The Cinderella Murder

by Mary Higgins Clark

  “Was Collins there?” Laurie asked.

  “Two gunshot wounds. Steve Roman was trying to kill him, but they think he’ll live. The police found a videotape collection in Collins’s bedroom. It looks like whatever child Nicole saw him with twenty years ago wasn’t his only victim. Collins may survive, but he’ll never get out of prison. And speaking of video, Reilly said to thank you, Laurie, for the tip about Dwight Cook’s boat. Turns out it was packed with surveillance equipment too, just like the house. Once again, Under Suspicion is bringing some much-deserved justice.”

  “So does it show what happened the night Dwight died?”

  “Not yet. It’s all digital, so they’ve got a computer tech trying to find where the video files may have been uploaded. If you don’t mind getting everyone back to the house in the SUV, I’ll take the rental car to meet Reilly. I want to make triple sure there’s no reason for us to fear some other crazy church member following in Steve Roman’s footsteps.”

  Laurie assured him they’d be fine in one car. He hugged her good-bye, whispering, “I’m proud of you, baby girl.”

  When she turned back to Jerry, his eyes were closed. It was time for them to go, too. She gave him a gentle kiss on the forehead before following Alex into the hall.

  Laurie was quiet as they rode the hospital elevator to the lobby level. She was elated that they’d nailed Collins, a fraud and, worse, a pedophile. But when this all started, she had made a promise to Rosemary to do her best to find Susan’s killer.

  Laurie couldn’t imagine losing a child. Twenty years later, and Rosemary still went to bed with haunting images of her only daughter running through a park with one bare foot, her necklace being torn from her throat in a violent struggle for her life.

  The realization came with the ding that sounded as the elevator doors parted. “The necklace,” she said aloud.

  72

  “What about a necklace?” Alex asked as they stepped out of the elevator.

  “I don’t know. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Come on, Laurie. I know you. I can tell when you’re working on a theory. It’s that kind of hunch that Leo calls your cop instinct. Is this about Susan’s necklace? The one found near her body?”

  “Just give me two minutes to work it out in my head, okay?” She could barely hang on to the various threads of thought starting to knit together in her mind. She didn’t want to lose her momentum by trying to spell it all out prematurely. “Can you round up Grace and Timmy from the cafeteria? I’ll get the car from the garage and swing around front.”

  “Aye-aye, Captain. But I’m dragging that hunch out of you once we hit the road. You know my interrogation skills,” he added with a smile.

  As she walked to the parking garage, she pulled up Nicole’s number on her phone and dialed, holding her breath, hoping that she would answer.

  She did. “Laurie, did you hear the news? Martin Collins was shot.”

  “I know, but I need to talk to you about something else.” Laurie got right to the point. “You said that Susan was rummaging for her lucky necklace when you argued about Keith and the church. Did she find it?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I really don’t remember after all these years. So much else happened later that day.”

  “Think, Nicole. It’s important.”

  “Um, she was running around, opening drawers and searching in her bedsheets and behind the sofa cushions. That’s right: she was digging through the couch in our common area when I got so mad I threw my book at her. Then she stormed out. So I’m just about sure she didn’t find it.”

  “Thanks, Nicole. That’s a big help.”

  Susan had fled her dorm room without her necklace but had been wearing it by the time she was killed. Where would she have gone? That had been the question that Alex had pressed with Keith, Nicole, and Madison. And that had been the question that Dwight Cook kept replaying on the surveillance video before his death.

  Laurie thought about her own habit of taking off her jewelry when she was busy at her desk. She believed she knew where Susan had found her lucky necklace.

  She pulled up another name on her phone and hit ENTER.

  Alex answered after two rings. “Hey, I just found Grace and Timmy. We’ll meet you out front.”

  “Okay, I’m walking into the garage and am about to lose my signal. Can you do me a favor and call Madison? Remember how she said she sent a sexy note to some love interest to pick her up at the dorm but he never showed? Can you ask her who the guy was?”

  “This is for your theory, right? Just tell me, Laurie.”

  “Call Madison first. It’s the last piece of the puzzle, I promise. See you in a jiff.”

  As she beeped the Land Cruiser’s locks open, she already knew in her gut what name Madison would give Alex.

  Richard Hathaway.

  73

  Richard Hathaway stepped out of his SUV. He could not believe his good luck.

  He had dashed from the restaurant after Madison mentioned the hidden cameras at the Bel Air house. Two years ago, Dwight had installed the same technology at the REACH offices and his Palo Alto home. Now it turned out that he’d also wired his parents’ house in L.A. Had he gone so far as to wire his boats?

  Yes, Hathaway thought, it would be exactly like Dwight to order the job for all his property at once, and he cared about his boats at least as much as that empty house in Bel Air.

  And if the boat Dwight had used last night was equipped with hidden cameras, had they been on when Hathaway stepped onto the cruiser for his scheduled dive with Dwight? Had the cameras recorded Dwight as he angrily accused Hathaway of killing Susan, insisting nonsensically that he’d figured it out by watching “the video”? Had they filmed Hathaway as he smothered Dwight with a life vest and then staged his body to appear in the water as a scuba accident? Had the police found the footage yet?

