“I thought of that, too,” Alex said. “But I’ve had clients who are extremely calculating about the costs and benefits of the choices they make. Jeff may have been confident that the ring wouldn’t be enough proof for a conviction-because it’s not. But now that Amanda’s body has been found, he can finally inherit her trust fund without having to sue to declare her dead, which would have made him look like a real heel in the public eye.”
“The account was worth two million dollars more than five years ago,” Henson said.
Leo let out a whistle. “It’s probably considerably more by now.”
Laurie said, “Is there any way to analyze the voice on the tape to see if it’s Jeff’s?”
Henson shook her head. “You can buy a voice distorter in any spy shop. As I told you earlier, the caller could be a woman for all we know. We traced the call, and it came from a burner-a throwaway phone, no name attached to it. According to the cell site information, the call originated through a cell tower two blocks from here. So any of the people you are interviewing could have made the phone call. So, nothing helpful.” Henson continued. “Can I trust the three of you to keep all this to yourselves? Don’t make me regret this.”
Laurie assured her that they would not let on that the police were closing in on Jeff, but as she shut the door behind the detective, she just couldn’t picture Jeff making that phone call. They had to be missing something.
As she and her father left Alex’s room, she asked if he could join her for a ride in the car after taking Timmy to the water park.
“No need to wait,” Leo reported. “I just saw Jerry, who was quite proud to have finished scouting locations with the camera crew early. Much to my surprise, Jerry announced he’d been looking forward the entire trip to checking out the four-story slide Timmy keeps carrying on about.”
“I’ll see if Jerry is joking or if he minds staying with Timmy so you can keep me company.”
“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.”