All Dressed in White Page 11

  “Dad, what are you trying to tell me?”

  “I’ll be blunt. It’s as if you’re afraid of letting him see the real Laurie.”

  “Alex sees plenty of the real me, Dad, but we’re not spring chickens who are going to drop our entire lives and run off together. We’re taking things at our own pace.”

  “That’s fine, and I know you’re a grown woman and don’t need your father telling you how to live your life. But let me say this once, just in case it needs to be said. I know how much you loved Greg. We all did.” Leo’s voice cracked briefly. “The two of you had a great five years, but that doesn’t mean the rest of your life has to be lonely. Greg, of all people, would not want that for you.”

  “I’m not lonely, Dad. I have you and Timmy, and Grace and Jerry, and, yes, I have Alex. You may want me to leap in faster, but we are in a good place, trust me.”

  He opened his mouth to speak again, but she interrupted.

  “Dad, do I ask why I haven’t seen you keeping any ladies’ company since Mom passed? There are several lovely widows I can introduce you to at church. They’re never shy about asking how you are.”

  He gave her a sad smile. “All right, you’ve got me there.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Dad. I know Alex cares for me. If it’s meant to be, it will happen naturally. We shouldn’t have to overthink it.”

  • • •

  Laurie’s own words echoed in her mind as she walked back to her room.

  With Greg, there had been no time to overthink. She had met him because she got hit by a cab on Park Avenue. They used to joke that they were the only couple who legitimately had different versions of how they met. When Greg first met Laurie, she was unconscious. When Laurie first met Greg, he was shining a penlight in her eyes to see if she would finally blink. They were engaged three months later.

  If it’s meant to be, it will happen naturally. When Laurie spoke those words to her father, she had been thinking about Greg, not Alex.

  33

  Jerry had told Laurie that the ballroom was decorated beautifully, but words didn’t do justice to the setting. It felt like a scene from a fairy tale. White roses and lilies were everywhere, and tiny white lights shimmered from the ceiling like stars on a country night. Grace and Jerry were dressed for the event. Grace wore a surprisingly unrevealing cobalt-blue gown, and Jerry looked dapper in his slim-fit tuxedo.

  “The two of you clean up nice,” Laurie remarked. “Well done. We should get some great footage to set the tone for the show’s opening sequence.”

  She glanced over at the camera crew. The lead cameraman gave her a thumbs-up to signal that he was ready. They would not be recording their voices, but they wanted to capture the moments when the participants first saw each other in the room. Then Alex in a voice-over would narrate the scene and identify the people.

  Sandra and her children, Henry and Charlotte, were the first of the participants to arrive for the reception. Even with her elegant silk pantsuit, Sandra had found a place for a button of Amanda’s photograph, complete with the image of a yellow ribbon, on her lapel. Laurie greeted Sandra and Charlotte with hugs, and then introduced herself to Amanda’s brother, Henry.

  “Oh, Amanda would have loved this.” Sandra wiped away a tear. “Everything is precisely the way she wanted it.”

  Charlotte placed an arm around her mother and gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “As I recall, this is just the way you wanted it, Mom.”

  “I know it is. I love to plan a party, it’s true. And the joy of planning this one—I wanted everything to be so perfect.”

  “It would have been, Mom,” Henry tried to assure her. He then began fiddling with his bow tie. He was a handsome man, but with shaggy dark hair and more than a few days of stubble, he did not seem comfortable in formal wear.

  Charlotte nudged her mother. “Jeff just walked in.”

  Sandra stole a glance and then quickly turned away. “With Meghan, of course.” Her tone was reproachful. “I know I pushed for this, Laurie, but now that we’re here, I have no idea how to act. I truly believe one or both of them is responsible for Amanda’s disappearance. I wanted them to be here, but I didn’t think it would be this hard to be in the same room with them.”

  Laurie placed her hand gently on Sandra’s arm. “Just do what comes naturally, Sandra. You don’t even have to speak with them if you don’t want to.” The beauty of reality television was letting the cameras capture human behavior, completely unrehearsed and unscripted.