  These were the questions that had swirled through his head as he drove from the restaurant, circling aimlessly through Hollywood, too panicked to go home or even to REACH’s jet in case the police were waiting for him.

  Instead, he’d gone to the storage unit he’d been renting for two decades to grab his “go bag,” containing false identification, fifty thousand dollars, and a gun. He had identical bags in separate storage facilities in five different California cities, waiting in the event this day ever came.

  But now that the moment he had been dreading was actually here, he realized he did not want to run. He had enjoyed the success of the last twenty years, and it was all about to improve further, as he was poised to become the new CEO of REACH. If he had even a shred of a chance to stay in this life, he was going to seize it.

  At least he now understood Dwight’s reference to a video. Something Dwight saw on the surveillance footage of that stupid TV production had alerted him to Hathaway’s role in Susan’s death.

  He had to figure out what Laurie Moran knew and then silence her—and anyone else necessary—for good.

  Parked on the street outside the Bel Air house, he saw an older man, a little boy, and the woman named Grace pile into a car. It was simple enough to follow them.

  Once in the parking garage outside the hospital, Hathaway watched as Laurie and Alex pulled in a few minutes later in a black Land Cruiser. Since then, he’d been waiting, planning his next move.

  Now Hathaway had caught two lucky breaks. The first was when Laurie’s father, an ex-cop who was probably armed, had driven away from the hospital alone. At the sight of his leaving, Hathaway had experienced the same sense of relief he’d felt the moment Susan strapped on her seat belt on the night she died.

  • • •

  It had been May 7, a Saturday. Hathaway had asked Dwight to meet him in the lab because no one else would be there that night.

  He wanted to talk to Dwight alone about REACH. Hathaway had created a search technology with the potential to revolutionize the way people found information on the Internet. It was worth thirty times mor
e than a professor could make in a lifetime of teaching. But technically, even though Hathaway had invented REACH, the idea didn’t belong to him. He was owned by UCLA, which in turn owned anything he created during his employment there.

  But students were in a different position. Students, unlike faculty who were paid a salary, owned their own intellectual property. And given Dwight Cook’s invaluable assistance with the code, who was to say that REACH wasn’t the sole invention of the young genius?

  Hathaway had been so focused on making his pitch to Dwight—convincing him that this technology could change the world and that it would be wasted in the hands of UCLA—that he almost didn’t notice Susan watching them in his peripheral vision. But then he turned to see her standing by her desk near the door, looking as he’d never seen her before—her hair and makeup perfect, in a yellow halter dress. He had known immediately from the way she was rushing out of the lab that she had overheard their conversation.

  Why had she been there on a Saturday? Why did she have to walk in unexpectedly at that very moment?

  Hathaway knew he needed to stop her. He needed to provide a context for what she’d overheard. He said, “Dwight, stay here where it’s quiet and think about it. I’ll call you later.” Hathaway then ran after Susan, catching up to her as she was walking toward Bruin Plaza.

  “Susan, can I have a word with you?”

  When she turned, she had a necklace in her hand. “I have an audition. I have to go.”

  “Please, I just want to explain. You don’t understand.”

  “Of course I do. Everyone I know is disappointing me today. It’s like I don’t really know anyone. I can’t deal with this now. I have to be in the Hollywood Hills in an hour. And my jinx of a car is back at the dorm and probably won’t even start.”

  “Let me drive you. Please. We can talk on the ride there. Or not. Whatever you want.”

  “How will I even get home?”

  “I’ll wait. Or you can call a cab. Whatever you’d like.”

  He thought back to that two-second pause as she pondered her options. He just needed her to get in the car, and he was certain he could convince her that what he was doing was the right thing.

  “Okay,” she agreed. “We can talk. And honestly, I just need a ride.”

  When Susan strapped on her seat belt and began putting on her necklace, he was certain he’d avoided a potential crisis.

  But that moment of relief had been fleeting. Once he started to drive, he laid out the same argument for her that he’d offered to Dwight Cook. The bureaucrats in the UCLA administration could never begin to understand the potential of this technology. It would be tied up for years awaiting layers of approval, while competitors in the private sector worked at a rapid-fire pace. Besides, crediting Dwight with the technology was only a thin stretch of the truth, given how much programming work he’d put into the project.

  He was certain Susan would go along, either out of dedication to technological development or to support Dwight. If worst came to worst, he would offer her a cut of the action. But Susan was too principled and, more important, too smart. Her father was an intellectual property lawyer. She knew from his work how important the creator of technology was to its development. In her eyes, Hathaway’s plan was not only stealing from the university but from potential investors.

  “With dot-coms,” she had argued, “the face of the company is half of the product. You’re leading people to think that a creative genius like Dwight—someone who doesn’t care in the least about money, someone who looks at the world and sees only the best—was the seed for all this. That he’ll be calling the shots. That’s fundamentally a different company from one run by you. It’s fraud.”

