The Cinderella Murder

by Mary Higgins Clark

  It was probably good he’d completed these tens of times before. Dwight was at his best when he kept a routine. Eight A.M. wake-up. Coffee. Three-mile jog. Cereal with fruit. Work. The occasional dinner with Hathaway. Reading. Sleep. Repeat.

  Ever since Nicole had appeared at REACH with the news that Under Suspicion would be featuring Susan’s case, that routine had been disrupted. Once he found out who killed Susan, his life could return to normal.

  And in the meantime, he needed a reprieve in the water. Just three more days before he could dive.

  44

  Madison Meyer pushed open the door marked 2F. “I cannot . . . believe . . . that this dorm is still here. It was new at the time, but, wow, is it dated now.”

  The building was three stories of blond brick, divided into efficient suites. Every campus in America had similar dormitories from the same era. This was the triple room that Susan, Nicole, and Madison had shared sophomore year.

  “Hey, guy in the black baseball cap.” Madison was pointing to one of the cameramen. “I’m turned this way for a reason. Please don’t move around to my right side. I told you it’s not a good angle for me.”

  “We have all your requests from your agent,” Grace said flatly.

  Laurie could tell that Grace wanted to put Madison the diva in her place, New York City style. Jerry would have had more patience but had stayed at the house in Bel Air to stage the upcoming summit sessions. “I think what Grace is trying to say,” Laurie gently offered, “is that we take care of all of that during editing. Besides, most of your camera time will be at the summit session.”

  “And, yes,” Grace added, “we’ll have someone there for hair and makeup. And vegetarian options for all meals. And the brand of bottled water you requested.”

  Alex Buckley placed a hand gently on Grace’s shoulder. “And now I think Grace is trying to say that your agent did a very good job by you.”

  Grace and Madison both laughed at the line. Laurie would never stop marveling at the way attention from a good-looking man could make some women forget everything else.

  Temporarily assuaged, Madison continued with her tour of the dorm room. Laurie would have preferred to have both Nicole and Madison here, but Nicole had been reluctant to extend her trip down to Los Angeles before the summit session. The one upside to Nicole’s absence was that they might be able to get Madison to open up about what Nicole had been like when they were dormmates. Laurie was determined to uncover whatever Nicole had been holding back.

  Once they were finished with the walk-through, Laurie asked Madison how she came to live with Susan and Nicole as sophomores, after the two others were assigned as roommates freshman year.

  “Let’s just say they were luckier on the freshman-roommate draw than I had been. The woman I roomed with first year was a real piece of work. Her own family called her Taz. As in, the Tasmanian Devil. All she had to do was walk in a room, and it was as if a tornado had blown in. She was loud and obnoxious and would borrow my clothes without asking. A nightmare in every way. So, no, we were not going to be one of those pairs, like Susan and Nicole, who would stick together like glue going forward. When the housing lottery opened for the next year, I let everyone who would listen know that I wanted to pair up. Susan asked if I wanted in with her and Nicole.”

  “How did you know Susan?” Laurie asked.

  “From the theater department.”

  “I’ve heard that the two of you were rivals of sorts. You ended up competing for the same parts, given your physical resemblance.”

  “You know what they say. Sometimes you need a competitor to bring out your best.”

  “Was that odd for you, to live with your rival? Plus, I assume by then they had their own rhythm as a twosome. Did you ever feel like a third wheel?”

  “Forgive me if this sounds cocky,” Madison said, looking directly at Alex, “but I have never felt redundant. It’s just not how I’m programmed. But, sure, if you’re asking if sometimes I felt like I was the odd woman out, there were certainly times. Little things, like teasing me about being too flirtatious. We all have a little mean girl in us, and Susan and Nicole weren’t above giving me the occasional cold shoulder.”

  Laurie could sense resentment beneath Madison’s otherwise cautious words, but the petty feuds that arose among friends weren’t usually grounds for murder. It was time to move on to issues that had been raised during other interviews.

