Later that afternoon, Detectives Hagerty and Pardo escorted me to a conference room on an upper floor of the courthouse, where my lawyer and the DA were waiting. The DA, Brad Neely, was a fortyish guy in a dark suit with heavy five-o’clock shadow. Gulping from a coffee cup as I entered, he stood up and shook my manacled hand.
“Mrs. Ford, thank you for agreeing to meet with us,” he said, ducking his head in greeting. “Please, make yourself comfortable. Detective, could you please remove her handcuffs? Thank you.”
I sat across from him, with my lawyer beside me.
“Can I offer either of you ladies a cup of coffee?” Neely said.
I’d been expecting coldness and hostility. His courteous attitude had the effect of lowering my guard. That could be a ploy, just like the good cop/bad cop routine the detectives had pulled in the car last night. In my exhausted state, I wasn’t confident that I could avoid getting played. I’d sworn off caffeine because of the baby, but my screwing up here today would hurt her more than a cup of coffee ever could.
“Yes, thank you. With milk, please.”
Neely called somebody to bring the coffee. In the meantime, he reviewed the agreement where they promised not to use anything I said today against me in court. The only exception was if I took the stand at trial. If I had to take the stand at my murder trial, this interview would be the least of my worries.
“That’s fine with me. I’ll sign the paper,” I said.
He handed me a pen. The coffee came. It was hot and strong, and in combination with the utter terror coursing through my veins, had the effect of focusing my mind. I listened intently as Neely spoke.
“Your lawyer, Ms. Cohen, tells me that you’re on the fence about cooperating against your husband. I get it. It’s a tough decision. I’m married myself,” he said, flashing the gold band on his ring finger. “For now, all we’re seeking is information. You might not ever have to testify against Mr. Ford in court, because of the marital privilege.”
“Or, you might,” Suzanne said. “Sometimes, the marital privilege doesn’t apply. The judge decides. Let’s just be clear, Brad. You can’t promise her she won’t have to testify against him.”
“That’s true. But for now, all we want is information, and anything you tell us is confidential. Your husband won’t find out we had this conversation unless you tell him yourself. And, by the way, if you’re afraid of him—”
“Afraid of Connor, you mean? Not my ex-husband?”
“Your ex-husband? You’re referring to—” He consulted a notepad that lay on the table in front of him. “—Derek Cassidy?”
I nodded. “I am afraid of Derek.”
“My notes indicate that Mr. Cassidy is currently incarcerated on an assault charge stemming from an incident that took place at Windswept the night Nina Levitt died. He was there.”
“Yes, but I don’t know anything about Derek’s case. How long he’s in for. When he might get out. If I’m going to talk to you, I’ll have to speak against Derek. That scares me. He scares me. Connor doesn’t.”
“Okay, why is that? Are you saying Derek—no, wait a minute, I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. Let me just assure you that if you have a specific security concern, we have the resources to protect you, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Now. Ms. Cohen has asked me to give an overview of the evidence against you to help you decide whether to proceed with your cooperation. That isn’t something I would normally do. But I’m willing to do it in this case, for a couple of reasons. One, this is blowing up in the press even as we speak.”
“You know that’s all orchestrated by Kara Baxter, right?”
“Who?”
“Kara Baxter. She says she’s Nina Levitt’s sister. We don’t even know if that’s true, but she’s after the money. She sued Connor for the estate, and the only way she can win is by proving he killed Nina. She got the tabloids to say he did by granting exclusive interviews. Now that they printed it, you guys are falling in line, trying to lock him up.”
“Who told you that?”
“Connor did.”
“I don’t know whether he’s trying to snow you, or if he genuinely believes that. But I assure you, Ms. Baxter’s lawsuit has nothing to do with our case. The information that led us to reopen the case came from Barry Ogilvy, the doctor who testified at the inquest. He got caught in a federal sting operation, trading opiates for sex. That obviously undermined his testimony. So, we brought him in, and he had quite a story to tell. A young woman visited his office and bribed him to say those things about Nina Levitt.”
“A—a young woman?” I said, shocked.
I sat back in the chair, feeling faintly sick. Neely’s eyes were locked on my face.
“Yes. Was that young woman you, by any chance, Tabitha?” he asked.
“Did he say it was me?”
“Answer the question, please.”
“Hold on one minute,” Suzanne said.
“No! Absolutely not, it wasn’t me. Did you ask the doctor who she was?”
“We did. He gave us her name, and we couldn’t associate it with a legitimate identity. In other words, the name was fake. She used an alias.”
“Show him my picture, then. It wasn’t me, I swear. Did he say what she looked like?”
“He said she had dark hair, and I note your hair is blond.”
“Dark hair. Okay, then. That could be a couple of people I can think of. But it’s not me. You believe me, right?”
“A woman smart enough to use an alias would probably think to wear a wig.”
I threw up my hands. “I don’t know what to say. Put me in a lineup, then. It wasn’t me.”
Suzanne put her hand on my shoulder and leaned forward.
“Tabitha, stop talking. For the record, Brad, we don’t agree to a lineup.”
“You don’t have to agree,” he said. “She doesn’t have a Fifth Amendment right to refuse a lineup. I think it’s a brilliant idea.”
“I need to speak to my client alone, please,” Suzanne said.
“Fine. We’ll be outside. Knock when you’re done.”
The DA and the detectives left the room, closing the door behind them. When we were alone, Suzanne turned on me with a troubled expression.
