All Dressed in White Read online

He changed his camera to a long exposure, pointed the lens across the ocean, and snapped. He checked the digital image on the screen. Stunning. He hadn’t lost his touch. At this time of night, most photographers would end up with either total blackness or a bright, harsh flash. But with a long exposure, he had managed to capture the pillows of waves across the ocean and the pepper of stars over the water. Not bad.

  He was on his way back to the hotel when he spotted a woman walking toward him. She was alone, her long curly hair blowing in the wind. He was nearly certain it was Meghan.

  He turned away as she passed. He gave her a hundred-foot lead, then began to follow. She’d never notice him from this distance.

  66

  Meghan sat at the edge of the hotel’s private pier, her feet dangling from the side. She had walked past several beautiful boats on her way to this spot at the end of the pier. The moonlight across the deep blue ocean water was beautiful, but her eyes were focused on the screen of her cell phone. She was completely stumped about what to say to her own husband.

  A new text message appeared. It was Jeff again. Where are you? We need to talk.

  Maybe she shouldn’t meet with Kate after all. She needed to smooth things over with Jeff. But Kate said she knew something about the TV show’s plans to railroad Jeff. Meghan needed to find out the details.

  She looked over at the three boats docked at the pier. In the darkness, she couldn’t tell much about them except that they were large. She guessed they would be considered yachts, but she knew nothing about boats other than what she’d learned from the captain on their fishing excursion in the Bahamas.

  What a perfect trip that was. She reminisced about their unofficial honeymoon. Jeff had organized every last detail, from champagne breakfasts to moonlit ocean swims. She shouldn’t leave him waiting any longer. She could call Kate from her room. She was about to stand up when she saw a person in her peripheral vision stepping onto the pier.

  She turned, expecting to see Kate.

  Even though the person wasn’t Kate, she began to smile. But as he came toward her, she realized that something was off. She’d known him for years, but this was an expression she’d never seen on his face before. She’d read somewhere that pregnant women develop a type of sixth sense to protect their unborn children from danger. Somehow she just knew. And he wasn’t supposed to be here.

  If this gut feeling turned out to be right, there was no way she could get past him and back to the hotel. He was blocking her path on this narrow pier. Pretending to be unconcerned, she waved and then started to call 911. But he was walking toward her too quickly. She could never place the call in time. And if she were right, he would never let her keep her phone. It could be used to track down her location.

  On impulse, she changed plans. She slipped her phone gently between two wood slats of the pier. A crossbeam beneath the boards held it in place. She had to hope he wouldn’t notice it there.

  She stood up, deciding that she had a better chance of fighting back on her feet.

  “Hey there,” she said, praying with every fiber of her being that her instincts were wrong.

  Then she saw the gun. There was no way to fight. She placed one hand protectively on her belly as he guided her along the pier and then shoved her onto the yacht. As she felt a sharp prick in the side of her neck, she prayed that someone would connect the dots between her phone and what was happening to her.

  And then everything went black.

  67

  Jeff was pushing the elevator button as fast as he could. He never should have let Meghan run off like that. He should have chased her from the room and blocked the hallway if necessary.

  The car seemed to descend impossibly slowly as he replayed their argument in his head. How could he have screamed at her that way? He had even accused her of not feeling anything about Amanda’s death. He had been cruel. He knew Meghan didn’t show her emotions the way most people did.

  When the elevator doors parted, he rushed through the lobby, searching for any sign of her. I never should have doubted her, even for a second, was the drumbeat in his head. He, of all people, knew how hurtful it was to be suspected of harming Amanda. But how could Meghan possibly have run off this way? He had texted and called her repeatedly, and she wasn’t responding. She has to know how terrified I’d be, he thought.

  Jeff felt as though he was reliving a nightmare as he retraced all the same steps he’d taken when they first realized Amanda was missing. The pools. The shops. The promenade. No, he vowed silently, I won’t let this happen again.

  As he searched for his wife in all the same places he’d looked for Amanda, he realized how much the two women had in common, but only superficially. They were both smart and perfectionists, but their personalities were so different.

  Jeff and Amanda had been together at just the right point in their lives for their relationship to make sense. When she was ill, she needed someone loyal and kind. And Jeff, who was struggling to figure out where a nice, easygoing guy like himself fit into the legal profession, sometimes needed a push from Amanda to be more assertive. Unlike Amanda, though, Meghan always accepted him just the way he was. She had never asked him to change, not even once. He was truly in love with her. They were meant to be together, not just at one phase of life, but forever.

  How in the world could she leave me worrying this way? he wondered. He tried her cell again. No answer. Knowing Meghan, she had her phone on vibrate and might not even hear it.

  As he was about to disconnect the call, an alert popped up on his screen inviting him to connect to one of the available wireless connections. He got an idea. Meghan always ran a “hotspot” from her cell phone because she didn’t trust the security of hotel servers for her confidential client information. He was fairly certain that the range of a hotspot was about one hundred and fifty feet. If he kept searching for the name of her signal—“MeghanInBrooklyn”—he might be able to find her.