  “Do you happen to recall what Susan was working on in the computer lab?” Laurie asked.

  Madison answered without a pause. “A dictation program. She got the idea because her father would often work at home on the weekend, using a dictation machine to draft motions and briefs. But then he’d have to wait until Monday for a secretary to do the typing.”

  In addition to Dwight and Professor Hathaway, Nicole and Rosemary had also confirmed the nature of Susan’s work. It was clear that Dwight Cook had not stolen the idea for REACH from Susan, as Keith Ratner had suggested.

  But then there were also the rumors about Professor Hathaway being romantically involved with students. Laurie had spent last night trawling the Internet for more information about Hathaway. From what she could tell, even though he initially left UCLA to pursue opportunities in the private sector, his only work since then had been for REACH and had been extremely lucrative. She had even found some trade journals speculating that Hathaway was the real brains behind the operation, while Dwight provided the kind of young, quirky persona that investors were looking for in the early dot-com years. But she had found nothing more about allegations of on-campus dalliances.

  “How about Susan’s relationship with her boyfriend?” Laurie asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Madison said offhandedly, “that guy. What was his name again?”

  “Keith Ratner.” It struck Laurie as peculiar that Madison wouldn’t remember Keith, especially since both of them had gone on to have some success as actors.

  “Right. The two of them were high school sweethearts. Totally devoted to each other.”

  “Really?” Alex said. “Because we’ve been told that Keith may have had an eye for other girls.”

  “Not that I ever noticed.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that Susan could have been seeing someone else besides Keith?” Laurie asked.

  On this point, Madison was more emphatic. “Absolutely not. She wasn’t like that. Besides, she just wasn’t that into dating. I mean, she had a boyfriend, but even Keith wasn’t really a top priority. She was into school and her work and theater. It’s like Keith was her fourth priority, like they were some old married couple.”

  Laurie noticed that Madison was looking directly at Alex again. Why didn’t she come right out and say it: I would never be boring. I make men my priority. She was so obvious.

  “And what about Nicole?” Laurie asked.

  “What about her?”

  “Rosemary tells me what a good friend Nicole was to her daughter, but sometimes mothers don’t know every detail of a child’s life while she’s away for college. Like you said, we all have a little mean girl in us. Were Nicole and Susan ever mean with each other?”

  “Funny. I can’t remember anyone asking about Nicole after Susan was killed. The whole focus was on Frank and me. I’ll be honest. I didn’t like Nicole very much, and I assume the feeling was mutual. But if she was going to kill someone, it would’ve been me, not her beloved Susan. That was a joke, by the way. She wouldn’t kill anyone. And neither would I, and neither would Frank Parker.”

  “So who does that leave as a suspect?” Alex asked.

  “I’ve always thought the key to finding her killer was figuring out how she got up to Laurel Canyon. Her car was still on campus.” She looked out the window and pointed to a parking lot behind the dorm. “Just back there.”

  Alex paused to follow her gaze out the window but already had the follow-up question locked and loaded. “People have suggested—”

  “That Frank did it, I covered
up for him, and one or both of us drove her car back to campus afterward. But I am one of two people in the very unique position to know that didn’t happen. Susan’s car had been giving her trouble, so I’ve always wondered if she accepted a ride with somebody to avoid the risk of a breakdown.”

  Laurie didn’t remember seeing anything in the police reports about car problems. “Was her car not working?”

  “It was—what was the word she’d use? One of those SAT words for being moody. ‘Mercurial’! She loved that word.”

  As Laurie thought through the possibilities, she realized that this tiny detail about Susan’s car could be significant. The reconstruction of Susan’s timeline on the day of her death had been built around the assumption that she would have driven herself from campus to Frank Parker’s for the audition. Based on that assumption, the likely killer was either Frank or someone she might have been with prior to her audition. But what if she had gotten into someone else’s car on her way to Frank’s?

