All Dressed in White Read online

  “Dearly as I love my grandson, at sixty-four I’m not up to the water slides. But Laurie, give yourself a break and spend your free time with Alex. I know you’re done shooting for the day.”

  “I am, but there’s something I need to do, and I’d feel safer if you came along. But you have to promise that this time, we do it on my terms.”

  53

  Laurie knocked on the door for the third time. “I know you’re home.” She peered through Jeremy Carroll’s front window, but couldn’t see anyone in the living room. At least it didn’t look as though he had thrown out his photo collection.

  She stepped toward the edge of the front porch to make sure that her father was staying put in the rental car parked across the street. She wanted him within view in case things went terribly wrong, but she thought she had a better chance of getting Jeremy to open up if she talked to him alone.

  She’d seen a curtain part when she walked up the driveway. She wasn’t going to leave until he answered.

  “I know you didn’t hurt Amanda,” she cried out. “I’m sorry that we were so pushy last time, but I think you want to help. Please!”

  The front door cracked open by an inch. Jeremy peered out from beneath unkempt brown bangs.

  “Are you sure you’re alone?” he asked fearfully.

  “Yes, I promise.”

  He opened the door fully and stood back, allowing Laurie to step inside. She hoped she wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

  • • •

  “I didn’t like that man who was with you,” he said once she was settled next to him on his living room sofa. “He seemed like a police officer or something.”

  “He’s actually my father,” she said, allowing that to serve as a response. “You were right to worry that people would be suspicious of you if they found out you were taking photographs of Amanda and her friends when they weren’t looking. But I understand now. You take pictures because you care about people. You want to see them in their most honest moments, not just when they’re smiling for the camera.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right. I don’t want to see the faces that people put on for the world. I want reality.”

  “You said you got rid of the photographs you took of your neighbors once you realized that they were truly upset. What about the pictures of Amanda?”

  He stared at her, blinking. He still didn’t trust her.

  “I saw you in the hotel surveillance footage. She walked past you, and you turned around to follow her. You had your camera. You’re an artist. You must have taken a few snapshots.”

  “They’re not snapshots, like some amateur Instagram account. They’re my art.”

  “I’m sorry, Jeremy, I didn’t mean to use the wrong words. But Amanda was a beautiful and, more important, smart and complicated woman. Did you know that she had been diagnosed with a very serious disease?”

  He shook his head.

  “Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was terribly ill. She lost twenty pounds and could barely get out of bed most days.”

  “That sounds terrible,” he said sadly.

  “It’s a cancer of the immune system. It keeps your body from fighting infection. She was lucky to make a full recovery, and she knew it. She told her friends she wanted to live her life to the fullest.”

  He nodded. “I knew she was special.”

  “You must have some . . . ,” she struggled to find the right word, “portraits of her. You kept them, didn’t you?”

  He nodded slowly. She was beginning to earn his trust.

  “You kept them for a reason. You think maybe there’s something in those images that might lead us to the truth about Amanda?”

  “Do you promise this isn’t a trick?”

  “I swear, Jeremy, I only want your help.” It was only a matter of time before reporters found out that Amanda’s body had been located, but so far, the story hadn’t broken. “There is new evidence that I’m not allowed to tell anyone. Based on that evidence, I don’t think anyone’s going to believe that you did anything to harm Amanda.”

  Next to her on the sofa, he began breathing so quickly that she thought he might be having a panic attack. When she reached over and placed a hand on his arm, he felt both warm and clammy.

  “It’s okay, Jeremy,” she assured him. “You can trust me.”

  He stood quickly, as though he was trying to act before he changed his mind. He walked to the dining room and began sifting through a tower of newspapers and magazines. Holding her breath, Laurie followed him into the room. From the bottom of the stack, he pulled out an oversized mailing envelope and handed it to her. Clear, block letters on the front read “GRAND VICTORIA,” with the date when Amanda was last seen.

  “May I open this?” she asked.

  He nodded. His face looked pained, as though he was expecting her to turn on him.

  Laurie slid the pile of photographs from the envelope and began to spread them across the dining room table. There have to be at least a hundred pictures, she thought. A few looked like the posed shots that the wedding party had taken with Ray Walker, but most of them were obviously taken without the subjects’ knowledge.

  As she flipped through the images, Laurie saw one of the entire wedding party gathered at a large round table near the pool. She could tell from the picture that it had been taken from a distance with a long-range zoom lens. Jeremy was actually a very good photographer. The focus was perfect. She was surprised to see two people holding hands beneath the table. There was no mistaking who they were. Trying to keep her expression impassive, she pulled it from the pile.

  “Do you mind if I keep this one?” she asked.

  “That’s okay.”

  Laurie hesitated, then said, “Jeremy, I want to hire you to do exactly what you did last time. Come back to the hotel now and take pictures of people on the set and also take some long-distance shots of those people when they don’t know you’re doing it.”

  “I’d like to work for you. Does that picture have anything to do with Amanda?”

