Death Of A Supermodel Part 9

Yoni held up her hand, and Laura immediately felt calm. She had a window into what kind of parent the production manager was going to be. A stern mother who made her child feel safe and in good hands, as though she knew the location of all the answers and was waiting for the person to meet her there. The exact opposite of Laura's own mother.

"Before that," Laura said, "when I saw her, she looked kind of green, and Monty made a comment about her skin color being off. So she must have come in sick. But she didn't say she was sick all night or suddenly or anything."

"So?"

"So she must have been poisoned already, but I don't know for how long."

"Get me that book right there." Yoni pointed at an art deco table.

Laura placed the fat tome carefully on Yoni's lap because it was about as thick as it was tall.

Yoni flipped through it. "Tell me more about what happened that morning, please. What did she say? How did she act?"

"She was normal. Just a little sick."

Yoni clenched her fist. "More."

"She was cranky, as usual, and Ruby sided with her."

"Cranky about what? My G.o.d, you can try a woman's patience."

"She wanted to wear sungla.s.ses on the runway. And Ruby said okay? I mean, really? Not only is it douchey, they weren't rented or signed off. So we could still get killed for infringing copyright."

"How was she breathing?"

"Didn't notice."

"Were her pupils dilated?"

"I missed my second year of med school."

"Was the black part big?"

"The sungla.s.ses... h.e.l.lo, she wouldn't take them off. I was arguing with her, and she was barely even answering, just making this clicking noise in her throat, which must be East German slang for 'ent.i.tled tall rich person can do whatever she wants.' And get this, Monty was trying to work on her, and she wouldn't take off the sungla.s.ses. She's ready to walk down the runway with flaking skin because why? I don't know because he finally just took them off her, and it wasn't like she had a black eye or anything."

"You didn't see her pupils then?"

"There's no eye contact. She's like seven feet tall, so I'm constantly looking up her nose."

Yoni slapped the book closed. "It's too obvious."

"What?"

"You haven't earned answers." Yoni swung her legs over the edge of the bed. "We agree she was murdered because your homicide detective was lurking around, yes?"

"Yes."

"People are murdered for only a few reasons. Love. Revenge. Money. Politics maybe. Poisoning is good for some of these. For politics. Yes."

"Thomasina? The only politics she cared about happened in the fit room."

"Don't exclude it too fast."

"Well, forget revenge or love," Laura said. "Because what's the point of revenge if you're not standing over them, telling them they're dying for something they did? And love, same thing. No one's getting killed for love unless the killer's there to hear the last words. Because they're hoping for apologies or regrets. No. It had to be money."

Yoni hoisted herself and her belly to a standing position. "At least you've turned on your brain. So I'll tell you. The sungla.s.ses were for light sensitivity. The skin was dry. The clicking in the throat was because she couldn't swallow. She was very sick, my dear. You should have been nicer."

Laura pursed her lips. She could have been nicer, just in general. But what was she supposed to do? She had three giraffes puking in the back room, two who looked as if they hadn't gotten their first period yet, a partner as green as a jalapeno, and rumors that Penelope Sidewinder was outside with her eagle eye. So yes, the whole argument over the sungla.s.ses had gotten cruel with words like "ent.i.tled b.i.t.c.h" getting thrown around in the heat of the moment. The guilt made her hold her arm out for Yoni as the pregnant woman trudged across the floor. Her offer was rejected, but Yoni made slow progress toward the bathroom.

"It was alkaloids," Yoni said. "All the symptoms. She was already poisoned when she came. You're lucky she didn't drop on the runway. MAAB would have been on you like bombs on a strategic target. You now figure out how they got into her. You can do that?"

"I think I know already."

Yoni raised an eyebrow. They were right outside the bathroom. Laura ran to her bag and fished out the capsule. "Can we find out if this is alkaloid?"

"I thought she didn't take pills?"

"I found it in her bag."

"You didn't give this to the police?"

"I gave the rest to them. But if they're going to start accusing my sister of something and not telling me anything about it, I need to do my own legwork. Don't you think?"

"I am very impressed." Yoni took the pill. "Give me a couple of days."

"You bet." Laura bathed in validation as she let the pierogi take her to the door.

Once in the lobby, Laura realized she hadn't told Yoni about the receipts, missing a huge opportunity to gain esteem with her. She pulled the copies out of her bag and headed back toward the elevator, questioning the maturity of her motivations, the practicality of bothering when she hadn't even looked at them, and the benefit of waiting for a later moment when she actually needed something from Yoni. Right about when she started looking at the pages, she realized loneliness had driven her back to the elevator. She had no one else to talk to. Ruby was too emotionally involved to keep in the loop. Stu was with a processed protein product. Corky was entertaining buyers. Mom was over some kind of emotional edge about Ruby. Jeremy was too close to the business; he'd invariably tell her to back off and sew.

Yoni was a great person to talk to, and she appeared very available where sleuthing was concerned, but she was pregnant and on bed rest. So by the time the elevator dinged, Laura was staring at her copies of receipts and thinking she should just leave. She turned away, but then saw a little scribble on one of the sc.r.a.ps of paper.

