Strictly Murder
Page 21
In Holly’s scheme of things, unmasking a killer was evidently all in a day’s work. My day’s work.
“Well, I have deciphered all the names in the diary you gave me.”
Her face brightened.
I gave her the list without telling her the code words Jaynee had used for each name.
“I thought you said earlier there were six names?”
“Yes, but Jaynee had used two different codes for Candida.”
“Well, that’s suggestive isn’t it?”
“Is it? What of?”
“Well, thinking about it …” she rubbed a hand across her forehead which showed she was doing just that, ” … she might have used one name to start with, when they were friends, and another one later after they’d fallen out.”
She smiled at this tortuous piece of logic which contradicted not only what she’d told me on my first visit, when she’d claimed the two women were friendly and had a good working relationship, but also the evidence in the diary where the uncomplimentary name appeared first.
“Well, maybe, Holly, but I still have no idea who killed her.”
“Oh.” Holly’s face fell as her mouth drooped at the corners. “I felt sure that by now you would have cracked it.”
Her relentless confidence in my ability to succeed where the police had so far failed was beginning to irritate me and my answer came out sharper than I’d intended.
“Well, I haven’t. I’d hoped that you might have new information and that was why you called.”
“Sorry.” She shook her head sadly. “I phoned because I thought you’d be looking into Greg’s murder and I wanted to tell you what had been going off here.”
“And what has been happening here? You mentioned police interviews.”
“They interviewed Candida and me. Separately, I mean. Candida was fuming afterwards,”
I’ll bet. The redoubtable Ms Clark would not take kindly to the sort of treatment Jerry Farish had doled out to me at our first meeting.
“Do you know why?”
Holly shrugged, a movement that once again gave me a glimpse of the little gold chain around her neck.
“She said it was inconvenient.”
“Inconvenient? I should have thought Greg’s death was more inconvenient, wouldn’t you?”
Especially for Greg, of course, though there was no way of knowing what he thought about it.
“Well, yes,” she said doubtfully, pulling at her lower lip, “but she was due in the recording studios - she does have other shows besides Star Steps - when the police wanted to interview her.”
“I don’t suppose she was any more pleased when they did their search.”
Holly’s eyes widened.
“Oh, I’ll say. She claimed they were being totally disruptive. They went everywhere, searching the place from top to bottom, all the offices along this corridor, the recording studios, editing suites, even the penthouse.”
Her tone suggested surprise at this thoroughness.
“Did they find anything?”
Her brow creased.
“I think so.”
“You’re not sure?”
Either the police found something or they didn’t. Drawing information out of Holly was like drawing teeth.
“Well, I only know what my friend Lauren told me in the canteen. She said they’d found a bundle of computer ties.”
My eyebrows rose. At last she’d said something useful.
“And they found them,” Holly went on in a tone that suggested deep significance, “in a cistern in the ladies’ toilet.”
“Really?”
My mind worked furiously but Holly appeared to be struggling with something, for the furrow was back on her forehead .
“Only … I’d seen computer ties around the Studios days earlier.”
“You had? Where?”
She fidgeted in her chair before blurting out:
“In Candida Clark’s office.”
My head was reeling when I left Holly’s office a few minutes later. Intending to go straight home and think about the implication of the secretary’s revelation, I wasn’t best pleased to see a familiar figure advancing towards me.
“Oh! It’s you again, is it?”
Candida Clark, legs wide, arms akimbo, blocked my further passage down the corridor.
“Bloody journalists. You’re as bad as the police”
“Well, I…”
“So what is it this time? Greg Ferrari?”
“But I …”
She flung open her office door and jerked her head
“Well, you’d better come in, I suppose.”
Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I followed her inside and closed the door.
“I don’t know why you’ve bothered coming back, Miss, er …”
“Long,” I supplied as she gestured for me to the chair opposite her. “Verity Long.”
“You might just as well have re-used the same load of rubbish as you’ve probably concocted for Jaynee bloody Johnson.”
There was no attempt to hide the contempt in her voice this time. No crocodile tears for either of her so-called celebrities. I wondered what had caused the change. She looked different too, older and more haggard than she’d seemed a fortnight ago. The neat French pleat had gone and she wore her hair loose over the mandarin collar of her suit.
“I think my readers might notice if I did that. I thought you might be able to offer them a deeper insight.”
All lies and flattery, of course, but it had worked before.
“Miss Long, I have a busy work schedule and there have been enough disruptions this week what with the police and your fellow journalists,” she gave the word a sneer, “virtually camping out here. Just take what I said before about Jaynee and use that for your piece on Greg, will you?
“Would that be the nice or the not-so-nice version?” I asked, provocatively.
She ran a hand through her hair, giving me a harsh stare before shaking her head.
“How quickly the vultures gather. Look, if you want the dirt on Greg, there are plenty here who will give it to you.”
“He wasn’t popular, then?”
“That depends on who you ask and how old they are.”
That sounded intriguing but before I could ask the obvious question, she fired one back at me.
“Did you ever meet Greg Ferrari?”
“Yes, I had dinner with him last week.”
