Piece of My Heart (Under Suspicion #7) - Mary Higgins Clark Page 0,60

bag.

Laurie found herself moving slowly, not wanting to climb into the studio van without a better lead.

She stopped walking as they approached the check-in window and turned toward Ryan at her side. “Is it just me, or did that not go well?”

“Not just you,” Ryan said. “It’s everything we already knew, but in his own words, which, frankly, sounded pretty good. And you know I like your father, but Gunther put some points on the board. We’re going to need to look at the timing between Gunther’s case and your dad’s promotion to the Public Information Office.”

Laurie pressed her hand to her forehead. There had to be something else they could do before leaving. She suddenly looked up. “The common folk digs,” she said.

Ryan’s expression was confused.

“Gunther remarked that he was on a sojourn to the luxury legal team suites, nicer than the meeting areas for the riffraff.”

It only took Ryan a beat to catch up to her train of thought. “Meaning, he has other visitors.”

Ten minutes later, they had a name: Summer Carver. She first showed up in the guest log about a year earlier, but over the last six months, she had only rarely missed the twice-a-week visitation hours that Gunther was allowed.

“So much for not having any friends except his lawyer,” Ryan said dryly.

As they waited for a corrections official to print out a computer scan of the woman’s New York driver’s license, they saw Tracy Mahoney standing in the alcove just inside the prison entrance. She turned away and held up her phone as if making a call, but Laurie was certain the lawyer had been watching them.

Tuesday, July 21

Day Seven

Chapter 37

The next morning, Laurie stood in her office, before three whiteboards containing everything they knew so far about Johnny’s disappearance, Darren Gunther and the murder of Lou Finney, and the possible connections between the two. Jerry, Grace, and Ryan sat at the white oval conference table, taking notes as she summarized key points.

She drew a circle in red ink around Summer Carver’s name. “If Gunther has someone acting as his eyes, ears, and legs on the ground while he’s in prison, we think Summer Carver is the most likely candidate. She is his only visitor at the prison other than his lawyer and, on occasion, his editor.”

She drew a second, smaller circle around Tracy Mahoney’s name. “There’s some possibility that his defense lawyer plays a complicit role in facilitating communications, but we think it’s unlikely she does any dirty work herself.” Tracy had seen them speaking to the prison guard at the check-in counter. It was certainly possible that the lawyer would have notified Summer by now that their production team was aware of her contacts with Gunther. The purpose of this meeting was to prepare before making any attempt to contact Summer directly.

“Jerry and I got an early start this morning looking into Summer’s social media, and hit pay dirt. Jerry, I’m going to let you spell out what we found.”

With only the four of them, Laurie would have simply had them huddle around her computer. Jerry, however, had been eager to connect his laptop to a projector so he could present what they had found on a larger screen.

As Laurie took a seat, a Facebook profile for Summer Carver appeared on a pull-down screen at the head of the conference table. In the profile image, a lanky young woman with long black wavy hair and pale skin held a fluffy white kitten up to her strawberry-freckled nose. “So Summer’s only social media presence is on Facebook. The first thing we noticed is that her only public posts—meaning we can see them even though we aren’t her online ‘friends’—are shared posts from the Darren Gunther Is Innocent page. We also know that she is active on Darren Gunther’s advocacy page, which isn’t surprising given that she visits him in prison.”

Jerry moved the cursor to the place on Summer’s profile where you could link to the profiles of any family members. Two family members were listed: her mother, Julie Carver, and a brother, Toby Carver. Jerry moved the cursor to Toby’s name and clicked.

“Her brother hasn’t posted anything for four years, so… dead end.” The profile picture wasn’t even of a person. It was a scenic shot of some woods near a creek. Jerry then pulled up the profile of Summer’s mother. “Mama Julie, however, is quite the active Facebook user.”

Julie’s profile photo depicted two women, smiling in close-up. One was Summer Carver, and the