Laurie was proud to have secured the participation of the victim’s family for every single episode so far. “I don’t know. I’ve left messages for Hunter’s father, but haven’t heard back. It doesn’t help matters that his assistant, Mary Jane, is on Casey’s list of alternative suspects. But I have an appointment to see his brother, Andrew, this afternoon.”
“Very well then. You get someone from the family on board, and it’s a go.”
As Laurie walked out of Brett’s office, she heard Ryan say, “I tried a major fraud trial on a week’s notice. We should be able to handle this.”
She was beginning to wonder when the other half of the “we” was going to start earning his paycheck.
21
Andrew Raleigh had asked Laurie to meet him at three forty-five at an address on East 78th Street, just west of Park Avenue. She arrived to find a townhouse three times the width of the others on the block. The entrance was secured by a heavy black metal gate, overseen by a security camera. She rang the buzzer, and within moments the gate sprang open.
She was less than a mile from her own apartment on 94th, but in a completely different world in some respects. This was one of the most prestigious blocks in all of Manhattan, occupied by the families whose names were on university buildings, theater lobbies, and museum walls.
The woman who answered the ornate mahogany door wore an impeccably tailored navy suit and white silk blouse. Her long black hair was pulled into a tidy ponytail at the nape of her neck. Laurie introduced herself, and said she was there to meet with Andrew Raleigh.
“I’m Mary Jane Finder, General James Raleigh’s assistant. Andrew is on the second floor, in the Kennedy Library. He’s expecting you. I’ll escort you up.”
This house not only had a library, but a library with its own name. A different world, indeed.
Laurie paused at the bottom of the staircase and let the silence fill the foyer. She had learned that most people continued to speak when faced with silence. But this woman was not most people. Laurie’s calls to the General, both on Friday afternoon and this morning, had been answered by Mary Jane. On both occasions, the woman had been all business, saying she’d relay the message, but with no reassurance of a return call. Now Laurie was standing beside her, and still Mary Jane said nothing about Laurie’s prior attempts to reach the elder Raleigh.
She appeared to be in her fifties now, and was still very attractive, but she would have been around Hunter’s age when she first began working for the family. Laurie wondered if the woman had always been so stony.
Over the weekend, Laurie had read a profile that described Hunter Raleigh’s younger brother, Andrew, as a “big personality.” When he greeted her in the Kennedy Library, she could see why that phrase was fitting. She estimated his height at six-foot-three. Unlike his lean, athletic brother, he had a barrel chest and thick neck. Each of his hands was the size of Timmy’s baseball glove. His loose, brightly colored, tropical patterned shirt and khakis seemed out of place in this house.
Even his voice was big. “Thank you much for meeting me here, Ms. Moran,” he boomed. “Is it all right if I call you Laurie?”
“Of course.”
She looked around at the paneled bookcases, the Persian rug, and the draperies on the windows. “This room is magnificent,” she said sincerely.
“This old mausoleum? This is Dad’s place. Personally, I prefer downtown, but my loft’s being renovated. I probably should have waited it out in East Hampton, but it’s starting to get chilly out there already. Or I guess I could have gone to the house in Palm Springs, or my condo in Austin. Anyway, you don’t need to hear about the Raleigh real estate.”
Laurie detected a slight southern accent that was unexpected in a member of such a quintessentially New York family, but Andrew’s mention of a condo in Austin reminded her that he had attended the University of Texas. He must have adopted the state as a second-or third or fourth-home.
Mary Jane had left them at the door of the library. “Ms. Finder said she is your father’s assistant. Has she been with him long?”
“About twenty years. Just between you and me, the lady scares the dickens out of me. Not sure the blood’s warm if you know what I mean.”
“I spoke to her on the phone when I tried reaching your father. It’s odd that when we just met she didn’t say anything about the messages I left.”
“Mary Jane’s as locked as a vault, but Dad keeps her a whole lot busier than I am. He’s consulting political candidates, serving on a dozen boards, working on his memoirs. Me? I like to fish and drink beer. You want a beverage by the way? It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Laurie declined and Andrew took a seat in the chair across from her. “Your show is seriously thinking about jumping into the story of my brother’s death? I have to tell you, I can’t say I see the point, Laurie.”
“As you probably noticed from the news coverage over the weekend, your brother’s case is still of great interest to the public. The jury convicted his fiancée of manslaughter, while many courtroom watchers believed the verdict should have been for murder. Meanwhile, Casey has never backed away from her version.”
“That someone drugged her with pills that just happened to be tucked away in her purse.”
“She claims that anyone at the gala could have slipped something into her drink that night. Once they were in the house with her soundly asleep, that same person easily could have put some pills in her purse to make her look guilty, even if police tested her blood for the drug.”
“Or else she’s lying.”
“Is that what you think, personally?” Laurie asked. “That Casey killed your brother?”
“Not at first I didn’t. I liked Casey. Heck, if I’d met her before Hunter, I might have made a play for her myself. She was more fun than Hunter’s usual type.”
“He had a type?”
Andrew shrugged. “Beautiful but boring. Good for a date or two, a photograph on a red carpet, but all interchangeable. Not Casey, though. That girl was a firecracker.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“Oh, nothing racy or anything. She was a challenge. When they’d been dating about two months, Hunter went down to Kiawah Island for a week without telling her. Didn’t call her once, even though she knew darn well he had a cell phone with him at all times. She found out where he was when she saw a photograph of him at some hometown political fundraiser for a South Carolina senator. When Hunter came home, she wouldn’t take his calls. When he showed up at her door, she slammed it in his face. No woman had ever drawn a line in the sand for him.” Andrew was laughing at the memory. “She sure got his attention. Hunter was a changed man after that. Smitten to no end. He loved that woman.”
“So why would she kill him?”
“To answer that, how much do you know about my father?”
“What I’ve read in his biography. And that he has an assistant who won’t return my calls and might be a vampire,” she added with a smile.
Andrew flashed her a thumbs-up of approval. “He’s a good man, but he was a three-star general and the son of a senator. He’s old school. In his world, men of a certain station owe the world a certain responsibility. They run foundations and serve the public.”
Laurie could almost hear his internal voice completing the thought: … They don’t devote their lives to fishing and drinking.
“And that kind of man requires a certain kind of woman at his side,” he continued, “not the kind of woman who tries to wrap a man around her finger-at least as my father saw it. Not to mention the fights.”
“Are you referring to the arguments that witnesses testified about during Casey’s trial?” The prosecution had marched through a parade of Hunter’s acquaintances to recount impassioned arguments Casey and Hunter had had in public.