All Around the Town (1992) by Mary Higgins Clark

Author:Mary Higgins Clark [Clark, Mary Higgins]
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-12-19T00:39:50.296000+00:00

PART FOUR

Chapter 68

THE GRAND JURY convened on February 17 and did not take long to indict Laurie for the purposeful and knowing murder of Allan Grant. A trial date was set for October fifth.

The next day Sarah met Brendon Moody in Solari's, the popular restaurant around the corner from the Bergen County courthouse. As lawyers and judges came in, they all stopped to speak to Sarah. She should be eating with them, joking with them, Brendon thought, not meeting them this way.

Sarah had spent the morning in the courthouse library researching insanity and diminished mental capacity defenses. Brendon could see the worry in her eyes, the way the smile faded as soon as anyone who greeted her turned away. She looked pale, and there were hollows in her cheeks. He was glad that she had ordered a decent lunch and commented on that.

"Everything tastes like sawdust, but there's no way I can let myself get sick at this stage of the game," Sarah said wryly. "How about you, Brendon? How's the food around the campus?"

"Predictable." Brendon took an appreciative bite of his cheeseburger. "I'm not getting very far, Sarah." He pulled out his notes. "The best and maybe the most dangerous witness is Susan Grimes, who lives across the hall from Laurie. She's the one you called a couple of times. Since October she's noticed Laurie going out regularly between eight and nine o'clock at night and not coming back till eleven or later. She said Laurie looked different on those occasions, pretty sexy, lots of makeup, hair kind of wild, jeans tucked into high-heeled boots---not her usual style at all. She was sure Laurie was meeting some guy."

"Is there any indication that she was ever actually with Allan Grant?"

"You can pinpoint specific dates from some of the letters she wrote to him, and they don't hold up," Moody said bluntly. He pulled out his notepad. "On November sixteenth, Laurie wrote that she loved being in Allan's arms the night before. The night before was Friday, November fifteenth, and Allan and Karen Grant were at a faculty party together. Same kind of fantasizing for December second, twelfth, fourteenth, January sixth and eleventh. I could go on right up to January twenty-eighth. The point is, I hoped to prove that Allan Grant had been leading her on. We know she was hanging around his house, but we haven't a shred of evidence that he was aware of it. In fact everything points the other way."

"Then you're saying that all this was in Laurie's mind, that we can't even suggest that Grant might have been taking advantage of her despondency?"

"There's someone else I want to talk to, a teacher who's been away on sick leave. Her name's Vera West. I'm picking up some rumors about her and Grant."

The pleasant background hum of voices and laughter and dishes being placed on tables, all the familiar sounds that had been part of her workday world seemed suddenly intrusive and foreign to Sarah. She knew what Brendon Moody was saying.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.