The child nodded shyly, then smiled. Oh, how he loved that expression—filled with trust and joy. “Can I get a hug from you, too?” Another nod, followed by a hug. She was still nervous with him. That was okay. These things took time. Now that she and her mother were in an apartment that he paid for, he would increase the amount of time he spent with both mother and daughter.
Martin knew how to lure people in. He had been a psychology major in college. One course had an entire section of the syllabus devoted to battered woman syndrome: the isolation, the power and control, the belief that the batterer is all-powerful and all-knowing.
Martin had earned an A+ on that part of the course. He didn’t need the textbooks and expert explanations. He had seen those characteristics in his own mother, so incapable of stopping his father from hurting her . . . and young Martin. He had understood the connection between fear and dependency so well that at the age of ten, he had vowed that when he was older, he would be the controller. He would never be controlled.
And then one day he was flipping channels in the middle of the night and saw a minister of a megachurch on television, a 900 number scrolling at the bottom of the screen for donations. He made everything sound so black-and-white. Ignore the word of the Lord and burn, or listen—and donate money—to the nice-looking man on the television and earn a place with God. Talk about power.
He started watching that preacher every night, practicing the words and the cadence. He researched the IRS rules for religions. He learned about faith-based grants, which allowed churches to get government money by administering charitable programs. He whitened his teeth, joined a tanning center, and printed glossy brochures promising people closeness to God by helping the poor.
The only problem had been the police. They didn’t have any proof yet, but Martin’s predilections had come to the attention of Nebraska law enforcement, and he was tired of their slowing down when they passed his house or saw him near a playground. Off he went to Southern California, filled with lots of sunshine, money, and people searching for a way to feel good about themselves. Advocates for God was born.
And though he clothed himself in religiosity, he knew that the keys to his power had been learned in his own household, watching the way his father controlled his mother.
Ingredient number one: fear. This part was easy. Martin didn’t have to hurt anyone. A nondenominational yet fervently religious church like Advocates for God tended to attract people who were already afraid of the world as they knew it. They wanted easy answers, and he would happily oblige.
Number two: power and control. Martin was the “supreme” Advocate for God, a direct vessel for the voice of God. He, in short, was their god. When he spoke, they listened. That aspect of the church had earned AG more than its share of detractors, but Martin didn’t need everyone in the world to believe. He had sixteen thousand church members and counting, and a track record of raising more than four hundred dollars per year per follower. The math worked.
Number three: isolation. No friends, family members, or other people to interfere with AG’s hold. Early on, this had been Martin’s biggest challenge, and he had learned his lesson with Nicole. Now he was more selective, forcing church members to earn their way into AG’s inner circle with years of loyalty. Until they knew too much about AG’s finances, he could afford to let people walk away.
His cell phone buzzed in his front pocket. He retrieved it and looked at the screen. It was Steve reporting from up north.
“I have to get this,” he explained to Shelly. “But I’ll check in on you tomorrow.”
“That would be nice,” the woman said, giving him another hug. Martin patted little Amanda on the head. Her hair was soft and warm. If he timed his visit right the next day, she would be home from school, before Shelly left the janitorial job he had found for her at an office building.
He answered as he made his way to the room’s rear exit. “Yes?”
“Nicole had a visitor to her house today, the first in the time I’ve been watching. A woman, must have been seventysomething, driving a Volvo. I followed her to a neighborhood called Castle Crossings, outside of Oakland. Looks pretty nice. Maybe it’s her mother?”
“No, her mother died in Irvine a few years ago.” Martin slipped through a fire door into the stairwell for privacy. “Did you get a name?”
“Not yet. It’s a gated community. Not to worry—Keepsafe has plenty of alarms here, so I can get past the entrance. I know the car and the license plate. I’ll find her house tomorrow and get an ID.”
