“Hi, Laurie.” Grace was Laurie’s twenty-six-year-old assistant. As usual, her heart-shaped face was heavily but perfectly made up. Today, her ever-changing mane of long, jet-black hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. She wore a bright blue minidress with black tights and stiletto boots that would have sent Laurie toppling over face first.
Jerry, wearing one of his trademark cardigan sweaters, ambled from his seat to follow Laurie into her private office. Despite Grace’s sky-high heels, long, lanky Jerry loomed over her. He was only one year older than Grace but had been with the company since he was in college, working his way up from intern to valued production assistant, and had just been promoted to assistant producer. If it hadn’t been for Grace and Jerry’s dedication, Laurie never could have gotten her show Under Suspicion off the ground.
“What’s going on?” Laurie asked. “You two act like there’s a surprise party waiting in my office.”
“You could put it that way,” Jerry said. “But the surprise isn’t in your office.”
“It’s in here,” Grace said, handing Laurie a legal-sized mailing envelope. The return address read ROSEMARY DEMPSEY, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. The seal had been opened. “Sorry, but we peeked.”
“And?”
“She agreed,” Jerry blurted excitedly. “Rosemary Dempsey’s on board, signed on the dotted line. Congratulations, Laurie. Under Suspicion’s next case will be the Cinderella Murder.”
Grace and Jerry took their usual places on the white leather sofa beneath the windows overlooking the skating rink. No place would ever feel as safe to Laurie as her own home, but her office-spacious, sleek, modern-symbolized all her hard work over the years. In this room, she did her best work. In this room, she was the boss.
She paused at her desk to say a silent good morning to a single photograph on it. Snapped at a friend’s beach home in East Hampton, it was the last picture she, Greg, and Timmy had taken as a family. Until last year, she had refused to keep any pictures of Greg in her office, certain that they would be a constant reminder to anyone who entered that her husband was dead and his murder still unsolved. Now she made it a point to look at the photograph at least once a day.
Her morning ritual complete, she settled into the gray swivel chair across from the sofa and flipped through the agreement Mrs. Dempsey had signed, indicating her willingness to participate in Under Suspicion. The idea for a news-based reality show that revisited unsolved crimes had been Laurie’s. Instead of using actors, the series offered the victim’s family and friends the opportunity to narrate the crime from a firsthand perspective. Though the network had been wary of the concept-not to mention some flops in Laurie’s track record-Laurie’s concept of a series of specials got off the ground. The first episode had not only aired to huge ratings, it had also led to the case’s being solved.
It was nearly a year since “The Graduation Gala” had aired. Since then they had considered and rejected dozens of unsolved murders as none had been suitable for their requirements-that the nearest relatives and friends, some of whom remained “under suspicion,” would be guests on the program.
Of all the cold cases Laurie had considered for the show’s next installment, the murder twenty years ago of nineteen-year-old Susan Dempsey had been her first choice. Susan’s father had passed away three years ago, but Laurie tracked down her mother, Rosemary. Though she was appreciative of any attempt to find out who killed her daughter, she said she had been “burned” by people who had reached out to her before. She wanted to make sure that Laurie and the television show would treat Susan’s memory with respect. Her signature on the release meant that Laurie had earned her trust.
“We need to be careful,” Laurie reminded Grace and Jerry. “The ‘Cinderella’ moniker came from the media, and Susan’s mother despises it. When talking to the family and friends, we always use the victim’s name. Her name was Susan.”
A reporter for the Los Angeles Times had dubbed the case “the Cinderella Murder” because Susan was wearing only one shoe when her body was discovered in Laurel Canyon Park, south of Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Though police quickly found the other near the park entrance-presumably it had slipped off as she tried to escape her killer-the image of a lost silver pump became the salient detail that struck a chord with the public.
“It is such a perfect case for the show,” Jerry said. “A beautiful, brilliant college student, so we have the hot UCLA setting. The views from Mulholland Drive near Laurel Canyon Park are terrific. If we can track down the dog owner who found Susan’s body, we can do a shoot right by the dog run where he was heading that morning.”
“Not to mention,” Grace added, “that the director Frank Parker was the last known person to see Susan alive. Now he’s being called the modern Woody Allen. He had quite a reputation as a ladies’ man before getting married.”
Frank Parker had been a thirty-four-year-old director when Susan Dempsey was murdered. The creator of three independent films, he was successful enough to get studio backing for his next project. Most people had first heard of him and that project because he had been auditioning Susan for a role the night she was killed.
One of the challenges for Under Suspicion was persuading the people who were closest to the victim to participate. Some, like Susan’s mother, Rosemary, wanted to breathe new life into cold investigations. Others might be eager to clear their names after living, as the show’s title suggested, under a cloud of suspicion. And some, as Laurie had hoped would be the case with Frank Parker, might reluctantly agree to go along so they appeared to the public to be cooperative. Whenever whispers about the Cinderella case arose, Parker’s handlers liked to remind the public that the police had officially cleared him as a suspect. But the man still had a reputation to protect and he wouldn’t want to be seen as stonewalling an inquiry that might lead to solving a murder.
Parker had gone on to become an Academy Award-nominated director. “I just read the advance review for his next movie,” Grace said. “It’s supposed to be a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination.”
Laurie said, “That may be our chance to get him to go along with us. It wouldn’t hurt to have all that attention when the Oscars come along.” She began to jot notes on a pad of paper. “Contacting the other people who were close to Susan is what we have to start on now. Let’s follow up with calls to everyone on our list: Susan’s roommates, her agent, her classmates, her lab partner at the research lab.”
“Not the agent,” Jerry said. “Edwin Lange passed away four years ago.”
It was one less person on camera, but the agent’s absence wouldn’t affect their reinvestigation of the case. Edwin had been planning to run lines with Susan prior to her audition but got a phone call that afternoon informing him that his mother had had a heart attack. He had hopped immediately into his car, calling relatives constantly on his cell phone, until he arrived in Phoenix that night. He had been shocked to hear of Susan’s death, but the police never considered the agent a suspect or material witness.
Laurie continued her list of people to contact. “It’s especially important to Rosemary that we lock in Susan’s boyfriend, Keith Ratner. Supposedly he was at some volunteer event, but Rosemary despised him and is convinced he had something to do with it. He’s still in Hollywood, working as a character actor. I’ll make that call and the one to Parker’s people myself. Now that Susan’s mother is officially on board, I hope that will convince everyone else. Either way, get ready to spend time in California.”