All Dressed in White

44

“Are we really going to let them drink scotch during their interview?” Jerry was staging the bar table just so in the cocktail lounge. From the right angle, the cameras would be able to catch both the dark wood of the hotel bar and the sunshine and palm trees waiting just outside.

“Trust me,” Laurie said. “This is the place where Nick and Austin will feel most at home. That’s what matters most, which means giving them their beverage of choice.”

Laurie had decided to question the two friends together. They seemed to open up around each other, and that was what she wanted.

As for wardrobe, Laurie couldn’t have hoped for more if she’d selected their clothing herself. They both showed up wearing tan summer suits with open-collared bright blue shirts. The only difference was the pattern of their pocket squares. Though their clothes were nearly identical, they looked nothing alike. Nick was strikingly handsome and fit, one of those men who wore a suit well. Austin was at best average-looking with the early signs of a paunch over his belt. His suit was impeccably tailored, but it did little to boost his overall appearance. She remembered what the mother of one of her friends had observed about her daughter’s date: “He does not yet look comfortable in his Paul Stuart suit.”

“Let’s get straight to the point,” Alex said once they were filming. “By all accounts, you two are successful, eligible bachelors. Even our assistant on the show says you can’t help but flirt with every woman you encounter. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. Was your friend, Jeff, ready to settle down with Amanda?”

Laurie wasn’t surprised when Nick took the lead. He was definitely the alpha male of the pair. “Absolutely,” he said with confidence. “Look, Jeff and I were tight from the second we were paired up as college roommates, but he was never a wingman.”

“And can you explain for our viewers what that means?” Alex asked.

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Nick and Austin exchanged an amused glance. “A buddy when you’re out talking to women. A partner in the hunt, so to speak.”

Laurie wanted to edit both of them out of the show entirely. No wonder she had always avoided the dating scene.

“Jeff wasn’t like that?” Alex asked.

“Definitely not,” Austin said, trying to get a word in. “In college, he was focused on his studies. He’d hang out mostly in groups.”

“What about later, once he was a lawyer in New York?”

Austin clearly didn’t know the answer. Nick was the one who was closer to Jeff. “He’d go out on the occasional date,” Nick said, “but nothing serious. I was actually the one who got into a serious relationship for a while-”

“Melissa,” Austin said. “That didn’t last for long.”

“True. I had one misstep at a buddy’s bachelor party. Melissa found out about it and was gone. I haven’t tried again, but hey, unlike some people here, at least I gave it a shot. Anyway, once Jeff started seeing Amanda, she was all he talked about.”

“But weren’t they on and off for a while?” Alex asked.

“At first,” Nick said. “One or the other would be so busy at work that they’d shift the relationship to the back burner. But, wow, once they started going out for real and then Amanda got sick, every minute he wasn’t at work he was with her. When she told him she had cancer, he asked her to marry him the next day.”

“What about after she was sick?” Alex asked. “Did you ever see them fight?”

“They argued like any other couple,” Austin said, “but he would never hurt her.”

Nick shot a disapproving glance to his friend. “Trust me: whatever happened to Amanda, Jeff had nothing to do with it. He was crushed when she went missing.”

“Until he became involved with Meghan,” Alex said.

A flash of anger crossed Nick’s face. “That’s not fair. Was the guy supposed to become a monk for the rest of his life? Is it that surprising that he’d fall for someone Amanda also loved and respected?”

“You’ll have to forgive Nick,” Austin observed. “He’s fiercely protective when it comes to Jeff.”

Laurie thought she detected a note of jealousy in Austin’s voice.

“Now, you’ve both said that you last saw Amanda around five o’clock, after you finished group photographs.”

Both confirmed the same timeline they’d provided to police. After the photo shoot, they’d gone to the bar for an hour and then to their rooms. A little before eight, they met in the lobby and went to dinner at the Steak and Fin, finishing around ten. Henry left while they stayed for an after-dinner drink there. Then they had a nightcap in Jeff’s room and went to their rooms around eleven.

“It’s our understanding that you were down here around the time Amanda and her girlfriends were coming back to the hotel. Did you cross paths with them?”

Nick shook his head. “No, I didn’t see Amanda again after they took pictures.”

Austin gave the same answer.

Laurie listened intently as Alex hammered questions at them.

“So you two fun-loving bachelors left Jeff’s room and went to bed around eleven o’clock. Isn’t that a little on the early side for both of you?”

“We’d been out late the night before. We’d been in the sun all day. We had plenty to drink before dinner, at dinner, and then in Jeff’s room.” Nick turned to Austin. “I don’t know about you, but I was beat.”

As usual, Austin quickly agreed. “I’d had enough. I went straight to my room and to bed.”

“Okay, let’s go back to when you two were alone with Jeff in his room. You have both told me previously that Jeff expressed reservations about marrying Amanda. What did he actually say?”

“I jokingly asked him if he was getting cold feet,” Nick said. “We were both astonished when he said, ‘Yes.’ ”

“And what was said after that?”

This time it was Austin who answered. “Jeff said that Amanda wanted him to change jobs. That he was too good of a lawyer to waste his time working for peanuts at the Public Defender’s office. Jeff told her that he liked being a public defender and helping people, and he was really good at it.”

“What was your response to that?” Alex asked.

“We laughed it off,” Nick said. “I told him getting married always means she’s going to start managing your life. Get used to it.”

“And what was Jeff’s response?”

“He laughed with us,” Nick said. “But we got the impression he was sorry he had started this conversation. It was right after that that we said good night and headed to our rooms.”

“So you went to your respective rooms at eleven o’clock and you contend that you stayed in your rooms all night. Is that right?”

“Yes,” they both answered.

“And as far as you know, Jeff was not planning to leave his room after eleven?”

“That’s right.”

“And is it fair to say no one can confirm that you were in your rooms for the night beginning at eleven o’clock, which is approximately the last time anyone ever saw Amanda?”

A flash of anger came over Austin’s face. “I guess not.” Nick nodded in agreement.

“Were you aware at the time that in her will Amanda had left Jeff her two-million-dollar trust fund?”

“We found out about that after she disappeared,” Nick said.

“Do you think Amanda would have told Jeff about his potential inheritance?”

They looked at each other. “It’s entirely possible,” Austin said quietly.

Laurie could tell that they both desperately wanted to vouch for their friend, but they couldn’t. There was no getting around one basic fact: Jeff had the most to gain by Amanda’s disappearance.