The Sleeping Beauty Killer Read online

  As far as Gabrielle Lawson was concerned, Laurie had some inkling of what she’d say if interviewed for their show. “Gabrielle testified at Casey’s trial. According to her, Hunter flirted with her at that fundraiser. Her exact words were that he was ‘not behaving like a man who was spoken for.’ At the gala she had approached their table, put her arms around him, and kissed him. The prosecution used that as further evidence to suggest that Hunter was about to break things off with Casey.”

  Laurie could tell from Jerry’s eager expression that there was more to the story.

  “But we know there’s more today than Casey’s defense lawyer knew fifteen years ago. Gabrielle Lawson has been married and divorced three times, with high-profile romances in between, which she always plays up in the press, whether real or imagined. Many of her advances on wealthy, powerful men have been rebuffed. One of her crushes, the director Hans Lindholm, even obtained a restraining order.”

  Laurie, Grace, and Ryan all murmured vague recollections of the momentary scandal, but Jerry was prepared with the details. “According to Lindholm’s petition, he met Gabrielle in passing at the Tribeca Film Festival, and then she began showing up unexpectedly at other public events he attended. He claimed that she even called a gossip columnist and swore that the two of them were shopping for an apartment together.”

  “Who was the gossip columnist?” Laurie asked, her eyebrow arching.

  “The one and only Mindy Sampson. Of course, there’s no way to confirm that Gabrielle was Mindy’s source, but the court did issue the restraining order.”

  Grace frowned. “She sounds like a literal Fatal Attraction. Maybe she decided that if she couldn’t have Hunter, then no one could. She killed Hunter, and framed Casey for the deed.”

  “Notice that even Grace is starting to see another side to the story,” Laurie said. “As you know, I’ll be seeing Gabrielle this afternoon. I’ve also been doing some digging of my own into Jason Gardner.”

  “That’s Casey’s ex-boyfriend,” Laurie told Ryan. “He was a junior banker and just happened to be sitting at his employer’s table at the Raleigh Foundation gala.”

  “Seems like another possible stalker to me,” Grace added.

  “Ryan,” Jerry explained, “Grace is our in-house conclusion-jumper.”

  “Put another way,” Grace said defiantly, “I’m the one with good instincts about people. And I started out absolutely certain that Casey was guilty as sin.”

  “Join the team,” Ryan snapped.

  “Now I’ve opened my eyes,” Grace declared. “And Jason’s my number one suspect. Think about it. Your ex is newly engaged to Mr. Muckety-Muck. Your enormous company buys an obligatory table at the gala, where Hunter Raleigh is bound to be the center of attention. Any normal person would want to be anywhere in New York City other than in that room. Instead Jason shows up. I’m telling you: that guy was jealous.”

  “You may be onto something,” Laurie agreed. “Both Casey and Angela claim that Jason tried getting Casey back, even after her engagement was announced. And like Gabrielle, Jason has accumulated some skeletons in his closet since Casey was first charged with murder. He raised eyebrows by writing a tell-all book immediately after she was convicted. But since then, he’s been divorced twice. Both wives complained to the police that he would drive by the house after he moved out. He even confronted his second wife’s new boyfriend in a restaurant. She alleged he had a substance abuse problem.”

  Ryan held up a hand to interrupt. “I don’t know how you can possibly get either of these people to talk to me on camera.”

  Laurie thought she saw Jerry and Grace both cringe at the use of his word me. She was relieved when Jerry spoke up. “Laurie can be very persuasive. The ones who are innocent help because they trust us. And the ones who aren’t so innocent pretend to trust us because they’re afraid of looking guilty.”

  Laurie couldn’t have put it any better herself. “If we can get Gabrielle and Jason on board, we should have enough to start production. If we get new leads, we can always do a second round of interviews.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Ryan said.

  Our plan, she thought, not yours.

  Jerry tucked his pen inside the spiral of his notebook. “It’s too bad we don’t know more about this financial issue with the foundation.”

  “Why?” Ryan asked.

