The Cinderella Murder (14 page)

Jerry began to explain. “Based on temperature, lividity, and rigor mortis—”

“Someone’s been brushing up on his science,” Grace said.

“Trust me,” he said, “it’s all Dr. Lane. She makes this stuff sound easy. Anyway, based on the science, the medical examiner estimated that Susan was killed between seven and eleven
P.M
. on that Saturday night. She was scheduled to arrive at Frank Parker’s house at seven thirty. When she hadn’t arrived by seven forty-five, he called Madison Meyer, who jumped in her car and arrived at the house around eight thirty. According to both Parker and Meyer, she stayed until close to midnight.”

“What were they doing all that time?” Grace asked. From the look of her arched brow, she had her theories.

“I’m not sure that’s our business,” Jerry said, “unless it has something to do with Susan Dempsey’s death.”

“You’re no fun.”

Laurie made a time-out sign with her hands. “Focus on the facts, guys. According to Frank and Madison, he made the decision to cast her within an hour. He was so excited about it that he wanted to show her the short film that was the basis for
Beauty Land
and talk more about the project. He hadn’t eaten yet so he ordered takeout; a pizza delivery record from nine thirty
P.M.
backed that up.”

Grace whispered a thank-you to the waiter who refilled her water glass. “But if Susan could have died any time between seven and eleven, and Madison didn’t get to Frank’s until eight thirty, she’s not really a full alibi. Where was he between seven and eight thirty?”

“Except you’ve got to take all the evidence into account,” Jerry reminded her. “Susan was due to arrive at Frank’s at seven thirty. The idea is that there’s no way Frank could have gotten into a chase with Susan, killed her, taken Susan’s car back to the UCLA campus, and returned to his house, all before Madison arrived an hour later. Not to mention, placing a phone call to Susan’s cell and then to Madison at the dorm room in the middle of it all. If Madison’s telling the truth, Frank’s in the clear.”

“Still,” Laurie said, “the whole alibi seems fishy to me: it seems hard to believe that Frank called another actress fifteen minutes after Susan was supposed to arrive, and that she just hopped in her car immediately.”

“Ah, but it does make sense,” Jerry said, “when Frank Parker is notoriously obsessed with punctuality. He has fired people for showing up five minutes late. And we saw how obsessed Madison is with being famous. If someone dangled a studio film in front of her and said jump, she’d ask how high.”

Grace still wasn’t fully sold on the theory. “But you also saw how she fixed her lipstick just to answer the door at her ratty house. I can only imagine the work she’d put into looking good for Frank Parker.”

“See?” Laurie said. “These are all the things we have to establish in our initial interviews with them. We go first for a gentle retelling
of whatever version of the story they gave back then. See if we can catch them in an inconsistency.”

“When do we bring Alex in?” Grace asked, smiling.

“You are singular in your focus today, aren’t you?” Laurie asked. “Brett Young has approved a budget to cover screening interviews with every participant, followed by what we’ll call our summit session: back-to-back interviews, all in the same location. That’s when Alex swoops in for the tough questions, after we’ve done our groundwork.”

“For that part,” Jerry said, “I thought we’d rent a house near campus, something big enough for the whole production team. That will save us money on lodging, and then we can use the house as the location for the interviews with Alex.”

Laurie wasn’t sure how she felt about living with all her coworkers, but from a financial perspective, she couldn’t argue with Jerry’s logic. “Sounds like a plan,” she said. “If nothing else, I’d say we’ve already earned this delicious lunch.”

As the waiter recited elaborate food descriptions from memory, Laurie nodded along politely, but her thoughts were spinning as she envisioned all the work they had in front of them. She had guaranteed Brett Young the best
Under Suspicion
possible. And, just this morning, she had given her word to her nine-year-old son that she would do it all while being a full-time mother.

How could she possibly keep both promises?

26

L
ydia Levitt sat cross-legged on the sofa in her living room, her laptop perched across her knees. She typed a final period and then proofread her online review of Rustic Tavern, the restaurant she and Rosemary had selected for lunch the previous day. She deleted the last period and replaced it with an exclamation point.
I will definitely be back—five stars!
She hit the
ENTER
key, satisfied.

The website thanked her for her review. It was her seventy-eighth entry. Lydia believed in giving businesses feedback, for good or for bad. How else could they know what consumers valued and be able to improve? Not to mention, writing the reviews gave her something to do. Lydia loved to stay busy.

It wasn’t just the delicious food and beautiful patio that had made yesterday so enjoyable. She was excited to have found a new friend in Rosemary Dempsey. Lydia had lived at Castle Crossings for twelve years now, and the entire time, she had been older than almost everyone else in the neighborhood. These kinds of planned communities tended to attract young couples, eager for a safe, predictable, homogeneous place to raise their children.

For the most part, Lydia had found company among the self-named “Castle Crossings grandparents,” the parents of the young couples, living nearby to either help with child care or facilitate grandparent time.

But Lydia hadn’t met anyone quite like Rosemary at Castle Crossings. Rosemary struck her as adventurous. Interesting. And, maybe because of the terrible loss she’d suffered, she seemed a bit haunted.