  “Wow,” Charlotte exclaimed. “Kate looks terrific. She hasn’t aged a day.”

  Laurie turned to see a third person with Jeff and Meghan, hugging them both. She was slightly shorter than Laurie, around five-foot-four, with chin-length, bright blonde hair and round, rosy cheeks. In the old college photographs Laurie had seen, Kate had been the plain one compared to her two friends. But obviously she had put her best foot forward for an occasion like this.

  “Did she bring the family?” Henry asked.

  “Her mother is minding the children,” Sandra replied. “I guess a true-crime TV show isn’t the best family vacation.”

  Except in my household, Laurie thought, amused. She excused herself to make her way over to the Colby crowd of participants, pausing nearby to eavesdrop. She heard Jeff tell Kate and Meghan that it was “surreal” to see his planned wedding reception with Amanda re-created.

  “It’s certainly a far cry from our reception,” Meghan said. “Margaritas and take-out barbecue in our apartment was more our speed.”

  Laurie couldn’t tell if she sensed resentment in Meghan’s tone. If Kate was at all suspicious of Jeff and Meghan, or disapproving of their marriage, she didn’t show it. They sounded like three old friends catching up.

  • • •

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Laurie said, “but I wanted to introduce myself.” Meghan never had found the time to talk to Laurie directly, and she had only spoken to Kate on the phone. Meghan seemed to withdraw as both Kate and Jeff said they were excited about the possibility of discovering new clues about Amanda’s disappearance once the show aired.

  Kate suddenly turned toward the entrance. “Take a look, guys. Nick hasn’t changed a bit, but get a load of our little Austin, all grown up!”

  Kate leaned in toward Laurie to fill her in on the backstory. “Nick was always a ladies’ man, even in college. Austin was Nick’s sidekick, but very much in his shadow. A complete disaster with women, he was always coming on too strong.”

  “Well, I don’t know about his success in the dating market,” Laurie said, “but I doubt he’s in Nick’s shadow in all respects these days. The two of them flew down here on Austin’s private jet.”

  The men were making a beeline for their old college friends.

  “La dee da,” Kate exclaimed, when Austin reached them. “A private jet, I hear. Who’d have thought that the Austin we knew in college would be doing that?”

  “Careful, Kate,” Austin protested good-naturedly. “I can probably dig up some old pictures from when you stayed way too long at happy hour.”

  Clearly these friends were used to good-natured banter.

  Laurie noticed Nick nudge his friend Austin. “Heads up,” he said. “We may have some competition for female attention at the bar tonight.”

  Laurie turned to see Alex walking into the ballroom. She felt a catch in her breath. His face was slightly tanned already, and his tuxedo fit him perfectly. Laurie immediately looked down at her own dress and was glad she had splurged on it. But she wished she had put on more makeup.

  “You look beautiful, as usual,” Alex said as she walked toward him.

  “And of course you’re the essence of the man about town.” As she spoke, she was aware of the instant warmth from the closeness of their bodies.

  The last person to arrive was Walter Pierce, the family’s patriarch. Unlike his ex-wife Sandra, he marched directly up to Jeff and greeted him with a strong handshake. He even congratulated
him and Meghan on their nuptials and wished them a lifetime of happiness.

  As Laurie scanned her cast of characters, she couldn’t help but notice how the dynamic changed once Walter entered. Having said his hellos to Amanda’s former fiancé and their friends, he moved directly to his family, where he remained for the rest of the night. The exchanges she had heard between Sandra and her children flowed less naturally. Every member of the Pierce family now seemed to focus on Walter. Was his flight okay? Did he like his room? Did he need another drink? Even with everything that had happened, he was still the head of the family.

  Were there ever children who didn’t care what their father thought of them? Laurie wondered. Then she answered her own question. No.

  After ten minutes she went over to the lead cameraman.

