Grace’s heart-shaped face broke out into a broad smile as she realized she knew the answer. “Tuesday afternoon. Her regular volunteer shift in the kitchen. Can I come? Please? Moms who Facebook love me!”
Laurie had been looking for ways to give Grace more responsibility, and she did have a natural talent for bringing out a person’s chatty side. “Sounds good.”
Laurie took a quick look at today’s outfit: an ocean-blue, above-the-knee sheath dress that was practically a nun’s habit compared to Grace’s normal attire, paired with glossy five-inch, nude-colored stiletto heels. “Don’t worry. I keep flats in my desk drawer for when I need to look less…”
“Spectacular?” Laurie said.
“Exactly.”
Chapter 38
Grace looked up at the gleaming six-story building on the SoHo corner of Spring Street and Sixth Avenue. From the sidewalk, she and Laurie could see the action unfolding inside a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen. Chefs in white aprons and black caps chopped carrots and onions, peeled potatoes, and rolled meatballs.
“This is the soup kitchen?” Grace marveled. She glanced at the plain black ballet flats she had slipped on for their trip downtown. “My Louboutins would have fit right in here, though mine are knockoffs, to be clear.”
Laurie shot off a quick text, We just arrived, and then held open the front door for Grace. “Not what you expected, huh? They built new headquarters a few years ago to expand operations. And it’s not a soup kitchen. They deliver close to two million at-home meals a year to clients who are too sick to shop or cook for themselves.”
Laurie had attended the annual gala for God’s Love We Deliver multiple times and was a regular donor. Last year for the fundraising auction, she had donated a tour of Fisher Blake Studios, culminating in a lunch with both the host and the producer of Under Suspicion.
That connection had come in handy when she wanted to meet with Summer Carver’s mother, Julie. Laurie had culled her old emails for the contact information of the staff member who had solicited the auction donation.
“Caroline,” Laurie called out, now recognizing the face of the young woman making her way to the reception desk to meet them. As Laurie rounded out the introductions, she noticed Grace eyeing Caroline’s high heels with a knowing smile. “Thank you so much for helping us out, especially on such short notice.”
“I was happy to do it,” Caroline said. “Julie Carver’s one of our best volunteers. She and her husband used to run their own restaurant in Queens. When he passed away, she decided to sell, but, turns out, she missed the work. Her retirement was very much to our benefit.”
Rather than bombard Summer Carver’s mother without notice during her weekly volunteer shift in the kitchen, Laurie had called Caroline and asked her to act as intermediary. According to Caroline, Julie had said she was a regular viewer of Under Suspicion and seemed eager to speak to someone about concerns she had regarding her daughter’s connection to a convicted killer.
Caroline’s eyes brightened at the appearance of a woman emerging from the first-floor commercial-style kitchen, drying her hands on her apron. Laurie recognized her from her Facebook photographs. “There’s Julie now. I held one of our conference rooms for you to meet in private.”
* * *
It only took a few minutes for Laurie to explain that they were conducting research for a special covering Lou Finney’s murder and Darren Gunther’s claim that he was wrongfully convicted. “As Caroline probably mentioned, your daughter’s name arose in our investigation because she frequently visits Gunther at the prison. We looked at her social media accounts to see how the two of them might be connected and happened to come across your posts, suggesting you had some concerns about your daughter. We were wondering if they related to Darren Gunther.”
“Those prison visits are what really put me over the edge with her,” Julie said wistfully. “At first, I was heartened by her interest in his criminal case. After a couple of very rocky years, Summer was back in New York, living with me, trying to figure out what she wanted to do next. She finished some course work she needed for her bachelor’s degree and started studying for the LSATs to go to law school. She has always been interested in the criminal justice system. In fact, she’s the one who got me hooked on your show. We watch it together.”
Laurie allowed the comment about Summer’s “rocky years” to lie for now, but she recalled Julie’s Facebook post from three years ago, mentioning that her daughter had moved home.
Julie continued. “You have to understand, my daughter has one of the best hearts in the world. You couldn’t ask for a more loyal or compassionate friend. But sometimes her feelings are almost too much. She’ll go to the end of the earth for someone she cares about, but to the detriment of herself—or anyone else for that matter.”
“My sister’s like that,” Grace said. “She’s willing to burn up her own life to help someone she loves.”
Julie smiled sadly. “So you understand. Let me ask you something: Does the person your sister is trying to help always deserve it?”
“Heck no,” Grace said. “One man ended up dumping her by text message—on her birthday no less. When she called and asked him why, he put his new girlfriend on the phone to talk to her. If some fool did that to me, the police wouldn’t find the body.”
Laurie was starting to wonder if it had been a mistake to bring Grace along, until Grace followed up with “I take it Darren Gunther isn’t the first person you’ve had to worry about in Summer’s life.”
“Definitely not,” Julie said. “She would have been the high school valedictorian except a boy who was a smidgen behind her in the class convinced her to flub a test so he could have it instead. He told her he needed it to get a scholarship, and then he broke up with her as soon as grades came out. But nothing beats the guy she met the summer before her senior year at Stony Brook. He wanted to be an actor. Convinced her to quit college at the start of her last semester to move to LA with him and be his manager. For two years, she lived her entire life around him, to the point that she stopped calling me because we couldn’t even talk without fighting. When she ran out of money to spend on him, he found another woman and moved on. The only bright side is that she finally came home.”
