MARY CLARK - The Cinderella Murder

“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

When 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

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.”