  “I just asked the wedding party and Sandra’s parents to stand together for a group shot,” she said. “We’ll close with that.”

  As they lined up and faced the camera, it was clear that this was not a typical wedding photograph. The earlier polite veneer was gone. Jeff had his arm protectively around Meghan. Tears were spilling from Sandra’s eyes. No one was even attempting to smile.

  Is it possible that someone in the wedding party could have hated Amanda enough to take her life? Laurie wondered. Unless the man in that grainy surveillance video or some other random stranger was the killer, it was highly likely that one of the people staring at the camera had killed Amanda.

  But which one?

  34

  It was ten o’clock the next morning, and the cameras were ready to go in room 217 of the Grand Victoria. Jerry had chosen this room as the location to interview Sandra and Walter Pierce. He had learned that this had been their suite when they came to Palm Beach for their daughter’s wedding but ended up searching for her instead.

  According to the plan Laurie had sketched out with Alex, Sandra would speak on camera first. Over the last five years, she had become the public face of the search for her daughter. She was the one who appeared on television regularly, pleading for the public’s assistance.

  Noticeably nervous, her hands clenched, Sandra settled in on the love seat across from Alex’s chair. She was wearing a turquoise linen blouse and white slacks. It was the same outfit she’d been wearing when she found out her daughter had disappeared. She told Laurie she could never bring herself to get rid of it.

  She took a deep breath and nodded toward Laurie, indicating she was ready.

  Alex began by asking Sandra to describe the moment when she first realized Amanda was missing.

  “I think I felt it in my bones the second I walked into the lobby. I saw Jeff, Meghan, and Kate gathered at the front desk, and I could tell something was wrong. And then Jeff said Amanda was gone, and I felt the ground disappear beneath me. Everyone else was worried, too, but also certain there would be some good explanation in the long run. But not me. I just knew something was dreadfully wrong.”

  “Was there a moment when those fears felt most confirmed?” Alex asked.

  She shook her head. “That might be the worst part of not knowing what happened. I was numb, stunned, bewildered. But the moment when Amanda’s disappearance really kicked in was when the police asked for her laundry to give to their canine team. The idea of dogs tracking my baby’s scent . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “In the early days of the search,” Alex said, “many in the media referred to your daughter as the Runaway Bride—”

  Sandra began shaking her head scornfully before Alex finished the sentence. “It was terrible. There were stand-up comedians guessing how long it would be before she showed up drunk on a dance floor in Miami. My daughter is not some flighty, whimsical girl in a wedding veil. She is tough and smart.”

  “I notice you’re speaking of her in the present tense,” Alex said.

  “I try to, yes. It’s my way of saying I won’t stop fighting for her, ever. She’s out there—somewhere, Amanda Pierce is out there, whether alive or not—and she wants to be found. I’m as certain of that as anything I’ve known in my entire life.”

  Alex looked to Laurie to see if she had any notes to give him before they moved on. She did not.

  “Sandra,” Alex said, “if it’s okay with you, we have asked Amanda’s father to join you in the discussion.”

  Less than a minute later Walter entered the room, clearly uncomfortable, and sat next to Sandra on the love seat. Laurie noticed that even though there was plenty of room for them both to sit comfortably, Walter chose a spot close to his ex-wife. She warmly gave his knee a gentle pat.

  Alex began, “Walter, many of our viewers will recognize Sandra. Initially, you were in front of the cameras, too. But after about three months, from what I can tell, Sandra seemed to take the lead in the continuing search efforts. Are you as convinced as she is that something terrible happened to your daughter the night she disappeared?”

  Walter looked down at his lap, then to Sandra. “I’ve never been convinced of anything other than my love for Amanda and the rest of my family. I trust Sandra when she says she has a mother’s connection to Amanda. That she knows in her blood and her bones that Amanda crossed paths with evil that night. I don’t purport to have that kind of a sixth sense, but they were always connected that way. Back before the days of crib monitors, Sandra would even wake up in the middle of the night only to realize that Amanda had done the same. Remember that?”

