All Dressed in White (4 page)

“I thought you just said your daughter’s fiancé was an attorney.”

“Yes, and a very bright one at that. He graduated at the top of his class from Fordham Law School. But he didn’t have any family money, nor was he the moneymaking type on his own. Working as a public defender in Brooklyn, he made a third of Amanda’s salary, not to mention her wealthy family’s business. There was no question she would be the one to take the reins if her father ever retired. I hated the idea of a contract preparing for a divorce before you’re even married, but Walter insisted.”

“What was Jeff’s reaction?”

“As a lawyer, he said he completely understood. I was relieved when he happily complied. But then we found out that, in addition to the prenup, Amanda had also drawn up a will a month before the wedding. Walter was so worried about Jeff robbing the family dry if
the marriage didn’t work out, but of course Amanda was free to write her will as she wanted. I think she was so upset at her father over the prenup that she wrote a will as a way to comfort Jeff. She left her trust fund entirely to him.”

“And how much was that?”

“Two million dollars.”

Laurie felt her eyes widen. Sandra wasn’t kidding when she said the family had money. “So has Jeff collected on that? Or is it seven years until someone’s presumed dead?”

“Yes, I understand that is the law. I suppose if her body is found, that jerk of a cop in Florida will win his ten-dollar bet, and Jeff will get two million dollars, plus considerable investment earnings. Or I’m told that he could try to declare Amanda dead at any time and collect that way. If Amanda had canceled the wedding, he would have been left high and dry. No divorce settlement, and no inheritance, because Amanda would have changed her will immediately once she went back to New York.”

“If he was engaged to your daughter, you must have known him well. Did Jeff seem like a dangerous person to you?”

“No. We thought he was a wonderful choice for a husband. He seemed very dedicated to Amanda, loyal to a fault, in fact. But in retrospect, maybe we should have seen the signs. His two best friends, Nick and Austin, as far as I know, are still happy bachelors, always with different women. Birds of a feather flock together, as they say.”

“You think Jeff was unfaithful?”

“It certainly seems possible, given the timing with Meghan.”

Laurie glanced at the notepad on the coffee table. “Meghan is the—”

“Meghan White, the maid of honor. She was Amanda’s best friend at Colby. And they stayed very close afterward when they both moved to New York City. She’s a lawyer, too. Immigration law, in her case. Amanda and Jeff knew each other in college but never
dated. Meghan is the one who actually reintroduced Amanda to Jeff in New York. I can certainly tell you she must have been very sorry that she did.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, it turns out that Meghan dated Jeff before Amanda ever did. And once Amanda disappeared, she swooped back in. They waited barely a year before marrying. Meghan White is now Mrs. Jeff Hunter. And I think one or both of them murdered my daughter.”

Laurie reached again for her notepad. “Let’s start all over again.”

6

L
aurie and Sandra were still talking two hours later, when Laurie’s cell phone let out a little chirp. It was her alarm, alerting her that her meeting with Brett was in ten minutes.

“Sandra, I’m afraid I have an appointment with my boss.” Brett was not the type of person who could tolerate being kept waiting. “But I’m very glad you flew all the way across the country to tell me about Amanda.”

As she walked her out of the office, Sandra had one last question. “Is there anything else I can tell you to help you decide to feature her case on the show?”

“I don’t make these decisions on my own, but I promise I’ll get back to you one way or the other soon.”

“I guess that’s all I can ask for,” Sandra said. She turned to Grace, who was sitting at her desk. “Thank you again for your kindness, Grace. I hope I’ll be seeing both of you again.”

“It was my pleasure,” Grace said, her voice sympathetic.

Once Sandra was gone, Jerry immediately joined them. “Why does that woman look so familiar? Is she an actress by chance?”

Laurie shook her head. “No, I’ll explain later.”

“Well, she was in there forever,” Jerry said. “Grace and I kept wondering whether we should interrupt. Our meeting with Brett is
in just a few minutes, and we haven’t had a chance to run through our list of story ideas.”

They had been planning to discuss their three top contenders one last time before Laurie had to pitch the concepts to Brett. She had started including Jerry in some of her planning meetings with Brett as he continued to take on increasing production responsibilities. She tended to focus on the news aspects of the program—the suspects, the witnesses, how to nail down their stories. Jerry’s talent was in envisioning scenes for the actual production—scouting locations, re-creating images from the crime, making the show as cinematographic as possible.

“I didn’t expect to spend so much time with her either, but I think I’ve got a plan. Just follow my lead.”

They started to walk quickly down the corridor to Brett Young’s corner office.

7

B
rett’s new secretary, Dana Licameli, waved them directly past her station into the inner sanctum. “He’ll want an explanation,” she warned in a conspiratorial whisper.

Laurie glanced at her watch. They were two minutes late. Oh boy, she thought.

He spun in his chair to face them when they entered. As usual, his expression was filled with disapproval. His wife once was heard to remark that he woke up every day with a scowl on his face.

