Philip Gould stood at the podium as the moderator of the panel, which included Ann Milburn, the makeup artist I’d seen backstage at the fashion show, and two other cosmetic company executives, both of whom were involved in research and development of new product lines. The topic was advances in cosmetics and what breakthroughs the cosmetic industry would enjoy in coming years. Although it wasn’t a subject in which I had any particular interest, I found myself fascinated at everything that went into creating new kinds of makeup, using sophisticated scientific methods to create “organic” compounds to achieve a “natural” look, and the marketing of, not just the goods, but the elaborate philosophy behind them, aiming to slide smoothly into the lifestyle of busy women, busy wealthy women, I amended in my mind when the discussion turned to pricing. Gould was especially interesting as he took the attendees into the world of big-time cosmetics. He was a dynamic speaker, and the applause at the end of the presentation was well deserved.
I waited in a line of people eager to speak personally with the New Cosmetics CEO. When I reached him I said, “Jessica Fletcher, Mr. Gould. It was a wonderful discussion.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“You said that you’d grant me some time following the panel.”
“I did? Right. Only a few minutes, though.” He threw out an arm and looked at his watch.
“Whatever time you can give me will be appreciated.”
He ushered me to a corner of the room and we sat at a small table.
“What is it you want to know?” he asked stiffly.
“I’ve been toying with the idea of setting my next murder mystery novel in the fashion world, during Fashion Week to be more precise. It’s a fascinating world that I know nothing about, and thought you might be able to give me insight into the role the cosmetics industry plays in it.”
He dusted an imaginary speck of lint from the vest of his three-piece blue suit, and chewed his cheek while deciding what to say. Finally, he said, “Look, Mrs. Fletcher, the cosmetics business is a competitive one—ruthless, you might even say. There are people who will do everything but kill a competitor in order to grab market share.” His smile was small. “Maybe that’s what you should write about in your novel, how a cosmetic manufacturer kills a competitor.”
I jotted a note in the pad I’d taken from my bag to indicate I was taking what he said seriously. But my interest was in models and how they factor into a cosmetics company’s business.
“A good idea,” I said to Gould, who seemed anxious to leave. “What about models?” I asked quickly. “Are models cutthroat, too?”
His eyebrows went up. “Do you mean will they kill each other to get ahead?” He chuckled. “Close enough. Yeah, I’d say that you could make that your story.”
“I ask because of what happened recently to Rowena Roth and Latavia Moore.”
He immediately sobered. “You’re asking the wrong person,” he said, making a show of glancing at his watch. “I know, they were too young to die, but such things happen. I read an obit the other day of a guy, aged twenty-six, who dropped dead while jogging. Heart attack. Some of these models starve themselves, go on crazy diets to stay thin. You can imagine what that does to their hearts and other organs. They’re young and reckless, stay out late drinking too much, skipping sleep, and expect my staff to fix the damages before they walk the runway or pose before the camera. At least with photography, you can fix their faces in the computer. In real life, it’s not as easy.”
“I imagine not,” I said. He held up his index finger to Ann Milburn, the makeup artist who’d been on the panel with him. She’d been leaning against a wall during my conversation with Gould, and judging from her body language she was impatient.
“Time’s up,” he announced to me.
“And I appreciate the time you’ve given me,” I said, returning the pad and pen to my bag. “What you’ve said about models and their lifestyles is very interesting.”
He stood and tugged at his vest to straighten it. “Some of them are like that. Not all, of course.”
“Of course. Not Rowena Roth, for instance,” I said as he prepared to walk to where Ms. Milburn waited. “I’m pretty sure that Rowena Roth didn’t die as a result of constant dieting.”
He stopped and turned. “And why are you so sure of that?”
“I just learned this afternoon that she might have been murdered.”
He returned to where I sat.
“Who told you that?” he asked, a frown creasing his brow.
“A source with the police.”
“Why would the police confide something like that in you?”
“I suppose because I’ve shown interest in why Rowena died, and the coincidence—sometimes there are coincidences—of Latavia Moore’s sudden death.”
“That’s nonsense,” he said loudly. “Why would anyone kill either one of them?”
“That’s what the police intend to find out, and I share their interest. Thank you again for your time today. I really appreciate it.”
He walked to where Ann Milburn waited for him and said something in her ear. She glared at me as they left the room together, and I had the feeling that Philip Gould had not been happy with my news.
Chapter Sixteen
By the time I arrived at the hotel, the rooftop bar was filling up fast. Kopecky had already secured a small table for us by the window, the same table that Maggie Black and I had occupied earlier. He stood when he saw me enter the room and displayed a wide grin, his hand outstretched. “Here you are,” he said, “looking as beautiful as ever.”
I thanked him for the compliment and took the chair he held out for me.
“So,” he said, “what have you been up to today?”
“It’s been busy,” I said, “but judging from what you said on the phone, you’ve had a busy day, too.”
“Not so much busy as interesting. What are you drinking?”
“A white wine would be nice.”
