Free I've Got You Under My Skin by Mary Higgins Clark Page B

Buckley to defend her,” Jerry suggested. “With his fees, that three hundred thousand dollars would go up in smoke.”
    Alex Buckley was the renowned criminal lawyer who would be the host of the program and would conduct separate interviews with Powell, the housekeeper, and the graduates. Thirty-eight years old, he was a frequent guest on television programs discussing major crimes.
    He had become famous by defending a mogul accused of murdering his business partner. Against tremendous odds Buckley had secured a not-guilty verdict, which the press had deplored as a miserable miscarriage of justice. Then, ten months later, the business partner’s wife committed suicide, leaving a note saying that she had murdered her husband.
    After watching countless videos of Alex Buckley, Laurie had decided he would be the ideal narrator of the Graduation Gala program.
    Then she had to convince him.
    She had called his office and made an appointment to see him.
    A moment after she was ushered into his office he had taken an urgent phone call, and sitting across from his desk Laurie had had a chance to study him closely.
    He had dark hair, blue-green eyes accentuated by black-rimmed glasses, a firm chin, and the tall, lanky build that she knew had made him a basketball star in college.
    Observing him on television, she had decided that he was the kind of man people instinctively liked and trusted, and that was the quality she was looking for in a narrator who would also be on camera. That instinct was reinforced as she heard him reassuring the person he was speaking to that there was no reason to worry.
    When he finished the phone call, his apologetic smile was warm and genuine. But his first question—“And what can I do for you, Ms. Moran?”—warned her not to waste his time.
    Laurie had been prepared, succinct, and passionate.
    She thought back to the moment when Alex Buckley leaned back in his chair and said, “I’d be very interested in taking part in the program, Ms. Moran.”
    “Laurie, I was sure you were going to get turned down flat that day,” Jerry said.
    “I knew that the money I could offer Buckley for being on the program wasn’t enough to compensate him, but my hunch was he might be intrigued by the unsolved Graduation Gala case. Thank heaven it turns out that I was right.”
    “You were right on,” Jerry agreed heartily. “He’ll be great.”
    It was six o’clock. “Let’s hope so,” Laurie said as she pushed back her chair and got up. “We’ve labored in the vineyard long enough. Let’s call it a day.”
    •   •   •
    Two hours later as they sipped coffee, Laurie said to her father, “As I told Jerry and Grace today, the die is cast.”
    “What does that mean?” Timmy asked. Tonight he had not asked to be excused after he finished dessert.
    “It means that I’ve done everything possible, and we start filming the people on the program tomorrow morning.”
    “Will it be a series?” Timmy asked.
    “From your mouth to God’s ear,” Laurie said fervently, then smiled at her son. So like Greg, she thought, not just in looks, but in the expression he gets when he’s thinking something through.
    He always asked about any project she was working on. This oneshe had described in the broadest terms as “a reunion of four friends who grew up together but haven’t seen each other in twenty years.”
    Timmy’s answer to that was, “ Why didn’t they see each other?”
    “Because they lived in different states,” Laurie answered honestly.
    The last few months have been hard, she thought. It wasn’t only the pressure of the enormous amount of preparation for the filming. Timmy had received his First Holy Communion on May 25, and she had not been able to keep the tears from slipping past her dark glasses. Greg should be here. Greg should be here, but he’ll never be here for all the important events in Timmy’s life. Not his confirmation or graduations or when he gets married. Not any of