All Dressed in White (Under Suspicion #2)(49)

“Yet I sense in you a woman who could in fact describe what it’s like to breathe, if someone asked you the question.”

She gave him a half smile. Laurie could almost hear her deciding to play along. “Fine. It was like being the weed next to the rose. In any other family, I would have been a superstar. I graduated at the top of my class from the University of North Carolina. I’m a pretty nice person. I work hard. But Amanda was special. Men wanted to marry her, women wanted to be her. She knew how to please people.”

“Jeff’s friends sensed that you weren’t especially happy about the wedding. Disinterested was the word one of them used.”

“Well, first of all”—Charlotte waved her hands dismissively—“Jeff’s friends are idiots. Second of all, I wasn’t disinterested. I was worried, and not about Amanda. I thought Jeff was the one making a mistake. I loved my sister, but I was probably the only person who really knew her. She looked like a princess from a fairy tale, with bluebirds brushing her hair. But she was cunning. Ambitious. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but she hid it behind this perfect, gentle fa?ade.”

Laurie found herself fascinated by Charlotte’s description. It felt utterly honest.

“So why were you worried about Jeff?” Alex asked.

“Because he had no clue what he was getting himself into. He started dating Amanda and then almost immediately she became very sick. Weak,” she added sorrowfully. “It was the only time in her life when she was vulnerable, but if anything the experience only hardened her. I can tell you this. She was going to put him through the ringer. She was going to change him the way she changed Ladyform. Her idea of a successful husband was not a public defender.”

Alex leaned toward Charlotte. “So do you suspect Jeff Hunter in your sister’s disappearance?”

She paused a long time before answering. “I guess that depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether he figured out that if he married Amanda, he’d be under her thumb as I always was.”





47





Leo woke up feeling completely rested. This bed is great, he thought. It had been ten years since Eileen passed. Since then, it was only on trips with Laurie that he slept somewhere other than in his own bed or in Laurie’s guest room. He realized it was probably time to buy a new mattress. Maybe he’d think about it when they were back in New York.

He looked at the clock. It was already ten A.M. He saw a note beneath the door that joined his room to Laurie and Timmy’s. He felt his hamstrings ache as he bent down for it. At sixty-four years of age, he was in good shape but needed to stretch more. Figured I’d let you two sleep in, the note read.

Timmy was getting older. He could sleep until noon if undisturbed.

Leo walked over to the small desk in the corner, opened the laptop Laurie had bought him for his birthday, and clicked on the Internet browser. He could spend a few minutes working on his pet project before waking his grandson for a late breakfast. He used two fingers to type facebook.com into the search window. Grace was the one who was teaching him how to “cyberstalk,” as she called it. When he was on the job, gathering background information had required knocking on doors and pounding the pavement. These days, people posted their entire lives, including what they ate for breakfast, on social media.

He typed “Carly Romano” into the search window of Facebook. He read recently that it was increasingly common for families and friends to maintain pages of those who had passed, as a place for loved ones to post memories. Sure enough, he found her wall, with a posting as recent as two months ago, from a Jenna Romano: Happy Birthday, Sis. You’re still in my heart. Xoxo.

He had called the police in Waterville and confirmed that Carly’s case was still unsolved. According to the detective he spoke to, the primary suspect was her high school boyfriend back in Michigan. The two had tried a long-distance relationship during their freshman year, but Carly broke things off when she returned to campus for her sophomore year. He didn’t take the news well. But police had never been able to build a case against him.

It seemed like a good case for Laurie’s show.

Leo clicked through the photographs on Carly’s profile, searching for one of the old boyfriend. He checked the dates. He was still browsing the college years. He needed to keep scrolling back to high school.

He couldn’t help but notice that Carly looked happy and lively in every photograph. She had thick, dark hair and big brown eyes. She seemed to always be smiling. He was scanning the pictures so quickly that he almost missed it: a familiar face.


He flipped back two pages. The caption on the photograph read, “DJ Night at the Bob-In!” Carly looked straight at the camera. The man next to her in the booth had his arm around her. He was younger, Leo thought to himself, but that’s definitely him.

Younger, but familiar. He spotted him two more times in other photographs taken within a few days of this one.

He clicked over to his email and found the production schedule that Jerry had sent everyone prior to the trip. Alex was interviewing Charlotte at nine A.M. in the courtyard behind the hotel, with Kate to follow at 10:30. If he hurried, he could find Laurie on a break in between.

? ? ?

Leo waited until he saw Charlotte Pierce leave the set. Laurie smiled when she saw him, but then a moment of panic crossed her face. “Dad, where’s Timmy?”