  “Because Casey told us she was suspicious of Mark Templeton. He left the foundation under a cloud. She said she thought Hunter was planning to order an audit of the foundation’s books.”

  “According to media reports at the time,” Laurie explained, “the foundation’s assets had significantly dipped.”

  “That’s very interesting.” Ryan’s voice was thoughtful, but he did not explain himself. “Very interesting.” He didn’t share whatever inferences he might have drawn from that information. The man was utterly useless.

  “I need to run,” Laurie announced. “My meeting with Gabrielle is in half an hour, and her apartment is near Gramercy Park.”

  She was surprised to find Ryan waiting for her a few minutes later outside the elevators. “I told Brett I’d be with you on the interviews for the show. Do you have a car coming or should I call my driver?”

  29

  For a man who had successfully tried multiple, complex jury trials, Ryan looked a little nervous. His eyes were darting between the doorman, front entrance, and the elevator as the doorman called upstairs to announce their arrival.

  “This can’t be the first time you’ve spoken to a potential witness,” Laurie whispered.

  “Of course not, but usually the person’s under arrest or with their lawyer.”

  The doorman announced that Ms. Lawson would see them. “Penthouse floor,” he told them.

  Gabrielle Lawson was one of those women who could pass for any age between forty and sixty, but Laurie happened to know that she was fifty-two years old, the same age Hunter Raleigh would have been, had he lived. She was dressed in an elegant white suit with tasteful gold jewelry, and her red hair was swept into a perfect, high bun. She didn’t look much different than she had fifteen years ago, when “The Chatter” published a photograph of her looking lovingly at Hunter Raleigh.

  Fifteen minutes into their conversation, Laurie had managed to make eye contact with Gabrielle only twice. Gabrielle was absolutely riveted by Ryan, twenty years her junior. Based on everything she’d read about her, Laurie knew that she was singularly focused on attracting the attention of successful, preferably handsome men. Ryan checked both boxes.

  Gabrielle ignored Laurie’s question about her greeting Hunter at the Raleigh Foundation gala and instead launched her own inquiry for Ryan: “How did you go from being a television commentator to a producer?” she asked.

  “Actually, I’m not a—”

  “Mere producer,” Laurie said, interrupting Ryan’s correction. “He’s also the new star of the show. He’ll be the one working start to finish with all our participants. He’s the heart of Under Suspicion, really.”

  She guessed that being the heart of a news-based television show wasn’t quite the draw of the award-winning film director Gabrielle had stalked, but it was probably good enough to have her fawning over Ryan.

  She hoped Ryan would take the hint and use the obvious dynamic to their favor, but instead he asked Gabrielle to confirm that she’d been thrice married and divorced.

  “I see no reason to dwell on that,” she said softly.

  “I think what Ryan would really like to know is whether you went over to greet Hunter the night of the foundation’s gala.” It was the very question she had already posed, but Gabrielle seemed to hear it for the first time now that it had been attributed to Ryan.

  “Let’s see . . . did I talk to Hunter that night? Well, of course I did. At some length.”

  Laurie pointed out that Casey’s defense law
yer had asked every prosecution witness whether they’d seen Hunter and Gabrielle together. No one had, other than a brief moment when Gabrielle walked up to Hunter near his family’s table and flung her arms around him enthusiastically. It was a subtle point, intended to undercut the prosecution’s claim that Casey killed Hunter because he was planning to break off their engagement to be with Gabrielle. Casey’s lawyer never argued that Gabrielle could have used the moment to slip a drug into Casey’s glass.

  “We were keeping things discreet,” Gabrielle said demurely. “Hunter hadn’t broken the news to Casey yet. He was dignified. He would never embarrass any of us. He would break things off quietly, and then we would have gone public after a respectable time period.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Laurie said, even though she did not believe a word of it. “Given that you were keeping things private, how did Mindy Sampson manage to get a photograph of the two of you together at a fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Clubs?”

