"I told them I told you I had access to the office."
"And they believed that? Even Cangemi believed it?"
"We believe what we already have in our heads. Isn"t that what you say?"
"Did he tell you about my team of female Eastern European staffers, running around, doing my bidding?"
While they dodged crowds and circled tents all over the Garmento Ghetto, she explained the immigration laundering at White Rose, the origins of the purple pills, the social strata at Marlene X, the eyedropper, and Bob"s exit from his overdesigned penthouse.
"He"s right to leave," Stu said. "Rolf, Sabine, he"s both. He"s wiggled out of at least four murders in his home country. Brutal, all of them." He pointed at Laura and dropped his voice half an octave. "You need to stay away from him. I have never been so serious in my life."
"I get it."
"I wanted to tell you in person. The next time we meet this guy, you"re not p.i.s.sing him off, and you"re running into a crowded place, and then you"re changing your name and moving out of state."
"Jesus, Stu." She didn"t appreciate the drama, not when they had so much else going on, nor did she appreciate hearing the message again from yet another person who wanted her to sit and sew.
As they made their way across the park to a food court, the schedule began, and the tent city that had been so full of bodies emptied like a crowded highway after a popular off ramp.
They stopped at the tent marked "Cafe Couture" and ordered three four-dollar coffees.
"Okay," Stu said, "what I"m hearing is that Thomasina was given the poison sometime between when she saw Ruby in the morning, and when she got to the tent to do your show."
"Right," Laura answered.
"And what you"ve put together, so far, is that she left home and then what?"
Since Ruby didn"t correct Thomasina"s point of exit, Laura decided not to either. "Marlene X, then the tents. Poisoned somewhere in there. She saw all her high-end buddies at Marlene X, and I think she was in the cab with Rolf."
"And from the cab to the dressing area? Something could have happened then."
"Ruby walked her in; I saw them."
Ruby interjected, "I saw her outside the MAAB offices, and we walked back together." Laura noticed her sister"s cheeks redden.
"Right back all the way?" Laura asked.
Her sister reddened further, and Laura realized it was because Stu was there. "No," Ruby said, "we made a pit stop. Uhm, there"s this corner behind the generator for the makeup tent, and ah, we..."
Stu"s face was blank. Either he had no idea or he had on his journalist face. Laura wanted to fill him in, without awkwardness, and knew she"d failed in her mission before the words even left her lips. "You guys had a make out session or something?"
"Little bit," Ruby said into her cup.
"Wow," Stu said with his face still emotionless. "Big wows."
Ruby tightened like a drum. "ShutupStuIhateyou!"
He leaned back. "No, come on. She was hot. Nice going."
"Stu! Are you baiting her on purpose?"
He looked incredulous. "She was not hot? Am I supposed to say that? Or like I should pretend it"s not a big deal?"
Ruby balled up a napkin and threw it at him. "I can see your freaking imagination. Stop it."
Stu turned to Laura, completely unfl.u.s.tered, and spoke as if delivering the weather report. "I had the most incredible s.e.x with Jeremy St. James last night."
She spit out her coffee. Ruby cried out an exclamation that was lost in the white noise of the wind.
"Wipe the pictures from your mind, the two of you." He leaned back and sipped his coffee. "Pots and kettles, ladies. All black, all the time."
Ruby snapped a used WWD from an adjacent table, as if in a huff.
Laura turned to Stu. "We need to find Penelope. I want to return the dropper and see what she says, but she could be anywhere here. I think Ruby should ask around."
"You"re going to openly accuse her of poisoning Thomasina Wente?"
"Maybe it was an accident. I don"t know."
"You"re-"
Ruby interrupted by reading, ""A kiss-off to the overtly commercial dreck meant to attract Target business that designers are trotting down the runway this season, Sartorial Sandwich is refreshing, spirited, wholly sophisticated, and just the right side of wearable." And look! Your origami failure!"
