by Kylie Logan
“Yo!”
“That guy Florie used to go out with once in a while, did you ever meet him?”
He paused the game and peered at them over the back of the couch. “Who’d go out with a chick who wears a nun’s habit?”
“Not the question,” Jazz reminded him. “Did she ever have a guy come over?”
“Not that I ever saw,” he told her. “But a few times when she left here, she’d go downstairs and get into a car.”
“What kind of car?”
“That’s what that cop asked.” As if she was picturing it, Meg went to the windows that looked out over the front yard. “Hard to tell from here. And it was usually dark.”
“An Audi. That’s what I told the cops because I’m pretty sure that’s what it was,” Croc said. “And the one time she went out there, the guy, the driver, he was getting something out of the trunk.”
“Did you get a look at him?” Jazz closed in on the couch, the better not to miss a single thing Croc said. “What did he look like?”
“Old guy,” Croc told her. “I mean, maybe forty. Lots of dark curly hair, a little bit of a beard. Nobody I know.”
Maybe not, but Jazz was pretty sure it was someone she knew.
Tate Brody.
CHAPTER 14
There was no use driving all the way back to this side of town on another day. She was already close to North Coast, and Jazz decided to make the best of it.
She went back to the building where the students had their studios, and when there was no sign of Tate Brody there, she went in search of his office.
He’d just gotten in—at least if the light jacket he was wearing and the Starbucks cup he set on the desk meant anything. The office door was open, and he thought he was alone. Even as she watched, he flicked on the vintage banker’s lamp on his Hepplewhite desk. The lamp had an amber shade, and the light illuminated the seashell marquetry on the desk and the laptop on it and cast the rest of the room in soft shadows that made Brody’s face into a study of planes and angles. The entire wall to the left of his desk was taken up with bookshelves, the books on them neatly and carefully tucked away. There was no sign of that photograph of Florie’s, the one he’d taken from her studio.
Jazz rapped on the doorjamb.
When Brody’s head snapped up, his eyes lit with recognition. Even if he wasn’t exactly sure who she was. “Miss…”
“Ramsey. Jazz Ramsey. I was here last week. About Florie Allen.”
“Of course.” He slipped off his Eddie Bauer fleece and draped it over the back of his desk chair. Like the last time she’d seen him, he was dressed casually. Charcoal pants and a long-sleeved rusty shirt, the color intense in the amber light, the shirt cut slim to make the most of his runner’s build. Either Brody had a flair for fashion, or someone who shopped for him did.
“What can I do for you?”
Jazz stepped into the office. “You can tell me why the last time we talked, you didn’t bother to mention that you’d been with Florie the night she was murdered.”
He was just about to sit down and he froze, his spine suddenly rigid. He gripped the back of his desk chair, and though he tried to make it look like the most natural thing in the world, she couldn’t help but notice that his knuckles were white. “Since I had nothing to do with what happened to Florie, I can’t see how it matters when I saw her last.”
“If you had nothing to do with what happened to Florie, it seems odd you’d keep something like being with her the night she died a secret.”
“Explain this to me again.” The moment of surprise evaporated, and a half smile tickled the corners of his mouth. He was handsome and accomplished, the idol of his students. He knew it. “You work where Florie went to school a couple years ago, and you think this is your business because…”
“Call me nosy.” It wasn’t either an excuse or a reason, but it was all Jazz had, and her smile told him as much. “I can’t believe something that important slipped your mind.”
“I can’t believe you’d have the nerve to come here and ask me about it. There’s really no reason for me to talk to you. I’ve already talked to the police.”
“Did you tell them what you didn’t tell me?”
In the glow from the desk lamp, his eyes were the color of Lake Erie in November. Gray and stormy. “I’m sure what I told them went into their official report. Since I’m still here…” He threw his hands in the air. “They obviously haven’t locked me up so I think you’ll have to agree they don’t share in your taste for drama. I’m not some lunatic murderer. I was with Florie that evening because we were shooting B roll.”
“For the commercial.”
“Yes, for the commercial. We did what we needed to do and then we left. I went my way and she went hers.”
“Did the two of you walk outside the building together?”
“Again, you’re asking questions, and I don’t understand why.”
“It just seems weird, that’s all.” Though she clearly hadn’t been invited, she sat in the chair in front of his desk and settled back, hoping to look casual so he wouldn’t catch on to the fact that her insides twisted and flipped. She had never been very good at minding other people’s business. That was Sarah Carrington’s job. Jazz was all about keeping things on an even keel.
Except murder didn’t qualify, did it?
She crossed her ankles, her nonchalance a mirror of his. She wondered if he was faking it, too. “That B-roll project, you were giving Florie the opportunity to earn some extra credit.”
“I told you she needed it. I hoped it might help her maintain her grades and keep her scholarship.”
“No luck, huh? I mean, she only got one A all semester, and that lonely A came from you.”
