The Cinderella Murder

25

The host at Le Bernardin greeted Laurie with a warm handshake. “Ms. Moran. I saw your name in the book. What a pleasure to welcome you again.”

There was a time when this had been a regular stop for her and Greg on their weekly babysitter nights. Now that she was the sole breadwinner and her usual date for dinner was a fourth grader, the Morans were more likely to opt for hamburgers or pizza than three-star Michelin fare.

But today’s decadent meal was meant to celebrate Brett Young’s official approval for the Susan Dempsey production. And Grace and Jerry were Laurie’s honored lunch guests.

“Three of you today?” the host confirmed.

“Yes, thank you very much.”

“Oh, and here I was hoping I’d get a chance to see that adorable Alex Buckley,” Grace said. “Jerry told me that he agreed to host again.”

“Yes, but just the three of us for lunch, I’m afraid.”

Jerry fit right into their elegant surroundings with his coiffed hair and dark blue suit. But as they were getting seated, Laurie noticed a woman at the next table glaring judgmentally at Grace. It could have been for the poofed-up hair, the heavy makeup, the three pounds of costume jewelry, the micromini hemline, or the five-inch stilettos. Regardless of the reasons, Laurie didn’t like it. She stared straight at the woman until she looked away.

“In any event,” Laurie teased, “don’t you think Alex is a little old for you, Grace? He’s got a dozen years on you.”

“And from what I can tell,” Grace said, “each one has made him better-looking.”

Jerry smiled and shook his head, used to Grace’s boy-crazy talk. “We have bigger fish to fry than your fascination with our host,” he said. “I know you call the shots, Laurie, but I don’t know how plausible it is for us to be flying back and forth to California constantly.”

She thought about Timmy’s wide eyes that morning in bed as he asked her how often she would be going to California. Now that she had convinced Brett Young to approve the Cinderella Murder, there was no turning back.

“I’m with you,” she said. “If you could think of a way to produce the entire show from New York, you’d be my hero for life.”

Grace registered her opinion with a tsk. “Sun. The ocean. Hollywood. Feel free to send me out to do as much work as you need.”

“I’ve started a punch list.” Jerry was the most organized person Laurie had ever met. The key to success, he liked to say, was to plan your work and work your plan. “We can hire an actress who looks like Susan to re-create-probably blurred-the foot chase in the Hollywood Hills.”

“If we do that, we need to be careful not to add any ideas or inferences to what we absolutely know to a certainty,” Laurie said.

“Of course,” Jerry said. “Like, obviously, we wouldn’t show the actress running out of Frank Parker’s house. But we know her body was found, strangled, in Laurel Canyon Park. And based on the discovery of her missing shoe, abrasions to her foot, and the path of flattened grass leading to her body, police believed her killer chased her from the roadway of the park entrance into the park’s interior. That was the part I thought we could re-create, the sprint from the park sign to the place her body was found.”

She nodded her approval.

“The real question,” Grace said, “is how she got to that roadway. Her car was parked on campus.”

“We’ll highlight that, too,” Jerry said. “Photographs from the investigation will suffice, I think. And I’ve already got a forensic pathologist lined up to talk about the physical evidence. A woman named Janice Lane, on the medical school faculty at Stanford. She’s a frequent expert witness and presents well on camera.”

“Excellent,” Laurie said. “Make sure she knows that we don’t include any prurient details. Susan Dempsey’s mother doesn’t need grisly descriptions of her daughter’s death on national television. Dr. Lane’s primary role should be a discussion of the timeline. It was the estimate of the time of death that helped Frank Parker establish an alibi.”

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?