All Dressed in White (20 page)

Laurie looked to her father for guidance.

“I’ll call the police if you don’t leave,” Jeremy threatened.

Leo took Laurie’s hand and led her to the front door. They had no choice.

“Dad,” she said once they were safe in the car, “he has photographs of Amanda. I could feel it. He’s going to destroy them now.”

“No he won’t,” Leo said grimly as he started the engine. “They mean too much to him. They’re his mementos.”

40

A
lex embraced Laurie when she walked into his suite.

“I didn’t want you to know how worried I was, but thank God you’re both back in one piece. How did it go? What was he like?”

Laurie sat on the sofa and pressed her hands to her face. “Scary.”

“Major creep,” Leo said. “Seriously off.”

“He’s living like a hoarder,” Laurie explained. “Floor-to-ceiling photographs everywhere. It was like something out of a horror movie. When I pressed him about whether he had pictures of Amanda, he threw us out of the house. Dad, should we call the police now?”

“And tell them what?” Leo said. “We don’t have any evidence. But I’m telling you: he’s the guy, the one the police missed all those years ago. Tying him to the case is a big breakthrough.”

“I don’t understand,” Alex said. “You just said you don’t have any evidence. How can you be so sure he’s guilty?”

Leo shook his head. “Sometimes I forget you’re a defense attorney. Trust me, we were the ones who were there. Jeremy Carroll knows something.”

“Leo, with all due respect, that doesn’t mean he’s guilty. I see clients all the time who get railroaded by police simply because they were nervous, or were trying to protect some harmless secret.”

“No one’s railroading anyone—”

“Okay, please, don’t argue,” Laurie pleaded. “Alex, Dad’s right. You weren’t in that house. There’s no question that Jeremy’s—” She paused, searching for the word. “A weirdo. And he didn’t even deny being the man in that video. He turned around to follow Amanda, and he’s been convicted of stalking people.”

“But you’re suggesting he did something far worse,” Alex pointed out.

Laurie turned to her father. “Dad, Alex is right that until we have solid evidence, we shouldn’t leap to conclusions.”

“So what do you want to do?” Alex asked. “It’s up to you.”

“Dad,” Laurie began slowly. “Based on your experience, you don’t think Jeremy will make a run for it or destroy evidence if we don’t move against him right now?”

Leo shrugged. “You never know, but if the guy can’t throw out old newspapers, I don’t think he’ll dump pictures he’s been holding on to for more than five years. And that house is probably his only asset. He’s not the type who can hop on a jet and live a fugitive lifestyle on the other side of the world.”

“And keep in mind,” Alex said, “just because he might know something about Amanda’s disappearance doesn’t mean he was involved.”

Laurie nodded. “What do you think about this? Jerry can call him and try to smooth things over. He can say that we’re reaching out to everyone who was at the Grand Victoria that weekend and didn’t mean to invade his privacy. That might calm his nerves.”

“Good idea,” Alex said.

“And Alex, none of us want to rush to judgment. We’ll keep an open mind for now, but that makes it all the more important that we hold everyone else’s feet to the fire. Don’t go easy on anyone.”

“I have no intention of going easy on anyone.” There was a glint in Alex’s eyes.

“Next up is Meghan. I can’t wait to hear how she wound up marrying her best friend’s fiancé,” Laurie said as she stood up and headed for the door.

41

“A
re you almost ready, Ms. White? We have the cameras set up with the current light, and the shadows can change quickly outside.”

Meghan White held up one finger. She would have finished by now if she could have gotten a better phone signal. When she told Jeff that she would be part of this awful show, she assumed they’d have plenty of notice to make arrangements with work. Instead, they’d been hauled down here on the spur of the moment, as if Meghan could put her entire caseload on hold with the push of a button.

She was doing her best to telecommute, but hotel Wi-Fi connections were infamously insecure, so she had created her own using her cell phone’s hotspot. She watched the progress bar move slowly on the download of this appellate brief. The production assistant—was his name Jerry?—was obviously getting antsy. She wanted to tell him that if time was of the essence, they should have filmed inside. “Just another second, I promise.”

When the download was finally complete, Meghan closed her laptop and followed Jerry to the set of rattan furniture Laurie Moran had arranged on the promenade behind the main building. She resisted the temptation to wipe all the makeup off her face. The woman who caked it on had promised her that she would look
natural on camera, but to Meghan, it felt as though she were wearing a layer of mud. She had stopped arguing when the makeup artist said, “You don’t want to look washed out on the screen. It makes people look scared.”

Meghan was scared, but she didn’t want to look that way. She asked for a little more blush.

Laurie Moran, the woman who had been hounding her on the telephone for the previous week, seemed amiable enough, but Meghan thought she had noticed a hint of sarcasm in the producer’s voice when she said she was happy to
finally
meet in person. Meghan was more nervous about going toe-to-toe with Alex Buckley. His cross-examination skills were well known.

Her laptop tucked away, she no longer had an excuse for delay. Okay, she said to herself, let’s do this and then Jeff and I can go home and move on with the rest of our lives.

•  •  •

The minute they were past introductions, Alex Buckley began by asking Meghan to explain the timing of her courtship with Jeff.