Laura snapped the paper from Ruby. Sidewinder"s review, which Ruby had read in its entirety, was jammed in the side with a picture of the trapezoid dress. "This is excellent!" She pulled out the full weight of her sarcasm skills, to say cheerfully and loudly, "Too bad we don"t have a company anymore!"
"We"re getting this backer tomorrow." Ruby s.n.a.t.c.hed at the paper, but Laura held it away with her one good hand. "He"s mine. Or she. Whatever."
"Gonna be hard to accuse her of murder after a review like that," Stu said, which was exactly what Laura was thinking as she stared at her own little rectangle on page seven.
Ruby cried, "We earned that review."
As if somewhere there was a cue, or a bell, people started drifting out of the tents and making their way to the coffee tent and the bathroom. They gathered in cl.u.s.ters and klatches, and laughed or spoke in hushed voices, gossiping and kvetching, sometimes comparing notes about what would sell and what was going to be on clearance a month after delivery.
Ruby snapped her paper shut. "Barry"s on after this. You going to see the lazy Susan?"
"I"ll just go to Jeremy"s. There"s like half an hour between, so we have an hour and some."
"Okay," Ruby said. "It"s fifteen minutes until the next session. I"ll be back before Barry even starts." She took off into the crowd, all smiles and pleasantness, with sunshine and rainbows coming right out of her a.s.s.
CHAPTER 24.
Laura sat across from Stu, hogging a table when there were people more important and ent.i.tled than them waiting to sit. She glanced at him, he glanced back, and they moved their chairs from the coveted table, which was descended upon and covered with papers and phones before they"d even settled the chairs three feet away.
"Maybe you should take the dropper to someone who can detect what"s in there," Stu said.
"It"s vitamin D. I"m sure she"s not poisoning someone every day."
"Do you ever think how crazy you have to be to kill someone? How many times a day do you want to commit murder, or how many times a month? And think about how few people actually do it. We"re actually doing all right, as a species."
She had a hundred comments, all involving a question about his actual ident.i.ty, because the man sitting next to her, saying that, was not the Stu she knew. Stu complained about horrible injustice and accused CEOs and media magnates of murder by proxy.
The crowd thinned again as the next show began, and they knew Penelope would be at Jeremy"s in half an hour, but there was still no sign of Ruby. Laura"s phone blooped. Chase"s top ten pictures came in. Even though it was pointless and she"d have to cancel the editorial in Black Book, she wanted to see how the shots from the rooftop looked.
"Should we go look for her?" Stu asked.
"Why?" She shook her phone as if that would get the pictures to load faster.
"I don"t know. Maybe she"s chasing around a murderer?"
"What"s Sidewinder going to do? Drag her behind a tent and poison her?"
"Don"t forget Rolf. I don"t think he"s in custody for that girl behind the strip mall."
The pictures loaded. She didn"t look at them because Ruby ran out from between two tents, her heels digging in the gra.s.s and forcing her to tiptoes, which would have been funny if her expression hadn"t been so serious. Laura and Stu stood up and grabbed their bags and jackets.
"What?" Laura cried.
"Penelope"s gone," Ruby panted, chest heaving from the run. "No one knows where she is. She wasn"t at the Champagne & Trash show, and now everyone"s talking about it." She jerked her thumb toward the bandsh.e.l.l. "Jeremy"s seating now, and her chair"s empty."
Laura pursed her lips and thought for a minute.
"What"s on your mind?" Stu asked.
"If she killed Thomasina for abetting a prost.i.tution ring, don"t you think she might go after someone feeding models diet pills? Like Roquelle Rik?"
"You"re grasping," Stu said.
"You didn"t hear the story she told."
Ruby sc.r.a.ped the dirt off her shoes. "I saw Roquelle going into Jeremy"s show. Everyone"s there."
"We can get in through the back," Laura said. "He"ll let me in. Come on."
It wasn"t a far walk, especially since the crowds were all seated. The back entrance to the bandsh.e.l.l structure was around a corner and past a fence. She walked with purpose until she heard a siren, then saw flashing lights.