He slipped into his desk chair and twined his fingers together, his hands on the gleaming mahogany surface in front of him. Not standard issue from the school, Jazz would guess. This desk was old, elegant. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jazz leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “The night before the video project was due, Florie was in a panic. She didn’t have a clue what she was doing. Then she turns in her video and … voilà! She gets an A. I’m just wondering, that’s all. I’m just wondering if that has anything to do with the fact that you were sleeping with her.”
He went as still as a statue. One minute melted into two and Jazz swore he never even breathed. She held her breath, too, and when he yanked open the top drawer of his desk, the sudden noise cracked through her like a rifle shot. She expected him to pull out a cell phone and call security to haul her sorry ass out of there. Instead, he held up a flash drive.
He popped open the laptop in front of him and inserted the drive. His fingers flew over the keyboard and when he was good and ready—only when he was good and ready—did he aim a laser look across the desk at her.
“Come over here.”
In the silence of the office, his voice was clipped. In the weird half shadows, his expression was unreadable.
Jazz braced herself against a sudden apprehension.
If she hesitated, he’d read right through her and know she was scared out of her wits.
If she made up an excuse, he’d realize she was winging it, just like she’d been winging the last two weeks of her life.
If she walked out, he’d make sure she never got the chance to talk to him again.
Her knees rubbery, Jazz got up and went to stand next to him.
“What is it?”
“Just watch.”
The screen flashed with an image that was either a sunrise or a sunset, a bright blaze of orange, a blink of yellow, a slash of pink.
Sunrise, she decided. It must have been, because the next thing she saw was a shot of downtown Cleveland taken from high up in one of the office buildings that ringed Public Square, where just two weeks before, alive and well, Florie had handed out brochures for the horror festival. The camera zeroed in on a group of people rushing to their jobs, the morning sun
on their faces, backpacks slung behind them, their hands filled with tote bags and coffee cups like the one on Brody’s desk, where a tiny wisp of steam rose from the top, ghostly in the light.
The camera zoomed in a little more, and soon, one person was singled out in the crowd, a single face flashed on the screen. Then another. Then another.
The next four minutes were a dizzying whirl of features and faces, people from all walks of life, short and tall, black and white and Asian, young and old. The background scenes changed, too, from Public Square, to the West Side Market Jazz had looked at from outside the brewery pub only the night before, to a park, to the lakefront. People coming and going, each frame of the video revealing personalities and moods, histories in the blink of each eye. Throughout, the lighting was perfect, filled with mood and shadow one minute, bright and promising the next. The background music was upbeat and not intrusive; the transitions from scene to scene were smooth and easy on the eye.
When it was finally over, Jazz felt as if she’d met the entire population of Cleveland, up close and personal. She was impressed. And incredibly moved. Especially when the final credit came on the screen.
Cleveland, it said.
By Florie Allen.
“That was…” Jazz struggled for the words. It would have been easier if there wasn’t a lump in her throat. “It was—”
“Remarkable? That was the one word that occurred to me the first time I watched it,” Brody said. He stared at that last screen—the credits, Florie’s name—before he shook himself away from the spell of the video. “The assignment was simple enough—create a video that could be used by local government to tell the story of the city. Some students talked history. Some of them focused on industry. Florie is the only one who concentrated on the people. So…” His chair swiveled and he turned it slightly so his knees brushed Jazz’s. “You don’t think that deserved an A?”
“It did,” Jazz admitted. “Florie did. But just the night before she turned it in, she told Grace she was desperate, that she didn’t know what she was doing.”
“And you believe Grace? As much as I admire the girl’s talent, I know better than to take anything she says about Florie at face value. You should, too. You claim to know them both.”
It was a sobering thought. Had she gotten so caught up in the fire of what she’d come to think of as her mission to learn the truth that she’d made assumptions? Had she cobbled together the bits and pieces of information she’d come across into some sort of story that made sense in her mind, but not in the real world? Had she … had she really … gotten so carried away that she had the balls to accuse an admired teacher of sleeping with one of his students?
Jazz swallowed down her mortification, but she knew there was no way she could keep the heat from her cheeks.
Brody noticed.
Of course he noticed.
That made her embarrassment—and the heat—even worse.
Jazz cleared her throat, scrambling for some subject—any subject—that would ease the knot in her windpipe. “What about Florie’s other classes?” she asked.
“You mean the ones she was failing? What about them?”
“If she could do such excellent work…” She glanced again at the computer screen. By Florie Allen. “How could she do so well in one class and so poorly in all the rest of them?”
“I can’t speak for any of those instructors. I know Joyce Wildemere, who teaches screenwriting, said working with Florie was a losing cause. And Joyce never gives up on any student.”
Brody stood. He was taller than Jazz, and standing too close. “Now Ms. Ramsey, you’ve seen the quality work Florie turned in. Do you still think the only reason she got an A was because I was sleeping with her?”
“But you went to her house to pick her up on more than one occasion.”
“Did I?”
“Her roommates told me, they said it was a man with curly hair and a bit of a beard.”
He brushed a hand over whiskers the color of oak leaves in autumn. “I doubt I’m the only guy in Cleveland with a beard.”
Jazz refused to let it go. Yes, Florie’s video was spectacular. Yes, she deserved an A. Yes, certainly, he was right, it could have been anyone there outside the house on Murray Hill.