Sometimes Martin thought about how easy it would be to collect dirt on his potential enemies if he had a police officer or two in his inner circle. A cop could run the plate in seconds. But cops weren’t wired to succumb to Martin’s formula. He had considered simply bribing someone to be on his payroll, but he figured any cop who would take a bribe would sell him out in a heartbeat.
Once Under Suspicion started filming, Martin could rely on Keith Ratner to find out what, if anything, Nicole planned to say about Advocates for God. But until then, all Martin could do was wait and take whatever drops of information Steve could gather.
“Very well,” he said. “Thank you, Steve.”
Once Steve hung up, Martin threw his phone so hard that the sound of the screen shattering echoed through the vacant stairwell.
24
When Laurie’s eyes blinked open the next morning, she took a moment to realize that she was back in her own bed, not on a plane or catnapping in her office. The digital clock read 5:58. She couldn’t remember the last time she woke up before the sound of her alarm. Crashing at 8:30 the previous night had certainly helped.
As she turned the alarm to OFF, she heard the clinking sounds of dishes in the kitchen. Timmy, as usual, was already awake. He was so much like his father that way, up and at ’em first thing in the morning. She recognized the smell of toast. She still couldn’t believe her little boy could make his own breakfast.
A crack of light broke the darkness of her bedroom, and she saw Timmy backlit in the doorway, holding a tray. “Mommy,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”
“Indeed, I am.” She turned on the lamp on her nightstand.
“Look what I have for you.” He walked slowly, his gaze fixed on the rim of a glass filled with orange juice, then rested the tray gently on the bed. The toast was crispy, just as she liked it, already slathered with butter and strawberry jam. The tray was one of two that had been her fifth-anniversary gift to Greg—made of wood, as tradition called for. They never had the chance to use them together.
She patted the empty spot on the bed next to her, and Timmy crawled in. She pulled him in tight for a hug. “What did I do to deserve breakfast in bed?”
“I could tell you were sleepy last night. You were hardly awake when you tucked me in.”
“I can’t get much past you, can I?” She took a bite of toast, and he giggled as she used her tongue to catch a wayward drip of jam.
“Mommy?”
“Hmm-hmm?”
“Are you going to keep flying to California for work?”
She felt her heart sink. The first Under Suspicion had featured a case in Westchester County. She’d been home every night. But this show required a change in geography. She hadn’t even thought about explaining all of this to the son who was apparently already feeling the impact of her travel.
She returned her toast to her plate and pulled Timmy close again. “You know my show tries to help people who’ve lost loved ones, like we lost your daddy, right?”
He nodded. “So bad guys like Blue Eyes might get caught. Like how Grandpa used to be a police officer.”
“Well, I’m not quite as heroic as that, but we do our best. This time, we are helping a woman in California. Someone took her daughter, Susan, from her twenty years ago. Susan is the focus of our next show. And, yes, I’ll need to be in California for a little while.”
“Twenty years is a long time ago. More than twice as old as me.” H
e was looking at his toes, wriggling out from beneath the sheets.
“Grandpa will be here with you full-time.”
“Except Grandpa said you couldn’t even call the other night because of time zones. And then when you got home, you were so sleepy, you almost fell asleep at dinner.”
She’d spent all these years since Greg’s death terrified for their safety, convinced that Blue Eyes would carry out his threat against them. Her son’s anxiety over having his mother spend time away from the house for her career wasn’t even on her radar. She had lived so long in warrior-widow mode that she’d never processed the guilt of being a regular working, single mother. She felt tears pooling in her eyes but blinked them away before he could see them.
“I always take care of us, don’t I?”
“You, me, and Grandpa. We take care of each other,” Timmy answered matter-of-factly.
“Then trust me. I’m going to figure this out. I can work and be your mom, all at one time, okay? And you always come first. No matter what.” This time, she couldn’t stop the tears. She laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “Look what happens when this sweet boy makes breakfast in bed. Mom gets all sappy.”
He laughed and handed her the glass of juice. “Time to brush my teeth,” he announced. “Can’t be late.”