Laura turned and saw a trail of police cars speeding from road to gra.s.s to asphalt and stopping at the bandsh.e.l.l. In the other direction, an unmarked car parked in front of them.
Ruby grabbed her hand. "What did you do?"
"Nothing!"
Car doors opened and were left that way as cops armed to the teeth got out and ran into the big tent, fanning out in a formation only they could see. Cangemi exited another unmarked car and ran toward them. She waved, but his intensity made her feel ridiculous.
"You!" he shouted, pointing at her. "Get down!"
She froze, but Stu pulled her and Ruby down to crouch on the gra.s.s. When Cangemi reached them, he grabbed Stu and Laura by the collars and pulled them into a black and white car.
"What the heck?" she shouted as he stuffed Ruby in after her.
"Stay here. Just sit and stay. Don"t move."
Not wanting to allow Cangemi to tell her the killer without getting in the first shot, she yelled, "It was Penelope!"
"If Penelope had three women tied to a broken boiler in Washington Heights, I"m about to get fired."
"Rolf," Stu said.
"We think he"s after Ivanah Schmiller, so if you see her, give a shout." Cangemi ran to the bandsh.e.l.l with the rest of the cops, jacket vents flying behind him like a comic book hero.
Stu sat sideways on the seat, feet dangling outside. Ruby looked out the window and sighed. Laura, who felt trapped and infantilized by everyone around her, took out her phone to look at Chase"s selects. Ruby leaned over to see.
"Oooh, that"s incredible," she said when Laura flipped to Rowena in the sewn-shut dress, arms raised, looking for all the world as though she were about to drop from a rooftop into Manhattan. "Wait, I can see the wires."
"They"re not retouched yet."
Laura flipped to the next one: Rowena in the trapezoid failure, jumping on the roof"s shed. She looked as though she was flying. It was unbelievable. Breathtaking.
The police shouted and ran, and more sirens came from some unidentified part of the park. Laura flipped to the next picture, trying not to catalog all the ways she might have p.i.s.sed off Rolf, and came to a close up of Rowena"s face. She was monstrous, powerful, even without retouching. She was a beauty who could eat up an audience and spit out the bones.
When Laura zoomed in, she saw a little flaw that seemed unusual. Then she knew that the subtext of Rowena"s gaze was the force of an unstoppable ambition because the flaw was not just a flaw. It was a little scratch on the eyeball, made in the death throes of someone who had stood in her way.
She explained the scenario to Ruby and Stu. She related her conversations with Roscoe Knutt, when he had told her of the little bit of membrane under Thomasina"s fingernail. She told them how Rowena had inserted herself in the rooftop shoot almost immediately, and that Roquelle was at the corner table at Marlene X that morning. Rowena had gotten herself into the Hudson gown as if she knew she had the same measurements as Thomasina, and she had left the shoes in the bathroom because her feet were a size too big.
"I told Penelope I thought Rowena was too young," Laura said. "I was just making conversation. And now we can"t find her, so I"m wondering, and I"m only wondering..."
"You think she"s doing it to the next in line," said Stu.
"I know Penelope was at Marlene X this morning, but I don"t know about Rowena. If Penelope started asking too many questions or trying to get her pulled off this season"s roster because she"s too young, that"s a career-killer."
"Call Pierre," Ruby injected. "See if she was there this morning."
"He won"t pick up if he"s at a show," Laura said. "Come on. Let"s get out. Rolf"s not going to do anything with all these cops around."
Stu didn"t budge, blocking the way. "Roscoe Knutt"s one of the greatest investigative journalists of all time, and you"re handing him this story?"
Ruby pulled the opposite door handle, but it snapped back with a clack. "I can"t open this side."
"What is it, Carnegie?" Stu asked, still not moving.
"Would you stop? It"s you, okay. All you. He cornered me. Can we go find Penelope before she chokes on her own vomit please? Because there"s not a cop in this city right now who would a, believe me, and b, give a c.r.a.p."
She pushed him with her cast, and he got out of the car.