A matter of hours after you’d had him over the boardroom desk, I thought, remembering the narrow escape I’d had in the penthouse suite. Candida looked at me in disbelief, one perfectly plucked eyebrow raised.
“You’re a bit old for Greg’s tastes, I would have thought,” she said bitchily. “He liked them young, old enough to be legal, but otherwise as young as he could get. Did he try to have sex with you?”
I didn’t quite know what to say to that. I could tell the truth, but ‘No, actually, he tried to kill me’ seemed overly dramatic - even for a television studio.
“No.”
“No? What are you? Another career virgin like Miss Goody-Two-Shoes down the corridor?”
I didn’t care for the personal note that had crept into her questions and made an effort to get back on track.
“So what are you saying? That Ferrari had a voracious sexual appetite?” She nodded. “And that he preferred young girls?” Another nod.
All at once, I had a horrible thought.
“What? Like Holly Danvers for instance?”
“I can’t give you names, if that’s what you’re after.” She made a moue of distaste at what she, no doubt, considered journalistic prurience. “Suffice it to say that there are plenty of girls in Crofterton who came here in innocence and left in disillusion.”
What a cracking quote! And what a shame I couldn’t use it.
“And what about Star Steps? Will it continue?”
“Not without sponsors, it won’t, and they’ve been falling over each other
to pull out. It couldn’t go on without Greg, anyway.”
“Oh?”
“We could have replaced JayJay easily enough. D-list female celebrities are two a penny. We’ve got blond presenters coming out of the woodwork. Dancers - and believe me, Greg could dance - are harder to come by.”
Was it my imagination or did her voice catch when she’d said that?
“So you’re going to miss him?”
“Oh, yes.”
There was no mistake this time and, suddenly, Candy Clark was in floods of tears.
I almost rocked back in my chair as realisation hit me. Candida Clark had been in love with Greg Ferrari. Who would have thought the Iron Maiden could be taken in by a shallow, self-obsessed Lothario like Ferrari. I felt incredibly sorry for her. How love makes fools of us all.
On the drive home I tried not to think about what I’d learned at the studios. The Friday evening rush hour was in full swing and the traffic and my new car took all of my concentration. The Citroen had a higher clutch than my old vehicle and I managed to stall it twice before I finally reached Sutton Harcourt. Hanging my bag by its strap over a chair, I threw the copy of the Crofterton Gazette I’d picked up en-route onto the kitchen table and put the kettle on for a cup of tea. Drinking the hot, sweet brew - I still like sugar in my tea though I have long since given up taking it in coffee - I Ieafed through the paper hoping for up to date news on Ferrari’s death. But six days after his murder, and with the police no nearer catching his and JayJay’s killer, both of the stars had faded from the headlines. Instead, they had turned their attention to matters of more parochial interest and I gazed in sheer disbelief at this little gem:
‘Leap-frogging Mayor Bruises Tomato’.
I wondered whether KD had seen it - and what her reaction had been, given her firmly held view of the poor quality of writing in what she referred to as the provincial press. I didn’t bother to read the report of the fruit-damaging local worthy but turned over to be faced with this riveting snippet of local life:
‘Dinner Table in Speed Record Hope’.
What? I laughed out loud. Clearly, my boss was right and we were fast heading for hell in a hand-cart. Then my eye fell on the name Kenny Cameron. A small piece in the ‘What’s On’ column informed me that the CEO of Mariner Productions would open the Crofterton Summer Fete tomorrow at 2.00pm in Victoria Park. Good, I thought, tapping a finger against my lips. I had been wondering how to approach him to ask him about JayJay and his presence at the fete seemed like a golden opportunity. I would casually bump into him and … and what? Demand to know if he’d killed JayJay and Greg? Not forgetting to ask what his motive had been, of course, because at the moment I could see no possible reason why he might want to harm either of them. Hmm, more work needed there, I felt. I got up from the table and began to prepare my dinner.
Afterwards, curled up on the sofa with a glass of wine, I went over everything I’d learned at Silverton Studios and what Jerry Farish had told me the previous evening. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Greg Ferrari was the key to this whole affair. Maybe I’d been looking at things from the wrong angle. I took a sip of wine, got up and started to pace, backwards and forwards over the faded carpet. If Greg’s death was nothing to do with events in Northworthy twenty years ago then who else had a motive to kill him? Whoever it had been needed an equally good reason to murder his co-star. The obvious answer was Candida Clark. I trudged around the living room, mentally listing the points against the producer.
One: She had loved Greg but he had rejected her in favour of younger women.
Two: Holly had seen the murder weapon - a bundle of computer ties - in her office prior to the murder.
Three: JayJay’s intention to quit the show might not be reason enough to kill her, but threats of damaging revelations in her autobiography certainly could be. Especially if they showed a tendency to violence in Candida’s past.
Four: She had the strength of character, and the resourcefulness, to be a killer.
