about Claire.”

      “I’m really sorry, Miss Madison.”

      “Me, too, Charlie. Me, too.”

      She settled back into the plush seat and shut her eyes, actually dozing for a few minutes on