“Yes,” I said.
He dimmed the lights and reversed the tape. The numbers rapidly streaming backward on the bottom indicated the time that the tape had been made. There were many figures going in and out of the building, but no one was recognizable at that speed. The officer stopped rewinding when the numbers neared noon, and then began the tape again, going forward at a faster speed than real time, but not so fast that we couldn’t get a clear picture of the doorman opening the building’s glass front door for visitors, and for people who entered or exited when the doorman was on a break or helping someone out of a taxi. The camera had been situated above the small waiting area in front of the elevators in the lobby, and angled back toward the entrance. Sandy and I sat transfixed by the fleeting images that came and went. At times there was a sizable lull. Then myriad people could be seen waiting for the elevator, tenants, deliverymen, contractors, and members of the building staff. It became boring; we had to fight to maintain vigilance as the tape ran, the fleeting numbers indicating the passage of time.
“What time were you seen on the tape?” I asked Sandy sotto voce.
“About an hour and a half from now,” he said, his eyes glued to the screen.
I was beginning to lose faith in the exercise. There hadn’t been a single face that he or I recognized; everyone on the tape was a stranger to us.
Until . . .
I turned to the officer. “Would you please stop the tape and rewind it back a few minutes?”
He did as I’d asked.
“It’s him!” Sandy blurted, almost elevating from his seat.
“Yes, it is,” I said.
The man in the lobby was certainly well-known to Sandy, and was recognizable to me despite my having met him only a few times.
The policeman paused the tape so we could confirm his identity. There was no doubt. The man waiting for the elevator in Latavia Moore’s building was Jordan Verne.
Chapter Twenty-five
“I’m sure that Detective Kopecky will want to see this,” I told the officer who had frozen the video on the section in which Jordan Verne’s face was clearly identifiable. Kopecky came into the room a few minutes later.
“Who’s he?” he asked, looking at the screen.
“His name’s Jordan Verne,” Sandy said. “He’s my financial backer and business manager.”
Kopecky noted the time at the bottom of the video. “That’s close to an hour before you show up,” he said. “Did you watch it long enough to see when he left?”
“Yes,” I answered. “We watched all the way until Sandy arrives, in case there was anyone else we might recognize. The tape shows Verne exiting the building less than thirty minutes before Sandy comes in.”
Kopecky nodded slowly. “It could fit into the approximate time of death,” he murmured to himself.
“Had rigor mortis set in by the time her body was discovered later on?” I asked, knowing that coroners use that sign to estimate a time of death.
“Let’s leave the forensics to the medical examiner, shall we?” Kopecky shot back. He turned to Sandy. “So this Verne character knew the deceased?”
“That’s right,” Sandy said. “From Los Angeles. He also knew her ex-husband, a sleazeball who called himself a talent agent.”
“Let’s stick to the facts without any characterization,” Kopecky said.
Sandy sighed. “Yes, Jordan knows, um, knew, Latavia very well.”
“Your mother told me that Jordan Verne was responsible for her success as a model in New York,” I said. “Do you agree?”
“Yeah, he was. Of course she worked it good. Never saw a camera she didn’t like or an editor she wouldn’t kiss up to—and more. Jordan pulled a lot of strings to get her cover work, hired press agents to place stories about her. She was unbelievably ambitious, but he had the connections to make her into a supermodel. That’s why I signed with him for my work, signed away my future earnings, signed away my soul. I figured if he could make her into a star in such a short time, he’d do wonders for me.”
“And has he?” I asked.
“Not yet, but he says I haven’t given him a year yet.” Sandy snorted. “It was a bargain with the devil. I can see that now. And look at this—now the guy sets me up to take the rap for his crime. If I give him a year, he’ll probably have me behind bars for life.”
“Let’s not get carried away here,” Kopecky said.
Kopecky looked at me. “You know this guy Verne, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“I’ve met him a few times.”
“He’s here in New York?”
“He was as of this morning,” Sandy said. “He lives in L.A.”
Sandy gave the detective the name of the hotel at which Verne was staying.
“I’ll have Mr. Verne picked up for questioning,” Kopecky said to Sandy, “but that doesn’t get you off the hook. I’m keeping my options open. You were at the scene where a model—a former married girlfriend of yours, I come to find out—was murdered.”
I knew Kopecky and his team would have been looking into Sandy’s background. His “no contest” plea in the theft of the costumes in Hollywood would have raised a lot of red flags for the police. But at least Kopecky was willing to open his mind and consider another suspect.
“Thanks for the tip.” He directed the comment at me.
I held my tongue. He should have had someone intimately familiar with individuals involved in the fashion industry screen the video in search of recognizable faces. And for all I knew, maybe he had. And maybe other viewers were not familiar with Latavia Moore’s manager from California. But the important thing was that Sandy and I had been given the opportunity to see the video and could identify Jordan Verne. That didn’t mean, of course, that Verne had anything to do with his client’s murder, but his presence in her apartment building was enough, at least, to expand the field of persons of interest.
As we were about to leave, Sandy said to Kopecky, “I asked you a question when you were interrogating me earlier today, but you wouldn’t answer.”
