43
The following afternoon, Laurie felt the fabric of her newest spring pants chafe against her scuffed leg. The saleswoman at Bloomingdale’s had described the cotton-nylon blend as “the closest thing you can get to jammies for your work wardrobe,” but right now the black trousers felt like sandpaper against an open wound. She could still feel the concrete of 46th Street scraping her skin. In retrospect, she should have worn a dress today, but she didn’t want Timmy to notice she was hurt. She had decided to downplay the incident by telling him that someone had stolen her briefcase while she was out with Charlotte. She believed in being honest with her son, but he had already lost one parent to violence. There was no point in scaring him unnecessarily.
She had spent the morning at the Apple store with Grace, replacing both her cell phone and laptop. Fortunately, Grace had kept everything backed up in the cloud, so the wizards at the store’s Genius Bar had gotten her up and running again before lunch. She wouldn’t have her replacement credit cards and driver’s license for a few days, but in the big scheme of things, she felt back to normal. The one thing she was still really missing was that beautiful crystal frame with the photograph of Alex and her.
She heard a light tap on her door, and then Jerry and Grace peeked in. She had scheduled a meeting to storyboard the production of their Martin Bell special. To her surprise, Ryan had suggested that she take the lead and call him only if he could be helpful.
“Ready for us?” Grace asked.
“Of course.”
They walked in side by side. With her four-inch heels, Grace was the exact height of Jerry. Each of them carried a single, familiar item. Jerry had a leather duffel bag from Ladyform, and Grace held a robin’s-egg-blue box, wrapped with a silky ribbon.
“You guys,” Laurie said. “This is too much.”
Taking the box from Grace, she slipped off the ribbon to find another crystal frame with the identical photograph that had been stolen from her the night before. “Really, I can’t accept these gifts again.”
Jerry set the duffel bag on one of her guest chairs and took a seat at her conference table. “You shouldn’t feel the least amount of guilt. The manager at Tiffany insisted we accept a replacement frame when I told her everything you went through last night,” Jerry said.
“And that bag?” Grace said. “I adore Charlotte’s company, Laurie, but do you know the markup on that stuff? Trust me: Girlfriend can spare a tote bag.”
Laurie gazed down at the photograph in her hands and smiled. The thought of some thief—or worse—looking at it last night after the robbery made her stomach feel sick. She imagined a rough-looking man with mean eyes cavalierly tossing it aside, rifling through the duffel bag for something more valuable.
This—more than her wallet or her phone or her laptop—was the item she had missed the most. She propped it beside her computer, between the photograph of the two of them with Timmy and Leo, and the one of her with Timmy and Greg. Somehow the three pictures felt right together.
• • •
Forty minutes later, they had mapped out their plan for the next entry in the Under Suspicion series. Ryan would narrate the early phases of Martin and Kendra’s relationship over B-roll footage of the medical school where they had met, the church where they had married, and the carriage house outside of which he was eventually murdered.
They had already obtained signed participation agreements from Kendra and from Martin’s parents. Predictably, the Bells would point the finger at Kendra, while Kendra would portray herself as a misunderstood wife and mother. But they had new information to reveal on camera. As host, Ryan would cross-examine Kendra, confronting her with evidence that Martin had been planning to divorce her and gain custody of the children.
“Don’t forget the information from the nanny,” Jerry noted.
Grace nearly leapt up from her seat at the mention of Caroline Radcliffe. “Where is Kendra spending all that cash, and what kind of woman says, ‘Am I finally free?’ when her husband is shot? Sorry, but it seems obvious to me. That lady hired a hit man to kill Martin Bell and now she’s still paying him to keep his mouth shut. Case solved.”
Jerry’s face made it clear that he agreed with her assessment.
Laurie tried to focus on each scene of the planned production, but she kept thinking about the previous night’s assault. Kendra might have paid the hit man to kill me, too, she thought. She shook away the thought, reminding herself it might have been a random robbery.
The sound of her office phone broke through the noise in her head. Grace rose from the conference table to answer on her behalf. “Laurie Moran’s office.” A few seconds later, she hit the hold button and announced that the caller was George Naughten. Laurie got up to take the call.
Jerry and Grace watched her expectantly as she listened to what George had to say. He had spoken to his psychiatrist since they’d visited his home the previous morning. The psychiatrist thought it would be good for him to help the show with its investigation. “It will be a chance for me to talk about Ma—on television to a huge audience. About the car accident and about what Dr. Bell did to her with his so-called treatment.”
“That would be great,” Laurie said, feigning enthusiasm. George had initially seemed like a prime suspect, a man with a grudge to harbor and a history of gun ownership. After meeting him yesterday, although she did not feel as strongly about it, she still had lingering doubt. Now here he was, wanting to appear on their show. If she had to guess, she’d say he planned to use the airtime to vent his grievances about the people he blamed for his mother’s death. “So this will basically be what you told us yesterday?” she asked.
“No,” he said adamantly. “There’s something else—something I’ve never told anyone.”
She sat up straighter in her chair, and Grace and Jerry looked at her, sensing that something had changed on the other end of the line. “Can you give me a hint now?”
“No. I can only tell you if you get me out of the nondisclosure agreement I signed.”
“As I said, George, we don’t need to know the specifics of your lawsuit against Dr. Bell.”
“Take it or leave it,” he said, suddenly insistent. “Those are my conditions. I have something you want to know—trust me—but not with the NDA.”
She pressed her eyes closed. She was pretty sure George wanted to drag them into grudges he had harbored for years, and none of it would have anything to do with Martin Bell’s murder. But Laurie’s motto was to leave no stone unturned. He wanted to be released from the nondisclosure agreement, and Martin Bell’s parents had the power to make that happen. They also wanted to solve their son’s murder.
“I think we can manage that,” she said.
Once she was alone in her office, she called Martin Bell’s parents and left a message asking them to call her.
Looking at the photographs on her desk, she realized that she wanted to be home, surrounded by family. Last night had left her more rattled than she wanted to admit. But Alex was in D.C., Timmy was at school, and her father had an all-day meeting with the anti-terrorism task force up near Randall’s Island.
I’ll put in one more hour of work, she thought. Then I’ll leave early, pay cash for groceries like the old days, and still have enough time to walk my son home from school. Tonight, it will be just the two of us, while we still have the chance.