‘But if they’ve already decided to hold an estate sale?’ Lil was perplexed.
‘Surprise!’ Ada said. ‘I don’t know how this is going to play out, but we have three dealers chomping at the bit to get on TV, and whoever wins could come off looking like an incompetent fool.’
‘Grandma,’ Aaron said, as he took the turn for the Brooklyn Bridge, ‘what about you?’
‘Good question, and I’m not entirely happy with the answer − I am having fun.’
Aaron snorted. ‘I love you Grandma, but you do realize you are one very twisted woman. You both are.’
‘Lil,’ Ada said. ‘Call me if you learn anything new.’
‘Will do. I want to go back to the LPP building.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, if we’re doing the Miss Marple thing – and let’s face it, we long ago passed the point of innocence – I want to walk in the footsteps of Lenore’s shooter.’
‘You know,’ Ada said, ‘speaking of footsteps, and I don’t know if this matters, but I’m thinking about everything Rachel did yesterday … not just the way she looked, and not just her mannerisms, but putting it all together. There are times when I truly believe she thought she was her mother. And the more I think about it, this show, and holding an estate sale in front of a multi-million dollar mansion and then giving the proceeds to charity – it’s pure Lenore. Tacky as hell, but making it seem piss elegant in the end.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Lil said. ‘I don’t think Rachel’s dead,’ she added, and the thought lifted her spirits. ‘If she faked being drunk, for whatever reason, it’s no stretch to think this is another stunt.’
‘Last question,’ Ada said. ‘I’ve now got hair, make-up and Peggy the wardrobe lady all giving me the stink eye, but why, Lil? Why, in God’s name, would she disappear?’
‘I think I have the answer,’ Lil said. ‘So I’ll answer your question with the one we should have been asking all along: what would Lenore do?’
Ada hung up, and accepted her third cup of tea from a young man whose job description likely included a line or two on beverage preparation. That he had no hesitation about popping into Lenore’s show-stopping bathroom seemed typical for this bunch. She mused over Lil’s parting question: what would Lenore do? The answer was obvious: anything and everything for ratings.
As Gretchen, the make-up lady, finished applying a layer of miracle spackle, she thought about the more curious question of why Rachel would pretend to be drunk.
‘OK,’ Gretchen said, and she pulled off the shiny smock.
Ada looked in the mirror at the elegant woman with her flawless make-up, dressed in a black lace slip. ‘It’s good,’ she said, gently touching one of the stiff peaks of her hair.
‘Careful,’ warned James, the hairdresser.
She smiled. ‘I really like it. You have to teach me how to do this.’
‘It’s mostly the product,’ he admitted. ‘And I have a secret or two.’
‘Would you share?’ she asked.
‘Please, if this show is a hit I’m sticking with you like glue. You’ll never have to do your own hair again.’
‘Did the two of you know Lenore well?’ she asked, looking from James to Gretchen.
‘Not much,’ James said. ‘She had her own team, although your dresser was hers for years.’
‘Peggy?’ And then it clicked. ‘She’s the one who found Lenore after she was shot.’
‘Yes,’ Gretchen said as she assembled her touch-up kit. ‘Peggy Stark.’ She was about to say more when the heavyset woman with the elaborate braid down her back appeared, pushing a garment rack. Under her breath Gretchen added, ‘Speak of the devil.’ She turned from Ada. ‘Hi, Peggy. She’s looking good.’
Peggy maneuvered the rack flush against the wall and turned to Ada. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses sat on the end of her slightly upturned nose. She studied Ada, her expression serious. ‘I was thinking green,’ she said. She selected a voluminous hunter green silk dress with tulle petticoats and a tight bodice.
Ada regarded the garment. ‘That doesn’t look like one of mine.’
‘It’s not,’ Peggy said, not meeting Ada’s gaze. ‘I got your measurements and have been doing a bit of shopping.’
‘Really?’ Ada said. ‘It’s beautiful. Is it new or old?’
