The Cinderella Murder (23 page)

He hit
PAUSE
. Jerry was in the corner by himself while everyone else was playing the game. Laurie seemed to stop and talk to Jerry alone. He rewound to the beginning of their conversation and hit
PLAY
.

By the time he watched Laurie resume her seat at the game table, Dwight wanted to throw his laptop across the room. When he set out to monitor the activity at the house, he thought it would give him some semblance of control, but this was maddening. What he really wanted was to be in the room with them. If they would only ask him the right questions, he could set them straight.

Susan and Hathaway? The thought made him physically ill. It was also ridiculous. Susan was too blinded by her devotion to that abominable Keith Ratner to notice anyone else.

And the idea that Susan had been the one to develop REACH? The technology that had launched REACH wasn’t Susan’s idea; it wasn’t even Dwight’s—not really. As Hathaway had pointed out, he and Dwight were two halves of a whole. On his own, Dwight might never have conceived such a grand idea. But without Dwight’s programming talent, Hathaway might have gotten bogged down and someone else would have caught up and surpassed him before REACH was off the ground.

It had nothing to do with Susan.

He wanted Susan’s murder solved, but now the people at
Under Suspicion
were on the completely wrong track, and he couldn’t correct their misconceptions without revealing the fact that he was monitoring their conversations. He was stuck. All he could do was watch and listen and hope. Oh, Susan, he thought wistfully.

He switched his screen over to the We Dive SoCal website. He hoped someone might have tips about new sites for him to explore while he was in Los Angeles, but it looked like he was going to stick
with his usual dives: Farnsworth Bank, on the windward side of Catalina, and the oil rigs off of Long Beach.

It was probably good he’d completed these tens of times before. Dwight was at his best when he kept a routine. Eight
A.M
. wake-up. Coffee. Three-mile jog. Cereal with fruit. Work. The occasional dinner with Hathaway. Reading. Sleep. Repeat.

Ever since Nicole had appeared at REACH with the news that
Under Suspicion
would be featuring Susan’s case, that routine had been disrupted. Once he found out who killed Susan, his life could return to normal.

And in the meantime, he needed a reprieve in the water. Just three more days before he could dive.

44

M
adison Meyer pushed open the door marked 2F. “I can
not
 . . . believe . . . that this dorm is still here. It was new at the time, but, wow, is it dated now.”

The building was three stories of blond brick, divided into efficient suites. Every campus in America had similar dormitories from the same era. This was the triple room that Susan, Nicole, and Madison had shared sophomore year.

“Hey, guy in the black baseball cap.” Madison was pointing to one of the cameramen. “I’m turned this way for a reason. Please don’t move around to my right side. I told you it’s not a good angle for me.”

“We have
all
your requests from your agent,” Grace said flatly.

Laurie could tell that Grace wanted to put Madison the diva in her place, New York City style. Jerry would have had more patience but had stayed at the house in Bel Air to stage the upcoming summit sessions. “I think what Grace is trying to say,” Laurie gently offered, “is that we take care of all of that during editing. Besides, most of your camera time will be at the summit session.”

“And, yes,” Grace added, “we’ll have someone there for hair and makeup. And vegetarian options for all meals. And the brand of bottled water you requested.”

Alex Buckley placed a hand gently on Grace’s shoulder. “And
now I think Grace is trying to say that your agent did a very good job by you.”

Grace and Madison both laughed at the line. Laurie would never stop marveling at the way attention from a good-looking man could make some women forget everything else.

Temporarily assuaged, Madison continued with her tour of the dorm room. Laurie would have preferred to have both Nicole and Madison here, but Nicole had been reluctant to extend her trip down to Los Angeles before the summit session. The one upside to Nicole’s absence was that they might be able to get Madison to open up about what Nicole had been like when they were dormmates. Laurie was determined to uncover whatever Nicole had been holding back.

Once they were finished with the walk-through, Laurie asked Madison how she came to live with Susan and Nicole as sophomores, after the two others were assigned as roommates freshman year.

“Let’s just say they were luckier on the freshman-roommate draw than I had been. The woman I roomed with first year was a real piece of work. Her own family called her Taz. As in, the Tasmanian Devil. All she had to do was walk in a room, and it was as if a tornado had blown in. She was loud and obnoxious and would borrow my clothes without asking. A nightmare in every way. So, no, we were not going to be one of those pairs, like Susan and Nicole, who would stick together like glue going forward. When the housing lottery opened for the next year, I let everyone who would listen know that I wanted to pair up. Susan asked if I wanted in with her and Nicole.”

“How did you know Susan?” Laurie asked.

“From the theater department.”

“I’ve heard that the two of you were rivals of sorts. You ended up competing for the same parts, given your physical resemblance.”

“You know what they say. Sometimes you need a competitor to bring out your best.”

“Was that odd for you, to live with your rival? Plus, I assume by then they had their own rhythm as a twosome. Did you ever feel like a third wheel?”

“Forgive me if this sounds cocky,” Madison said, looking directly at Alex, “but I have never felt redundant. It’s just not how I’m programmed. But, sure, if you’re asking if sometimes I felt like I was the odd woman out, there were certainly times. Little things, like teasing me about being too flirtatious. We all have a little mean girl in us, and Susan and Nicole weren’t above giving me the occasional cold shoulder.”

Laurie could sense resentment beneath Madison’s otherwise cautious words, but the petty feuds that arose among friends weren’t usually grounds for murder. It was time to move on to issues that had been raised during other interviews.

“Do you happen to recall what Susan was working on in the computer lab?” Laurie asked.