  The network name popped up on the beach, just as Jeff was about to head back to the hotel. He scanned as far as his eyes permitted, searching for anyone who might possibly be Meghan. He felt a pang in his stomach as he spotted an elderly couple holding hands. They seemed very much in love. He wanted to be walking hand-in-hand with Meghan well into their eighties.

  He kept walking, the light from the hotel growing dimmer. He stumbled across the uneven sand in the dark.

  He continued to walk north, counting his steps until Meghan’s wireless signal dropped. Forty-one steps, about a hundred and twenty-three feet. He returned to the spot where he had originally noticed the signal and walked south. Only eleven steps, or about thirty-three feet. He began again from that starting point and walked inland thirty steps before the signal dropped. No sign of Meghan anywhere.

  There was only one direction left—the ocean. He felt a moment of panic until he realized that her phone wouldn’t emit a signal from the bottom of the ocean. There was a pier, but he didn’t see anyone on it. Still, he had to check. It was the only place left.

  He walked the full length of the pier but saw nothing. Alone in the dark, he became so desperate he called out her name: “Meghan!” His phone was still getting her signal. Where was she?

  He was about to turn back to the hotel when he saw the moonlight reflect off something between two wooden boards of the pier. He reached down and felt something metallic in the gap. It was the edge of a cell phone. It was Meghan’s.

  He’d found the signal, but his wife was gone.

  68

  Jeff knew instantly that the phone wasn’t accidentally left behind. It had been deliberately placed between those boards, he was certain of it. The question was, why?

  Her only recent text messages were the ones he’d sent her, asking her to come back to their room. No voice mails of interest. He pulled up her emails. The most recent message was from Kate. She thought the TV show was going to set him up as the prime suspect. No kidding, he thought. She wanted to meet Meghan on the pier.

 
; Now where were they? His first instinct was that he didn’t have Kate’s cell phone number, but then he checked Meghan’s contacts. Of course she had a perfectly updated address book. Typical Meghan.

  Kate answered after two rings, but the wait felt like an eternity. He heard a television in the background.

  “Kate, it’s Jeff. Can I talk to Meghan?”

  “Um, I thought this was going to be Meghan. You’re calling from her number.”

  “I have her phone. Meghan’s not still with you?”

  “What are you talking about? I haven’t seen her since dinner.”

  “You emailed her to meet you at the pier. I found her phone here, but not her.”

  Kate’s voice was clearly worried as she said, “I hate to tell you this, Jeff, but I didn’t email Meghan, and I haven’t left my room since I got back. If she was meeting someone at the pier, it wasn’t me.”

  When Jeff hung up, he realized he had no one he could turn to. Kate may not have written that email, but whoever did was right: Jeff was the prime suspect. He could already picture the detectives’ response once he reported his wife missing. They’d never believe him. They already thought he killed Amanda. Now they’d think he’d hurt Meghan, too.

  Why had Meghan left her phone behind? What was he missing?

  Jeff scrolled further back into her emails. Everything appeared to be about work. Then he saw one sent yesterday from a medical office. He opened it. It was signed Dr. Jane Montague, OB/GYN. He was about to close it when one particular word caught his attention.

  “Hi Meghan, the nurse sent me your message inquiring about the effects of ultra-rapid metabolization on your pregnancy. Though it’s good to know you metabolize drugs faster than most people, this only helps your doctors make sure you’re on appropriate dosages when you require a prescription. It will not affect the baby one bit! Best, Dr. M.”

  Her pregnancy. The baby. They were having a child.

  It all made sense now. That’s why Meghan had been so eager to put this television show behind them. She didn’t want to tell him while they were in the middle of an investigation.

  He also understood now why Meghan called Amanda’s attorney. Now that their family was growing, he and Meghan absolutely would need a larger apartment.

  Jeff never wanted to take money from Amanda, but the fact that he was named in her will was exactly that—a fact. If Jeff would eventually inherit all that money from Amanda, wasn’t Meghan’s question to the lawyer reasonable, especially since they were now having a baby? The fact that Amanda’s body was found only a few hours later was a horrible coincidence. But it looks really bad.

  He felt tears burning his eyes. He couldn’t believe he had ever doubted her.

  He looked at the phone in his hand. Meghan must have left it for a reason.

  He scanned the texts, phone calls, and emails one more time. He even looked through her photographs, hoping for some clue.

  What else could it be?

  The location. That was what she had wanted him to know. Not anything in the phone, but the location of the phone itself. Something terrible had happened on that pier.

  He jerked when Meghan’s phone rang in his hand. Please, let it be her. Let this nightmare be over.

  “Hello?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line, followed by, “Is this Jeff? This is Laurie Moran. I’m sorry to call late, but I managed to lose the release Meghan signed for the show. My boss will go nuts. Would Meghan mind if I stopped by real quick? I’ll sleep better knowing it’s done.”

  “Meghan’s not here. She’s—gone. Please help me find her.”

  69

  After her call ended, Laurie turned and faced the detective.

  “He said she’s ‘gone’?” Detective Henson was clearly unhappy about everything she’d learned in the last half hour. That Laurie had evidence she hadn’t shared with the police. That her officers had watched Jeff, but not Meghan. And now, that their plan to find Meghan without scaring her off had failed.