“Tabitha, what are you doing? We agreed that we’re here to get information, not give it. You can’t just go running off at the mouth like that—”
“Suzanne, you don’t understand. What Neely just said is huge. The woman who bribed the doctor? That wasn’t me, I swear to you. Who was it?”
“I don’t know. Who do you think it was?”
“I don’t know either, but whoever it was killed Nina. Maybe working with Connor, maybe not. There were two dark-haired women in Nina’s life. Lauren Berman, the head of PR at Levitt Global. She had a motive. Her husband left her for Nina, then she had an affair with Connor, and he left her for Nina, too. There’s Juliet Davis, Nina’s personal assistant. Whether she had a motive, I don’t know. But she was around constantly, in the middle of everything. Actually, there’s a third dark-haired woman. Nina’s yoga teacher, Dawn something. I only met her once in passing, but people say she’s a real whackjob. We have to tell the DA.”
“I explained the rules earlier. This session is for us to get information. We’re not telling the DA anything yet. You understand? We don’t just blurt things here. That’s not smart. You’ve been arrested on a murder charge. You. Not Lauren, not Juliet, not— Who was the third one?”
“Dawn. The yoga teacher.”
“Whatever. You’re in a very difficult position, and we need to proceed with caution. After the interview, I’ll follow up. I’ll research these women. Figure out if that’s information we want to trade. But only if we get something in return. You need to keep quiet and let me do the talking. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, you’re right.”
“Promise you won’t say anything more without clearing it with me first. Otherwise, I’ll end this session right now. I can’t sit here and let you dig yourself into a hole.”
“I promise. Forgive me, Suzanne. I appreciate your advice, and I’ll follow it.”
“All right. Ready? Deep breath.”
I nodded. She called the DA and the cops back to the table.
“Tabitha has information to give,” Suzanne said. “But cooperating against her husband is a big step, and she’s not there yet. She’s not the woman who bribed the doctor. You won’t be able to prove that at trial. What else have you got?”
“We’ve got lots of witnesses who put her at the scene on the night of the crime, starting with an Uber driver who remembers her because she gave a cash tip.”
“No good deed,” Suzanne said, shaking her head.
“Not just him. A Southampton police officer named Beth Rossi who remembers Tabitha, and who arrested her drug-dealing ex-husband, Derek Cassidy, that same night for assault. Plus, the guy who was assaulted, Steve Kovacs, who worked for Nina Levitt—he could be a witness, too.”
I opened my mouth to ask whether Kovacs was actually talking, or if he was just a hypothetical witness, but Suzanne put a restraining hand on my arm.
“Brad,” she said, “let’s say Tabitha admits to being at Windswept that night. But she has an innocent explanation for the visit, and her ex was only there because he stalked her to the scene. I’m not sure what that gets you.”
“Innocent explanation? Are you kidding me? She and Cassidy, who both have a record for oxy distribution, were at the scene that night that Nina Levitt died. Not just momentarily. For a long time. Cassidy was arrested lurking in the area around midnight, after assaulting the guard an hour earlier. Midnight is smack in the time-of-death range the coroner gives for Nina. As for Tabitha’s presence, the evidence is damning. She wasn’t there like some guest at the party. She was trespassing, stalking Nina. Denise, show them.”
Neely nodded at Detective Pardo, who reached into a manila folder, pulled out three eight-by-ten photographs, and laid them down, one by one, facing me. Suzanne cast a dire look in my direction. They were color pictures of me, taken at Nina’s Fourth of July party, so vivid that I could feel the soupy heat under the tent and hear the band playing. In the first one, I stood against a wall stuffing my face, my eyes darting sideways furtively, like I was up to no good. In the second, I was even more shamefaced, looking over my shoulder as if I knew the law was on my heels. The third was the worst of all—a wide-angle shot that captured me in the same frame as Connor and Nina. The two of them were side by side, his hand on her arm, a unit, a married couple. I stood alone, glaring at them with undisguised hostility.
I looked like I was thinking about killing her.
Neely tapped that one with his finger.
“This will be Exhibit A at your trial. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. This one’s worth twenty-five to life,” he said.
Sick, cold fear spread through my body from the pit of my stomach down to my fingers and toes. I tore my eyes from the photos and stared at him. My heart beat so loudly, I could hear it in my ears.
“Who took these?” I demanded, my voice quiet and deadly calm.
“I won’t answer that.”
Who was it? Lauren? Juliet? Kovacs? Why would they take my picture months before they knew me, before Connor and I were even married? How would they know to do that? There was only one way. Connor told them to.
In that moment, I began to accept that I was probably being framed for murder by the man I loved.
“Whoever took these pictures is your killer, not me. I’m just the patsy.”
“Oh, your story is that you’re being framed?” Neely said. “That’s a Hail Mary if ever I’ve heard one. The jury won’t buy it. I have phone records showing that you called Connor’s phone just minutes after this photo was taken, and he didn’t answer. We can prove at least ten unanswered calls from your phone to his in the days leading up to the murder. So, here’s my current theory. You were a financially strapped waitress who had the good fortune to have a fling with a wealthy, married man. To him it was nothing. You saw it as the opportunity of a lifetime. You pursued him. But he wasn’t interested. So, you took matters into your own hands, and solicited your violent ex to assist you in murdering his wife. Then you married him, a mere three months after she passed away. You now live a life of untold luxury. If that’s not the truth, Tabitha, then you’d better tell me what is.”