Great! I could make out a strong case against Candy, so why did I still feel dissatisfied? Something must be wrong somewhere, something that didn’t quite gel. I sighed. My mother always said I was hard to please. So, who else was there? I racked my brains for possible suspects. Holly? Well, hardly. Greg may well have seduced her but, these days, that was no motive to kill a man. Most girls would relish his advances, assuming they didn’t throw themselves at him in the first place and besides, try as I might I could not come up with a plausible reason why Holly would also kill JayJay. Kenny Cameron seemed an unlikely candidate for either murder, though I would be interested in hearing what he had to say for himself tomorrow and, according to Jerry, John Brackett had a cast iron alibi.
Eventually, with my brain tired from working out all the permutations and my legs aching from all the pacing I’d done, I took myself off to bed. I pulled the thin summer-weight duvet over my shoulders and lay there trying to rest and put all thoughts about death and murder out of my mind. But sleep proved elusive. It must have been an hour later that I decided to give up the struggle and wandered into the kitchen for a nightcap hoping a tot of brandy would help me into the arms of Morpheus. I pulled down the half-litre bottle of Courvoisier from the cupboard where I stored it and reached for a glass. A headline in the discarded Crofterton Gazette screamed at me as I did so. ‘Promises Were Broken Say Angry Mums’. Could broken promises also lead to murder? I was beginning to think that they might.
The Rotary Club Summer Fête took place every year in Victoria Park in the centre of Crofterton. Beyond the elegant wrought iron bandstand formal gardens that fronted on to the town, and separated from it by a wide pavement, lay the twenty or so football pitches that in winter played host to hundreds of bare-legged, red faced men and boys of the local Sunday League. Now a myriad of gaily coloured marquees, tents and gazebos clustered around a large grassed area in the middle where the various events were held. It was an opportunity for local charities and voluntary organisations to show themselves off. Stalls for the Guides, Scouts, and St. John Ambulance Brigade, interspersed here and there with ice cream and burger vans, battled against the cries enticing the public to part with its money at tombola and win-a-teddy stands.
When I arrived Kenny Cameron was just finishing his speech and declaring ‘the Crofterton Summer Fête well and truly open’, though by the looks of things it had been in full swing for some time. I wandered around, my pace leisurely, my mind occupied not with the fun on offer but with darker thoughts. Determined not to open my purse, I relented and tried my luck at a bottle stall, run in aid of Macmillan Nurses. Naturally, from a large trestle table filled with every type of brandy, whisky, wine and liqueurs, I came away with nothing more than a bottle of nail polish. Green nail polish! Still, I didn’t really mind, at least my money had gone to a good cause.
“Excuse me.” A touch on my arm made me glance up. “It’s Verity Long, isn’t it?”
Well, well. Maybe my luck had changed. Instead of me thinking up excuses to approach the man from Mariner Productions, here he was accosting me.
“Yes, Mr Cameron. Hello again.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Me?” I looked at him stupidly. What was the man going on about?
“Yes, It was you that found her.”
“Yes.” I replied, quietly, “I found her.”
To my surprise he put a hand under my elbow and steered me away from the crowds.
“Please, Miss Long,“ he kept his voice low, “I need to talk to you.”
We didn’t stop until we’d left the area set aside for the fête, crossed the pavement, and were into the formal gardens. He aimed straight for the first empty bench.
“Let’s sit down a moment.”
“Mr Cameron, what is all this about?”
I turned to face him, shocked to see tears in his eyes.
“Was she peaceful when you found her? Did Jaynee die peacefully, do you think?”
“Why on earth do you want to know that, Mr Cameron?”
He took a moment, during which he gave me a long, calculating stare, before replying.
“Can I trust you, Miss Long?
“It’s Verity, please, and yes, I would like to think you can trust me. Though it depends what it is,” I added as an afterthought. Who knew what terrible secret this man wanted to confess?
“Jaynee Johnson and I were lovers. Oh, I don’t just mean in the conventional sense,” he waved a well manicured hand, as if to indicate that I should dismiss all thoughts that he could be so banal and hurried on. “I mean we were in love. We were hoping to be married.”
For a moment he looked so utterly bereft, so devastated, that I had to restrain myself from putting an arm around him.
“I’m so sorry.”
“The week that Jaynee was supposedly missing,” tears ran down his face, “she was with me in my cottage in Derbyshire.”
So I’d been right in my guess that JayJay was in a love nest somewhere, though in the face of Kenny Cameron’s all too evident grief, that thought gave me no satisfaction at all.
“Perhaps you’d better tell me all about it,” I said as he took out a large handkerchief and wiped his streaming face.
Slowly, with many pauses while he struggled to control his emotions, I got the story from him. They had been seeing each other since March, originally to discuss the producer’s plans for a chat show but soon discovered they had a lot more in common than the industry they worked in. Business meetings had given way to romantic dates though the realisation that they were in love had come more recently and as a complete surprise to both of them - or so Cameron claimed. The week at the cottage had been his idea but Jaynee had gone along with it, quickly seeing the opportunity it presented for some free publicity.
“How did anyone know she was missing?” I asked.
“Oh, Jaynee arranged it with a reporter she knew. This chap was to start all the ‘Where is Jaynee?’ and ‘JayJay is Missing’ business in return for exclusive revelations on her return. We knew all the press hounds would pick up the scent and run with the story.”