He sounded like her now. All the pieces of the Cinderella Murder show were in place and she couldn’t help thinking about what her father said about putting herself in the company of a killer. An involuntary shudder went through her. A working mother’s guilt was the least of her worries.
25
The host at Le Bernardin greeted Laurie with a warm handshake. “Ms. Moran. I saw your name in the book. What a pleasure to welcome you again.”
There was a time when this had been a regular stop for her and Greg on their weekly babysitter nights. Now that she was the sole breadwinner and her usual date for dinner was a fourth grader, the Morans were more likely to opt for hamburgers or pizza than three-star Michelin fare.
But today’s decadent meal was meant to celebrate Brett Young’s official approval for the Susan Dempsey production. And Grace and Jerry were Laurie’s honored lunch guests.
“Three of you today?” the host confirmed.
“Yes, thank you very much.”
“Oh, and here I was hoping I’d get a chance to see that adorable Alex Buckley,” Grace said. “Jerry told me that he agreed to host again.”
“Yes, but just the three of us for lunch, I’m afraid.”
Jerry fit right into their elegant surroundings with his coiffed hair and dark blue suit. But as they were getting seated, Laurie noticed a woman at the next table glaring judgmentally at Grace. It could have been for the poofed-up hair, the heavy makeup, the three pounds of costume jewelry, the micromini hemline, or the five-inch stilettos. Regardless of the reasons, Laurie didn’t like it. She stared straight at the woman until she looked away.
“In any event,” Laurie teased, “don’t you think Alex is a little old for you, Grace? He’s got a dozen years on you.”
“And from what I can tell,” Grace said, “each one has made him better-looking.”
Jerry smiled and shook his head, used to Grace’s boy-crazy talk. “We have bigger fish to fry than your fascination with our host,” he said. “I know you call the shots, Laurie, but I don’t know how plausible it is for us to be flying back and forth to California constantly.”
She thought about Timmy’s wide eyes that morning in bed as he asked her how often she would be going to California. Now that she had convinced Brett Young to approve the Cinderella Murder, there was no turning back.
“I’m with you,” she said. “If you could think of a way to produce the entire show from New York, you’d be my hero for life.”
Grace registered her opinion with a tsk. “Sun. The ocean. Hollywood. Feel free to send me out to do as much work as you need.”
“I’ve started a punch list.” Jerry was the most organized person Laurie had ever met. The key to success, he liked to say, was to plan your work and work your plan. “We can hire an actress who looks like Susan to re-create—probably blurred—the foot chase in the Hollywood Hills.”
“If we do that, we need to be careful not to add any ideas or inferences to what we absolutely know to a certainty,” Laurie said.
“Of course,” Jerry said. “Like, obviously, we wouldn’t show the actress running out of Frank Parker’s house. But we know her body was found, strangled, in Laurel Canyon Park. And based on the discovery of her missing shoe, abrasions to her foot, and the path of flattened grass leading to her body, police believed her killer chased her from the roadway of the park entrance into the park’s interior. That was the part I thought we could re-create, the sprint from the park sign to the place her body was found.”
She nodded her approval.
“The real question,” Grace said, “is how she got to that roadway. Her car was parked on campus.”
“We’ll highlight that, too,” Jerry said. “Photographs from the investigation will suffice, I think. And I’ve already got a forensic pathologist lined up to talk about the physical evidence. A woman named Janice Lane, on the medical school faculty at Stanford. She’s a frequent expert witness and presents well on camera.”
“Excellent,” Laurie said. “Make sure she knows that we don’t include any prurient details. Susan Dempsey’s mother doesn’t need grisly descriptions of her daughter’s death on national television. Dr. Lane’s primary role should be a discussion of the timeline. It was the estimate of the time of death that helped Frank Parker establish an alibi.”
Jerry began to explain. “Based on temperature, lividity, and rigor mortis—”
“Someone’s been brushing up on his science,” Grace said.
