Before He Finds Her (15 page)

She couldn’t imagine anyone being friends with a policeman, but she took him at his word. “What did they ask him?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But the police must have thought—for a while, anyway—that he knew something or saw something, or maybe had information that might help them find Ramsey.” Something started buzzing, and Arthur became distracted for a moment before realizing that the sound was coming from the hallway and not one of the machines in his room. “I really don’t know. But my attempt to speak with him about the crime is what ended our acquaintanceship, and he’s refused to speak with me ever since.”

“What do you think he might have known?”

Arthur still seemed distracted, glancing around the room, up at the blank TV mounted to the wall, then back at Melanie. Finally, the buzzing in the hallway stopped and he visibly relaxed. “If you came here looking for answers, I’m afraid I don’t have any. Everything you read on my blog and in my articles? That’s it. It’s all I know, except for what I just told you. I know it doesn’t amount to much. But if you’re set on investigating what happened on the night of September 22, 1991, there are worse places to start than with David Magruder.”

“Except that he won’t talk to a journalist about it.”

“Then it’s a good thing you aren’t one.” Yes, his smile was definitely irritating, but she would try to get used to it. “I think I can help you, Alice. But if you find out anything, you have to tell me, okay? It’s really boring in here.” He frowned. “And this case. It’s important to me.”

She nodded. “It’s important to me, too.”

9

Melanie took a deep breath, let it out, and entered the dim marble lobby, which was empty except for a security guard in the far corner, sitting behind a desk. As she approached, the man glanced up at her. She told him she had a 3:00 appointment with David Magruder.

“ID, please.” He barely looked up from the newspaper spread across the desk. When she didn’t respond, he said, “Driver’s license? Passport?”

Yesterday, she’d given a false name to Magruder’s assistant. “I don’t have my license with me,” she said. “I took the train in from New Jersey.”

He looked up from the paper. “What’s your name?”

“Alice Adams.” The more she said this name, the faker it sounded. “Mr. Magruder is expecting me. His assistant never said anything about—”

“Hold on.” He picked up the phone receiver and dialed a few buttons. “Yeah, a young woman—Ms. Adams—says she has an appointment with Mr. Magruder.” A long moment passed before he said, “Okay. I’ll send her up.” He hung up the phone. “Sign here. Eighteenth floor. I need to look in your bag.”

On the eighteenth floor, the elevator doors opened directly into a reception area with carpeted hallways extending in both directions. Hanging on the wall behind the reception desk were enlarged photographs of David Magruder and the name of his current TV show,
Magruder Reveals
. Melanie had watched it a couple of times. Everyone was always shouting and crying and reconciling, and the music in the background told you how to feel.

A stunning woman with long black hair and a black dress sat behind a small wooden desk. She was quietly telling someone on the other end of the telephone line that “some people are just bastards, and you can’t let the bastards stand in your way. You just need to... Hold on.” She lowered the phone. “Yes?”

“I’m Alice Adams,” Melanie said. “I have a three o’clock appointment with Mr. Magruder.”

The woman looked Melanie up and down and uncapped her hand from the phone receiver. “I’ll call you back,” she said, hung up, and dialed an extension. “Mr. Magruder,” she said, her voice sultry and full of promises, “I have an Alice Adams here who says she’s waiting to see you.” She picked a speck of nonexistent lint off her shoulder. “All right, I’ll tell her. Thank you.” She hung up the phone and said nothing for five seconds, ten. She was studying her fingernails.

“Is Mr. Magruder—”

“Yeah, I know. He’s coming.” She looked up from her nails. “Where are you from, anyway?”

“North Carolina,” Melanie said.

“Yeah, your accent is crazy thick,” the woman said in her crazy thick New York accent, and then, thankfully, the man Melanie recognized from TV and the photos overhead came rushing around the corner.

Arthur Goodale had told her to forget about posing as a pro.
You’re a college student working on a project, spotlighting Magruder and his amazing career. You’re completely enamored with him.
She’d laid it on thick with his assistant, embarrassingly so, but the approach had worked.

“Alice?” Magruder came up to her now, arm extended, beaming at her as if she were the celebrity. “I’m David. I’m so glad to meet you.” His handshake was firm, his palm dry, just as she knew it would be. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go back to my office where we can chat.” She began following him. “Did you have an easy trip?”

