All Dressed in White (Under Suspicion #2)(2)
Grace had recently turned twenty-seven but looked even younger. Laurie had been tempted more than once to tell Grace she didn’t need to wear all of the makeup she meticulously applied every day, but clearly Grace preferred a personal style quite different from Laurie’s classic tastes. Today, she wore a multicolored silk tunic over impossibly slim leggings, with five-inch platform boots. Her long black hair was pulled into an I Dream of Jeannie topknot, teased into a perfect fountain.
Usually Grace lunged for the bakery bag, but today she did not. “Laurie,” she began slowly.
“Something wrong, Grace?” Laurie knew her assistant well enough to recognize when she was upset.
Just as Grace was about to explain, Jerry stepped out of his office. Standing between Jerry’s long, lanky frame and Grace in her sky-high heels always made Laurie feel short, even though she was a slender five-foot-seven.
Jerry held up both palms. “There’s a lady sitting in your office. She just showed up. I told Grace to schedule an appointment for her at some other time. For the record, I had nothing to do with this.”
2
Sandra Pierce gazed out the window of Laurie Moran’s office. Sixteen floors below was the famous Rockefeller Center skating rink. At least, that’s what Sandra would always see, even now, in the middle of July, when smooth ice and swaying skaters were temporarily replaced with a summer garden and restaurant.
She pictured her own children skating hand-in-hand at that very spot more than twenty years earlier. Charlotte, the oldest, on one side; Henry, her younger brother, on the other. In the middle was their baby sister Amanda. Her siblings held on to her so tightly that if her skates left the ground, she would still be safely upright.
Sighing, Sandra turned away from the window and looked for something to keep her attention while she waited. She was surprised at the tidiness of the office. She had never been to a television studio but had been picturing one of those huge open floors with rows of desks like you see in the background of news shows. In contrast, Laurie Moran’s office felt more like a sleek yet comfortable living room.
Sandra noticed one framed photograph on Laurie’s desk. Seeing the office door still closed, she picked it up and studied it. It was Laurie with her husband, Greg, on a beach. She assumed that the little boy in front of them was their son. Sandra did not know the family personally, but she had seen photographs of both Laurie and Greg online. Sandra’s curiosity about Under Suspicion had been sparked when the show first aired. But when she recently read an article mentioning the producer’s own background with an unsolved crime, Sandra knew she needed to come here to meet Laurie Moran in person.
She immediately felt guilty for the invasion of Laurie’s privacy. She knew she would not want a stranger looking at photographs of her, Walter, and Amanda. Sandra winced as she realized that the last time she’d been with her ex-husband and youngest daughter was five and a half years ago—the last family Christmas before Amanda’s wedding. Or what was supposed to be her wedding.
Will I ever get used to thinking of Walter as my ex-husband? she wondered. She met Walter her freshman year at the University of North Carolina. Because of her father’s military career, she had lived all over the world, but never in the South. She was having a hard time adjusting, as if the other students who had grown up there lived by an unwritten code she didn’t understand. Her roommate took her to the first football game of the season, promising that once she cheered on the Tar Heels, she’d be an authentic North Carolinian. Her roommate’s brother brought a friend along. He was a sophomore. His name was Walter, and he was a local boy. He spent more time talking to Sandra than watching the game. By the time they all sang the fight song in the final quarter—“I’m a Tar Heel born, I’m a Tar Heel bred, And when I die, I’m a Tar Heel dead”—Sandra thought to herself, I think I’ve met the man I’m going to marry. She was right. They were together from that time on. They raised their three children in Raleigh, just a half-hour drive from the stadium where they met.
She thought about how, in the first thirty-two years of their nearly thirty-five-year marriage, they had helped each other in their very different domains. Though Sandra never formally worked for Walter’s family company, she was always advising him on new product launches, advertising campaigns, and especially personnel issues at work. Between the two of them, she was the one most attuned to people’s emotions and motivations. Walter returned the favor by pitching in whenever he could to help her with the church, school, and community projects she was always overseeing. She almost smiled remembering the sight of her big bear Walter numbering hundreds of tiny rubber duckies with a Sharpie for the annual rotary duck race on the Ol’ Bull River, reciting each number aloud as he added a new duck to the pile.
Walter used to tell her that they were partners in everything. Of course, she realized now that was never quite true. As hard as Walter tried, he struggled as a father. He would show up to recitals and baseball games, but the kids could tell that his mind was somewhere else. Usually, his thoughts were on work—a new product line, manufacturing flaws at one of the factories, a retailer insisting on further discounts. For Walter, his best contribution as a father was taking care of the business, creating a legacy and financial security for the family. That left Sandra to make up for his emotional detachment from their three children.