He motioned for the waitress and gave her my order. His glass of beer sat on the table.
“You were saying that your day was interesting,” I said.
“Right.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to seeing you again.”
I mirrored the gesture and we touched rims.
“You know, Jessica, there’s something I have to say to you, get off my chest.”
“I’m listening.”
“Ever since Mary died—that’s my wife, God bless her—I’ve met lots of women, you know, nice single women who maybe I could get interested in. But then I met you.”
Oh, no, I thought. Where is this going?
“What I mean is, you have this way about you that makes a guy, makes me feel really important. You ask a lot of questions instead of mouthing off with your own opinions and ideas. That makes me feel—well, it makes me feel comfortable, right at home, if you get my drift.”
“I, uh—yes, I think I do, and I’m pleased that you feel that way. You said on the phone that you thought that Rowena Roth’s death might have been murder. Or were you referring to Latavia Moore? Or maybe both?”
“I’ll get around to that in a minute. You know what I did?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“I bought a couple of your books and started reading them.”
“That was very good of you.”
“Not at all,” he said, waving away my appreciation. “I know that they’re novels, fiction and all, but they really give me a look inside you, what makes you tick, the things that are important to you. You’re a really nice person, a real lady.”
His barrage of compliments was sweet, but put me on alert. While I thanked him for each nice thing he said about me, what I wanted to get to was the reason I was there with him. It certainly wasn’t to bask in his ego-boosting comments. But as he continued, my eagerness to hear about the
possible murder of Rowena Roth would have to be put on hold, at least until he was finished speaking of other things.
“I was talking to Christina—she’s my daughter; you haven’t met her yet—and I showed her your books, which of course she’d already read. I told you she was a big fan. So I began telling her all about you and you know what she said?”
“No.”
“She said, ‘Daddy, I think you’ve got a crush on this lady Jessica Fletcher.’”
He sat back and smiled, held out his hands in a gesture that said, “What can I say?” and added, “That’s what she said, and she knows me pretty good.”
The trend of his monologue had to stop, I told myself. I struggled with what to say. I didn’t want to insult him. He was a nice man, and it was evident that he missed his wife terribly and needed another woman in his life. But I wasn’t that woman.
“Detective,” I said, deliberately not calling him Aaron, “we don’t know each other very well, and I’ve already indicated to you that there’s another man in my life.”
“Yeah, but when do you ever get to see him? He lives far away.”
“That’s true. Nevertheless, he’s very important to me. You have been very attentive and certainly flattering, but I’m feeling uncomfortable being on the receiving end of all these compliments. I really would appreciate hearing about what you alluded to on the phone earlier today, that we might have a murder on our hands. Did you mean in the case of Rowena Roth, or was it Latavia Moore?”
His response was to ask whether I wanted a second glass of wine, which I declined, and to order another beer from our waitress. I glanced around to make sure that we weren’t being overheard by those at neighboring tables. “Why do you suspect a murder took place?” I asked.
“Okay,” he said, “down to business. You know, I looked you up on the Internet, Jessica.”
I waited to hear more.
“I saw that not only do you write about murder, but you’ve been involved in solving a few of them in real life.”
“I’ve been fortunate to be in the right place to help out at times, and I’ve made a number of lucky guesses.”
“I think it’s a lot more than that. So I’m seeing you as a partner of sorts.”
“A partner in solving a murder?”
“Yeah. Right. If you insist.”
“That’s the only way I’ll partner with you.”
He looked at me for a long moment. “Okay. I get the message.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Look, let’s start over. You’ve been doing your own investigation into Ms. Roth’s death. Am I right?”
I stifled a sigh of relief. “I wouldn’t call it an investigation, but I am naturally curious why she died.”
His pause was pregnant, as though making a dramatic statement. Then he said, “Ms. Roth, the model, might have been poisoned!”
“‘Might have been’?”
He leaned closer. “This is between us, right?”
I looked around. “Who else would I tell?”
“Not the pretty-face design guy. Not his mother. Not the model’s aunt. No one. I have to insist.”
“You have my word.”
“Good. I figure your word is gold. Here’s the skinny, Jessica. The medical examiner’s office has a couple of young hotshots working in it whose only goal is to cut down on the backlog of cases they have. One of them did the original autopsy on Ms. Roth and came to the conclusion—a premature conclusion, I might add—that she died of a heart attack. Convenient, huh?”
“And not entirely far-fetched.”
“Even though she wasn’t even twenty years old and had been in good health?”
“She was seventeen actually,” I said.
“Just proves my point.”
“I admit that young people dying of a heart ailment is unusual, but it does happen from time to time.” I thought of Philip Gould’s comment. “Wasn’t there a jogger who died at twenty-six?”
“Yeah. I saw that, too. They said it was natural causes. But maybe not this time,” he said smugly. “Like I told you before, I’ve had this funny feeling about it from the get-go, so I put the arm on my boss at headquarters to request a second autopsy, this time by Doc Barden.”
“Barden? He’s a famous medical examiner. I have two of his books.”
