Rosemary Dempsey ran her fingertips along the dark gray granite countertop as she paced the length of the kitchen. “It feels so strange to be back here. I cooked in this room almost every day for nearly forty years.”
Rosemary had put together a collection of her daughter’s childhood photographs and mementos—a blue ribbon won in a science fair, the banner she’d worn as her high school’s homecoming queen. She had even given Laurie and her crew the guest book from Susan’s memorial service.
Now they were inside the Dempsey family’s former home, where Jerry had arranged for them to shoot today’s interview. This was the kitchen where Rosemary first learned that her daughter’s body had been found in Laurel Canyon Park.
“I thought it would be traumatic to come back here,” Rosemary said. “But after what happened in my backyard last week, it’s nice to get away from my ‘new’ neighborhood.”
“Have the police made any progress in your friend’s investigation?”
“Apparently not. You might have found another case for your show,” she said with a sad smile.
Laurie could tell that Rosemary needed to ease into a conversation about that horrible morning when she learned of Susan’s death. Laurie shot a look to Jerry, who was lingering next to the cameramen stationed near the sliding glass doors at the edge of the kitchen. He gave her an okay sign. Though they were keeping their distance, they could capture what they needed to get on video.
“Has the house changed much since you lived here?” Laurie asked.
Rosemary stopped pacing and looked around her. “No, not in any obvious way. But it feels completely different. Their furniture—it’s much more modern than ours. And our art is gone. The photographs. All of the things that made this house our home are either with me at the new place or in storage.”
“If it wouldn’t be too painful,” Laurie said, “maybe you can point out a few details in the house that were significant to your daughter. Perhaps we can start with her room?”
Laurie wouldn’t need footage from other parts of the house, but a tour through the home was a way to get Rosemary to loosen up and start talking about Susan. The show only worked when they could portray the victim not as a piece of evidence in a mystery to be solved but as a living human being.
Rosemary led the way up the mission-style staircase to a bedroom at the end of the upstairs hallway. Her hand trembled as she turned the doorknob. The room was set up now as a nursery, with lavender-colored walls hand-stenciled with yellow tulips.
She walked to the window and fingered the latch. “See how the overhang above the front porch is just beneath the window here? I used to check this lock every single night because I had a fear that someone would sneak in and grab my baby.”
Next she walked to the closet and ran her fingers along the inside of the door frame. “This is where we used to chart her growth, drawing a new line for every birthday. They’ve painted it over since then, but I swear, you can still seem them. See? Faint little lines.”
Laurie looked over Rosemary’s shoulder and smiled, even though all she saw was clean white paint.
When they were back in the kitchen and in front of the cameras, Laurie felt like Rosemary was ready. “Please,” Laurie encouraged gently, “tell us how you learned about your daughter’s murder.”
Rosemary nodded slowly. “It was the weekend of Jack’s sixtieth birthday. We had a big party here on Saturday, outside. It was a beautiful night. Everything was so perfect, except Susan couldn’t be there. She called that afternoon to wish Jack a happy birthday, but he was at the club for a round of golf. He worked so hard. Always. She was in good spirits, excited about school, and very excited about the audition she had that night.”
“The one with Frank Parker?”
“Yes. She told me his name, but I hadn’t heard of him. She said he was a real up-and-comer. She said . . . she said she felt ‘lucky,’ like it was ‘too good to be true.’ ” Her voice caught as she repeated her daughter’s words. “Then we got the call from the police the next morning. The funny thing is, I had a terrible feeling all day that something was wrong, like this vague but terrifying foreboding.”
“About Susan?”
“No, not initially. More this floating anxiety. But that all changed once the police called. It was the LAPD. They had found a body. You know the rest—one of her shoes had fallen off, presumably as she was chased through Laurel Canyon Park. Her cell phone was nearby too. Her lucky necklace had been pulled from her throat. They wanted to know why she might have been at the park. I told them she was meeting that night with Frank Parker. It was only later that we learned that his house was only a mile or so from the location where they found her body.”
Laurie could see the grief gripping Rosemary, all these years later. She knew full well it would never disappear. “Going back to Frank Parker, did that strike you as peculiar, for him to meet with Susan at night?” Laurie asked gently.
“No, but she didn’t tell me she was going to his house. And I assumed that her agent would be there. Trust me, if I could turn back time, I’d stop her from ever going to that audition.”
“Why? Because you think Frank Parker is the one who hurt your daughter?”
Rosemary looked down at her hands and shook her head. “No. I wish I could have stopped her from going up to the Hollywood Hills that night, because at least she would have been closer to campus, where she knew her way around. She wouldn’t have been wearing silver shoes that she couldn’t run in. At the very least, even if she couldn’t escape, she wouldn’t have been called Cinderella, as if my daughter were some pretty little girl trying to win a prince for the night. That nickname and the Hollywood setting wouldn’t have been such a painful distraction.”
“A distraction from what, Rosemary?”
Rosemary paused, pressing her lips together as she chose her next words. When she finally spoke, any nerves she’d had about the cameras were gone. She looked directly into the lens like a trained TV star. “A distraction from the truth, which is that the most dangerous person in Susan’s life was much closer to home: her boyfriend, Keith Ratner. He was a cheater and a liar, and he knew my Susan was going places he could only dream of. I will go to my grave believing he is the one who killed my baby.”