"Maybe whoever it was had to move them right away or they were getting shipped out to service jobs, if you know what I mean. You don"t know what happens to girls in some of these places."
"I never said they were girls."
Possibly, she should have held back that little zinger for later, but she"d never had that kind of foresight or mental fort.i.tude. If she had someone, she had them.
He was pretty p.i.s.sed. She could tell by the way he pushed the toaster back against the wall. "You could shut up long enough to help them before they get deported back to where they"re going to get hurt."
Laura took a stab in the dark, "Rolf has them. We think he snagged one at the airport the morning Thomasina was killed. He killed another one already. Ivanah"s a.s.sistant."
Bob rubbed his eyes. "I shoulda locked the door."
Ruby put her hand on Laura"s shoulder. "We should go."
"Where is he?" Laura asked. "Do you know?"
"Are you kidding? He"s got more names, more money, and more pa.s.sports than we know how to track. And what he"s doing? With the women? It"s the only thing he enjoys. If I were you, I"d stay out of his way. He"s crazy. Over and out. You know where the door is."
They found the door, which was still open. Two moving guys carried a love seat into the hall, and Laura wondered if Rolf was scary enough to scare the Schmillers out of their house.
CHAPTER 23.
"I"m sorry, Yoni. The contract says you"ll be paid, but it"s over. They pulled everything." Laura stood in their empty showroom, talking on the phone and listening to the hubbub next door as Jeremy"s team prepped for his show that night. She kept trying to rub her eyes with her right hand, but her arm was set and wouldn"t bend that way. Ruby snapped the samples away and did the job of folding. She was the only one who was going to fit into them anyway.
"Yes, even the tack on. And I know he"s going to be p.i.s.sed," Laura said. Yoni was in the process of a breakdown. She did not manage change or failure well. "I"ll tell him. No problem. Just try to rest okay?" She hung up before Yoni could argue further.
She held up Debbie Hayworth"s wool crepe dress. It looked fantastic on a hanger, which was mandatory. If it looked bad on a hanger, the customer would never try it on. And if she didn"t try it on, she wouldn"t buy it. The store buyers who came into the showroom knew it, and so the samples were made to look good on a hanger to appease the buyers. The smaller the size, the better the hanger appeal, but that meant the girls on the runway had to be no more than hangers to wear the samples, hence the issue over skinny models.
"Was Thomasina taking them? The pills?" Laura asked. "Because there"s no way someone could have injected her with anything unless she expected it."
"On and off." Ruby lovingly folded samples and boxed them. "I talked her out of them when we started, you know, and then she had to stop eating because her b.o.o.bs got too big. I tried to feed her, but..."
"You were interfering with her job," Laura said. "You don"t get to do that. And you lose weight when you eat cookies."
"Not my fault."
Laura sat down, feeling defeated. "You know who I feel worst for? Corky. He came on, gave us everything he had, and we failed him."
"You want to do the crepe dress for Debbie, don"t you?"
"We"d be able to pay him. He"s the only one not covered."
"Can I think about it?"
"No. I can"t do it. You"re right. She"d have me trapped and I"d be her private label wh.o.r.e."
Ruby snapped all the wool crepe dresses off the racks, sending hangers flying with the crack of wood hitting wood. She balled up the dresses and stuffed them in a plastic bag. "Done. You are not a wh.o.r.e."
"Do you think Rolf is really crazy?" Laura wasn"t ready to accept or reject Debbie"s order with any finality. "Like crazy enough to scare Bob Schmiller out of his own house?"
"If that"s the case, I don"t want anything to do with any of it. Let the police take care of it. We"re out."
Laura pressed her face to the cool wood of the table and saw the showroom sideways. Her phone blooped, and she looked at it without picking up her head. "Pierre wants us to meet him at Marlene X. G.o.d, I hate it there." She looked at the clock. Barely noon, and Marlene X closed at one. The morning had been days long already.