She decided not to mention her battle with the NJ Transit ticket machine, or being overwhelmed by Penn Station and the crush of people with their briefcases and their scowls, or, emerging onto 34th Street, being stunned by the searing daylight and mammoth buildings and wide sidewalks and the crowds everywhere she looked, moving fast, fast.

“Yes, sir,” she said, and smiled.

“Good. Jeremy told me you’re majoring in broadcast journalism. Hard road, changing landscape—but if you keep your eyes and ears open and your nose clean, then you’ll...” They passed a few offices where on the other side of the glass young men and women sat at cubicles and stared at their computer monitors. Every-one was on the phone.

David Magruder had on a dark blue suit with subtle pinstripes and freshly polished black shoes. On TV, he was a good-looking middle-aged man with terrific hair and a pleasing voice. In person she wouldn’t call him handsome, exactly. The parts were all there: cleft chin, blue eyes, that perfect head of hair, but the parts didn’t quite fit together. It was as if he’d been ordered a la carte.

He had stopped in front of a double door with a T
APING
IN
P
ROGRESS
sign attached to it. “They’re doing promo spots right now,” he said. “Otherwise, I’d give you the full tour. Come on, let’s go to my office.”

At the end of the hallway, he opened the door and waved her in. His office looked about the size of Melanie’s home on Notress Pass. One corner was nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking a large portion of Manhattan. Magruder strolled over and scanned the skyline as if it had been erected this morning just for him.

“I do well,” he said. “But nothing was ever handed to me.”

When he was done looking out his window, he turned around, smiled at Melanie, and told her to take a seat. The sofa was leather, soft, and probably cost more than all of her family’s furniture put together. Above the sofa were photographs of Magruder shaking hands with President Bush, and another with him shaking hands with President Clinton. Both settings looked like the Oval Office. That seemed to be the recurring theme—Magruder with incredibly famous people, most of whom even Melanie recognized: Madonna, Tom Cruise, Michael Jordan. Angelina Jolie. Hillary Clinton. Magruder flashed the same smile in all of them: friendly, slightly crooked, with his teeth showing a little. A smile divorced from an actual expression.

He sat down on a leather chair at the head of the coffee table, which looked like a slab of petrified wood. He crossed his legs. The crease in his pants was sharp enough to cut steak.

“We produce a show a week, which airs on Wednesday night. Thursday we’re off, and then on Friday morning we start all over again.”

“That sounds really intense,” Melanie said.

“Maybe. Though I have to tell you, Alice, after years of daily TV and having to chase every unfolding story and be everywhere at once, it feels like a walk in the park. I can plan my shows ahead of time, get the interviews I want.”

Now that Melanie had a better look, she noticed that Magruder’s face had the same orange cast as some of the girls at college who hit the tanning salon too often. Not sure what to say next, she took Arthur’s advice and paid a compliment. “Your office is amazing,” she said.

“Thank you. This whole floor is mine,” he said. “The network wanted me to rent space in their building, but I said fuck no. Pardon the bravado, but it’s the truth. I refused to have them looking over my shoulder.” He shrugged. “What’re they gonna do, Alice? Last week, I got a twelve-share with those marines, guy and a gal who got nailed by an IED and fell in love in rehab. We broadcast part of the wedding, their first dance... did you happen to catch it?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I missed it.”

“Well, you’d have been weeping. Trust me, it was very beautiful.” He smiled again, but the smile quickly vanished into an expression of genuine concern. “I have no manners.”

“Sir?”

“Would you like coffee? Tea?”

“No, thank you.”

“I’d offer something stronger, but I probably shouldn’t, ha ha. But if you want it, it’s here. But we probably shouldn’t.”

“If you have any water.”

“Sure, we can rustle that up.” He picked up the receiver of the phone on the coffee table and dialed an extension. “Please bring Ms. Adams a glass of water. No, nothing for me.” He hung up. “You’re southern.”

“North Carolina,” Melanie said.