  As if reading her mind, Alex asked, “Do you think Susan would take a ride from a stranger?”

  Madison shrugged. “I can’t see it, unless she was late and really desperate. But sometimes we don’t think of strangers as strangers, you know? Maybe someone she recognized from campus offered her a lift? And then she didn’t realize he was a creep until it was too late.”

  Or, Laurie thought, the someone was her boyfriend, Keith Ratner, just as her mother thought from the very beginning.

  Alex was shifting gears to another topic. “You mentioned being one of only two people who knew for certain where you and Frank Parker were that night,” he said. “How has it felt for you all of these years, to have people question your credibility?”

  “Obviously, it’s horrible, and frustrating, and infuriating. It’s not that complicated: I got a call from a critically acclaimed director saying that another UCLA student stood him up and would I be willing to read on short notice. I knew the other student was Susan and figured she must have chickened out or something. So I thought, Her loss, my gain. I hopped in my car and went straight there. I stayed until close to midnight. You know the police checked his phone records, right? And we had pizza delivered around nine thirty, and that was confirmed too. And yet people who have never met me are essentially calling me a liar, based on absolutely no evidence.”

  It was true that the police investigation confirmed the pizza delivery, but the delivery boy had no idea whether the man who paid for the pizza at the door was alone or with company. Phone records also confirmed the fact that Frank placed a call to the phone in Madison’s dorm room, but, as Madison had noted, only the two of them knew what was said during the call or what transpired afterward.

  “You just happened to be home on a Saturday night?” Laurie interjected. She had thought from the very beginning that something was odd about Madison’s account of the evening. Just last week, Madison had made them wait on her porch while she freshened her lipstick. Would she really hop into her car on no notice for an audition?

  But now that Laurie had a better sense of who Madison was, she saw the wrinkle that had bothered her. “I got the impression you had a busy social life back then. It’s hard to imagine that you’d be in your dorm, standing around, when the phone rang at seven forty-five on a Saturday night.”

  “I wasn’t feeling well that night.”

  “And yet you were well enough to get in your car for an audition? I can’t imagine you went to Frank Parker’s house wearing sweats and no makeup.”

  Madison smiled, again directly at Alex even though Laurie was firing the questions. “Of course not. And I was never sitting around my dorm on Friday and Saturday nights. That particular Saturday? I was supposed to go to a Sigma Alpha Epsilon party, so, yes, I was looking my best. But then I wasn’t feeling well—as I said—so I thought I might stay home. Then Frank called, and I just happened to be dolled up and ready to go. I hopped in my car and got a fantastic role. I mean, I won a Spirit Award, but people still want to believe I only got that role because I vouched for Frank. But I earned it.”

  “But the role might have gone to Susan if she hadn’t been killed.”

  “You don’t think that put a huge cloud over the entire experience for me? Susan and I were competitors, but we were also friends. Everyone seems to forget that. How many times do I have to say this? I got Frank’s call at seven forty-five, I went straight to his place, I was with him from eight thirty to midnight, we got pizza around nine thirty, and then I came home. I had nothing to do with Susan’s death.”

  45

  Laurie let Grace do the driving back to Bel Air. She never got the chance to drive in New York City and was enjoying the experience, despite the hideous Los Angeles traffic.

  “So what do you think?” Laurie asked once they were on the road. Alex had climbed into the SUV’s backseat before Laurie could protest.

  Grace was the first to offer an opinion. “Uh-uh, I’m not buying it. That line about her and Susan being friends? Maybe so, but just as quickly, she was all, I won a Spirit Award, and I earned it. I’m sorry, but that’s cold.” She was waving one finger around in the air for emphasis, and Laurie felt the car swerve within the lane.

  “Grace, two hands on the wheel, please.”

  “Sorry, I just get a little worked up by that woman. And that timeline? Whoa, did that sound rehearsed. Seven forty-five, eight thirty, nine thirty, midnight, like a little wind-up doll.”

