“Sorry,” she said, inspecting the screen. “I need to take this.”
“Rosemary,” the voice on the phone said, “it’s Laurie Moran. I have good news.”
Rosemary was muttering the requisite acknowledgments—“Yes, I see, uh-huh”—but was having a hard time ignoring Lydia’s expectant looks.
When she finally hung up, Lydia said, “Whatever that was about, you seemed very happy about it.”
“Yes, you could say that. That was a television producer in New York. The show Under Suspicion has picked my daughter’s case for their next feature. The producer can’t make any promises, but I have to pray that something new comes out of this. It’s been twenty years.”
“I can’t imagine.”
Rosemary realized that it was the first time she had spoken about Susan to anyone who hadn’t known her or been investigating her death. She had officially made a new friend.
21
Dwight Cook wished he could gut the interior of REACH’s headquarters and start over. The design concept had sounded great when the architect first pitched it. The three-level building had plenty of open space, some of it with forty-foot ceilings, but was also filled with nooks and brightly painted crannies with couches and bistro tables for people to gather in small groups. The idea, according to the architect, was to create the illusion of one large, continuous, “mazelike” space.
Well, the maze effect had worked.
Was it only he who craved monochromatic symmetry?
He blocked out all the horrible visual distractions and thought about the work that was taking place within these ridiculously shaped walls. REACH had been around for nearly twenty years and still managed to hire some of the brightest, most innovative tech workers in the country.
He reached the end of the hall and turned right toward Hathaway’s office. His former professor had been at REACH from the beginning in every possible way. But regardless of their work together, he would always think of Hathaway as his professor, the man responsible for building REACH into an empire.
Hathaway’s door was open, as was the norm in REACH’s “corporate culture.”
Richard Hathaway was well into his fifties by now but still looked essentially the same as when UCLA coeds had dubbed him the school’s “most crush-worthy” teacher. He was of average height with an athletic build. He had thick, wavy brown hair and a year-round tan, and always dressed like he was about to tee off at a golf course. As Dwight approached, he could see that Hathaway was reading a magazine article called “Work Out Smarter, Not Longer.”
Dwight took a seat across from Hathaway, unsure how to raise the subject that brought him there. He decided to ease into it, the way he had noticed people did when they were trying to avoid a topic. “Sometimes when I walk around the building, it reminds me of your lab back at UCLA.”
“Except we were working with computers the size of economy cars. And the furniture wasn’t as nice, either.” Hathaway was always quick with a good line. How many times had he saved the day by “tagging along” to a meeting with a potential investor? Dwight had surpassed Hathaway in programming talent, but without Hathaway, Dwight would have always worked for someone else.
“The walls were straight, though,” Dwight said, making his own attempt at the same kind of humor.
Hathaway smiled, but Dwight could tell that his self-deprecating one-liner had fallen flat.
“What I meant,” Dwight continued, “was that we have all these kids—smart, idealistic, probably a little weird.” Now Hathaway laughed. “They all believe they can change the world with the right piece of code. I remember your lab feeling like that.”
“You sound like a proud parent.”
“Yes, I suppose I am proud.” Dwight tried so hard not to feel his emotions that he had never learned to describe them.
“It’s fine to be proud,” Hathaway said, “but REACH has investors with expectations. It would be nice to be relevant again.”
“We’re more than relevant, Hathaway.” Dwight had called him “Dr. Hathaway” long after they both left UCLA. Despite the professor’s insistence that Dwight refer to him as Richard, Dwight just couldn’t do it. “Hathaway” had been the compromise.
“I mean front-page-of-the-Journal relevant. Our stock price is holding steady, Dwight, but others’ are going up.”
Even as a professor, Hathaway was never the tweed-jacket-and-practical-shoes type. He made it clear to his students that technology could not only help people and change the world, it could also make you rich. The first time an investment banker wrote them a seven-figure check, enabling REACH to set up shop in Palo Alto, Hathaway had gone directly to the car dealer for a new Maserati.
“But you’re not here to relive the old days,” Hathaway said.
Dwight trusted Hathaway. They’d had a special connection from the moment Hathaway had asked Dwight, after freshman midterms, to work in the lab. Dwight had always felt like his own father was trying to either change him or avoid him. But Hathaway had all the same interests as Dwight and never tried to tell him to act like anyone other than himself. When they worked together, combining Dwight’s code-writing skills with Hathaway’s business savvy, it was a perfect match.
So why couldn’t he tell his friend and mentor of twenty years that he was hacking the e-mail accounts of everyone who might be connected to Susan’s murder?
Oh, how desperately he wanted to tell him what he’d learned. He knew, for example, that Frank Parker’s wife, Talia, wrote her sister to say she was “dead set against Frank ever speaking that girl’s name again.” Was Talia opposed to the show because she suspected her husband was involved?
And then there was Madison Meyer’s e-mail to her agent, insisting that once she was in a room alone with Frank Parker again, she was “sure to land a true comeback role.” That one definitely made it sound like Madison had something to hang over Frank’s head.