Ruby dropped the bag of samples as if it were full of body parts and reached for her jacket. "Let"s get out of here."
"He"s going to jerk us off about some c.r.a.p. Don"t tell him about Debbie. He"ll make me take the job, and we need to decide for ourselves."
Laura had a great view at Marlene X. At five-foot-four, she was eye level with b.o.o.bs, pierced bellyb.u.t.tons, and the occasional clavicle. None of the giraffes paid her any mind, as usual, not the ones who were there looking for an agent or the ones Roquelle had already scooped up. They glanced at Ruby. Some even smiled because they were taught to keep their enemies close. More than one b.u.mped her a little because she was a squat five-seven, but still beautiful enough to be a threat.
The line was ten miles long, and they were cut more than once by giraffes with friends ahead of them, but giraffes don"t have friends, just compet.i.tion. She elbowed one hipbone with her cast, but it yielded nothing but a smile, or maybe a snarl. She couldn"t tell the difference.
Laura was aware Marlene X was bringing out the surly worst in her, but it was awful, the single most despicable place in the world. Mirrors were everywhere, along with some wildly expensive greyish black wood. Green drapes with big metallic embroidered Xs on the borders hung over the windows. Chintz cups lay next to modernist silverware, which shouldn"t work. None of it should work, but it did, and it awed and infuriated her because a place with that kind of bad vibe should look as bad as it felt. There were pitiful few tables, all booths around the perimeter, and they were all taken up by important people. The rest of the patrons stood. And if someone sat where they shouldn"t, they were told politely to get the h.e.l.l up. The problem was that one was never told who was important enough to sit, people just knew or they didn"t.
Despite the floor"s dense population of giraffes, the tables were near empty. Everyone who was important enough to sit at the tables was at the bandsh.e.l.l and surrounding tents. The models were either getting primped for the first round of shows or managing the primped. The hangers-on and second-rate beauties were left.
Pierre had a corner booth and tapped something into his phone while some gorgeous thing of about fifteen summers sat up straight and moved her lips. Laura thought underage models shouldn"t be allowed to talk. It polluted the s.p.a.ce around them terribly. Marlene X was notorious for poor bussing because it was hard to move, so Pierre"s table was cluttered with dirty cups and plates.
When they sat, Fifteen Summers glared at Ruby and didn"t even acknowledge Laura"s existence. Laura wished she had the opportunity to not hire the girl, but her spite wouldn"t be satisfied that season, or the next. Or possibly ever.
A glance from Pierre sent Fifteen Summers scuttling away.
"You"re not thinking of repping models now, are you?" Laura asked.
"And cross Roquelle?" he answered, putting down his phone. "I"d start writing my suicide note now."
Ruby pushed away the dirty cups. "You need to find us something. My sister is going to break down. Look at her."
Pierre looked at her, which was incredibly uncomfortable.
"I"m fine," she said.
He cleared his throat and watched the door as it opened, but it was apparently no one he wanted to speak to. "I may have something of interest. Tomorrow morning. Sat.u.r.day. You need to be here. At this table."
Ruby clapped, but Laura held her own as the jaded one of the pair. "Who is it?"
"I can"t say."
"You"re just popping them on us? How can we prepare?" Ruby asked.
"You can start by making sure you both look presentable and have something to talk about. Besides the bodies falling all around you, of course. The news already has too much to say about that. You"d think Greyson was pulling strings. Bring nothing for design. They don"t want to see it. They know what you do. Do something stylish with that sling. My G.o.d, did it come in another color?"
"You mean we"ll keep getting to do what we like without rhinestone b.u.t.tons?" Laura asked, hoping against hope that her life would be restored.
The busboy rushed over and picked saucers and teacups off the table. Laura caught a glimpse of something on a saucer that didn"t belong there.
"No promises," he replied, sipping from his little chintz teacup. He pointed at Laura. "You need to just make sure there"s no more chasing around after murders unless that murder is your own. No?"
