28
Once they were all seated in her office, Laurie started by making a list of the participants they had already secured, placing a check mark next to their names if they were considered a potential suspect.
Ivan Gray. Carter Wakeling. Anna Wakeling. Anna’s husband, Peter Browning. The cousin, Tom Wakeling.
Laurie placed check marks next to all five names.
“I thought you said the police cleared the cousin,” Jerry said.
“So far they have. Tom and his date, Tiffany Simon, both said they were together in the American Wing, looking at portraits on the second floor. The story rang true to the police, I guess. And they assumed this woman wouldn’t lie to protect Tom since they were only on a second date.”
Grace shook her head. “But the second date was to one of the most sought-after events in the city with a man whose last name was Wakeling. To some women, that might be a relationship worth protecting,” she pointed out.
“I agree,” Laurie said. “That’s why I still have Tom on our list of suspects. I want to talk to his date myself.” By all accounts, Tom and Tiffany had lost touch nearly three years ago. There’d be no reason for her to cover for Tom now. She wrote down the woman’s name—Tiffany Simon—in a separate column: Her to-do list. “Hopefully she’ll be easier to find than Mrs. Wakeling’s assistant, Penny Rawling. Have we had any luck with that?”
Jerry shook his head. “Ivan doesn’t have her cell phone number anymore, assuming it’s the same as it was then.”
Sometimes Laurie longed for the old days, when you could look up a number in the white pages or, in a real pinch, call 411.
She added Penny Rawling’s name beneath Tiffany’s, and then added a check mark. Penny wasn’t the most likely suspect, but she hadn’t been eliminated from suspicion either.
She tapped her pen against her notepad. “I wish we had a better handle on Virginia Wakeling’s children. It was hard to get a sense of them in such a short meeting.”
“If you ask me,” Grace said, “Anna seemed like the boss of the bunch.”
“Followed by her husband in the pecking order,” Jerry said. “Then a big step down before the brother, Carter.”
Grace, always willing to jump to conclusions, declared that if the children had anything to do with it, “Anna would have been the one to call the shots. I bet she tripped the alarm in the costume exhibit to create a diversion, and then her husband followed Mrs. Wakeling. How many men haven’t had a thought or two about pushing their mother-in-law off the roof?”
“It is so hard to imagine anyone coming up with a plan to murder his or her own parent,” Laurie said. “Maybe I’m being sexist, but it seems especially shocking for a daughter to kill her mother.”
“On the other hand,” Jerry said, “I could imagine Carter acting alone. We all agree he seems to live in his younger sister’s shadow. That could make him resentful. If Ivan’s telling the truth, then Virginia was thinking about changing her will so her children would need to support themselves through their own work for the company. Anna’s clearly the one running the show at Wakeling Development, so Carter might have been afraid that she’d find a way to force him out.”
“Or they all acted together,” Laurie said. “Or it was Ivan, or Penny, or Tom. In that case Anna and Carter are innocent people who lost their mother.” Once again, she felt as if they were grasping at straws. She realized how much she wished she could talk about the case—about everything, really—with Alex. “Whatever dynamics we noticed in the family, it’s obvious that the three of them are close-knit. They’re protective of each other. We need an outsider—someone other than Ivan—to give us a better idea of their relationship to their mother. That makes it all the more important that we find Penny Rawling.”
“I’ll keep trying,” Jerry said.
“I know,” Laurie said, not wanting Jerry to feel as if she were blaming him.
“What about the nephew, Tom?” Jerry asked. “He’s just a cousin. Maybe he’d be willing to give us the dirt?”
“I don’t think so. First of all, until I talk to Tiffany Simon, we have to consider him a suspect, too. More important, I talked to him in person. He may have been the black sheep in the family three years ago, but today he very much wants to stay close to the pack. He won’t say anything to jeopardize his position with the family.”
She looked down at her list. What was she missing?
“If we go to production now, we pretty much only have Ivan’s word against the family’s,” Jerry said.