The copy machine had done a butcher job, but she could make out a phone number, which had the old school 212 area code. The Kiel's store receipt was dated the day before the show. Before she could talk herself out of it, Laura stood at the curb, dialing the number. And before she could come up with an excuse for calling besides, 'Sorry, I dialed the wrong number,' someone answered.

"Sidewinder here."

It was most certainly not a wrong number.

"Hi, Penel... I mean, Ms. Sidewinder. I... uh... this is Laura Carnegie? From Sartorial Sandwich? I'm sorry to bother you?" She was disgusted with the question-asking lilts on the ends of her sentences. She kicked people like that. They were weak and worthless, and there she was in their company.

"Yes, Ms. Carnegie. I'm heading into a showing. Is there something I can help you with?"

Oh, G.o.d. Laura had nothing. "You saw my show yesterday?" Stupid, stupid, stupid girl. It sounded as if she was leading in to a request for a review, which was exactly what Sidewinder expected and the reason for her beleaguered, formal tone. Before Laura could get cut off, she blurted, "I wanted to say, some of the girls in my show, I don't think they were of age. And I don't know what to do about it. I feel so bad, and I don't want to get into trouble, but if I don't speak out, well, that's worse. And my Mom looked sixteen until she was twenty-five so... I don't want to make accusations."

The background noise on Sidewinder's side disappeared, as if the reviewer had walked into a nearby closet. "Where are you, darling?"

"Tudor City area-ish." G.o.d, had she just given away Yoni's location or something? What a c.r.a.ppy spy she'd make.

"Have you ever been to Baxter City? Do you know where it is?"

Those were two totally different questions. No, she had never been to Baxter City because it was members-only and impossibly exclusive, but yes, she knew where it was. But before she could explain that she wasn't a member, she found herself agreeing to meet the reviewer there in half an hour. She called Corky to let him know she wouldn't be in the showroom for a couple of hours and was preparing excuses when he answered the phone in full panic mode.

"Where are you?" he hissed.

"I was dropping approvals to Yoni, then-"

"I'm all alone here."

"Where's Ruby?"

"Not here. I got buyers coming out the wazoo, no time to steam anything. No time to refill the water jugs. I've eaten brunch four times. Bloomingdale's ran an hour late, and where the h.e.l.l are you guys?"

"Corky, I don't know where Ruby is. I a.s.sume you called her. But I can't get there for a few hours, and there's nothing I can do about that right now. I'm sorry, but there are things happening, and it's not like I'm any use in the showroom anyway."

"Is this Thomasina drama?"

"Yes."

"Fine," he said. "Just get Ruby back here."

She promised she'd make it up to him, but had no idea how.

CHAPTER 8.

Laura had heard of Baxter City, but never seen it. It was not visible or accessible from the street. She walked up an alley off Centre Street with a cast iron gate and made eye contact with the guy in the building's window. Unlike every other alley in the city, the cobblestone paving was scrubbed clean and repaired. The dumpsters and their smells were hidden away, and the building windows had not a bar or burglar alarm on them. The guy in the window opened the gate, and she walked through a pair of frosted gla.s.s double doors with the letters BH etched in them.

Past the doors, she stepped into a simple lobby about the size of a doctor's waiting room. The room was dark, with candles and a small cas.e.m.e.nt window as the only sources of light. A thin Asian man in black jeans and thick, black Bakelite gla.s.ses circa 1923 greeted her from behind a raw wood counter.

"I'm not a member," she said, as if deflecting Bakelite's inevitable derision.

"Very good." He seemed nonplussed by her plebe status. "Who's sponsoring you today?"

Laura blinked. She had no idea what he meant.

"You're a guest of someone?"

His courtesy was disarming. If she had been a guest, it was calculated to make her feel comfortable. If she was an interloper, it was meant to let her know, politely, how one gets in. She felt at ease then, as though she wasn't going to get thrown out on her ear or shamed into leaving before she had her meeting.

"Penelope Sidewinder invited me?" G.o.d. With the question voice again. When had she started to feel so small? When had she decided she was permanently the bottom person on a social ladder that could get pulled up any time?

Bakelite checked his clipboard and motioned toward two doors. "She's upstairs already. Elevator to the right. Stairs to the left. Sixth floor. Mandy at the counter will help you out once you're there. There are no photographs, please."

"Thanks."

As she walked the three, maybe four steps to the wall with the different transports to the upper floors, she wondered which method the rich people took, the people who weren't "guests." One would a.s.sume a sense of ent.i.tlement took them to the elevator. But the truly ent.i.tled, those who didn't have to think about their ent.i.tlements, would probably take the stairs. And didn't she want to be one of those?

More than what she wanted to be, who was she? Regardless of money, which method did she want to take? She was on the third step, still undecided, almost walking directly into the wall in between, when a couple blew by her so fast they almost knocked her over. She heard a girl giggling and a man mumbling, and saw a leather jacket and bit of pink georgette frill pa.s.s her and enter the stairwell. Neither apologized nor even looked back. She decided to take the elevator.