"I understand." But when the busboy turned to leave, Laura said, "Excuse me?" and picked the foreign object off the saucer. It was an eyedropper. "Is this Penelope"s?" she asked, remembering the vitamin boost at Baxter City.
"Ah." Pierre held out his hand. "She was here. Give it to me; I"ll return it."
"No, I"ll do it. Come on, Rubes. We have to go." She shoved Ruby out of the booth and out the door.
"What?" Ruby shouted once they were on Third Avenue. "Why are you pushing?"
Laura held up the eyedropper. "It doesn"t matter who was in the cab with her because that"s not where it happened. It was in Marlene X." Laura filled in the blanks for Ruby. "Penelope had a really tough time when she became a model. Like really tough. Like rape tough. That"s why she"s h.e.l.l-bent on protecting models from themselves. So what do you think happens when she finds out Thomasina"s importing s.e.x toys and telling them they"re going to model? And then finding out she can"t do anything about it because Rolf"s covering his tracks?"
"She"s not crazy."
"Oh, yes, she is. And she droppers her tea with vitamin D and sat at the same table with Thomasina that morning because they all sit in that corner. So how hard would it be just to put something else in it? Something that"s the same as what she knows Thomasina"s already taking, but strong enough to kill her?"
"So, what do you want to do? Because I know you"re not calling that detective."
"Let"s go return this dropper."
On the way to Central Park, she realized that Stu had gotten into a brawl with a psychopath dangerous enough to frighten a hedge fund manager out of his ivory tower. She called him.
"I wanted to tell you what I found out about Rolf."
"You mean Sabine?"
"He"s scary."
"You have no idea. Where are you?"
"On the way to the shows in the park."
"I"ll meet you there."
Laura had a plan for their trip to Garmento Ghetto, naturally, and it involved going to the MAAB table in the administration tent. All the models had to register there, get weighed in, and have a good talk if they were new or a pat on a bony shoulder if they were old hands. If Penelope wasn"t present, there should be more than a few acolytes to direct her to the correct show, interview, or weigh-in.
The street running through the park was closed off and well-populated with coffee-holding buyers and fashionistas with cellphones and damp hair. There were the usual altercations between joggers and cyclists and the oblivious ditzes with zero situational awareness who walked in front of their well-scored paths. Collisions, altercations, elbowings, and fistfights were reported daily. Rather than move the shows, yet again, to a different venue, the city sprayed Central Park with police.
Laura kept her wits about her when she crossed the road, guiding Ruby by the elbow because her sister was texting. They"d been lectured by Stu numerous times on how hard it was to be a cyclist anywhere in the city, and Laura didn"t want to be a part of the problem.
The Garmento Ghetto had been moderately crowded on Tuesday, when she"d been there for Sartorial"s show, and the volume had increased steadily for the three days following, culminating in a b.a.l.l.s-out fashion blowout Friday night. The last show was the monster, as it led directly to parties, and there were no showroom meetings after. That had traditionally been Jeremy"s spot. But since he"d taken a season off after Gracie"s death, he"d lost his treasured place. He had bought the second to last spot, and the two before it, which p.i.s.sed off any number of designers, and used the time to rebuild the runway.
Barry Tilden had partnered on the change. On Seventh, that might have been seen as a sign of weakness, because if you weren"t cutting someone"s throat, you were a weakling, but surprisingly, it had strengthened both of them. They actually seemed to like each other, and as two designers with lifestyle brands, Barry having done it already and Jeremy striving for it, they developed a runway design they could sink their teeth into.
They tore down the bandsh.e.l.l"s center runway and replaced it with a design that splayed out like petals on a daisy. The center was a lazy Susan that spun the models onto one of the petals as they came out from the back. Each petal was meant for a buying category. So a model would come out with a special bag or shoes, and the lazy Susan would stop on the petal with seats for accessory buyers and photographers for accessory trade magazines. If she also had on an outfit meant for sportswear, outerwear, makeup, or textile buyers, she would return to the center and get spun onto that petal.
