The Cinderella Murder (13 page)

He started watching that preacher every night, practicing the words and the cadence. He researched the IRS rules for religions. He learned about faith-based grants, which allowed churches to get government money by administering charitable programs. He whitened his teeth, joined a tanning center, and printed glossy brochures promising people closeness to God by helping the poor.

The only problem had been the police. They didn’t have any proof yet, but Martin’s predilections had come to the attention of Nebraska law enforcement, and he was tired of their slowing down when they passed his house or saw him near a playground. Off he went to Southern California, filled with lots of sunshine, money, and people searching for a way to feel good about themselves. Advocates for God was born.

And though he clothed himself in religiosity, he knew that the keys to his power had been learned in his own household, watching the way his father controlled his mother.

Ingredient number one: fear. This part was easy. Martin didn’t have to hurt anyone. A nondenominational yet fervently religious church like Advocates for God tended to attract people who were already afraid of the world as they knew it. They wanted easy answers, and he would happily oblige.

Number two: power and control. Martin was the “supreme” Advocate for God, a direct vessel for the voice of God. He, in short, was their god. When he spoke, they listened. That aspect of the church had earned AG more than its share of detractors, but Martin didn’t need everyone in the world to believe. He had sixteen thousand church members and counting, and a track record of raising more than four hundred dollars per year per follower. The math worked.

Number three: isolation. No friends, family members, or other people to interfere with AG’s hold. Early on, this had been Martin’s biggest challenge, and he had learned his lesson with Nicole. Now he was more selective, forcing church members to earn their way into AG’s inner circle with years of loyalty. Until they knew too much about AG’s finances, he could afford to let people walk away.

His cell phone buzzed in his front pocket. He retrieved it and looked at the screen. It was Steve reporting from up north.

“I have to get this,” he explained to Shelly. “But I’ll check in on you tomorrow.”

“That would be nice,” the woman said, giving him another hug. Martin patted little Amanda on the head. Her hair was soft and warm. If he timed his visit right the next day, she would be home from school, before Shelly left the janitorial job he had found for her at an office building.

He answered as he made his way to the room’s rear exit. “Yes?”

“Nicole had a visitor to her house today, the first in the time I’ve
been watching. A woman, must have been seventysomething, driving a Volvo. I followed her to a neighborhood called Castle Crossings, outside of Oakland. Looks pretty nice. Maybe it’s her mother?”

“No, her mother died in Irvine a few years ago.” Martin slipped through a fire door into the stairwell for privacy. “Did you get a name?”

“Not yet. It’s a gated community. Not to worry—Keepsafe has plenty of alarms here, so I can get past the entrance. I know the car and the license plate. I’ll find her house tomorrow and get an ID.”

Sometimes Martin thought about how easy it would be to collect dirt on his potential enemies if he had a police officer or two in his inner circle. A cop could run the plate in seconds. But cops weren’t wired to succumb to Martin’s formula. He had considered simply bribing someone to be on his payroll, but he figured any cop who would take a bribe would sell him out in a heartbeat.

Once
Under Suspicion
started filming, Martin could rely on Keith Ratner to find out what, if anything, Nicole planned to say about Advocates for God. But until then, all Martin could do was wait and take whatever drops of information Steve could gather.

“Very well,” he said. “Thank you, Steve.”

Once Steve hung up, Martin threw his phone so hard that the sound of the screen shattering echoed through the vacant stairwell.

24

W
hen Laurie’s eyes blinked open the next morning, she took a moment to realize that she was back in her own bed, not on a plane or catnapping in her office. The digital clock read 5:58. She couldn’t remember the last time she woke up before the sound of her alarm. Crashing at 8:30 the previous night had certainly helped.

As she turned the alarm to
OFF
, she heard the clinking sounds of dishes in the kitchen. Timmy, as usual, was already awake. He was so much like his father that way, up and at ’em first thing in the morning. She recognized the smell of toast. She still couldn’t believe her little boy could make his own breakfast.

A crack of light broke the darkness of her bedroom, and she saw Timmy backlit in the doorway, holding a tray. “Mommy,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”

“Indeed, I am.” She turned on the lamp on her nightstand.

“Look what I have for you.” He walked slowly, his gaze fixed on the rim of a glass filled with orange juice, then rested the tray gently on the bed. The toast was crispy, just as she liked it, already slathered with butter and strawberry jam. The tray was one of two that had been her fifth-anniversary gift to Greg—made of wood, as tradition called for. They never had the chance to use them together.

She patted the empty spot on the bed next to her, and Timmy
crawled in. She pulled him in tight for a hug. “What did I do to deserve breakfast in bed?”

“I could tell you were sleepy last night. You were hardly awake when you tucked me in.”

“I can’t get much past you, can I?” She took a bite of toast, and he giggled as she used her tongue to catch a wayward drip of jam.

“Mommy?”

“Hmm-hmm?”

“Are you going to keep flying to California for work?”

She felt her heart sink. The first
Under Suspicion
had featured a case in Westchester County. She’d been home every night. But this show required a change in geography. She hadn’t even thought about explaining all of this to the son who was apparently already feeling the impact of her travel.

She returned her toast to her plate and pulled Timmy close again. “You know my show tries to help people who’ve lost loved ones, like we lost your daddy, right?”

He nodded. “So bad guys like Blue Eyes might get caught. Like how Grandpa used to be a police officer.”

“Well, I’m not quite as heroic as that, but we do our best. This time, we are helping a woman in California. Someone took her daughter, Susan, from her twenty years ago. Susan is the focus of our next show. And, yes, I’ll need to be in California for a little while.”

“Twenty years is a long time ago. More than twice as old as me.” He was looking at his toes, wriggling out from beneath the sheets.

“Grandpa will be here with you full-time.”

“Except Grandpa said you couldn’t even call the other night because of time zones. And then when you got home, you were so sleepy, you almost fell asleep at dinner.”

She’d spent all these years since Greg’s death terrified for their safety, convinced that Blue Eyes would carry out his threat against them. Her son’s anxiety over having his mother spend time away
from the house for her career wasn’t even on her radar. She had lived so long in warrior-widow mode that she’d never processed the guilt of being a regular working, single mother. She felt tears pooling in her eyes but blinked them away before he could see them.

“I always take care of us, don’t I?”

“You, me, and Grandpa. We take care of each other,” Timmy answered matter-of-factly.

“Then trust me. I’m going to figure this out. I can work and be your mom, all at one time, okay? And you always come first. No matter what.” This time, she couldn’t stop the tears. She laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “Look what happens when this sweet boy makes breakfast in bed. Mom gets all sappy.”

He laughed and handed her the glass of juice. “Time to brush my teeth,” he announced. “Can’t be late.”

He sounded like her now. All the pieces of the Cinderella Murder show were in place and she couldn’t help thinking about what her father said about putting herself in the company of a killer. An involuntary shudder went through her. A working mother’s guilt was the least of her worries.

25

T
he 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.”