  Laurie agreed on both points. Madison had stood by her alibi of Frank Parker, but it was almost too good. Every detail of her recollection of that night was absolutely consistent with the version she had given police twenty years ago. That was not how real memories worked. They evolved over time, some pieces deteriorating while others crystallized. Details got muddled and mutated. But Madison had nailed every line, as if she were acting.

  “The one inconsistency I did catch,” Laurie noted, “was at first she said she was home because she was sick. Then when I asked how she could have left so quickly for the audition, she said she was going to a frat party but then thought she was sick, and then Frank happened to call when she was still prettied up. It sounds convoluted to me.”

  “And a frat party?” Grace said skeptically. “Please. I may not have known Madison Meyer twenty years ago, but I can’t picture her hanging out with the campus Greeks. Something’s not right.”

  Laurie’s thoughts were interrupted by her phone buzzing. Two new voice messages had come in while her cell was turned off during the shoot.

  “Hi, this is Tammy from Advocates for God. You left a message last night for Reverend Collins about an old police investigation? The reverend apologizes that his schedule did not permit him to return your call personally, but he asked me to call you. He says police interviewed several of our members at the time, and in his recollection, they verified the whereabouts of the individual you mentioned in your message. He has nothing further to add but suggested that you could contact the police for details.”

  Laurie skipped to the next message. “Ms. Moran, this is Keith Ratner. I wanted to apologize for losing it yesterday. It’s frustrating, to say the least, that people still question me after all these years. But I do want to help if the show will still have me. Give me a call when you have a chance.”

  She hit the RETURN CALL button, and Keith picked up immediately. “You got my message?” he asked.

  “I did, and I feel like I also need to apologize. My tone was sharper than I intended yesterday. And I want to assure you that our show will remain objective. In fact, since we saw you at the bookstore, I looked into your alibi for that night, and we’ve also been exploring every possible theory with the same amount of depth. For what it’s worth, I thought you might want to know that Susan’s mother and both of her roommates all said that Susan was much too devoted to have been involved with anyone but you.”

  She saw no point in telling him that Rosemary’s response to the question had been, “Oh, I would have been thrilled if Susan h
ad stepped out on that jerk.”

  Keith confirmed the address for the summit session in Bel Air and then said good-bye just as they were pulling into the driveway.

  “Pretty boy is back on board?” Grace asked.

  “Careful,” Alex said. “I’m starting to think you call everyone pretty. My feelings are hurt.”

  “Yes,” Laurie reported, “Keith Ratner—a.k.a. Pretty Boy Number Two—is back. But I’m starting to wonder whether he has a point about Rosemary suspecting him for no reason. His alibi is at least as good as Frank’s. He’s got multiple people vouching for him, not just one person who had a lot to gain in sticking by a critically acclaimed director.”

  Alex unstrapped his seat belt as the SUV rolled to a stop. “I don’t think you can ignore the fact that the multiple people belonged to what some have called a brainwashing religion. Advocates for God doesn’t exactly have a squeaky-clean reputation.”

  The sun felt good on Laurie’s face as she stepped down from the front seat. Maybe she could get used to California. The neighborhood was absolutely silent except for the distant sound of a lawn mower and Grace’s voice.

  “And you heard what Madison said about Susan’s car being fickle,” Grace was saying. “If she was worried about a breakdown on her way to the audition, who would she ask for a ride? Her boyfriend, that’s who. Her agent was on the road, driving down to Arizona. So she called Keith. I still say they got into a fight on the way up there, she hopped out of the car, and it got out of control.”

  Once again, Laurie felt like she was swimming through mud. The entire purpose of these early interviews was to crystallize the case so Alex could move in for the kill during the summit session. But they were supposed to start shooting in two days, and she still had no clearer picture of who killed Susan than when she’d first spotted the Cinderella Murder case online. Brett Young would never trust her again with this kind of budget. And more importantly, it was possible that this episode would fail by the only measure that really mattered to her—revealing something new about the investigation.