  “In a way it does,” she said, even though she was sure that the picture bore no relation to Amanda’s murder. She wanted the photograph because she knew someone who would want to keep this image private.

  She realized as she continued scanning the pictures that Jeremy had filed them in the progression of the day. The sunlight grew dimmer toward the bottom of the pile. She paused on an image that appeared to be of Amanda, taken from behind. She was in the sundress she’d worn for their afternoon session with the photographer, and the hotel bar was visible in the background.

  Laurie held up the photo for Jeremy. “This is when you saw her in the promenade and turned around.”

  He nodded.

  “Jeremy, this is so important. It’s just as you said. You were able to see beyond the false faces people put on for the public. Did you see Amanda and the groom arguing? Is it possible she was going to call off the wedding?”

  He shook his head, moved close to her side, and began sorting through the pictures himself. She could almost feel his breath on her neck.

  “Here, let me help you,” he said as he began pulling individual images from the ones she had already bypassed. “See how they look at each other? They had no idea I was looking. People don’t fake these feelings.”

  Jeremy was right. The pictures he singled out showed undeniable affection. Jeff wrapping his arm around Amanda’s waist as she stepped into the pool. Amanda looking up adoringly while Jeff took the seat next to her at the restaurant. Their fingers entwined as they strolled next to each other on the beach. Amanda and Jeff would have had no idea they were being photographed, but they appeared to be head over heels in love.

  “But here’s the thing,” Jeremy said, pulling out a new subsample from his collection to tell a different story. “I don’t think the bride and groom, and the two lovebirds holding hands beneath the table, were the only people in love that week.”

  Laurie now understood what he meant when he said that his
photographs captured the truth about people. “Can I take these, as well?” she asked.

  “Yes, you can have anything that’s helpful,” Jeremy said.

  Laurie could tell that he finally felt at ease with her.

  He volunteered one last image. “And I know you’ll want this one.”

  The final photograph he handed to her showed two people. One of them was Amanda. She was pulling her arm out of the other person’s grip. Her mouth was open. She looked angry. Hurt. The two were clearly upset. But the other person in the photograph was not Jeff.

  “What time was this?”

  “Not long after I saw her in the courtyard. It was around six o’clock, before they all left to get ready for dinner.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “The other college friend came down to meet them. Her name was Kate? It looked like they forced themselves to act like everything was fine once she was there.”

  “Did you take any pictures after that?”

  He shook his head. “No, they were wearing false faces again. There was no point.”

  “And did you leave the hotel after that?”

  “No. I stayed. The Grand Victoria is a beautiful place to be. It was nice to just walk around and take pictures of people on vacation.”

  “Did you see Amanda again that night?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Laurie couldn’t believe her ears.

  “You know how when she disappeared they kept playing the video of her walking with her friends to the elevator and then turning around?” he asked.

  “Of course. It’s the last time anyone ever saw her.”

  “No it’s not. I saw her.”

  “What happened next?” Laurie was practically screaming she was so excited.

  “She was alone, heading down to the parking garage.”

  “Did you see her get into a car?”

  “No, I followed her to the staircase and then stopped.”

  “Why? Why didn’t you keep following her?”

  “It’s so quiet down there. Every noise echoes. I was afraid she’d hear my footsteps. I didn’t want to scare her.”

  Laurie could only imagine how different it might have been that night. If the killer had been lurking in the garage, the sound of Jeremy’s footsteps might have frightened him off.

  54

  Leo Farley kept his eyes on Jeremy Carroll’s front porch as he hit refresh on his cell phone’s email app for what felt like the thirtieth time in three minutes.

  He had a love-hate relationship with computers. Sometimes he thought about how much easier his job would have been if he had had all this technology at his fingertips back with the NYPD. And then there were moments like this when he wished he had an actual human being on the other end of a good old-fashioned telephone call.

  He had seen the worry in Laurie’s face when she stepped out of the car. Laurie’s show had been a phenomenal success so far. In both of the previous specials, the show had played a key role in identifying the murderer.

  Laurie’s work at the Grand Victoria would prove instrumental, but this might be the first time that she only managed to move the ball downfield, without going over the goal line. I was a cop for nearly thirty years, Leo thought. I’ve learned to know the difference between a gut feeling and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But for Laurie, the sense of uncertainty was new. They still needed more evidence before the police could even possibly arrest Jeff. And Leo was determined to find it.

  Maybe I made a mistake, he thought, not insisting on going inside with her. He had intensely lobbied Laurie to allow him to accompany her inside Jeremy’s house, but she insisted on questioning him alone. She was so driven to get to the truth. But at least she didn’t come here alone. She had allowed him to make the drive with her.

  To keep his mind occupied, Leo had called the Office of Student Services at Colby and asked for help searching the college yearbooks for any information about Carly Romano. According to Jeff, he was only a casual acquaintance of the young woman who’d been murdered near the campus. If Leo could prove that Carly and Jeff had been an item, they’d be one step closer to building a case against him.