But if all that was true, then she knew no more than she did the night Luther signaled his find in the abandoned building.
And that wasn’t good enough.
“You were with her the night she died.”
“I never denied it, though I did fail to mention it to a woman who had no business asking about it in the first place.”
He was being gracious, and Jazz was pretty certain she didn’t deserve it. Not after she marched into his office and threw out accusations and demanded answers.
“You’re right.” She dipped her head, fighting for composure and the words that might explain her actions. Before she could find them, a woman breezed through the office doorway.
She wasn’t expecting Brody to have company. She came to a stop just inside the door, and a flash of surprise froze her delicate features. To her credit, she recovered in a heartbeat, and by the time she strolled over to the desk, Brody had already stepped away from Jazz.
“Hey!” He kissed her cheek. “I didn’t know you were planning to stop by.”
“Obviously.” Her eyes were dark, but her coloring was porcelain. The combination was striking. Her smile was sleek, and she put a hand on Brody’s arm and left it there, and in that moment, Jazz knew who did his shopping.
“I had a meeting over at the natural history museum about the fundraiser next month,” she told him. “And now I’m headed to dinner at Club Isabella with Blaire and Tommi and the rest of the board, but I couldn’t be this close and not stop to say hello.” She swung her gaze to Jazz, and her voice changed ever so slightly. Warm and fuzzy to passionless, aloof. “Hello.”
“Hi.” Jazz had nothing to feel guilty about, but still, she felt as if she owed the woman an explanation. She stepped back, putting a little more distance between herself and Brody. “I’m not a student.”
“I’m not, either.” The woman stuck out a hand. “Sloane Brody,” she said.
Of all the things Jazz cared about in the world, what went on in so-called “society” was way at the bottom of the list. But even she recognized the name. Sloane Brody’s photograph routinely appeared in the paper and online along with articles about the orchestra, museums, and charitable work of all sorts.
Sloane tightened her hold on Brody’s arm. “Tate is my husband.”
Jazz wondered how many other women she’d had to remind of that not-unimportant fact.
Sloane wore a jacket that cost as much as Jazz made in a month. Her makeup was perfect, her lipstick glossy. The diamond in her wedding band sparked like lightning.
Jazz didn’t give a damn. At least not as much of a damn as she did about Florie. “I just stopped in to talk about—”
“The student who was killed,” Brody finished the sentence.
Sloane’s smile withered. “That poor girl. And they were together that night, you know. Tate and that…”
“Florie.” When Sloane couldn’t come up with it, Jazz supplied the name.
“Yes, Tate and Florie. They were working on a commercial together. Did he tell you that?”
“He did.” Jazz lied because there didn’t seem much use in pointing out that the first time she’d talked to him, Brody had conveniently edited out that part of the story. “And then when they were done, he must have gone home.”
“Oh, no. Didn’t you tell her?” Sloane dropped her Marc Jacobs bag on the chair that had recently been Jazz’s. “He left the shoot and met me over at the Bourbon Street Barrel Room.” It wasn’t far from where Jazz found Florie’s body. “Isn’t that right, Tate? I was waiting there for you.”
It was his turn to smile. “I’m a lucky man. Yes, my wife was waiting there for me.”
Jazz was sure Nick had asked all these same questions. If
he had any doubts about the time line or Brody’s alibi, she knew Nick would be all over him.
“But you did walk outside the building with Florie.” It seemed like a lifetime ago that Jazz had originally asked the question—before the incredible video and the beaming wife. “Didn’t you?”
“My students had filmed in the building just days before and we were just finishing up. So you see, Ms. Ramsey, everything is under control.” His look wasn’t as pleading as it was simply conspiratorial. Jazz owed him. For the conclusion-jumping. For the accusations. He wasn’t admitting to any of it, not the grade-fixing or the sex. He was just reminding her that she had no right to ask about any of it, and his wife had no need to worry. “Just like you thought it was when you came by to confirm the facts.”
“You’re absolutely right.” There was nothing else Jazz could say, and besides, there was no disputing the truth. She wished them both a good night.
Outside the office, she listened to the low hum of their conversation. But only long enough so she wasn’t eavesdropping. In those few seconds, she decided not to go to her car.
If the instructor who gave Florie her one and only A couldn’t help, what about the others, the ones who’d watched Florie’s academic career go up in smoke?
It didn’t take her long to find Joyce Wildemere’s office. She was grading papers, her head bent over her desk, and the overhead fluorescent lights glinted against gray hair that looked as if it had been chopped by a toddler. She stood when Jazz walked in, maybe because she was polite, maybe because she wasn’t sure who Jazz was and if she’d have to make a quick getaway. She was wearing a black skirt that brushed her ankles, boots that looked as if they’d be more at home on the back forty than in a classroom, and a blue-and-white top with buttons down the front that gaped over her large and drooping breasts.
“Can’t tell you much of anything,” she said in answer to Jazz’s questions about Florie. “I gave her plenty of opportunities to turn in her work and she never did. I had no choice but to fail her.”