Laurie shrugged. “That was my problem with the case from the beginning. I can’t imagine we’ll learn anything new.”
“Well, Brett can’t say you didn’t warn him,” Grace said consolingly.
“And I can at least make the episode gorgeous,” Jerry said, his voice lifting. “I hate to say it, but viewers will tune in just to see the dresses. Are you ready for a preview?”
Grace and Laurie sat back and Jerry pinned a series of photographs to the large corkboard in Laurie’s office. Grace added oohs and aahs in response to her favorites. Laurie made a point to give a little clap when he pinned the photograph of Jacqueline Kennedy in her white cotton dress. That was the one Jerry was including as a tribute to his grandmother.
“Now, these are just the still photos,” he explained, “but once it’s all produced, we’ll cut it together with video footage of the gala. It will be snappy with lots of movement. And then we’ll contrast those images with photographs from the crime scene—nothing gory, of course, but yellow tape across the roof space, maybe a few spatters of blood on the snow. I haven’t selected those images yet. Obviously, this work was more pleasant to complete,” he added with a smile.
“It all looks great,” Laurie said. She had come to television with a background in journalism, but Jerry had majored in media arts and had started at Fisher Blake as an intern. His strength was in creating strong visuals specifically for television.
“I just wish we had access to a few of the actual dresses,” Jerry said. “If we could even use three, with one tiny corner of exhibit space at the museum, I know I could work wonders.”
“I’m sorry, Jerry, but the Met said it would be impossible,” Laurie said. “The dresses weren’t in their permanent collection. Most came from presidential libraries, the Smithsonian, and other museums.”
“I know. I just wish I could snap my fingers and make it so.”
“Well, if you had that magic power, I’d prefer you use it to find these two women, and pronto,” Laurie told him. She held up her notepad. “Tiffany Simon and Penny Rawling might be able to give us a new angle on all of them.” She still had that feeling in her gut that they didn’t have all of the pieces of the puzzle yet. “I just know Brett will be pushing us to start production any day now.”
“No magic powers needed,” Grace announced. She was looking at the screen of her iPhone. “Penny Rawling might be keeping a low profile, but I think I found Tiffany Simon.”
She handed Laurie and Jerry her phone. It was open to the website of a business called the Marriage Mobile. Their motto was “When You’re Ready to Say ‘I Do,’ ” and they promised to show up anywhere in the tristate area with everything a bride and groom needed for a wedding. The owner and “minister” was named Tiffany Simon.
Laurie studied the picture of Tiffany, taking in the fake eyelashes, heavy makeup, and plunging neckline. Not the kind of appearance that would go over well at the exclusive Met Gala, she thought. No wonder Tom’s cousins were scornful of his date.
“Why wait?” she asked herself, as she picked up her phone and dialed the number on the website. The call was answered by a fluttery voice saying, “Marriage Mobile, Tiffany speaking.”
Her voice matches her picture, Laurie thought, as she introduced herself and explained why she was calling.
The response she received was everything she could have hoped for. “I love your reality show,” Tiffany squealed. “I can’t wait to be on it. Boy, can I tell you something about the Wakelings. What a snooty bunch they are.”
She may be a fount of information, Laurie thought, as she offered Tiffany a chance to meet anytime tomorrow.
“Oh, I would love to,” Tiffany told her, “but I have meetings with new clients in the morning and early afternoon, and I have to get everything together for a wedding I’m doing at five o’clock. The ceremony is at the pier alongside the Intrepid. The groom used to be in the navy and he wants the battleship in the background of his wedding pictures. Do you want to meet afterwards, say six o’clock?”
“I can do six,” Laurie said.
“Great. Landmark Tavern is on Eleventh Avenue at Forty-Sixth. It’s in a neat old building and would be super convenient for me. The menu is English pub fare if that’s okay with you.”
I’m not going for the food, Laurie thought to herself. “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Laurie hung up the phone and looked at the expectant faces of Jerry and Grace. “My date is set with Tiffany Simon, and she appears anxious to dish on the Wakeling family.”