“Trust me,” he said, “it’s all Dr. Lane. She makes this stuff sound easy. Anyway, based on the science, the medical examiner estimated that Susan was killed between seven and eleven P.M. on that Saturday night. She was scheduled to arrive at Frank Parker’s house at seven thirty. When she hadn’t arrived by seven forty-five, he called Madison Meyer, who jumped in her car and arrived at the house around eight thirty. According to both Parker and Meyer, she stayed until close to midnight.”
“What were they doing all that time?” Grace asked. From the look of her arched brow, she had her theories.
“I’m not sure that’s our business,” Jerry said, “unless it has something to do with Susan Dempsey’s death.”
“You’re no fun.”
Laurie made a time-out sign with her hands. “Focus on the facts, guys. According to Frank and Madison, he made the decision to cast her within an hour. He was so excited about it that he wanted to show her the short film that was the basis for Beauty Land and talk more about the project. He hadn’t eaten yet so he ordered takeout; a pizza delivery record from nine thirty P.M. backed that up.”
Grace whispered a thank-you to the waiter who refilled her water glass. “But if Susan could have died any time between seven and eleven, and Madison didn’t get to Frank’s until eight thirty, she’s not really a full alibi. Where was he between seven and eight thirty?”
“Except you’ve got to take all the evidence into account,” Jerry reminded her. “Susan was due to arrive at Frank’s at seven thirty. The idea is that there’s no way Frank could have gotten into a chase with Susan, killed her, taken Susan’s car back to the UCLA campus, and returned to his house, all before Madison arrived an hour later. Not to mention, placing a phone call to Susan’s cell and then to Madison at the dorm room in the middle of it all. If Madison’s telling the truth, Frank’s in the clear.”
“Still,” Laurie said, “the whole alibi seems fishy to me: it seems hard to believe that Frank called another actress fifteen minutes after Susan was supposed to arrive, and that she just hopped in her car immediately.”
“Ah, but it does make sense,” Jerry said, “when Frank Parker is notoriously obsessed with punctuality. He has fired people for showing up fi
ve minutes late. And we saw how obsessed Madison is with being famous. If someone dangled a studio film in front of her and said jump, she’d ask how high.”
Grace still wasn’t fully sold on the theory. “But you also saw how she fixed her lipstick just to answer the door at her ratty house. I can only imagine the work she’d put into looking good for Frank Parker.”
“See?” Laurie said. “These are all the things we have to establish in our initial interviews with them. We go first for a gentle retelling of whatever version of the story they gave back then. See if we can catch them in an inconsistency.”
“When do we bring Alex in?” Grace asked, smiling.
“You are singular in your focus today, aren’t you?” Laurie asked. “Brett Young has approved a budget to cover screening interviews with every participant, followed by what we’ll call our summit session: back-to-back interviews, all in the same location. That’s when Alex swoops in for the tough questions, after we’ve done our groundwork.”
“For that part,” Jerry said, “I thought we’d rent a house near campus, something big enough for the whole production team. That will save us money on lodging, and then we can use the house as the location for the interviews with Alex.”
Laurie wasn’t sure how she felt about living with all her coworkers, but from a financial perspective, she couldn’t argue with Jerry’s logic. “Sounds like a plan,” she said. “If nothing else, I’d say we’ve already earned this delicious lunch.”
As the waiter recited elaborate food descriptions from memory, Laurie nodded along politely, but her thoughts were spinning as she envisioned all the work they had in front of them. She had guaranteed Brett Young the best Under Suspicion possible. And, just this morning, she had given her word to her nine-year-old son that she would do it all while being a full-time mother.
How could she possibly keep both promises?
26
Lydia Levitt sat cross-legged on the sofa in her living room, her laptop perched across her knees. She typed a final period and then proofread her online review of Rustic Tavern, the restaurant she and Rosemary had selected for lunch the previous day. She deleted the last period and replaced it with an exclamation point. I will definitely be back—five stars! She hit the ENTER key, satisfied.
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