  Gabrielle smiled coyly, as if they were two girlfriends gossiping. “Well, you know how it is. Sometimes these matters need a little push. It didn’t dawn on me that the picture would get Hunter killed or I never would have done it.”

  “So you admit you gave that picture to Mindy,” Ryan said, as if nailing down a witness on cross-examination.

  Laurie managed to suppress a wince. His statement was too bald and assertive. Alex never would have made that mistake. Sure enough, Gabrielle immediately denied the accusation.

  “Heavens, no. I saw a photographer approaching and leaned in for the picture. But that’s all.”

  Laurie immediately tried to regain some rapport with Gabrielle. “What about Casey? I’ve heard that she was quite a mess at the gala.”

  “Sloppy doesn’t begin to describe it,” Gabrielle dished. “She was visibly intoxicated, slurring her words and nearly falling down. It was embarrassing. Hunter was distraught, I could tell.”

  “As distraught as Hans Lindholm when he applied for a restraining order against you?” Ryan asked mockingly.

  Gabrielle glared at Ryan. “You’re as pretty as a Georgia peach, but your mother should have taught you some manners, Mr. Nichols.”

  Laurie offered a profuse apology and her warmest smile. “Ryan’s a lawyer by training,” she explained. “Law schools don’t spend a lot of time teaching etiquette.”

  Gabrielle laughed. “I can see that.”

  “Millions of people watch our show. Would you be willing to share your observations with our viewers?” Laurie asked.

  Gabrielle hesitated, eying Ryan skeptically.

  “It would be essential to countering Casey’s claims of innocence,” Laurie pressed. “On the program we want to make sure we hear from both of the women in Hunter’s life.”

  Gabrielle’s face glowed at the description. “Absolutely,” she said. “I owe it to him. That’s why my other marriages never lasted. I could never replace my Hunter.”

  Gabrielle was still smiling as she signed on the dotted line.

  • • •

  As Laurie walked to the elevator, she found herself wishing Alex were here. As much as she resented Ryan’s presence, she had often asked Alex to play a role in these preliminary interviews. If he had been the one who had accompanied her, they’d have been sharing their opinions immediately. But she had no interest in hearing ­Ryan’s thoughts, so she replayed her own.

  She believed Gabrielle’s account of Casey’s impaired condition, but that was consistent with having been drugged involuntarily. However, she did not believe that Gabrielle had had a close relationship with Hunter. She was certain that Gabrielle had been in cahoots with Mindy Sampson to plant that photograph of Hunter and her in the paper. But was she obsessed enough to kill Hunter? Laurie had no idea.

  The elevator doors had barely closed when Ryan laid into her. “Don’t ever apologize for me to another person again or make a joke at my expense. I’m good at my job.”

  “You should have been the one apologizing, including to me. You may be a good lawyer in the courtroom, but you’ve now chosen a job that you seem to have little interest in learning about. You nearly blew that interview,” Laurie shot back.

  “You call that an interview? More like a cakewalk.”

  “Gabrielle agreed to go on camera, which you said an hour ago would be impossible. We’re not federal prosecutors. We don’t have subpoena powers. We get witnesses by being warm and fuzzy, not sarcastic and alienating. The tough questions come later, while we’re filming.”

  “Please. The woman doesn’t even know anything relevant. Hunter Raleigh was murdered by Casey Carter. Full stop.”

  Laurie walked three steps ahead of him through the building lobby and into the backseat of the awaiting car. “You have a lot to learn, and you don’t even know it. If you mess this case up, I won’t care how many of your family members know Brett—I won’t work with you again. And now I’m taking your car to my next interview.”

  She pulled the backdoor closed, leaving Ryan standing alone on the sidewalk. Her face still felt flushed when she gave his driver the only address she had for Jason Gardner.

  30

  Fifteen years ago, Jason Gardner attended the Raleigh Foundation’s gala at Cipriani as an up-and-coming analyst for one of the largest investment banks in the world. In light of that background, Laurie had expected to find Casey’s ex-boyfriend working today as a billionaire hedge fund manager. Instead, when she appeared at the address listed on his LinkedIn profile, she found a tiny office in a dusty building overlooking the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. The name of the firm was GARDNER EQUITY, but based on the cheap furniture, she suspected Gardner had very little in the way of actual equity.