Easier said than done, of course. The ch.o.r.eography was positively mathematical. Jeremy and Barry had spent weeks planning how it would work. Even though their shows weren"t combined, they found their efforts were more valuable when they worked together.
Ruby drifted over to a klatch of garmentos she wanted to stroke. Laura beelined past the construction teams hastily building Jeremy and Barry"s stage, to the admin tent, which was half information desk meant to turn tourists away, and half actual administration. The MAAB desk was hidden way in the back.
She walked in as if she owned the place, which if she counted the dues she paid to the CFDA, plus her taxes, she kind of did. "What do you mean I can"t come in?" she asked the guard at the front.
He wore a tight T-shirt and sprayed on black jeans. He looked at his clipboard, then held it up for her to see. "Right there." He cracked gum when he spoke, leaning on one foot as if he were planting bulbs and his boots were better than shovels. "It says, and I quote, "Admin tent for show day: patrons only." So, no tickee. No shirtee. Having a show Tuesday means you can"t come in on Friday. Do you want the MAAB office number? It"s right on 40th Street. They"ll be back on Monday."
"Penelope said I should come." Lying was bound to go poorly, and it did.
"Did she write you a yellow ticket?"
"She must have forgotten."
"Call her and get one, and I can let you in."
Laura scanned the crowd for her sister and found her outside the biggest tent for the Ricardo Ofenhelb show. She stood with a fashion writer from Bazaar, the editorial director of Black Book, a reviewer from Apparel News, and a klatch of buyers from the juggernaut of Federated. They were laughing at something the VP of sales from Brandywine Girl said.
That was why she needed Ruby, and why she resented her. That was why taking Debbie"s order seemed so right and so wrong. Because doing that sort of business meant Ruby"s skills were unnecessary, but cultivating as a business required exactly what Ruby had that Laura lacked.
"Can you stop?" Laura whispered. "I just got turned away at the admin tent and don"t want to stand outside by myself like a loser."
Ruby said quick goodbyes.
Stu showed up in front of the admin tent soon after. Laura thought that by the time she saw him, she"d at least know where Penelope was sitting for the next show, but she had nothing, and she felt crummy about that until she got a look at him. He wore his grey mis-b.u.t.toned cardigan, but it didn"t look intentional. It looked like the product of a disheveled mind.
"You okay?" Laura asked. "They didn"t give you a hard time in jail or anything, did they?" He waved the notion away, but didn"t say anything. "What? It"s something."
He gave her a slight shrug. It wasn"t like him to avoid telling her anything, even if he were mad at her. So when he shrugged off a simple question, Laura worried.
"Leave him alone," Ruby said.
"Tell me what you have since last night," Stu said in a flat voice.
She didn"t like it. Not one bit, and though she had let their romance slip through the cracks, she would not let their friendship. "No, you have to at least tell me the general area of what"s bothering you."
"Tofu," he said, p.r.o.nouncing it exactly the way it was spelled, and with relish, as though he wanted to insult.
"She didn"t like you getting arrested?"
"Not when I was out gallivanting with you, she didn"t."
Laura couldn"t tell if he was angry at Tofu or himself.
Ruby, not content to sit in a mystery for too long, interjected, "You set her straight, right?"
"Yeah," he said, "and she went straight for the door. Anything else you want to choke out of me? Because you can see how much I want to talk about this."
It was out of character for Stu to behave that way. Typically, nothing was too painful for him to admit, and she was torn between being happy he was free of the catty b.i.t.c.h and angry at Tofu for treating him so shoddily. She also thought for a second that it might be the perfect time for her to slip in. He was free. Technically, she was free. Except for Jeremy. She knew she didn"t have it in her to juggle two men.
She changed the subject. "So, why did you get arrested yesterday and not me?"