And yet, Dwight could not bring himself to tell Hathaway what he’d been up to. He knew Hathaway would worry about the corporate implications if Dwight were caught hacking into private accounts. No one would ever trust REACH with information again. Their stock price would plummet. This would have to be one secret he kept from his oldest friend.
But Hathaway was looking at him expectantly. “What’s up, Dwight?”
“I think I actually forgot. That walk down the maze must have made me dizzy.” He was pleased when Hathaway smiled. The line had worked.
“I do that all the time,” Hathaway said. “But, hey, since you’re here: I got a call from a Laurie Moran? A TV special about Susan Dempsey? They said you gave them my name. I thought everyone sort of knew Frank Parker did it but the police could never prove it.”
Dwight wanted to scream, But I might be able to! Instead, he said, “I just want people to know that Susan was more than her headshot. She wasn’t some wannabe actress. She was . . . truly phenomenal.” Dwight heard his own voice crack like a middle schooler’s. Once he was on camera, would everyone watching know how obsessed he had been with his fellow lab assistant? “And, let’s face it,” he added, “you’d be better on TV than me.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea? They’ll be asking about the work in the lab. You know I don’t like anything that calls attention to how this company got launched.”
It had been nearly twenty years since they started REACH. Sometimes Dwight actually forgot how the idea had originated, but Hathaway never did.
“It won’t be like that,” Dwight insisted. “Shows don’t get ratings by delving into the details of web-search optimization. They just want to hear about Susan.”
“Very well, then. If you’re in, I’m in.”
As Dwight returned to REACH’s colorful labyrinth, he felt completely alone. He couldn’t remember any time when he’d kept information from Hathaway. But he realized the real reason he had not shared his activities with his professor. He didn’t want Hathaway to be disappointed in him.
He had to find out more, though
. The reason I want to do the show, he thought, is because once I have physical proximity to the others, I can clone their phones and finally prove who killed Susan. But, no, he couldn’t say any of that.
He had to do this. For Susan.
22
Without the rearview camera on the dash of her Volvo, Rosemary Dempsey might have clipped the edge of the newspaper recycling bin that had been thrown a bit too haphazardly to her curb after weekly pickup.
She loved the new technology that surrounded her every day, but it always made her wonder what Susan and Jack would have said about it.
As she shifted out of reverse, she caught sight of Lydia in her peripheral vision, watering her hydrangeas with a gardening hose. She wore bright orange rubber shoes and matching gloves, one of which waved in Susan’s direction. Rosemary returned the wave and added a friendly beep of the car horn. She made it a point to watch her speedometer as she rolled down the street. Knowing Lydia, any excessive speed could threaten their budding friendship.
Rosemary smiled as she navigated the turns through Castle Crossings, trying to imagine Lydia Levitt forty years ago, with bell-bottoms and platform shoes instead of gardening gear.
She was still smiling when the GPS told her that her destination was on the right. The navigation system’s estimate of the drive time had been nearly perfect: forty-two minutes to San Anselmo.
As Rosemary passed driveways filled with Porsches, Mercedes, even a Bentley, she started to wonder if her Volvo would be the worst car on the block. She saw one cream-colored pickup truck two houses down from Nicole’s, in front of a McMansion that overfilled its lot, but that car obviously belonged to a landscaper.
“You have arrived at your destination,” her car announced.
• • •
Rosemary had been to Nicole’s home before but still took a moment to register its beauty. A perfectly restored five-bedroom Tudor in San Anselmo with sweeping views of Ross Valley, it was, in Rosemary’s view, far too large for a couple with no children. But as Rosemary understood it, Nicole’s husband, Gavin, could afford it, plus he frequently worked at home rather than commute to San Francisco’s financial district.
The forty-minute drive was a small price to pay to deliver this news in person.
Nicole greeted her at the door before she had a chance to ring the bell. She gave Rosemary a quick hug before saying, “Is everything okay? You were so secretive on the phone.”
“Everything is just fine. I didn’t mean to alarm you.” Rosemary was so aware of her own loss as a mother, sometimes she forgot how Susan’s death must have affected others. When one of your best friends dies when you are only a teenager, do you spend the rest of your life on high alert?
“Oh, thank goodness,” Nicole said. “Come on in. Can I get you anything?”
The house was silent.
“Is Gavin home?” Rosemary asked.
“No, he has a dinner meeting with clients tonight, so he’s working at the office today.”
Rosemary had grown up one of five children and had always wanted to have a large family. But it was more than ten years before joyfully, happily, Susan had come along.
She was a social bee, always attracting the neighbor kids and then her schoolmates. Even when she’d gone to college, the house wasn’t silent. It still somehow buzzed from her energy—her phone calls, miscellaneous pieces of laundry left strewn around the house, her CDs blasting from the stereo when Rosemary flipped the switch.
Rosemary had never asked Nicole why she and Gavin had opted for a silent house, but she couldn’t help but feel sorry for them over the choice.
She followed Nicole into a den lined floor-to-ceiling with books. One wall was dominated by business books and historical nonfiction. The other wall popped with every kind of novel—romance, suspense, sci-fi, what some people called more “literary” fare. She felt a pang as she remembered Susan’s calling her from UCLA two days after the big move: “You’d love my roommate. She has amazing taste in books.” The novels had to be Nicole’s.
