All Dressed in White (Under Suspicion #2)(13)

She should have known that any mention of Amanda would put a damper on the visit. Charlotte was always comparing herself to her little sister. Even five years after Amanda disappeared, she was competing with Amanda’s memory.

Once I told Charlotte about my meeting this morning with Laurie Moran, she seemed excited, Sandra thought. And she was quick to volunteer her willingness to participate if the show got the go-ahead. “A day never passes that I don’t miss Amanda,” Charlotte had said. But there was that moment when her face fell at the mention of her sister’s name, followed by the urgent request for a martini.

Charlotte is a good, decent person, but why is she so insecure, even jealous? Sandra sighed. Charlotte’s envy could bring out the worst in her. In the seventh grade, she had been suspended for tampering with another student’s entry in the science fair.

But no matter how jealous she had been of Amanda, Charlotte would never hurt her little sister. Or would she? Sandra, horrified that the thought would even cross her mind, felt a stinging lump in her throat.





14





As the number 6 train lurched to a stop at the 96th Street station, Laurie was replaying the conversation with Jerry in her head. He knew more about Amanda’s disappearance from five-year-old news coverage than Laurie had managed to glean during a two-hour conversation with Amanda’s own mother. That’s how well he knew the case. Yet he had refrained from pitching a show about his own cold-case obsession because of a comment she had made months ago in Los Angeles. You looked sad, he had said. I assumed—


Jerry hadn’t completed the sentence. He didn’t need to, because he had assumed correctly. Laurie’s only previous visit to the Grand Victoria had been with Greg. It was their second anniversary. New York had suffered an especially bitter winter. More than by the cold, Laurie’s mood had been affected by yet another month passing without becoming pregnant. Her doctor told her that these things didn’t always happen right away, but she and Greg had been so eager to start a family once they got married.

Sensing her worry, Greg had surprised her on a Thursday night, announcing that he had arranged to take a long weekend off from the Mount Sinai emergency room, where he was a resident. They spent four marvelous days, swimming and reading on the beach during the day, enjoying long dinners in the evening. Timmy was born nine months later.

When Greg died, I had felt so alone, Laurie thought. We had always pictured ourselves having four or five kids. She loved Timmy—he was more than enough all on his very own—but she never thought he’d be an only child.

But now, nearly six years after Greg’s death, she realized that she and Timmy had never been at risk of being alone. Her father, Leo, had retired from the NYPD to help raise her son.

And my immediate family didn’t stop there, Laurie thought. Grace could read her mind with one look. Jerry had known that she might not be ready to delve into a story about a young couple getting married at a resort where she’d once celebrated with Greg. Jerry and Grace were co-workers, but they were also family.

And then there was Alex. I don’t want to go there right now, she thought.

She walked quickly the few blocks to the apartment. As she slipped her key into the front door, she felt the stress of the busy day fade away. She was home.





15





She was greeted by the smell of chicken roasting in the kitchen and the familiar sounds of cartoon fighting from the living room. Pow! Hah! Timmy was playing Super Smash Bros. on his Wii, while Leo read the sports section on the sofa. Laurie had tried to restrict Timmy from these types of games for as long as possible, but even she had been forced to cave.

“Mario doesn’t stand a chance,” Laurie said, recognizing one character on the screen battling her son’s virtual self.

Timmy unleashed a lethal kick and then let out a satisfied “Yesss!” He scrambled up to hug her.

“There she is,” Leo said as he stood up. “How was your meeting with Brett?”

Laurie smiled, appreciative that her father remembered that today had been the scheduled pitch. “Better than I could have expected.”

“What was his reaction to the cases you were torn between?”

“Forget them. Something really terrific came up today.” She gave him the short version of the surprise visit from Sandra. “Do you remember the case?”

“Vaguely. I was still on the job back then, so there were enough crimes in New York to keep me busy.”

Laurie heard the musical chime of a game coming to an end, and Timmy set his controller down. Obviously, he had been listening to them. “So does this mean you’re going to be leaving again?” he asked, a touch of anxiety in his voice.

Laurie knew that Timmy worried about her schedule. When they filmed the last special, she decided to pull him from school for two weeks while his grandfather watched over him on the set in California. She couldn’t possibly do that for every installment.

“You’re going to like this one,” she told him. “Instead of going somewhere so far away, it’s in Florida, and that’s only a two- to three-hour flight. If the project is approved, I’m even hoping to schedule it for next month before you go back to school.”

“Is there a water park?”

Laurie sent a mental thank-you to Grace, who had already looked up that kind of pertinent information. “Yep. They’ve got a slide that’s forty-feet high in one of the pools.”