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CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

LONDON, ENGLAND

SUNDAY, MARCH 26, 2023

11:00 A.M.

In 1973, Angela Baker had announced to her parents that she had no intention of being shipped off to a top-drawer finishing school in Switzerland. Instead, she wanted to attend Oxford and study law. Her mother, Genevieve, had been appalled by that declaration. After all, if St. Delphine’s had been good enough for both her mother and her grandmother, why wasn’t it good enough for Angela?

That was because Angela had seen the results. St. Delphine’s had prepared Genevieve Rogers to marry well and run a household—which she had done, on the surface anyway. To all appearances, Roland James Baker III, had been quite the catch. He was someone who made money hand over fist. He had also ventured into the political arena where he had spent a number of years commuting back and forth between London and Brussels, where he had represented the UK’s interests at the European Union.

Unfortunately, he was also a serial philanderer—something Angela had figured out at age thirteen when she had caught him red-handed in bed with one of the bridesmaids in the aftermath of a cousin’s wedding. From then on, she began paying closer attention to her father’s comings and goings. His having women on the side wasn’t a one-time thing. This was long before computers and instant messaging and texting, but Angela had found his stash of telltale letters along with the batch of R-rated photos he kept as proof of his various conquests.

When she had tried to talk to her mother about it, suggesting that maybe Dad had outside interests, her mother had brushed it off saying, “It’s nothing to worry about. That’s just how your father is.” As long as Angela could remember, there had never been a spark of love or affection between her parents, and by the time she was in her late teens, she realized the truth. Armed with her training from St. Delphine’s, Genevieve had managed to find a very posh bed—one that was laundered each week and made each day by someone else. She, however, was the one who had to lie in it, because her finishing-school education had prepared her for nothing else.

At Oxford, Angela had taken a first. After graduating, passing the bar, and becoming a barrister, she had turned her laser-like focus on family law. As the years passed, she saw her mother, still trapped in a loveless marriage, withdraw more from life and into her unhappy self. At age fifty-two, Genevieve had taken her own life with an overdose of sleeping pills. Days after her mother’s death, Angela had gone to her office and found that her mother had mailed a handwritten letter to her there. Written on one of Genevieve’s embossed note cards, it had said: I wish I had done as much with my life as you are doing with yours. I’m so glad you didn’t take my advice . It was signed “Love, Mum.”

Now, matted and framed, that note hung in her office right behind her desk, along with her impressive collection of diplomas and awards. Over time, her mother’s final words had become the guiding principle of her life. Through the years, Angela had gained the reputation for being the go-to solicitor for women, especially high-profile ones, exiting problematic marriages. There was nothing that gave her life more purpose than putting the screws to philandering, cheating husbands. When opposing counsel who had come up against her in court referred to Angela as a piranha, they did so with good reason.

As for her own father? Still alive, Roland James Baker III was now Angela’s responsibility. Suffering from Alzheimer’s, he lived in an upscale memory care home, currently paid for with the remains of his dwindling fortune. If his own money ran out, as it might well do, Angela would need to cover the cost of his care, but she no longer bothered visiting him. The last time she had done so, he’d had no idea who she was, and she hadn’t gone back.

Never married and pushing seventy, Angela had no intention of calling it quits. What she did was a mission as opposed to a nine-to-five job. She took calls and responded to emails and texts, no matter the day of the week or the time of day. When she awakened that Sunday morning, it was only natural that she went scrolling through her inbox over her first cup of Earl Grey.

When she reached a message where the sender was a series of numbers and symbols rather than a name, she was tempted to delete it, but the subject line—“George Smythe”—reeled her in. One of Angela’s previous clients, a satisfied one, had referred Margaret Smythe to Angela when she discovered that her husband was carrying on with a much younger woman who was only three years older than their daughter.

George had pulled similar stunts before, but never with someone that young, and for Margaret, the current mistress’s age was the last straw. The couple had already gone through mediation and agreed on a settlement that left the family home to Margaret and the London flat to George. Since Margaret’s job had been that of a corporate wife, George had agreed to pay ongoing maintenance until she managed to unload the family home. But that agreement had been made without Margaret’s knowing about the considerable amount of funds George had possibly been amassing illegally and concealing offshore.

Not wanting to lose the anonymous message, Angela copied it and saved it under the name “Gotcha” in her computer’s Margaret Smythe folder. Then she sat there wondering who this anonymous tipster was and had she really been personally threatened by George Smythe? What was the story behind that?

Out of curiosity, Angela made herself a piece of toast, poured herself another cup of tea, and waited, letting the minutes tick off on her watch. After the promised fifteen minutes, the email vanished from her computer screen. She checked her trash and junk files and found no sign of it.

She wasn’t sure how the vanishing act worked, but obviously it had. Next, she reached out to Samira, her IT consultant, asking her to get back to her as soon as possible. In the meantime, she did some searching on her own, just to verify some of what the tipster had said. Angela’s modest computer skills were enough for her to find the two recent homicides her tipster had mentioned. Adrian Willoughby’s and Bogdan Petrov’s so-far unsolved murders were currently under investigation by the Essex Police.

“And so are you, Mr. George Smythe,” Angela said aloud, “and you’d best look out, because your friendly neighborhood piranha is coming for you.”