The Cinderella Murder (22 page)

K
eith could feel his cell phone shake in his hand. It had been years since he’d lost control. He certainly could not recall ever speaking to Martin Collins so firmly. “I can’t do it. You should have heard the way they were running down AG. I couldn’t control my anger. I had to leave to keep myself from saying more than I should.”

“Of all people, Keith, don’t you think I know what it is like to have our beliefs belittled by people who can never understand our good works?”

Keith should have known that Martin would not accept his decision, but Martin didn’t understand his frustration. Keith had heard the ridicule in Laurie Moran’s voice when she mentioned Advocates for God. She could never begin to understand how AG had saved him after Susan died.

Service to others and guidance from Martin as to the certainty of God’s goodness had kept Keith from taking out his grief through booze and girls. And then there were the group sessions. Keith began to examine his guilt at treating Susan poorly when she was alive. He realized that all his betrayals were little acts of revenge. As much as he loved Susan, she made him feel small. He remembered how other couples in high school would talk about being treated like honorary family by one another’s parents. His friend Brian even got birthday and Christmas presents from his girlfriend Becky’s family.

But Keith had never gotten the slightest sign of approval—let alone affection—from Rosemary or Jack Dempsey. Jack worked so hard, he probably wouldn’t have been able to pick Keith from a lineup. And Rosemary? She treated Keith like dirt, with her constant sighs of disappointment and barbed comments insulting his dream of being a star.

Susan always told him to ignore it. She said her mother was just protective and would have had the same response if Susan were to date a prince who was also a Rhodes scholar. But, after Susan’s murder, Keith realized that he had absorbed the criticism. Hurting Susan—having power over her—had been a way to keep her from hurting him.

Now Keith felt like Rosemary Dempsey was calling the shots all over again. He tried once more to explain it all to Martin.

“The way that television producer spoke to me brought back all my old insecurities. And the way they talked about AG reminded me of how Susan would call it a scam when Nicole first became involved.”

“You didn’t give them any indication that it was Nicole who introduced you to the church, did you?”

“Of course not.”

“Remember, if they ask, you were handed a flyer on campus and were curious. With all the pamphleting I did back then, it’s perfectly believable. Do not say
anything
to link Nicole with AG.”

“I won’t be saying anything at all. I don’t want to be part of that show.”

“You know better than this. Sometimes it’s not about you, Keith. How are you best positioned to serve the work of God?”

“How can it be God’s work to be in a house full of people who make fun of everything our church stands for?”

“A house?”

“Yes, they have a house for filming. They’re also going to be staying
there.” He retrieved the address from his pocket and read it to Martin.

“Listen to me: you will call the producer and confirm your participation. Advocates for God is a
group
serving God, and Nicole’s participation in this show is a direct threat to that group. I have reason to believe that Nicole isn’t saying anything about us for now, but the television show may be digging into Nicole’s background.”

“ ‘Reason to believe’?”

“I’m relying on you to update me about her involvement and to steer the investigation away from anything that might lead to AG. Do you understand?”

Sometimes Keith wondered whether he should be more questioning of Martin’s commands. But without Advocates for God, what would he have?

42

D
etermined to stick to her family’s postdinner board game ritual, Laurie gathered the crew in the den of the Bel Air house to play Bananagrams, which was like Scrabble on speed. Timmy’s favorite moments of the game were the banana-related puns: “split” to start playing and “peel” to pull new tiles. Grace had won the last three games in a row, each time telling Timmy that she might not have been the smartest person in the room, but that she was the most competitive person in the entire world, “and that matters more in the long run.”

Laurie could tell that both Timmy and Leo approved.

Everyone was playing except for Jerry, who was hunkered in a chair by the fireplace, working on plans for next week’s summit sessions.

“Take a little break,” Leo said. “Your eyes are going to cross.”

“Can’t take a break when you live with your boss.” Jerry looked up from his notes and winked at Timmy, who laughed at the joke.

Laurie thought that if anyone should have been working late tonight, it was her. She had blown the meeting with Keith Ratner today. The man was arrogant, but he had a point. Rosemary was so convinced that Keith was involved in Susan’s death, but was her suspicion based in fact or on her belief that Susan never would have gone to Los Angeles in the first place if not for her boyfriend? And
would anyone have even questioned his alibi if it had come from six members of a book club or established group, instead of Advocates for God?

She was supposed to be spelling out words with her tiles, but she kept hearing Keith’s voice:
You told me you’d be objective
. Objective reporting meant checking his alibi.

She excused herself to make a phone call. She looked up the phone number for the church of Advocates for God and received a message system. “This is Laurie Moran, calling for Reverend Collins.” She had read that Martin Collins was the founder and minister of Advocates for God. Though the alibi witnesses who had spoken to police were all individual church members, she had to believe that Collins would have been aware of the situation given the group’s relatively small size at the time and the high-profile nature of the investigation. “It’s about a church member named Keith Ratner and a police investigation from 1994. If he could return my call, I’d appreciate it.”

Laurie was heading back to the makeshift game room when Jerry waved her over to his corner.