Madison answered without a pause. “A dictation program. She got the idea because her father would often work at home on the weekend, using a dictation machine to draft motions and briefs. But then he’d have to wait until Monday for a secretary to do the typing.”

In addition to Dwight and Professor Hathaway, Nicole and Rosemary had also confirmed the nature of Susan’s work. It was clear that Dwight Cook had not stolen the idea for REACH from Susan, as Keith Ratner had suggested.

But then there were also the rumors about Professor Hathaway being romantically involved with students. Laurie had spent last night trawling the Internet for more information about Hathaway. From what she could tell, even though he initially left UCLA to pursue opportunities in the private sector, his only work since then had been for REACH and had been extremely lucrative. She had even found some trade journals speculating that Hathaway was the real brains behind the operation, while Dwight provided the kind
of young, quirky persona that investors were looking for in the early dot-com years. But she had found nothing more about allegations of on-campus dalliances.

“How about Susan’s relationship with her boyfriend?” Laurie asked.

“Oh yeah,” Madison said offhandedly, “that guy. What was his name again?”

“Keith Ratner.” It struck Laurie as peculiar that Madison wouldn’t remember Keith, especially since both of them had gone on to have some success as actors.

“Right. The two of them were high school sweethearts. Totally devoted to each other.”

“Really?” Alex said. “Because we’ve been told that Keith may have had an eye for other girls.”

“Not that I ever noticed.”

“Do you think it’s possible that Susan could have been seeing someone else besides Keith?” Laurie asked.

On this point, Madison was more emphatic. “Absolutely not. She wasn’t like that. Besides, she just wasn’t that into dating. I mean, she had a boyfriend, but even Keith wasn’t really a top priority. She was into school and her work and theater. It’s like Keith was her fourth priority, like they were some old married couple.”

Laurie noticed that Madison was looking directly at Alex again. Why didn’t she come right out and say it:
I would never be boring.
I make men my priority.
She was so obvious.

“And what about Nicole?” Laurie asked.

“What about her?”

“Rosemary tells me what a good friend Nicole was to her daughter, but sometimes mothers don’t know every detail of a child’s life while she’s away for college. Like you said, we all have a little mean girl in us. Were Nicole and Susan ever mean with each other?”

“Funny. I can’t remember anyone asking about Nicole after
Susan was killed. The whole focus was on Frank and me. I’ll be honest. I didn’t like Nicole very much, and I assume the feeling was mutual. But if she was going to kill someone, it would’ve been me, not her beloved Susan. That was a joke, by the way. She wouldn’t kill anyone. And neither would I, and neither would Frank Parker.”

“So who does that leave as a suspect?” Alex asked.

“I’ve always thought the key to finding her killer was figuring out how she got up to Laurel Canyon. Her car was still on campus.” She looked out the window and pointed to a parking lot behind the dorm. “Just back there.”

Alex paused to follow her gaze out the window but already had the follow-up question locked and loaded. “People have suggested—”

“That Frank did it, I covered up for him, and one or both of us drove her car back to campus afterward. But I am one of two people in the very unique position to know that didn’t happen. Susan’s car had been giving her trouble, so I’ve always wondered if she accepted a ride with somebody to avoid the risk of a breakdown.”

Laurie didn’t remember seeing anything in the police reports about car problems. “Was her car not working?”

“It was—what was the word she’d use? One of those SAT words for being moody. ‘Mercurial’! She loved that word.”

As Laurie thought through the possibilities, she realized that this tiny detail about Susan’s car could be significant. The reconstruction of Susan’s timeline on the day of her death had been built around the assumption that she would have driven herself from campus to Frank Parker’s for the audition. Based on that assumption, the likely killer was either Frank or someone she might have been with prior to her audition. But what if she had gotten into someone else’s car on her way to Frank’s?

As if reading her mind, Alex asked, “Do you think Susan would take a ride from a stranger?”

Madison shrugged. “I can’t see it, unless she was late and really
desperate. But sometimes we don’t think of strangers as strangers, you know? Maybe someone she recognized from campus offered her a lift? And then she didn’t realize he was a creep until it was too late.”

Or, Laurie thought, the
someone
was her boyfriend, Keith Ratner, just as her mother thought from the very beginning.

Alex was shifting gears to another topic. “You mentioned being one of only two people who knew for certain where you and Frank Parker were that night,” he said. “How has it felt for you all of these years, to have people question your credibility?”

“Obviously, it’s horrible, and frustrating, and infuriating. It’s not that complicated: I got a call from a critically acclaimed director saying that another UCLA student stood him up and would I be willing to read on short notice. I knew the other student was Susan and figured she must have chickened out or something. So I thought, Her loss, my gain. I hopped in my car and went straight there. I stayed until close to midnight. You know the police checked his phone records, right? And we had pizza delivered around nine thirty, and that was confirmed too. And yet people who have never met me are essentially calling me a liar, based on absolutely no evidence.”

It was true that the police investigation confirmed the pizza delivery, but the delivery boy had no idea whether the man who paid for the pizza at the door was alone or with company. Phone records also confirmed the fact that Frank placed a call to the phone in Madison’s dorm room, but, as Madison had noted, only the two of them knew what was said during the call or what transpired afterward.

“You just happened to be home on a Saturday night?” Laurie interjected. She had thought from the very beginning that something was odd about Madison’s account of the evening. Just last week, Madison had made them wait on her porch while she freshened her lipstick. Would she really hop into her car on no notice for an audition?

But now that Laurie had a better sense of who Madison was, she
saw the wrinkle that had bothered her. “I got the impression you had a busy social life back then. It’s hard to imagine that you’d be in your dorm, standing around, when the phone rang at seven forty-five on a Saturday night.”