  Sandra nodded and said softly, “I do.”

  Alex continued, “My understanding is that Amanda, by all accounts, was already a tremendous asset to Ladyform, your family business.”

  “She was indeed,” Walter confirmed proudly.

  “Some have speculated that the expectation to carry on your legacy may have been a burden on the next generation of Pierces. She was only twenty-seven years old, and her career was already mapped out. Now she was about to get married. Is it possible the pressure was too much? Do you think Amanda simply escaped and started a new life?”

  “When it comes to what happened to Amanda, I’m guessing just as much as anyone watching your show. But I want to say this, just in case there’s any chance my daughter is watching. Please come home, sweetie. Even just a phone call to your mother, so she knows you’re okay. And if someone out there has our daughter, please, we will do anything, pay anything, to get her back.”

  Walter was on the verge of tears, and Laurie could tell that Alex wished he didn’t have to move on to the next question. Laurie had to hope that all of this would lead to something good.

  “I’m sorry to bring this up,” Alex said, “but since our show is about crime and the toll it takes on loved ones, it’s worth mentioning that, after thirty-two years of marriage, the two of you divorced a little more than two years ago. Did Amanda’s disappearance contribute to the end of your marriage?”

  Walter turned to Sandra. “Do you want to take that one?” he asked with a nervous smile.

  “Walter and I never thought we’d be one of those divorced couples. We didn’t believe in it. People used to ask us the secret to a long marriage and Walter would say, ‘Neither one of us leaves!’ But, yes, Amanda’s disappearance changed us, individually and as a partnership. We were on separate paths. Walter wanted—no, needed—to get back to our normal life. He had his company to run and we had two other children, plus our grandchildren, whose lives needed to continue. I try to move on, for the sake of Henry and Charlotte, but I realize I’ve stayed frozen. I’ll be in limbo until I find Amanda. That put an enormous strain on our marriage.”

  “Walter,” Alex said quietly, “is there anything you want to add to that?”

  “If you’re lucky enough to live to our age, inevitably you’ll have some regrets. My biggest one is making Sandra feel the way she just described. But the truth is my life never went back to normal, and it never moved on. In my own way, I’m still in limbo, too, Sandra, but alone.” He looked at his ex-wife. “Because here’s the thing you never realized: I wasn’t the tough one. You were
. I couldn’t walk with you on your journey to find Amanda because I wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t want to find out she was dead, and I couldn’t take the thought of her resenting me so much that she’d leave the whole family behind. So I hid myself away in my work and pretended that we had to move on. But I’m not hiding anymore. I’m here with you and Henry and Charlotte. And I’m ready for the truth, no matter where it leads us.”

  Laurie gave a hand signal to the cameraman to stop shooting and let the room become quiet. She turned away as she saw Walter wipe a tear from his face. The Pierces deserved some semblance of privacy. It was a moment of silence for Amanda.

  35

  When Laurie got back to her room, her father was sitting on the couch watching cable news. He hit the mute button on the remote control, and she kicked off her shoes and settled on the couch next to him.

  “That was pretty heavy,” she sighed.

  She and Leo had adjoining rooms, each with two beds. The door was open, and she could see Timmy at his Wii in Grandpa’s room.

  Having watched Sandra and Walter’s raw emotions about their missing daughter, she could only think again how blessed she was that her father was always there for them.

  Leo put his arm around her. “I’m sure it was tough, but I think I have some good news for you. Your new lead, the man in the surveillance footage, may have paid off, and it’s pretty interesting.”

  • • •

  As Laurie waited, Leo got up and walked over to the desk in the corner of the room.

  “Remember I mentioned that the photographer’s intern only had one conviction?” he asked.

  “Sure. Something about violating a court order? What did he do? Fail to show up for a traffic ticket?”

  “That wouldn’t be nearly as intriguing as this.” Leo’s expression was serious as he handed her a manila file folder. “Start with the first document. That’s the court order in question.”