“You really should hang it up for the night,” she said. “I’m starting to feel guilty.”

“Then you have no idea how late I usually work in New York. Besides, this is fun. I was just going through old copies of the UCLA newspaper that I downloaded onto my computer. I thought it might be worth exploring the aftermath of Susan’s killing on the campus. Were students afraid? Did the university add security? That kind of thing.”

“Good thinking.”

“Thanks. And then I saw this.”

He rotated his laptop so she could see the screen. The headline read
TECH PROFESSOR LEAVES FOR PRIVATE SECTOR, FIRST JOB IS FOR UCLA STUDENT
.

The article was published in September 1994, the first edition
in the school year following Susan’s death, reporting the university’s loss of Richard Hathaway, a popular and prolific computer science professor, to a booming, Internet-fueled private sector job.

According to the article, a university policy requiring ownership of all faculty research and development could have played a role in Hathaway’s departure. The author hinted that the policy could make it difficult to hire and retain professors in the most innovative and profitable fields. It also reported that Professor Hathaway’s first private-sector gig was as a consultant to UCLA junior Dwight Cook, who was currently seeking financing for his Internet-search technology.

The caption beneath Professor Hathaway’s photograph read, “Professor could earn his annual UCLA income in a day’s work for a successful start-up.”

But it was the last paragraph of the article that Jerry highlighted for Laurie on his screen:

Professor Hathaway may be familiar to students beyond the computer science department as the male professor named “most crush-worthy” by this publication for three of the last five years. Though that award is one of many tongue-in-cheek honors bestowed by the paper’s editorial board, not everyone always saw the humor. Last year, a student filed a complaint with the university, repeating campus rumors that Professor Hathaway had dated female students and alleging that he showed favor to attractive female students on that basis. The student withdrew the complaint when she was unwilling to provide the names of any students who may have been involved with the popular teacher, and no other students came forward to confirm her allegation.

Jerry looked at Laurie to make sure she had finished reading. “We know Susan was one of his favorite students. And she was definitely attractive.”

Laurie looked again at the photograph accompanying the article. Hathaway would have been in his late thirties at the time. When she met him in Dwight Cook’s office, she had noticed he was handsome, but his face was fuller and his hair thinner than in this photograph. As she looked at the younger version, it dawned on her that Hathaway’s features were similar to Keith Ratner’s. Dark hair, strong cheekbones, and a killer smile. She could imagine that a woman might be attracted to them both.

Susan and her professor? It was a theory that the police had never even considered.

“I’ll check with her roommates, see if there were any signals that Susan and Professor Hathaway might have been an item. If they were, Dwight Cook certainly didn’t know about it. I could tell when I first spoke to him that he’d been carrying a torch for Susan himself, and then Keith made it sound like Dwight was pretty obsessed with her. No way would he have kept Hathaway as his right-hand man at REACH if the teacher crossed that line with Susan. But the article calls him a consultant. We know that Hathaway was instrumental to REACH from the very beginning. That means he got stock options and big money. I know you told me that Hathaway confirmed that the idea for REACH was Dwight’s and not Susan’s, but—”

“You’re thinking Dwight Cook might have murdered Susan?”

“I don’t know, Jerry. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that it’s often the least likely suspect.”

She thought of her husband’s murder. Because Greg was an emergency room doctor, the police thought he might have crossed paths with a deranged patient who became fixated on him. It never dawned on anyone that Greg was targeted by a sociopath consumed by hatred of her own father, NYPD inspector Leo Farley.

Laurie was reminded of her conversation with Alex that morning; Jerry really had moved on since his intern days. He was now
close to a partner for her on the show, and she needed to treat him that way. “I’ll call Rosemary again so we aren’t just taking Hathaway and Dwight’s word for it about Susan’s lab work. She’ll know what Susan was working on.”

Laurie had hoped to narrow the field of people under suspicion before the summit session, but her list of suspects seemed to be growing.

43

B
y the time Dwight Cook slipped his key into the lock of his Westwood bungalow, it was nearly midnight. He and Hathaway had taken REACH’s jet to Los Angeles, but the flight had been delayed by fog in the Bay Area.

Hathaway teased him for hanging on to this modest little house, which Dwight had bought at the end of his junior year, once REACH appeared solid enough as a start-up for him to get a small mortgage. In fact, Hathaway teased him for returning to college at all. Hathaway was so confident in REACH’s potential to pull in major cash that he’d retired from his tenured position.

But Hathaway had always been more financially motivated than Dwight. It sounded overly simple, but Dwight really did enjoy college—not the parties or hanging out in the quad, but the learning. So even after REACH launched, he found a way to finish college. Besides, he had Hathaway to oversee the corporation.

As soon as he locked the door behind him, he opened his laptop and logged in to the surveillance cameras at the Bel Air house. He had not been able to check updates while he was with Hathaway.

He fast-forwarded through hours of tape for a quick overview. The house was empty most of the day. The little boy and his grandpa came home first, followed by some television for the boy and phone calls for Grandpa. Then Jerry and Grace, followed by Laurie and
Alex Buckley. It looked like they were wrapping up the night with some kind of game in the den.