Piece of My Heart (Under Suspicion #7) - Mary Higgins Clark Page 0,1
sound of yet another horn honking, this time from the pickup truck behind them.
From the driver’s seat, Charlotte Pierce glanced in the rearview mirror and threw up a frustrated hand. “I don’t know where he expects me to go.”
Laurie held her breath momentarily while the delivery truck in front of them blasted out a dark cloud of exhaust.
It wasn’t even noon yet on a Wednesday, but the Long Island Expressway was at a standstill as city dwellers lined up in search of a beach respite from the sweltering streets of Manhattan. The two-hour drive to the Hamptons would be three for them today and creep up to a four- or five-hour commute by Friday evening.
Unfazed by the surrounding snarl, Charlotte sang along blissfully to the Janis Joplin song that was playing on the radio. “Take another little piece of my heart now, baby—”
She flashed a grin toward her passenger. “Aaaah, the glamour of the LIE in mid-July.”
Charlotte had bought this car—a new Mercedes convertible—only a month ago and was still reveling in the novelty of cruising with the top down. She wore big, dark, round sunglasses and had tucked her chin-length bob tightly behind her ears for the car ride. Laurie could see that behind the shades, Charlotte was looking past Laurie to the car in the right lane.
“That guy next to us is checking you out, my friend. Poor dude doesn’t know that you’re about to be a married lady.”
On instinct, Laurie turned her head. The driver of the SUV was in fact smiling in her direction. She quickly looked away.
“Please, he’s staring at us because of this music. He knows we’ll need hearing aids by the time we reach our destination.”
The comment only made Charlotte turn up the volume even more. “Take it!,” she sang, swaying her shoulders with the music. The deep, satisfied laugh that followed was infectious, and when traffic began to move again, Laurie found herself smiling and singing along with her friend.
She had more than her fair share of reasons to celebrate. In four days, she would marry Alex Buckley, who had spent more than two years convincing her that he could be part of her busy life as a widow and working mother. After a small ceremony at the church for their families and closest friends, then a dinner reception at one of their favorite restaurants, they would head to Italy for a ten-day honeymoon. She had not only made room for Alex in her life; they were starting an even better life together.
It had been Charlotte who had talked Laurie out of the idea of a “family honeymoon.” The private trip with Alex would be the first time she had ever been away from her ten-year-old son, Timmy, for more than a couple of nights. In lieu of the post-wedding family trip, though, she and Alex had planned a three-day stay on the east end of Long Island for their immediate families to celebrate Alex’s fortieth birthday in the days leading up to the actual wedding.
For the getaway, they had chosen the South Shore Resort & Spa in the Hamptons, right on the water. Joining Laurie, Alex, and Timmy would be Laurie’s father, Leo; Alex’s brother Andrew and his wife and three children; and of course Ramon, who insisted on calling himself Alex’s butler but was more like a surrogate uncle to them all by now. To help with the children, they had also invited Timmy’s favorite babysitter, Kara.
Laurie’s plan had been to leave the city early that morning with Alex, Timmy, and Ramon until the world decided to interfere. She was the producer of Under Suspicion, a news-based reality television show that reinvestigated cold cases. She had everything ready to start filming her next case special once she returned from Italy. Eight years earlier, a journalist named Jonathan Brown had simply vanished. According to Brown’s wife, Amy, he was meeting with an anonymous source about potential fraud at a pharmaceutical company. When police were unable to confirm the existence of any such meeting, public suspicion shifted toward Amy. Brown was never found, either dead or alive, and Amy was never charged.
After a year of trying to contact former employees of the pharmaceutical company, Laurie homed in on a researcher who was killed in a hit-and-run car accident only one week after Brown went missing. Even more intriguing, the researcher’s widow, Carrie, told Laurie that he had been anxious about something at work in the weeks before his death. When Laurie asked