He clearly isn’t pulling any punches, Meghan thought. He’s going for the jugular.

“You had to have known that some people would disapprove of your starting a relationship with him when Amanda—his fiancée and your best friend—was still missing.”

Meghan had practiced her answer hundreds of times, but now that she was here, all she could think about was those hot lights and cameras pointing at her. She had worked so hard to avoid all this attention.

She managed to make it through her memorized response. “We were both as surprised as anyone, Alex.”

“You’ve told people over the years that you were the one to reintroduce Amanda and Jeff.”

“That’s right. At a coffee shop in Brooklyn. Amanda loved their bagels,” she said sadly.

“But you didn’t intentionally get them together, did you?” he asked in a sympathetic tone. “Isn’t it true that Jeff just happened to bump into you?”

“Yes, I guess that’s right.”

“In fact, weren’t you romantically interested in Jeff all the way back in college?”

She shrugged. “College crushes come and go.”

“So you did have a crush. And then you were excited when you both ended up in New York after law school and he invited you out.”

“Yes, I suppose I was.”

“And were you the one to tell him you didn’t want to see each other anymore, or was that his decision?”

“It wasn’t like that. We didn’t even have that discussion. We just never went out on a third date.”

“And is that because Jeff didn’t invite you?”

“Sure, I guess.”

Meghan could feel the implication in the pause that followed. The show had scored a point at her expense. All these years, she had allowed people to think that she played cupid between Amanda and Jeff. Would everyone see the truth now? Would they know that she had loved Jeff all along? That she had sobbed for hours after Amanda called her the day after the coffee-shop run-in to say that Jeff had invited her to dinner? Meghan had known instantly that she had lost her shot. She never could compete with Amanda.

Now in desperation, she tried to turn the tables on her interrogator. “Have you ever heard of tunnel vision?” she blurted. “Let me explain it. It’s when an investigator gets suspicious of one person and views all the evidence through that lens. I could point to any person in the wedding party and start raising questions. It doesn’t mean any
one of us is involved. Take Kate, for example. On the night Amanda disappeared, she said she had too much to drink and needed to go to her room. But when I went to check on her, there was no answer, even though I banged on the door. In the morning, she claimed not to have heard the knocking, even though Kate is the lightest sleeper I’ve ever met. In college, she would wake up if someone played a CD two rooms away. Do I know where Kate was that night? Not really. But did Kate have anything to do with Amanda’s disappearance? I’d bet my life she didn’t. Are you going to play gotcha with all of us? Are you trying to make us all look guilty?”

Meghan felt like she had made a valid point, but realized the producers could always edit anything they didn’t like. By the time they were done with their creative splicing, she might come across like a defensive lunatic.

Alex shifted gears. “Did you threaten to sue Amanda for stealing a product idea from you?”

Meghan’s worst fears were coming true. Well, not her
very
worst fears, but she knew this interview was not going well. She felt even more nauseous than she’d become accustomed to in the past week. How in the world did they even know about the fight at the Ladyform offices? She thought Amanda’s disappearance had long ago overshadowed their argument. It must have been Charlotte. That woman never forgot a grudge.

“I didn’t
threaten
her, but I did let her know my feelings were hurt. Back in college, the two of us came up with a trick to hold our keys and our iPods while we were working out. We sewed neoprene pockets onto our exercise clothes. It kept the contents dry and tucked snugly into place. Plus, we thought it was pretty cute. When I saw Ladyform’s X-Dream collection in stores, I was so upset that I went to Amanda’s office. We argued over whose idea it was. I thought it was mine, or at least a joint idea. She insisted the real
work and the ownership was hers and the company’s. In my opinion, if she didn’t think she was doing anything wrong, she would have told me in advance.”

“You were screaming loudly enough that people could hear you all the way down the hall. Did the fact that Amanda was going to marry a man you were still interested in add to your anger?”

Meghan was beginning to regret not trying to dissuade Jeff from coming here. Now she was trapped. She had no choice but to keep talking. “I admit, the argument in her office was heated. But she called me the next day. We met for lunch. She explained all the design work and experimentation that had gone into turning our simple little trick into a breakthrough product. She apologized for not telling me in advance, and I told her she could make it up to me by paying for the very nice bottle of champagne we were drinking and sending me a box full of free workout clothes.” She smiled at the memory. “In the end, it was a minor snit between friends. And it was over the same lunch that we had the conversation I always go back to. It’s the reason I truly believe that Amanda left this hotel on her own.”

Alex leaned forward. Meghan prayed that he would believe her. She had never told anyone this before, except Jeff. “Amanda’s illness fundamentally changed her. She told me that she would no longer do things only out of loyalty or obligation. She was going to live for herself. It was her reason for not giving me credit for X-Dream. In her heart, she didn’t believe I deserved it, so sharing credit with me would diminish her own accomplishment.”

“And how does that relate to her disappearance?” Alex asked.

“She was so different than the Amanda I knew before she was sick. In retrospect, I think she was trying to tell me she was no longer going to be the good girl. The good daughter. The good friend. The good wife. She wanted freedom, and she wanted power, and she didn’t want to feel guilty for being the strong, independent woman
she’d grown to be. But, she couldn’t do all those things in the shadow of her family and friends and her impending wedding.”