“He sure is, and for good reason. He was the best. He retired a year ago, but they bring him in on tough cases, the ones that the young turks in the office of the chief medical examiner can’t get a handle on. Anyway, Doc Barden agrees to perform a second autopsy on her—and he did.”
“I take it that he came up with a different conclusion from the others.”
“He sure did. Want to know what he says?”
I would have preferred that he simply say what the result of the second autopsy was and not prolong the story, but he had the floor. I nodded.
“Doc Barden says that her heart was damaged by a foreign substance that he’s betting will show up in her liver and kidneys.”
He watched as what he’d said sank in to me.
“Poison? What sort of poison?” I asked.
Kopecky shrugged. “The doc is working on that as we speak. Whatever it was, it did something funny to her lips. The regular toxicology report takes forever, but Barden’s putting a rush on it. ‘Stat,’ they call it in the medical business. He named a couple of possibilities, names I’d never heard of. But that’s why he’s the best.”
“Well,” I said, “I certainly appreciate your sharing this with me. When does Dr. Barden expect to have a definitive answer?”
“I don’t know, but based upon his track record, it won’t take long.”
“What about Latavia Moore’s death?” I asked. “You were suspicious of that one, too. Is there anything new on that case?”
He shook his head. “I still think I’m right about that one. We’ll see.”
The rooftop bar was now filled to capacity and the noise was giving me a headache. I desperately needed some quiet space, fresh air, or a nap.
“So,” Kopecky said, “I’ve told you everything that’s new, Jessica. You have anything to add?”
He’d shared a great deal with me, and I decided I had to return the favor. “Rowena was a patient of a prominent Park Avenue plastic surgeon, Edmund Sproles.”
“How do you know that?”
I explained that I’d come across the doctor’s card in Rowena Roth’s apartment while there with her aunt and Maggie Black. “I spent some time with Dr. Sproles today,” I added. “He did some work on her, including reshaping her lips.”
He grimaced.
“I know,” I said, “it hardly seemed that she needed any sort of restructuring. Oh, I should also add that Dr. Sproles grows exotic plants in his waiting room as a hobby, including some poisonous ones.”
“Really? Now, that’s interesting,” he said, and asked me for the doctor’s name again, which he noted in a pad.
“Rowena also received an expensive fur coat from an admirer, perhaps someone with whom she’d had an affair.”
“Past tense?”
“It seems that way. Polly Roth said her niece was attracted to older men, but at Rowena’s age almost all men were older men.” I picked up my bag and rummaged inside. “Oh, and this is for you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s half a packet of oatmeal that Rowena had for breakfast the morning she died. I took it in case there had been any incidence of contaminated cereal, but I couldn’t find anything to support that. I kept it anyway. It’s probably not relevant, but perhaps you should have it tested.”
Kopecky leaned back and grinned at me. “You’re in the wrong profession, lady. This is all incredible stuff. You make a great partner. We should have another drink to celebrate.”
“Detective Kopecky, I’m no
t feeling well. I’m sorry to bail out on you, but I’d like to go to my room and lie down.”
“You all right?”
“Just very tired.”
“Sure, sure, I understand.”
While he waited for the waitress to bring the bill, he walked me to the elevators.
“Thanks for sharing information with me,” I said.
“Same here. I’ll look into this Park Avenue doctor, and I’ll have this tested.” He waved the oatmeal packet at me.
“Thank you for the wine.”
“Hey, my pleasure. We’ll do it again soon. Christina is dying to meet you and—”
The elevator arrived. I got in and pushed the button for my floor. My last image of NYPD Detective Aaron Kopecky was of him smiling and waving good-bye as the door closed.
Chapter Seventeen
I’d told Kopecky that I didn’t feel well and needed to lie down. It was close to being accurate. I was tired, tired of fending off his advances. And truth to tell, I simply had to get away from him and the noisy bar crowd and enjoy some moments of solitude.
The detective’s interest in me had spilled over into the personal, which made our exchanges awkward. And while I thought I’d made it abundantly clear that I was not interested in a personal relationship, perhaps in my efforts not to offend him I hadn’t been firm enough. In any case, he was intent upon wearing me down. And I was weary of his efforts and in danger of losing my patience. The best action under those circumstances was to climb out of the frying pan and try to avoid a fire.
I knew that Kopecky must be lonely. The years following my husband Frank’s death were not so far in the past—and probably never would be—that I couldn’t instantly recall the feelings of misery and longing for what had been lost. The death of Mary Kopecky had created a gaping hole in Aaron’s life. That he was looking to fill it was understandable, and I was sure that one day he would find another woman—not to take Mary’s place, but to recapture the warmth and comfort of companionship and sense of belonging that being part of a couple can provide. What he didn’t yet realize was that there are benefits to being on one’s own as well: the freedom to make choices without consulting anyone else; the pride in being self-reliant; and the satisfaction of deciding what your soul requires at the moment, whether it’s to spend an evening with friends or enjoy some time alone.
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