Because of Grace’s comment about her sister, they now had an answer to where Summer had been before returning to New York. Laurie was also starting to understand the value that someone with Summer’s personality could provide to a man like Darren Gunther. If she truly believed Gunther had lost eighteen years of his life for a crime he didn’t commit, could she justify taking a child’s freedom for a few days to balance the scales of justice?
“How have things been between you and your daughter since then?” Laurie asked.
“We were good at first. She wanted to pursue a career in criminal law and started reading more and more about the innocence movement, which led her to Darren Gunther’s case. At first, she made it sound like she was working as an intern for his defense lawyer or something. I was overjoyed, thinking that would give her a leg up on her law school applications.”
“By his lawyer, do you mean Tracy Mahoney?” Laurie asked.
Julie apologized and said she did not know the attorney’s name. “In fact, I have no idea whether Summer even had contact with the lawyers. The next thing I know, she’s driving up to Dannemora as often as the prison will let her in. At that point, I knew this wasn’t any normal office volunteer situation and confronted her about it. Turns out, she’d written that man a letter in prison. She had been working on her admission essay about wrongful convictions and was hoping to collect personal stories. It went from a pen pal situation to her meeting him in person, to what seemed to me to be practically an obsession. Suddenly, there were no more LSAT books on the dining room table, there was no more talk about applying to schools. Just Darren this, Darren that. I honestly got so worried that I called the prison to try to bar her from seeing him, but I couldn’t give them grounds for doing s
o.”
Laurie heard the obvious anguish in Julie’s voice. “You said the prison visits were what ‘put you over the edge’ with Summer. Exactly what did you mean by that?”
“I felt like I was enabling her, letting her live here, paying her bills, all so she could give her time and energy to this murderer. And honestly, even if he’s innocent, he’s taking advantage of her goodwill. I didn’t want my daughter falling prey to some prisoner she barely knows instead of figuring out how to live her own life. So I put my foot down. I told her she had to stop visiting him and focus on her future if she was going to continue to live under my roof. That was four months ago. She hasn’t spoken to me since.”
“I’m sorry,” Laurie said. “That must be terribly painful.”
Julie nodded, accepting the concern. “Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake giving her an ultimatum. I thought she’d have no choice but to respect my wishes. Or at the very least, she’d have to get a job to support herself, which might keep her from spending so much time upstate.”
“What did she do instead?” Laurie asked.
“To my complete dismay, she moved in with her brother of all people.”
“Why was that so surprising?” Laurie asked.
“They’ve never been particularly close—he’s older and is actually her half brother from my husband’s first marriage. They were more… different than any sort of conflict between them. Where I always expected Summer to finish school and be a success, my husband had to ride Toby just to get him through high school. And while Summer will give someone the coat off her back in a storm—let’s just say Toby’s not like that. When Summer packed her stuff and said she was going to Toby’s, I tried to get him to send her back to me, or at least make her get a job. But from what I can tell, he’s been supporting her this whole time, when I don’t even know how he supports himself.”
“You don’t know what your stepson does for a living?” Laurie asked.
“See, that’s the thing: Toby doesn’t really do anything. When my husband died, they each got a bit of money. Not a fortune, mind you, but a good financial head start for a young adult. Summer squandered it all on that wannabe actor, and Toby bought a small, modest house upstate. He works as a property caretaker for some of the vacation owners. Does seasonal work selling firewood, shoveling snow, that kind of thing. Honestly, sometimes I wonder how the math adds up. I know he had some kind of interaction with the court system a few years ago, but he told me it was nothing to worry about. Then he supposedly went camping for a few months.”
“You sound skeptical,” Laurie said.
“I thought it was possible he was sent to jail.” She whispered the word as if someone might overhear. “He laughed when I raised the theory, but it left me unsettled. It’s a horrible feeling to doubt the word of my husband’s only son. But now I wonder if Toby might have some connection to Darren Gunther, too—like the man is stealing my family from me. Does that sound crazy?”
Laurie thought about Gunther’s flair for charm. He wanted—no, needed—people to love him. Was it possible he had managed to win over not only Summer and her overly big heart, but her brother as well?
“No, it doesn’t sound crazy at all.”
“Good, because I know with a mother’s gut, with every fiber of my being, that my daughter is in big trouble. Somehow, some way, this man is going to get her to do something that could ruin her life forever. Please, Ms. Moran. Please try to stop that.”
If Laurie’s suspicions were right, it might be too late to save Summer Carver. The question was whether they even had time to save Johnny.
* * *
Grace looked glum as they climbed into the back of their Uber.
“You okay?” Laurie asked, waiting for her cell phone to power up again.
“I feel bad for her is all.”
“She’s definitely worried about her daughter.”
Something else seemed to tug at Grace. “If I had a mom who loved me that much, I’d tell her everything—the good, the bad, and the boring. Someday, Summer’s going to regret shutting her mother out.”
