Tanya refused to accept that Letty didn’t want to move to Los Angeles. “Think of all the career opportunities,” she’d said. “Show business is the business there.”
“I’m not in the business anymore,” Letty reminded her. “And that’s fine with me.” She didn’t remind her sister that Evan intended to fight tooth and nail to keep Tanya from taking Maya across the country with her. And she didn’t point out that she was pretty sure Tanya mainly wanted Letty to accompany her to California as in-house childcare.
While Maya sucked contentedly on her juice box, Letty tapped her phone and forced herself to read the headlines of the tabloids back in New York.
BLOND BEAUTY SLAIN, TOT ABDUCTED, COPS SEEK SISTER was the headline in the Post. A huge color photo of Tanya and Maya, dressed in matching outfits for a children’s charity fundraiser, was plastered across the front page, and below it was a smaller photo of Letty, handcuffed and dressed in orange jail scrubs. It was a screenshot from the other walk-on she’d done three years earlier for a Law & Order episode, but it made Letty look like a hardened criminal.
The Daily News was even worse. WHERE IS MAYA? the headline screamed. Beneath it was a blown-up shot of Maya, hands clasped beneath her chin, her cupid’s-bow lips curved into a dreamy smile. Letty recognized it as the school photo from the exclusive preschool Maya attended. The subhead and accompanying story made her want to gag.
HEARTBROKEN DAD OFFERS REWARD FOR KID’S RETURN
Real estate entrepreneur / philanthropist Evan Wingfield is still reeling after last week’s brutal murder of his estranged partner, Tanya Carnahan, and the apparent abduction of his four-year-old daughter, Maya.
Through a family spokesman, Wingfield announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of his daughter.
“Although they were no longer in a romantic relationship, Evan admired and respected Tanya, and he is devastated by her tragic death. For now, though, all his energies and resources are concentrated on finding his daughter,” said the spokesman, Charles “Skipper” Hallowell. “He has fully cooperated with the police, and he will not rest until Maya is brought back to safety.”
Tanya Carnahan, an aspiring model and actress, was found sprawled on the floor of her lavish Upper West Side brownstone last Sunday morning, after an anonymous tipster, believed to have been her older sister, 33-year-old Scarlett Carnahan, called 911 to report Tanya’s death. A source close to the police investigation told the Daily News that Tanya Carnahan suffered a blow to the head. Although the actress had reportedly been in rehab for unspecified substance abuse issues, the source said preliminary lab results revealed substantial amounts of Xanax and alcohol in her system.
When authorities arrived at the town house, which is one of several in the neighborhood owned by Wingfield, they discovered Tanya Carnahan’s body. The child, however, was missing.
Evan Wingfield admitted to police that he’d seen his former girlfriend that morning, and that the two had a loud argument after he accused her of drinking, in violation of their custody agreement. He insisted, however, that Tanya Carnahan was alive when he left the home shortly after noon on Sunday.
Wingfield and Tanya Carnahan were in the midst of a very public and very bitter court battle over their daughter. Carnahan claimed that her former fiancé was a serial cheater who was indifferent to their daughter’s needs, while Wingfield claimed that Tanya Carnahan, who’d had only modest success with her acting and modeling career, was an unfit mother.
Friends of the couple say the two were introduced by Scarlett Carnahan, who at the time was employed by and in a relationship with Evan Wingfield. The relationship ended when Wingfield turned his attention to Carnahan’s troubled younger sister, a recent arrival from Atlanta.
“Troubled?” Letty exclaimed out loud. “She wasn’t troubled until she hooked up with that scumbag.”
Maya, startled, looked up at her aunt, her mouth puckered.
The child smiled, uncertainly, before turning her attention to a handful of seashells they’d gathered during yesterday’s morning walk on the beach.
According to one friend, the 42-year-old real estate entrepreneur struck up a relationship with Scarlett Carnahan when she was working as a waitress at the Lazy Daizy diner in Tribeca.
At the time, Carnahan was struggling to find acting work, and needed a new place to live after roommates evicted her from her apartment in Queens.
“Evan befriended her, let her stay in an apartment he owned nearby, even gave her a job managing some of