She fell asleep on the couch in her clothes, so she just dashes into the bathroom, tries to pat her hair into better shape, and then hurries to the door. Cheng is smiling, and holding a flash drive. “Joy Meachum had the best security system money can buy,” he tells her. “But with the camera footage there, I’ve now got it.”
Given what Marci’s pretty sure it contains, maybe he shouldn’t look so happy. But hey, at least he’s not gazing down at the wedding ring she’s had on for less than a month with pity in his eyes, which makes him way better than most of the people she’s interacted with lately.
She boots up her laptop, and together they watch it. Joy Meachum barely had time to hear a scream from one of her neighbors, and look in its direction, confused, before she disintegrated. It creeps Marci out, this woman not at all unlike her dying like that, with only her security cameras there to pay attention or miss her. And when she’s been trying so hard to not think about how alone in the world she is right now.
“So maybe for a split second or so all her cash and private possessions belonged to her brother,” Cheng says, “before he of course died too and passed them on to little Mr. Smith.”
The cash might get disputed, actually. Ms. Meachum was more specific in the willing of her professional assets to four different individuals, and the three still alive can probably try to twist the will’s language to make a claim. It doesn’t help matters that the two siblings still weren’t on the best of terms when they died; Marci knows it shocked some people to hear she’d left him so much.
She’s not even sure how much her clients will care. From the time Colleen Wing, sole heir to Danny Rand and surviving executor for Ward Meachum, first called Jeri’s number and got her instead, neither she nor Bethany Smith have made the vast fortunes they’re supposed be inheriting much of a priority. Ms. Smith does want some money, because she and her son really could do with it, but so long as the latter still inherits a very large sum, the exact numbers are too high to mean much to her. Ms. Wing has freely admitted she mostly wants to police Rand Enterprises’ behavior; Marci suspects she’ll need her later, rather than sooner. If she doesn’t switch to Matt by then, anyway.
For now, she says, “Thank you, Mr. Cheng. If you want breakfast…”
“No time,” he shrugs. “I’ve got six more cases to deal with this morning.”
More than her; Marci only has five today, including the Smiths. But when Cheng is gone and she checks her phone, she finds texts related to two of them. The Janson case might be clearing up, with one nephew likely dead, and his wife withdrawing her challenge. But in the Ghosh case, it seems the grandfather might not be dead after all, but possibly kidnapped.
Before she gets breakfast herself, she’s made a call and sent off four different emails. She doesn’t expect to hear from any of the four recipients until at least the afternoon, if then. Plenty of time to read her way through two different sets of financial records, and wait to see if there’s any news on three other people who still aren’t confirmed as alive or dead. She might even have time to do a little more rereading about inheritance law. She had surprisingly little experience with it before this all started.
She wants to work through the morning. Marci knows she’s going to crash sooner or later, feel all the grief she’s managed to avoid having time for. But she can’t face that yet.
She takes the time to make herself eggs for breakfast; it’s one of those weird things that sooths her enough to be worth it. She eats them facing away from the window; she has a crazy urge to cry when she looks upon the city for too long. Foggy’s ring feels heavy on her finger, but she refuses to take that off.