Once they were seated, Nicole looked at her expectantly.
“So you haven’t heard yet?” Rosemary asked.
“No,” Nicole said. “At least, I don’t think so. I have no idea what you’re talking about, and the anticipation is going to give me a premature heart attack.”
“It’s really happening. Laurie Moran called me. The head of the studio approved Susan’s case as Under Suspicion’s next feature. And everyone has signed on: me, you, Madison, Frank Parker, and—color me shocked—Keith Ratner. She even got people who knew Susan from the computer lab.”
“That is wonderful news,” Nicole said, reaching over and briefly clasping Rosemary’s hands in hers.
“Yes, I think so, too. I feel like I pressured you into it, so I wanted to thank you personally.”
“No, no pressure at all. I couldn’t be happier.”
Rosemary had been on an emotional roller coaster ever since she opened Laurie Moran’s letter, but she still felt like Nicole was responding strangely.
“Laurie said they’ll do pre-production interviews with all of us. No cameras, for the most part. Just hearing our side of things so they know what to ask us once they yell ‘action.’ ”
“Sure, no problem.”
Did Rosemary imagine it, or had Nicole’s eyes just moved toward the staircase of her empty house? “You’re happy about this, aren’t you, Nicole? I mean, you and Madison were the only people my daughter ever lived with besides her parents. And, well, Madison was always sort of the add-on. Whether you wanted to be or not, you were the closest thing to a sister that Susan ever knew.”
Whatever distance Rosemary sensed in Nicole immediately vanished as her eyes began to water. “And for me, too. She was my friend, and she was . . . amazing. I promise you, Rosemary. I will help. Me, you, this show. If there’s any way to find out what happened to Susan, we’re going to do it.”
Now Rosemary was crying, too, but she smiled through the tears. “We’ll show Frank Parker and Keith Ratner what a couple of determined women can do. It has to be one of them, right?”
When Rosemary was ready to leave, Nicole led the way to the front door, and then wrapped her arm around Rosemary’s shoulder as she escorted her down the steep walkway from her front porch to the street.
Rosemary paused to take in the breathtaking view of the valley, all green trees backed by blue hills. “I don’t know whether I’ve ever told you this, Nicole, but I was so worried about you when you decided to leave school. I wondered whether you were, in some way, another victim of what happened to Susan. I’m so happy that things have worked out well for you.”
Nicole gave her a big hug and then patted her on the back. “You drive safe, okay? We have big things to look forward to.”
As Rosemary climbed into the driver’s seat, strapped on her seat belt, and pulled away from the curb, neither woman noticed the person watching them from the cream-colored pickup truck, two houses down.
The truck pulled away from the curb and followed Rosemary south.
23
Martin Collins worked his way down the aisles of his megachurch, conveniently located right off I-110 in the heart of South Los Angeles, shaking hands and offering quick hellos and blessings. He had delivered a rousing sermon to a packed house of four thousand, on their feet, their hands raised to God—and to him. Most could barely make rent or put food on the table, but he saw bills flying when the baskets were passed.
The early days of recruiting new members in tattoo parlors, bike shops, and sketchy bars and painstakingly converting them, reinventing them, were long over.
To see thousands of worshippers enthralled by his every word was exhilarating, but he enjoyed this moment—after the sermons, after the crowd dwindled—even more. This was his chance to speak in person to the church members who were so devoted to him personally that they would wait, sometimes hours, to shake his hand.
He circled back around to the front of the church, sa
ving for last a woman who waited in the front pew. Her name was Shelly. She had first arrived here eighteen months ago, a walk-in who had found a flyer for Advocates for God in the bus station. She was a single mother. Her daughter, Amanda, sat next to her, twelve years old with milky skin and light brown eyes fit for an angel.
Martin reached out to hug Shelly. She rose from the pew and clung to him. “Thank you so much for your words of worship,” she said. “And for the apartment,” she whispered. “We finally have a home of our own.”
Martin barely listened to Shelly’s words. Sweet little Amanda was looking up at him in awe.
Martin had found a way to bring substantial funds into Advocates for God. Because they were now a government-recognized religion, donations were tax-free. And the dollar bills thrown from wallets in a post-sermon fervor were nothing compared to the big money. Martin had mastered a feel-good blend of religious and charitable language that was like a magic recipe for scoring high-dollar philanthropic contributions. He’d found a way to make religion cool, even in Hollywood. Not to mention the huge federal grants he landed with the help of a few like-minded congressmen.
The money allowed the group to back its mission of advocating God’s goodness by helping the poor, including supporting members who needed a safety net. Shelly had whispered her gratitude for a reason. Martin could not provide a roof for every struggling follower—just the special ones, like Shelly and Amanda.
“Still no contact with your sister?” Martin confirmed.
“Absolutely none.”
It had been two months since Martin had convinced Shelly that her sister—the last member of her biological family with whom she had contact, the one who told her she was spending too much time at this new church—was preventing her from having a personal relationship with God.
“And how about you?” he asked little Amanda. “Are you are enjoying the toys we sent over?”
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