He nodded. “It’s a sexy accent, and it suits you—you’re quite lovely—but you’ll want to lose it or you’ll be relegated to the small markets. This isn’t a come-on, by the way, just some free advice. Back when I was doing weather, I used to sound like a real hick. Point is, I lost the accent. Point is, I beat out
60 Minutes
last week. Ratings talk. Everything else walks.” He slapped his lap twice, as if encouraging a small, obedient dog to jump up and be petted. “So—your class. Tell me about it.”

“It’s called Introduction to Mass Media,” she said.

“What school?”

Last night she’d gone online to prepare for this question. “Gaston College.”

“Never heard of it.” Exactly why she’d chosen it. “Go on.”

“Well, one of our assignments is to interview someone in TV or radio. I thought I’d have to find someone back home, but when I found myself in New Jersey for a cousin’s wedding and realized I’d be this close to New York... anyway, I’m like your biggest fan.”

Arthur Goodale had insisted she say that.

“So instead of interviewing some local yokel, you came to me. That’s ambitious. I like that. And I always try to make time for the next generation of media moguls.” His smile was reassuring. “So what do you want to know?”

She unzipped her backpack, removed her notebook and pen, and scanned the list of handwritten questions. She decided to begin with a question about past shows he worked on, but almost at once he stopped her. “You can learn all that on Wikipedia. Lesson number one: Don’t waste your interview’s time. What is it you really want to know?”

She looked at the list again. He’d just invalidated eleven of her fifteen questions. If only she were subtle and clever and able to improvise, able to chat. All she could do was skip to question twelve on the list. “You’re single with no children, isn’t that right?”

“It is,” he said, a little uncomfortably. “But again, that’s something—”

“Why do you still live in Silver Bay?”

He frowned. “I don’t talk about my home life.” He must have realized that sounded curt, because he added, “I’m sure you understand why a public figure might want to keep his private life private.”

This was a serious blow—her plan, such as there was one, was to get him talking about Silver Bay and then, acting naïve, bring up the crime. How do you develop a rapport?

“My school assignment,” she said, “is to get to know my subject. His life as well as his work. That’s why I asked about Silver Bay.”

“Trust me,” he said, “my work is a lot more interesting than my life.” He shifted in his seat.

Five, maybe seven seconds of silence. Her armpits felt sweaty. Feeling out of options, she shut the notebook and braced herself. “When you lived in the Sandy Oaks neighborhood,” she said, “how well did you know Allison and Ramsey Miller?”

“I beg your pardon?” He leaned back in his seat and got a good look at her. “Were you not just listening to me?”

“In nineteen ninety-one—”

“What the hell kind of a question is that? I’m not discussing that.”

“I only wondered if you knew them. Because you lived in—”

“I know where I lived, sweetheart.” No smile now. “I don’t talk about that. You don’t ask about that. Do we have an understanding?”

Her heart pounded. “Yes, sir.”

“I didn’t know either of them. Not even a little. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said. He was lying, though. Why would he lie?

“Damn right, okay.”

Just then, a young woman barged in carrying a tray. “Here you go,” she sing-songed. On the tray sat a single glass of ice water. Melanie and Magruder watched as she set the glass in front of Melanie, on a ceramic coaster. She smiled. “Anything else?”

“No,” Magruder said.

“I didn’t know if you wanted lemon or not,” she said, “so—”

“We’re fine,” Magruder said.

“All right,” the woman said, her smile faltering and then reaffirming itself. Then she left.

“I’m really sorry,” Melanie said when the woman was gone, doing her best to sound apologetic and reasonable. She meant it, too. She didn’t want to be burning this bridge already, when there was no other in sight. “I promise, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You? You can’t upset me.” She looked down at the table, accepting his condescension. He took a breath, laid his hands down on his lap atop those perfect creases. “Why don’t you try telling me the truth. Why are you really here? Who are you?” When she didn’t immediately answer, he asked, “What college did you say you’re going to?”

“Gaston College.”

“We’ll see about that. Because
this
...” He motioned to her clothes. “The college students I know would’ve dressed up for an interview.” At Arthur’s advice, she had dressed like a “typical student”: simple blouse, worn blue jeans. Sneakers. Hair in a ponytail held together with a black elastic. Subtle lipstick and a touch of eyeliner—an amount that Phillip always mistook for no makeup at all. “If I find out you’re with the
Enquirer
or some other—”