  The receptionist at the front desk was reading a gossip magazine and chewing gum. When Laurie told her that she was looking for Mr. Gardner, the woman tilted her head in the direction of the only other person in the office. “Jason, Ms. Moran’s here.”

  Jason’s résumé was not the only thing that had taken a hit in the last fifteen years. The man who rose from the desk in the back corner was only forty-two but had deep lines in his face and bloodshot eyes. He looked nothing like the young, handsome man whose photograph was on the back of his tell-all book, My Days with Crazy Casey. Laurie suspected that the drugs and alcohol his ex-wives had mentioned to police were still taking their toll.

  “Can I help you with something?” he asked.

  “I have some questions about Casey Carter.”

  His face suddenly aged another decade.

  “I saw the news that she’s out. Hard to believe how fast fifteen years flew by.” Jason’s gaze was somewhere far away, as if he were watching the years pass.

  “I don’t think they were quick for Casey,” Laurie said.

  “No, I suppose not.”

  Laurie had not had a chance to read Jason’s book in its entirety, but she’d skimmed enough to know that Jason had thrown his ex-girlfriend under the proverbial bus. The book described an ambitious, power-hungry young woman who cast aside her on-again, off-again boyfriend when she set her sights on Hunter Raleigh.

  Laurie pulled her copy of the book from her briefcase. “Some people might have been surprised by your decision to write this. From what I’ve heard, you were quite in love with Casey.”

  “I did love her,” he said sadly, “that’s true. She was outspoken, energetic, fun. I have no idea what she’s like now, but back then? Being around Casey made me feel more alive. But sometimes a personality like that comes with a price. There’s a fine line between spontaneity and chaos. In some ways, Casey was a one-woman wrecking ball.”

  “How so?”

  He shrugged. “It’s hard to describe. It’s like she felt everything a little too much. Her interest in art? She couldn’t just appreciate a painting; it would move her to tears. If she got a negative comment at work, she’d be worried about i
t the rest of the night, wondering what she had done wrong. And so it went with me. When we first met in college, it seemed like we were soul mates. When she moved to New York, I hoped it was to be with me, but she clearly cared more about her job at Sotheby’s. Then she enrolled in classes toward her master’s degree and started talking about plans for her own gallery. Meanwhile, she was questioning why I wasn’t working harder. Why someone got promoted over me. Like I wasn’t good enough for her. When she broke it off with me, she said she wanted a ‘time-out.’ I figured it was another one of our off periods. But two weeks later, I see a picture of her in the society pages with Hunter Raleigh. She broke my heart. I got distracted. The troubles I was having at work snowballed. As you can see, I didn’t exactly wind up in the Taj Mahal.”

  He sounded like a man who blamed Casey for his downfall. It wasn’t a stretch to think he blamed Hunter as well.

  “Yet I’m told you tried to get her back, even after the engagement was announced.”

  “You’ve got good sources. It was only once, and a large amount of whiskey was to blame. I told her that a snob like Hunter would squeeze every ounce of life from her. Little did I know that the situation would be the other way around.”

  “You think she killed him?” From what Laurie could tell, Jason’s book never gave a direct opinion as to Casey’s guilt.

  “I’ll admit that calling her Crazy Casey in the book title was a little unfair. Frankly, Arden Publishing insisted. But Casey was stubborn as a mule, with the temper to back it up. When we were going around, she would get all riled up if I spoke to another woman. I can only wonder what she would have done if Hunter tried to dump her the way she did me.”

  After Laurie left, Jason waited until he heard the elevator in the hallway depart before asking Jennifer—the latest in a long string of incompetent assistants willing to work for what he could pay—to take a short break. Once she was gone, he pulled up a number he had not dialed for years. His agent answered, then placed him on a brief hold. The man who eventually picked up again did not sound happy to hear from him.