It dawned on Laurie that Grace often spoke about her sister and occasionally referred to a monthly dinner with her godmother, but rarely mentioned her parents. She was trying to figure out how to follow up on Grace’s comment when her phone finally came back to life. A text message from Jennifer Langland was waiting for her. Sounds like your phone is off. Please call me as soon as you get this.
Laurie hit a button to call Langland.
“I looked into Summer Carver and her known associates like you asked.”
Laurie braced herself for disappointing news. Langland was convinced that Gunther had nothing to do with Johnny’s abduction. “I had an interesting meeting with her mother, Julie, just now. She described Summer as extremely vulnerable to influence. She said her daughter was, quote, ‘obsessed’ with Gunther. Summer’s apparently living with her half brother, and it sounds like the mom thinks he may be a bit shady. She thought he might have some kind of agenda for helping his sister right now.”
Langland’s response was immediate. “Tobias Anderson Carver, six years older than his baby sister. Current address in Brewster, New York. He was accused of fraud about four years ago, for raising money for a nonexistent condo project. Served three months and got his record expunged after two years for keeping his nose clean.”
“He told Julie he was camping during those months. Is it possible Toby met Gunther while he was in jail?”
“No. The brother’s charges were federal. Two completely different systems. But if Toby’s involved with Gunther, too, maybe he has more of a financial incentive. If Gunther wins his wrongful conviction case, he could get millions as compensation. Summer may be helping out of love, while the brother sees a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
Laurie was surprised to hear how open Detective Langland was to the possibility that the Carvers might be behind Johnny’s disappearance. “You found something,” Laurie said.
“I did. According to the E-ZPass electronic toll records, last Wednesday, at 1:02 P.M., a Toyota Camry registered to one Tobias Anderson Carver crossed the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan, then onto the Throgs Neck Bridge at 1:37. At 7:52 P.M., it returned to the Throgs Neck again in the other direction, then back to the GWB.”
As Langland spoke, Laurie’s thoughts raced, calculating the timing and the route from Brewster, New York, to the Hamptons. The route meant only one thing: a one-day trip onto Long Island and back. “It lines up,” Laurie said.
“Like clockwork. And it’s the only time Toby Carver’s account shows any travel east of New York City in the past twelve months. It looks like your father may have been right, Laurie. Now we need to figure out how to bring Johnny home.”
Chapter 39
Sitting at her office conference table, Laurie took a deep breath before dialing Summer Carver’s cell phone number. She thought she heard her own blood pulse through her veins as she waited for an answer. With each ring, she pictured the rustic cottage that Toby Carver owned on four acres of land in Brewster. She imagined little Johnny, locked away in a basement or an attic or a tool shed.
In cooperation with Detective Langland, local police had sent an unmarked car to drive by the property, but they saw no obvious signs of foul play. The investigative team had decided against knocking on the door. Until they had a search warrant to authorize entry into the house, which a judge had declined without further evidence, they didn’t want to tip off Summer and her brother that they were suspects.
The voice that answered was perky and peppy. Laurie reminded herself that Summer’s own mother said that she had been acting like a different person under the influence of Darren Gunther.
Summer let out a high-pitched squeal at the mention of Under Suspicion. “Oh my goodness, you have no idea how much I love your show. I’ve seen every one of them. I read all the comments on the fan pages and message boards. I have to admit, I thought maybe you were o
n the wrong track with the runaway bride case, but I eventually came around once all the facts were revealed. Your show is better at crime solving than even the FBI.”
Laurie explained that she was calling because she had learned from the prison that Summer was a frequent visitor of Darren Gunther. “Mr. Gunther is the focus of our next program. We interviewed him yesterday, in fact. Perhaps he mentioned that to you.”
“That’s great news. I’ve followed his case for over a year and am convinced he’s innocent. He’s such a gentle soul, plus a brilliant writer. Every day he’s behind bars is a tragedy.”
“So, did he mention that we interviewed him?” Laurie prodded.
After a long pause, Summer finally answered. “I consider myself part of his legal team. I don’t think I should repeat any communications I’ve had with him.”
Laurie was no lawyer, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t how attorney-client privilege worked. “As a fan of Under Suspicion, you may have read that the nephew of our former host, Alex Buckley, recently went missing from a beach in the Hamptons.”
This time, Summer didn’t pause. “I saw that! I’m so sorry. I should have expressed my thoughts and prayers as soon as you called. I can’t imagine how terrified his parents are.”
Laurie felt like she was floundering. She needed to get Summer to initiate the idea of trading Johnny for Gunther’s freedom. “His family—which is my family, as you may know—would do absolutely anything to rescue Johnny. Maybe that’s how you feel about Darren,” she added. She had come as close as possible to saying directly that they were willing to strike a deal.
“Darren’s not a little boy,” Summer said, “but he was barely an adult when he was sent to prison. And he’s just as innocent as Johnny.”
“Can you and I meet tomorrow?” Laurie asked. “You could provide valuable insight that our show is missing. And anything you want to say to me, I’m open to hearing it—completely off the record if you want it that way.”
Piece of My Heart Page 16
