The Amazing Adventures of Miss Ariana Okata

I Am Summoned to the Reading of the Will

On the morning of the reading of Ted's will at his attorney's office, I received a most unusual text message on my iPhone. It read:

Be careful around Veronica. Don't stare into her eyes for more than a few seconds or U may turn into a barnyard animal of some kind. Or maybe even a rock.

Yours affectionately,

A Secret Admirer

Despite its oddness, and despite the fact I had no clue whom this Secret Admirer really was, I decided to heed the warning, since someone had gone to all the trouble of sending it to me in the first place.

I showed up at Ted's lawyer's office, Dombey and Sons, situated on the 20th floor of a high rise on Howe Street in downtown Vancouver, dressed in a tight-fitting, yet appropriately demure and stately, charcoal-grey, Coco-Chanel-inspired linen skirt suit with a matching sun hat. I wanted to look like a character straight out of an Agatha Christie novel (Murder on the Orient Express, to be exact), and I think I did a pretty good job. When I entered the conference room everyone turned to look at me. The receptionist, a dowdy older woman, announced my arrival.

"– Ms. Ariana Okata has arrived."

Dombey Sr. and his two sons, Eric and Michael, all suitably expensively dressed and groomed, and all quite handsome, were already seated at the head of a gigantic mahogany table, even more gigantic than the one in the boardroom of SFMC. They were cuing up a DVD on a 60-inch flatscreen TV mounted on the wall.

Dombey Sr. immediately stood and approached me, holding out one hand to be shaken, which I did. Then he showed me to one of the plush, leather-bound conference chairs, right next to the younger, better-looking version of Ted Sr.; Ted Jr.

Also present, sitting on the other side of Ted Jr., was Ted Sr.'s daughter, Annie, and sitting across the table from them their mother, the legendary Veronica. She was also dressed to kill, so to speak, and wore a cream-coloured designer suit and matching hat; however, her ensemble included gloves, so I have to admit she trumped me on that accessory, but I wasn't fazed. I still had at least 15 years on her and as everyone knows, age trumps style in most situations, including this one.

Sitting at her side was the same fabulously dressed, hot young man I'd seen at Ted's funeral. Upon seeing me he couldn't help but smile and nod his head once, though it turned out to be a bit risky, given Veronica's so-chilly-she-could-freeze-Hawaii glance she gave him. That brief, coy smile dropped from his pleasing features in a heartbeat. At that moment I realized the man had to be her current lover, and that he'd better be careful around me, at least when she was in the room. For the time being, we were both safe, as Veronica's attention was diverted away when Dombey Sr., sensing a brewing tempest in a law office, asked if I'd had any difficulty finding it (the office). I responded that no, I hadn't, and that I very much appreciated the free underground parking. The man clearly knew how to defuse a tense situation.

Annie and Ted Jr. also politely acknowledged me, though, as mentioned, the same could not be said of their mother. Regardless, I pulled back the generously padded, deep chocolate brown leather chair beside Ted Jr. and took a seat. I immediately detected that he had the same excellent choice in men's cologne as his father had, and was comforted by the familiar spicy, masculine aroma. Ted Jr. extended one hand in greeting and made strong eye contact. There was an instant connection. As the saying goes, some apples don't fall far from the tree. I also noticed the lack of a wedding band, but pushed that to the back of my list of priorities. I was there with more pressing issues on my mind; namely, getting to the bottom of Ted's untimely and shocking demise, and clearing my name in the process.

Veronica shot me a quick but unmistakably hostile glance from her vantage point on the other side of the table, which made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but I didn't let that faze me, either. Heeding the text-message warning I'd received that morning, I glanced quickly away from her penetrating and potentially dangerous gaze.