  He began to slow at the curves, buying time to build his case. “But a company run by me would be worth more,” he had insisted. “I have more experience. I’m a tenured professor. I don’t have Dwight’s personality quirks.”

  “The tech market loves quirks,” she had said. “Besides, it’s not simply a matter of dollar value. It’s just dishonest. Aren’t we getting close now? Why are you slowing down?”

  When they were half a mile from her audition, he pulled the car to the side of the road. “Susan, you can’t tell anyone what you heard. It will ruin my career.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have done it. You offered to drive me to my audition. I’ve heard you out. Now I need to get to my appointment.”

  “Not until you understand—”

  Just like that, she was out of the car, determined to make the rest of the trip on foot. He had to go after her. She ran faster in those heels than he would have thought possible. By the time he caught up with her in the park, one of her shoes had fallen off.

  His first move had been to grab her by the arm. “You’re being naive.” He was still trying to persuade her. Why couldn’t she be as gullible as Dwight?

  And before he knew it, she was beneath him, hitting him, kicking at him. Sometimes he even convinced himself he couldn’t remember what happened afterward.

  But of course he did.

  Once it was over, he made a quick decision that his best option was to leave her body. All her friends knew she was coming up here for an audition, so hopefully that would distract the investigation.

  He called Dwight immediately, not long past seven o’clock, asking him to meet at Hamburger Haven to explore his suggestion further. If anyone ever asked, Dwight could vouch for his whereabouts for all but this short window of time.

  Just as he hoped, the investigation had focused on Frank Parker, with Susan’s boyfriend, Keith, the alternative suspect. For twenty years, he was convinced he’d gotten away with it, until he arrived at Dwight’s boat last night. Now here he was, wondering how much Laurie Moran knew.

  And that was the second piece of good luck to come in Hathaway’s direction. First, the ex-cop had driven away. And now here was Laurie Moran, keys in hand, all by herself.

  74

  As Laurie walked through the parking garage toward the Land Cruiser, she realized that the clues pointing to Hathaway had been there all along. Susan had fled her dorm room after her fight with Nicole, eager to find her lucky necklace before her audition. Where would she have gone? To her desk at the lab.

  And what would she have seen when she got there?

  Laurie wasn’t certain about this part yet, but if Susan went into the lab on a Saturday, she could have walked in on a moment that Hathaway assumed would be private. Maybe she’d caught him in one of those rumored liaisons with a female student or in the midst of some kind of academic impropriety. Hathaway could have talked Susan into getting into his car to discuss whatever she’d seen, especially since her own car had been acting up and she was set on getting to her audition.

  Hathaway claimed to have been with Dwight the night Susan was killed, but the timeline was hazy, and now Dwight was dead. There was no way to know with certainty where Hathaway was that evening, but that’s where the phone call to Madison came in.

  Laurie realized what had been nagging her about her conversation with Madison after Laurie spotted Hathaway leaving Madison’s hotel room. Madison had said that she had nothing to hide now that they were both grown-ups. She said they were rekindling. This wasn’t a new relationship for them.

  Laurie was certain that once Alex called Madison, she would confirm that Hathaway was the love interest who never showed up to her dorm room the night Susan was murdered. He never showed up because he was killing Susan in Laurel Canyon Park.

  She opened the car door and paused to glance at her cell phone. No signal, as she suspected. Oh well, she thought, once I pull around to the hospital entrance, Alex can tell me if he reached Madison.

  She had just slipped her cell phone in the pocket of the driver’s-side door when she felt a hard object pressed against her back. In the side-view mirror, she saw the reflection of Hathaway standing behind her.

  “Get in,” he ordered, shoving her behind the wheel. Keeping the gun on her, he c
limbed over her into the passenger seat. “Now drive!”

  75

  Alex knew there was no stopping Laurie once her mind was on a mission. So when she asked him to call Madison about the identity of the love interest who turned down her invitation the night of Susan’s murder, he did, even though he did not understand the significance.

  “Madison,” Alex said once he had her on the phone, “you sent a note to someone inviting him to see you the night Susan was killed. We’d like to know who that was, if you don’t mind.”

  Alex was shocked when she responded, “Professor Hathaway. We’d had some flirtatious interactions already, so I thought we might spend a Saturday night together. But he was a complete and total no-show. No phone call, no nada. It’s the kind of slight I take seriously—I blew him off after that and never spoke to him again. Until two days ago.”

  “Thanks, Madison,” Alex said. “That’s helpful.”

  Alex could see now the theory Laurie had been mulling over. From what they’d heard about Hathaway, he wasn’t the type to have ignored a beautiful young woman’s overture.

  Then Alex realized why Laurie had mentioned the necklace. Susan had been searching for her lucky necklace during the argument with Nicole. From there, she might have gone to Hathaway’s lab to look for it.

  He found himself fiddling anxiously as he waited for Laurie to pull the car around so they could connect all the dots.

  “Mom just turned the wrong way,” Timmy said.

  They were standing just inside the double doors of the hospital exit.

  “You saw your mother?” Grace asked.

  “She’s over there,” he said while pointing to an SUV heading to the hospital exit. “Is that Grandpa in the car with her?”