Even so, Lydia could tell that Rosemary had been shocked at lunch when Lydia mentioned her wild-child days in the late sixties. If their meal had not been cut short by the phone call Rosemary had received from that television producer, Lydia might have found a way to fully explain the connection between that part of her life and her current identity as the rule-follower of Castle Crossings. Lydia had seen what life was like when everybody did whatever he or she felt like doing, willy-nilly. After she saw friends overdose, or lose their families to alcoholism, or get their hearts broken because one person’s idea of live-and-let-live is another person’s definition of betrayal, she saw the value in playing by the rules.

Lydia set her laptop on the coffee table and walked to the front window, parting the gray linen drapes with her fingertips. Rosemary’s driveway was empty. Shoot. She was looking forward to another visit.

She was just about to let the drapes close when she noticed a cream-colored pickup truck parked in front of the house next door to Rosemary’s. The driver exited, wearing cargo pants and a black windbreaker. He was probably close to forty years old, with a shaved head. He looked tough and lean, like a boxer.

He was walking toward Rosemary’s yard.

She let the drapes fall but kept a tiny slit open to peer out. Oh, how Don teased her when she did this. They both knew that everyone called her “the nosy neighbor.”

“What else am I supposed to do with myself all day?” she would ask Don. “I’m bored, bored, bored.” Spying on the Castle Crossings crowd, like posting online reviews of restaurants, kept her busy. She found such pleasure in conjuring up imaginary tales from the humdrum comings and goings around these quiet cul-de-sacs. In her
alternate version of this neighborhood, Trevor Wolf’s band of teenage after-school buddies was plotting a series of bank robberies. Mr. and Mrs. Miller were cooking methamphetamine in the basement. Ally Simpson’s new rescue dog was actually a trained drug K9, working undercover to expose the Millers’ nefarious activities. And, of course, affairs abounded.

“You’ve got such an imagination,” Don liked to say. “You should write a mystery novel one day.”

Well, Don was at the health club, so he wasn’t around to catch her spying today.

She peered through the crack in the drapes as the pickup-truck man first knocked on Rosemary’s door, then leaned over to check out the view through her living room window. When he turned away and began retracing his steps through the yard, she assumed he was returning to his car. Instead, he turned left, facing away from her, and headed toward the side of Rosemary’s house.

Now, that was interesting. She began conjuring explanations: a burglar who had somehow slipped past security at the front gate; someone affiliated with that television show Rosemary had mentioned yesterday; a door-to-door proselytizer, out to introduce Rosemary to a new religion.

That’s it! Her church. She remembered Rosemary mentioning an upcoming flea market at Saint Patrick’s. She said she was grateful that she didn’t have to lug all of her giveaways to the church herself. A volunteer was supposed to come by to haul them for her. A pickup truck would be just the right vehicle for the job. Maybe Rosemary had arranged to leave the donations behind her house in the event she wasn’t home to meet him.

Lydia pulled on a fleece from the coatrack by the front door. She could help load the truck, or at least say hello on Rosemary’s behalf.

She crossed the street and then followed the same path the man had taken, walking to the right side of Rosemary’s house to her backyard.
She found him trying the sliding glass door, unsuccessfully. She remembered how Rosemary had unlocked her front door when Lydia helped her with the groceries earlier that week.

“I told her she really doesn’t need to keep her doors locked,” Lydia called out. “That’s basically the reason most people live here.”

When the man turned, his face was expressionless.

“I’m Lydia,” she said, waving as she approached. “The neighbor across the street. You’re from Rosemary’s church?”

No change in expression. Only silence. Maybe he was deaf?

She stepped closer and noticed now that he was wearing black gloves. It didn’t seem quite that cold to her, but she always seemed to run a little warmer than other people. He finally spoke, only one word. “Church?”

“Yes, I thought you were from Saint Patrick’s. For the flea market? Did she tell you where she left everything? I got the impression she had a bunch.”

“A bunch of what?” he asked.

Now that she was right next to him, she noticed the insignia on the breast of his windbreaker.

“Oh, you’re from Keepsafe?” She knew about the company from Don’s days in the security industry. They were one of the most common providers of home alarms in the country.

At the mention of the company, the man appeared to wake from his daze. His smile was somehow even stranger than his previously blank expression. “Yes, I’m from Keepsafe. Your neighbor’s alarm sent an alert to our local station. She hasn’t cleared it and didn’t answer when we called. We automatically do a home visit to be sure. Probably just a misunderstanding—a dog knocking over a vase, that kind of thing.”

“Rosemary doesn’t have a dog.”

Another weird smile. “I meant that as an example,” he said. “These things happen all the time. Nothing to worry about.”

“Are you sure you even have the right house? Rosemary doesn’t have an alarm system.” That was the kind of thing Lydia would have immediately noticed when she walked into Rosemary’s house.

The man said nothing, but the smile was still there. For the first time in her life, Lydia believed that the danger she sensed was anything but imaginary.

27

A
fter a ritualistic postdinner game of Clue and a nighttime snack of peanut butter on apple slices, Laurie tucked Timmy into bed to the sounds of running water and clanking dishes from the kitchen.

She found her father loading the dishwasher.

“Dad, you don’t need to do that. You already do so much for Timmy when I’m at work.”

“Used to be that cleaning up after dinner was an hour-long chore. I think I can handle throwing away takeout containers and tossing a few plates into a machine. I know how hard you’ve been working.”