Everything about the place was magical and perfect. The floors were made of an unfinished, distressed wood laid out in a herringbone pattern so irregular and impossible to clean that ten ticks of specialness were added for the simple cost of managing them. The walls were covered with art. Real art. Banksy's scrawled screams, Barofsky's numbers, Ryden's big-eyed mannequins and meats. A Cullen so p.o.r.nographic she could almost smell it. All were framed and crowded together so close that the wall was almost completely covered. The amount of original art that had to be purchased to achieve the effect was staggering.

At the counter, a Hawkinson soda can/clock sat next to the phone like a knick-knack bought at a thrift store. Mandy looked like a normal person, not a model, not overly made up to out-glamour any of the members.

"I'm meeting Penelope Sidewinder," Laura said, keeping any hint of a question from her voice. The amount of effort required to do that was monumental.

Mandy smiled in a way that made Laura feel like she was in the club, part of their inner circle, welcome and wonderful, and led her down a hall, up half a flight of stairs, and deeper into that new world. Not wanting to miss a moment, Laura turned off her phone.

They entered the biggest living room Laura had ever seen, with islands of tastefully worn couches at discrete distances from one another, rugs that did not cover too much of the raw wood herringbone floor, and floor-to-ceiling windows with a view that could have been created only by accident or pure mathematics. Both New Jersey to the west and Long Island to the east seemed to be visible. The scope of the s.p.a.ce and views from the windows gave her a feeling of peace and rightness. She would join the club and have access to that room any time. It was her place as much as Penelope Sidewinder's. She belonged. Even wearing her old jeans, a chain mail belt, and a cropped wool crepe s.h.i.+ft she had pieced together from extra Sartorial fabric, even with her cheap shoes and unhighlighted roots, even with one eye's worth of makeup that had rubbed off since the morning, she vowed it was not the last time she'd see that room.

Penelope Sidewinder sat by one of the many windows, sipping something from a porcelain cup. The setting sun glinted off the flyaway strands of hair she hadn't tucked into her bun. At five-ten and built like a breadstick, she had probably modeled in her younger days. She was one of the top half-percent of people who had the face and build for magazine covers, and the other top half-percent of those who could run her career like a business, stay off the sauce and the powder, and survive. What no one expected was that she was also a woman of strong moral fiber and sharp sartorial eye. When modeling started drying up, she took to fas.h.i.+on reviewing, and as she aged into her forties, she spoke her mind frequently and openly. The girls were too young. Their bodies were too thin, and the industry was eating alive all but the top five percent.

And there she was at Baxter City, waving Laura over to a seat.

"I'm so sorry to bother you," Laura said, slipping onto the cool leather. "I didn't know who else to call."

"Oh, I was at the Calvin show. Same thing every season. I can just look at the pictures. Tea? It's rooibos. African red. I take it with cream and sugar, like a chai, but most people take it straight."

Laura accepted the tea and left it plain. "You know, I didn't really think about any of the girls much, since Mermaid made all the right a.s.surances." Laura listened to herself and thought she sounded like an actress in a scene from Upstairs, Downstairs. "But Thomasina... with what happened at the end. It's been haunting me all day."

Penelope leaned forward and put her hand on Laura's knee. "Don't worry. If you have the green sheet from Mermaid, you're protected." The green sheet was the boilerplate contract, with a.s.surances from the agency that their girls were of minimum age and weight. It was called a green sheet because the agreement had been first scribbled on a green napkin at Marlene X. "But I do need to know what you saw, especially with Thomasina. The board at MAAB is foaming at the mouth. Someone's going to have their blood drawn."

"I hope it's not us." Laura only breathed the last two words, because in the middle of the sentence, she was pretty sure she shouldn't have said it.

"I doubt it," Penelope said. "But who can say? Things happen. And there's been no time for a full investigation."

Laura felt pensive. What a stupid thing to lose her business over. Nothing was going right. "This is harder than I thought it would be. Starting the line." She realized immediately that she'd spoken too frankly.

"Everyone pays a price. Even people born into it have a piece of themselves missing."

"Thomasina was born rich and wore clothes for a living. I mean, I'm sorry she's dead, I really am, but-"

"Thomasina had dreadfully conservative parents who only cared about their image, and she carried self-loathing in every picture she took. It was what made her face so special. The complexity there, you don't learn that in acting cla.s.s."

"I never saw it. I'm sorry."

"You did, even if you couldn't pin it down. Every girl has a history in her eyes. The brilliant ones put it right there without saying a word. I took pictures before and after I came to New York, and it's like two different people were in them, because I was different."

Laura looked past the little wireframes and into Penelope's green eyes. She found nothing but warmth and sincerity. She felt accepted and invited, finally somewhere she belonged utterly. "Where were you before?"

Penelope sighed. "When I started out, I was fifteen. From Kentucky."

"You don't have an accent."

"Back then, we had to erase our accents. Obliterate them. Now of course, it would be part of my brand. Are you having a cookie? I can't eat all of them myself."