  Henson signaled to the officer next to her—she called him Tanner—to hand her his radio. “Peters, you still got eyes on Hunter?”

  “Yeah, on the beach. Almost back to the hotel. He just got off the phone.”

  “Yeah, unfortunately that was us calling the wife. He said she’s missing.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Bring him back here—we’re in the lobby—so we can figure out what in God’s name is going on.”

  Detective Henson made no attempt to mask her anger. “I can’t believe you people didn’t tell me all this hours ago,” she said. “You should have given me those photographs the moment you had them.”

  Leo held up a palm. “Hold on a second. I backed Laurie up on that. We didn’t think there was a rush. And we’re able to do more as private individuals than the police. The minute we start working with you, the Constitution applies. We thought we were doing the right thing.”

  “We, huh? Funny, in my world, cops are a different breed than reporters and defense attorneys.”

  Leo was about to further defend himself when Alex interrupted. “I think it’s safe to say we could have played things differently today. What can we do to help you now?”

  “You can start by telling me what else you’ve been hiding from me.”

  Laurie started to say there was nothing else, but then she remembered there was one other thing. “Jeremy, the photography intern. I hired him to come to the hotel and take photographs of our subjects. His secret pictures from five years ago were helpful. I figured it was worth trying again.”

  “And you think he’s here now?”

  “I don’t know. But I can find out.” She called Jeremy’s cell phone. He picked up right away and confirmed that he was at the hotel, in the courtyard. “Come to the lobby now. It’s important,” she told him.

  They were still waiting for Jeremy when Jeff showed up with a man who Henson introduced as Sergeant Peters.

  Jeff was speaking so quickly, it was hard to follow. An email to Meghan from Kate that wasn’t really from Kate. The phone left at the pier. Meghan only called the lawyer because they were having a baby.

  Detective Henson was unmoved. “We’re going to sort through all that once you have a chance to explain it at the station. But, right now, Jeff, we need to find your wife. It doesn’t look good that she’s missing. We have some questions that we need to ask her. Running off like this makes her look guilty.”

  “Guilty? Wait, I was sure that you’d think I did something to her. You think Meghan—?”

  “We just have questions,” Henson said, “which means we need to find her. Now, we can start by you turning over that phone.”

  Jeff blinked in disbelief. “No.” He placed the phone in his front pocket.

  “That’s a mistake, sir.”

  “It’s called the Fourth Amendment. No searches without a warrant.”

  “It’s going to look like the two of you killed Amanda together,” she said.

  “No, it’s going to look like what it is. My wife is missing. Someone took her from that pier, and you clearly don’t believe me. So if she calls this number for any reason, I want to be the one who answers it.”

  Laurie was about to try to intervene when she spotted Jeremy coming into the lobby, hurrying toward them. “Jeremy, please tell me you’ve seen Meghan.”

  70

  Jeremy looked frightened, his eyes shifting between Henson and the other officers. “They look like police. They always turn everything around. They think the worst of me.”

  “It’s okay,” Laurie assured him. “I told them that I’m the one who asked you to be here. I hired you to photograph people from a distance. Do you know something about Meghan?”

  “I saw her.”

  “Where? When?”

  “About twenty minutes ago, maybe thirty. On the pier. But I don’t want to get her in trouble.”

  “She’s not in trouble, but we need to find her.”

&
nbsp; Now Jeremy was giving a nervous look to Jeff. “I don’t think he’s going to like what I have to say.”

  “I just want to find my wife,” Jeff pleaded. “Tell us anything you know.”

  “I saw her with another man. At the pier.”

  “What man?” Jeff asked. “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know who he was. I’m good at night photography, but it’s impossible to make out faces. But she met him at the pier. Then they got on the boat.”

  “Jeremy,” Laurie said, trying to sound calm, “we need as much information as you can give us. It’s an emergency.”

  Jeremy covered his camera protectively. Laurie could tell he didn’t trust them. They couldn’t force him to talk or give them his camera. She thought about how she was able to connect with him earlier today at his house.

  “This is your chance to help Amanda, Jeremy. Whatever you saw could help us find her killer. But we must act quickly.”

  His eyes brightened. “Meghan was sitting on the pier and a man came off the boat. I couldn’t see everything, but she went away with him.”

  He lifted the camera from his neck and began scrolling through photographs on the digital screen. “You can’t see his face, like I said, but he’s taller than Meghan.”

  All Laurie could see were dark figures next to a boat. As Jeremy continued to flip through images, she asked him to go back to one that seemed to have a higher contrast than the others. “That one,” she said. “I saw something that looked a little clearer.”

  When he reached the picture, he explained. “That bright spot is a white sign on the boat. The white metal catches the moonlight. It’s a very good shot, isn’t it? That’s why I chose it for a close-up. You have a good eye.”

  But Laurie wasn’t interested in the artistry of the shot. What mattered was the sign. LADIES FIRST.

  “Ladies First,” she said. “Why does that sound so familiar?”