“Yeah? What was that?”
“I asked if you’d found my fingerprints in Latavia’s apartment.”
Kopecky looked at me.
“Sounds like a fair question,” I said as sweetly as possible.
“No, your prints weren’t inside her apartment, Black. That’s why we let you go. We did find them on her door, however.”
“I told you they would be there,” Sandy said, smiling, trying out his charm on Kopecky. But the detective wasn’t letting himself be won over.
“Prints or no prints don’t exonerate you, Black. Killers sometimes wear gloves or wipe their prints off anything they touched.”
“But you did find some other prints there, I assume,” I said, “someone other than Latavia’s herself.”
“That’s right, Mrs. Fletcher, unidentified prints.”
“When you catch up with Mr. Verne, I assume you’ll check his prints against those that you found in the apartment.”
The moment I said it I knew that I’d overstepped my bounds, and expected an angry response from the detective. But I needn’t have worried. He smiled for the first time since we’d arrived and said in a high voice, “Gee, I hadn’t thought of that—Jessica—but I’ll make a note to myself to see that it’s done.” He was being facetious, of course, but at least he hadn’t snapped at me, which I would have deserved.
Sandy and I left headquarters and took a taxi back to his studio.
“He called you Jessica,” he said as we neared our destination, “not Mrs. Fletcher.”
“Detective Aaron Kopecky is a good and decent man, Sandy,” I said, “but I’m afraid that I rubbed him the wrong way somewhere along the line. Our relationship was pleasant until that happened, and I’m hoping to get it back on a friendlier basis.”
As we rode the creak
y elevator to Sandy’s floor, he said, “I can’t tell you how much better I’m feeling, Jessica. You just lifted an enormous weight from my shoulders.”
“That’s good to hear, Sandy, but it’s not over yet. I still think you should consult with a criminal attorney for your own peace of mind. But otherwise, let’s let the police do the job they’re trained for. I trust them not to railroad an innocent man.”
“How about you, me, and my mom have dinner together tonight?”
“I’d love to, but I promised to have dinner with my nephew and his wife and son. It’s the last chance I’ll have to see them before heading home to Maine.”
The door to the studio was closed when we arrived. Sandy tried it and it opened.
“We usually leave the door open if we’re working,” he commented as we entered the empty studio. “Leaving it unlocked if no one is here is a bad idea. I wonder where my mother went.”
His question was answered the next moment. Maggie was nowhere to be seen—but when we looked in Sandy’s office, we found Jordan Verne with his feet up on the desk.
“Hey, Jordan,” Sandy said, “didn’t expect you to be here. Where’s my mom and my staff?”
“I told your staff to take the rest of the day off. I sent your mother out to get us some coffee.”
“Why would you send the staff home?” Sandy asked.
“Hey, I’m not footing the bill for salaries if you’re going off to the clink.”
“Just a minute,” I said. “Aren’t you presuming a great deal?”
“Oh, right, you’re Jessica Fletcher. You and Xandr been out on the town?”
“As a matter of fact, we’ve been at police headquarters.”
“Yeah, I knew that they brought you in for questioning, Xandr,” he said, “something about Latavia Moore’s death.”
“Her murder, you mean,” Sandy said.
“Was it murder?” Verne’s laugh was forced. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “Lots of people hated her, and after what she did to you in California, I’m sure you were first in line among those who wanted to see her dead.”
“Mr. Verne,” I said, “I think you ought to know that the police would like to interview you about Ms. Moore’s—death.”
“Me? Why would they want to interview me?”
I waited for Sandy to explain, but he was staring at Verne with a frown. When he didn’t say anything, I said, “We’ve just come from viewing a surveillance tape recorded at Ms. Moore’s apartment building the day she died.”
“Yeah? Why would that interest me?”
“You were on that tape.”
“Was I?”
“Yes, we saw you.”
“Must be a mistake. Those video cameras are lousy. You can never recognize who’s in them.”
“I’m not sure I agree,” I said, “but you can make that point with Detective Kopecky when he invites you downtown. He said he and his people were going to your hotel, but since you’re here, I’ll call and have him swing by the studio.” I pulled my cell phone from my bag and punched in Kopecky’s number. Verne wrenched the phone from my hand and threw it in the corner.
“What are you up to?” Sandy asked. He lunged for Verne, who grabbed the heavy glass bowl from the desk and swung it viciously, catching Sandy in the side of the head. He let out a pained groan as he slumped to the floor, blood from the gash running down his cheek.
I bent down. “Sandy, are you okay?” I looked up at Verne. “I don’t know what you think you can accomplish by attacking him. The police are already looking for you. If they don’t find you at the hotel, they’ll check the airports, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they showed up here as well.”
“Shut up!” Verne snapped. He lifted the glass bowl to strike again, but I kicked his shin. He dropped the bowl and it shattered when it hit the floor. He stumbled backward and grabbed the pair of giant shears Sandy used to cut his fabrics. “Get back,” he yelled.
Sandy continued to moan, his hand pressed against his wound, but Verne warned me away. “Leave him,” he said, raising the shears and waving it in front of my face.