  When Leo explained he was a retired first deputy commissioner of the NYPD looking into Carly’s case in his spare time, the secretary volunteered that the yearbooks all contained an index by students’ names. She would scan any page mentioning Carly and email it to him. It was the only thing he could think to do as he sat restlessly in the car.

  • • •

  Laurie saw her father lean his head back in the driver’s seat when she reemerged from Jeremy’s house. She wondered how many times he had started to leave the car to check on her.

  “Laurie, that might have been the longest twenty minutes of my life,” Leo said as she hopped into the passenger seat.

  “Dad, wait until I tell you,” she said as she dropped the package on the floor and began to put on her seat belt. Then her cell phone buzzed. It was a new text from Alex.

  Local news just reported the discovery of Amanda’s body. CNN is covering now. I’m taking Timmy to the pool but will follow updates online.

  She was still reading the message when her phone rang. It was Brett Young.

  She answered immediately. “Brett, I know. Big developments.”

  “Huge! Please tell me you’re almost finished filming.”

  “We’ve got everyone who matters on film, yes.”

  She could almost picture him popping the champagne on the other end of the line. “So how long before you finish? I want to start advertising now.”

  “We don’t have any answers yet, Brett.”

  “We need to strike while the iron’s hot. I want to go to air as soon as possible. Wrap it up. Pronto!”

  “There’s a little problem. We still only have questions, not answers.” She realized that the connection was already broken and Brett had not waited for her response.

  Leo shifted the car into gear. “Brett must think you’re Houdini.”

  “The news got out about the police finding Amanda’s body. Did you hear it?”

  “No, I had the radio off. I was making some phone calls.”

  “He wants me to finish as quickly as possible.”

  “To what end?” he protested. “At this point nobody knows who killed Amanda.”

  She thought about the photographs Jeremy had given her. Did she finally know who killed Amanda?

  Maybe.

  55

  Leo dropped Laurie off at the hotel entrance and waited for the valet to take the car while she went to see Alex. She had just walked into the hotel lobby when she saw Kate Fulton make a beeline in her direction.

  “Oh, Laurie, thank goodness. I’ve been looking all over for you. I feel terrible thinking about anything other than Amanda right now, but it’s really important. I already talked to Jerry, but he said he couldn’t make any promises. I know I signed that agreement, but I don’t want you to use my interview after all.”

  This was the last thing Laurie wanted to deal with right now. She had Brett breathing down her neck, and she desperately needed to talk to Alex. She could feel the photographs in her briefcase pulling at her. She and Leo both thought she should take them to Detective Henson, but she wanted Alex’s advice before making a final decision.

  “Kate, I think I know why you’re having second thoughts about your interview,” Laurie said, “but can we please talk about it later? I’m sure we can easily edit out the segment you’re worried about.”

  “Wait, do you know? Did Henry say something?”

  Laurie reached into her bag and pulled out the first photograph she had taken from Jeremy, the one of the entire wedding party sitting around a table. Even from a distance, Jeremy had been able to capture Henry’s hand entwined with Kate’s. “An intern for the wedding photographer had this,” Laurie said, giving her only copy to Kate. “And trust me, I’ll edit out the part where you said you wondered if you got married too young, and no one ever
needs to know.”

  Kate had been the first to turn in for the night after the bachelorette dinner. Amanda’s brother, Henry, was the first of the men. They were the only married people in the gang. They were both parents to young children, eager for some downtime. After saying good night to their dinner companions, they had gotten together in one of their rooms.

  “I love my husband,” Kate said. “It was just one night. It was a terrible mistake, for Henry, too.”

  “You don’t need to explain.”

  Kate gave her a huge hug. “I felt so guilty for thinking about myself when they’ve finally found Amanda. Poor Sandra and Walter. Austin offered the whole family the use of his jet if they needed to get home, but they said they wanted to stay here.”

  “They’re actually holding up okay,” Laurie said. “After all these years, I think they were ready to hear the truth. There is one more thing you can help me with.”

  “Anything.”

  “Were Meghan and Amanda arguing while you were all down here?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” she said. “But, as you now know, I had other things on my mind. Why?”

  “Amanda told you she was having second thoughts about the wedding and needed to find something out. Is it possible she figured out that Meghan had feelings for Jeff?”

  “I don’t know—maybe. You don’t think Meghan killed Amanda, do you?”

  “Oh, of course not,” Laurie said quickly. “We just try to cover all our bases.”

  She watched Kate head toward the elevator, knowing she was going to destroy that photograph. The pictures that mattered to Laurie were still in her briefcase. Five of them showed Meghan at various times during the week, staring longingly at Jeff as he doted on his fiancée. But it was the final photograph that was most shocking: Amanda pulling her arm from Meghan’s grip during a heated argument.

  56

  Leo had just returned to his hotel room when he heard a knock at his door, followed by a familiar voice. “It’s Laurie. Dad, are you there?”