“Sorry to be a little late, Brett. You’ll be pleased to know that I was talking to someone who may be great for the next special.”

“People are either late or prompt. Saying you’re a little late is like saying you’re a little pregnant.” Turning from her, he said, “You’re looking especially dapper today, Jerry.”

Laurie wanted to throw something at Brett, especially for what she recognized as a double-edged comment about Jerry. When Jerry first started working as an intern at the studios, he was a shy, awkward college student trying to hide his lanky frame with baggy clothes and slouching posture. Over the years, she had seen his confidence grow and his appearance change accordingly. Until very recently, he almost always wore turtlenecks and cardigan sweaters, even in warm weather. But since the first show of the
Under Suspicion
series had taken off, he was experimenting with different fashion choices.
Today’s attire was a fitted plaid jacket, bow tie, and mustard-colored pants. Laurie thought he looked terrific.

Jerry straightened his jacket proudly and took a seat. If he construed Brett’s remark as sarcasm, he wasn’t showing it.

“I’m excited for our meeting,” Brett said. “My wife, she tells me I don’t give enough—what does she call it?—
positive reinforcement
to my colleagues. So, Laurie, Jerry, I want to make clear—I’m excited to hear your ideas for the next special.”

A couple of years ago, Brett had been anything but excited when Laurie came back to work. She had taken time off when Greg was murdered. Then her first shows were flops, but that may have been because she was still grieving and distracted, or perhaps it was just tough luck. Either way, stars fall quickly in the land of television production, and Laurie knew that her days were numbered when she proposed the idea for
Under Suspicion
. Now that the show was a hit, she realized that she had been toying with the concept even before Greg died.

“You know, Brett, we can’t guarantee that we’re going to solve every case.” So far, they were two for two. In both previous specials, the people involved in the cases had cooperated with the production and let their guards down when host Alex Buckley had questioned them. It wouldn’t always happen like that.

Brett tapped his fingers on his desk, a signal that others should be quiet while he was thinking. As Grace irreverently put it, “He thinks with his fingers.” A handsome man with sculptured features and a full head of iron-gray hair, at age sixty-one he was biting to the point of cruelty and equally brilliant in his success as a renowned producer.

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, what matters is that viewers think you
might
, and they want to be there when it happens. Tell me what you have for the next case.”

Laurie thought of the notes she had prepared in her kitchen
the previous night while Timmy played video games after dinner. Three cases. She suspected that the murdered medical professor would be Brett’s top choice. Because of a bitter divorce, both his wife and father-in-law were natural suspects. He’d begun seeing a woman who herself was recently divorced, so the new girlfriend’s husband was also on the list. Plus there was an academic colleague who accused him of stealing research. Not to mention a disgruntled student who had flunked his anatomy class. It was a perfect case for their show.

Also on Laurie’s list was the case of a little boy who had been murdered in Oregon, whose stepmother was the leading suspect. It was a good case, but whenever Laurie started to think about the violence that had been inflicted against a nine-year-old boy, she thought of her own son, and would find herself looking at other possibilities.

The third case on the list was the killing of two sisters thirty years earlier. Laurie found the case fascinating, but suspected that Brett would think a thirty-year delay would make the case too cold to capture viewers’ attention.

Now all those notes remained on a legal pad in her briefcase.

“I know I told you I had a few ideas, but one of them clearly stands out.” For her sake, and for Sandra’s, she hoped Brett would agree.

8

W
alter Pierce stood in his office overlooking a production floor at Ladyform’s factory in Raleigh, North Carolina. Most CEOs would have opted by now for a fancy office on a high floor in a skyscraper, far removed from the everyday employees who worked in manufacturing. But Walter prided himself on running Ladyform as a traditional, family-owned business whose products were all designed and made in the United States. He was a large man, tall and burly, with a monk’s ring of hair around a jowled face.

When his great-grandfather first started this company, women were still transitioning from corsets to brassieres, a change galvanized by the metal shortage in World War I. As he was proud to say, “The change reportedly saved more than fifty million pounds of metal, enough to build two battleships.”

In the beginning Ladyform had one North Carolina factory manned by thirty workers. Now Ladyform maintained not only the original factory here, but also operations in Detroit, San Antonio, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Sacramento, not to mention the offices in New York.

As he looked down at the busy scene below, he thought how Amanda had been the one who pushed for Ladyform to have a New York City presence. At the time she was still in college, but she was a straight-A student with savvy business sense. “Dad, we need to bring
the brand into the future,” she had told him. “Women my age think of Ladyform as frumpy girdles that their mothers and grandmothers wear. We need women to see us as the company that helps them look and feel better in their own bodies.” She had so many ideas about
rebranding
—designing garments that were both fun and comfortable, modernizing the logo, and adding a line of sports clothing so that the brand represented, as she said, the female form instead of “the underwear people,” he thought sadly.