I drew deep breaths to calm myself, my eyes fixed on Verne and the shears he wielded. “You know what you’re doing now is convincing me that you did, indeed, murder Latavia Moore,” I said, backing through the office door, trying to put some distance between Verne and me and to get him away from Sandy. “An innocent man wouldn’t threaten someone with a weapon.”
“And a smart woman wouldn’t make the kinds of remarks that encourage violence,” he said, following me into the studio, keeping the shears pointed at my chest.
“What do you plan to do?” I moved toward the windows and stepped behind the large worktable, using a chair to keep him a safe distance from me. “A smart man like you must have made plans to get away.”
“I’m getting out of here all right,” he said, grabbing the chair away and tossing it across the room. He continued to make slashing movements over the table while I pulled one chair after another in front of me to keep my distance from him.
He was wound spring-tight; his eyes darted around the room in search of a way to magically escape. But there was no magic exit, not with Sandy in the office and me there, and that meant—and the thought made me shudder—that he would have to dispose of us if he had any chance of bolting from the studio and enjoying freedom.
I had started to ask him how he thought he could possibly evade the police when out of the corner of my eye I saw Sandy slumped against the wall. I kept my gaze on Verne and continued to pepper him with questions, hoping to rivet his attention on me so as not to notice the injured man sliding along the wall in the direction of the door. Sandy had closed it behind us, but it hadn’t latched. It was open a few inches.
Verne stabbed at me, but I leaped out of his way. “Enough games, Jessica Fletcher. Play your cards right and I’ll make your death swift and painless. Wouldn’t you prefer that?”
I danced back and forth behind the table. “You have to answer my questions first.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” he said, holding the shears above his head like a knife.
“Why did you kill Latavia Moore?” I shouted. “You must have had a good reason.”
“She asked for it,” he replied, “her and that swindling husband of hers.”
“What does he have to do with her? I thought they were divorced.”
“He still pulls the strings.”
“Were you and her husband in business together?” I asked, noting that Sandy had almost reached the door.
“He cut me out, the dirtbag,” Verne said. He’d calmed considerably, his body language no longer taut, his eyes now fixed solely on me. “I made Latavia into a big success and then her husband convinces her to drop me. Oh, no! You’re not firing me, buddy.” He smacked the side of the shears against his palm. “He’s the one who should have died. I’ll get him when I get back to L.A., after I take care of you, that is.” He was composed now, his voice cold.
“You must have felt very upset when Latavia fired you,” I said, anxious to establish rapport with him.
“Upset? Yeah, that’s putting it mildly. Mad as hell, too.”
“Didn’t you know Latavia’s husband was not to be trusted?” I said. “He set up Sandy Black on the charge that he’d stolen costumes from the studio where he worked.”
“Where do you think I got the idea? That’s right—poor, dumb Sandy Black, the patsy. I saved him, persuaded him to leave L.A. and become a designer in New York. Even gave him his new name. Without me, Xandr Ebon would be nowhere.”
And not bound to an ironclad contract for the rest of his life.
Sandy had reached the door. While I was attempting to distract Verne, Sandy silently opened the door wide enough to slip through it and disappeared into the hallway. But the moment he was gone, Verne turned and saw the
trail of blood on the floor that led to the door. He cursed as he turned from me and ran to the door, out into the corridor. As he did I acted on pure instinct. I raced to the door, put my shoulder against it, and tried to shut it behind him. But an opposite force slammed the door against the wall and I tumbled backward, falling to the floor, scrambling out of the way, trying desperately to escape the deadly shears that were certain to be biting into my body any second. I put my arm up in defense. Someone grabbed my wrist and hauled me to my feet.
“Jessica! Are you okay? Lady, you scared the life out of me.”
Detective Kopecky shook me by the shoulders.
“Did you see him? Jordan Verne, the man we saw in the surveillance tape. He just ran out of here. He injured Sandy and threatened to kill us both. He murdered Latavia Moore. He admitted to it.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Calm down. We got him. Ran right into our arms.”
“But Sandy. He’s terribly injured.”
“No worries. The EMTs are on the way for your designer buddy. He’s got a hard head. He’s going to be fine. His mother is comforting him as we speak.”
I took a deep breath and ran my shaking fingers through my hair. My heart was racing.
Kopecky grabbed one of the chairs Verne had thrown out of the way and insisted I sit down.
I sank into it gratefully, not sure my knees would stop knocking any time soon. “How did you know to come? Did Sandy call you?”
“No, you did. But then when you didn’t come on the line and I heard a big crash, I figured something was wrong and hot-footed it over here, just in time to catch a wild-eyed guy running at me holding the biggest pair of scissors I ever saw. How does anyone use those things anyway?”
I started to giggle. Maggie and Sandy who stood in the doorway started laughing, too.
“What? What?” Kopecky scratched his head. “What did I say that’s so funny?”
When I was able to get my adrenaline-fired giggles under control, I wiped away tears of relief and smiled at Sandy. “Are you really all right?”
“My head hurts,” he replied, “but I think I’ll live, thanks to you. If you hadn’t lured him away from me, I think he’d have tried to finish me off with that bowl.”
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