‘It’s new, but retro,’ Peggy said. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘It’s by a young designer in Nolita. I sent him your picture and told him what we were going for. You won’t need a slip with it, it’s fully lined. No bra either.’
‘It’s lovely,’ Ada said. She glanced at the open door, then at Gretchen and James, and finally at Peggy, who was holding the shimmering dress and looking at her expectantly. She had a moment’s clarity and wondered if this were an important piece of things. Lenore lived without privacy. It wasn’t just that she put her life on display for the viewing public, but that there was this whole other world of invisible people, like satellites around her star. In for a penny, she thought, and eased the slip’s straps off her shoulders. It fluttered around her feet, leaving her in bra, panties and old-fashioned silk stockings and lace garter belt. She suppressed a giggle.
Peggy looked up at her as James and Gretchen went out, leaving the bathroom door wide open.
‘You don’t want to know,’ Ada said.
‘I might,’ Peggy said.
‘Always wear clean underwear,’ Ada said, as she unhooked her bra.
‘Absolutely,’ Peggy said, as she unzipped the back of the dress and placed it on the tile floor. ‘Probably best to step into it. You’re in good shape,’ she commented. ‘Pilates?’
‘Yoga,’ Ada said, as Peggy eased the dress up. It cinched in tight around her waist and there was boning in the bodice that molded her breasts into the 1950s conical ideal of feminine perfection.
Peggy stepped back. ‘Can you sit?’
‘I’ll try,’ Ada said, looking at her reflection. ‘It’s gorgeous …’ She eased back into the make-up chair.
‘Lenore would practice in the mirror,’ Peggy said. ‘To see how the outfits would read on camera.’
‘You knew her pretty well,’ said Ada, as she turned in the chair from the half mirror above the vanity to the full-length gilt-framed one next to the door. She positioned her legs beneath her and had visions of black-and-white TV housewife June Cleaver waiting, with Martini in hand, for Ward to return from a day at the office.
‘I knew Lenore,’ said Peggy, the tone of her voice not inviting further discussion.
‘What happens to this dress after the show?’ Ada asked.
‘You mean do you get to keep it?’
‘Do I?’
‘Not always, but when you talk to your agent that’s the kind of thing you get worked into your contract. But this one you can keep. I told the designer if we used it we’d mention him on the show, and of course he gets credit at the end. It’s a good deal for him.’
‘I’ve been noticing that,’ Ada commented. ‘There seems to be a lot of … product placement?’
Peggy snorted. ‘It’s just getting started. Lenore was huge into product promotion. Commercials are becoming obsolete. Nowadays, everyone tapes the shows they want and then fast-forwards through the commercials. So to keep sponsors it’s all about product placement. You’ll see, if Final Reckoning is a hit, you’ll be drinking soda out of a huge cup with the company name on it and we’ll have top designers begging to dress you. There were some episodes of Lenore Says that were little more than infomercials.’
‘I can’t see how there could be much product placement in a show about appraising antiques.’
‘Barry’s no slouch,’ Peggy said. ‘Everything that gets filmed is a potential sponsor: the car you drive, the shoes you wear, the granola bar you have between takes, everything. And if a sponsor wants to get on the show and is willing to pay the bucks, it won’t matter if the product doesn’t fit. Let’s say it’s a tractor … you’ll be doing a segment on vintage tra
ctors.’
‘Interesting. How much do sponsors pay?’
‘Depends on the show and the ratings. You’ll learn about that. I can tell you this, to get your logo on Lenore Says costs at least a quarter million. If you actually wanted the product used, it could be a million or more.’
Ada continued to pose in the mirror while surreptitiously studying Peggy Stark. She reminded her a bit of an old friend, Miriam Roth, the first girl she’d ever kissed. ‘So you worked on Lenore Says?’
‘For fourteen years.’
Ada heard bitterness in her voice. ‘You don’t sound happy about that.’
‘Long and boring story,’ Peggy said. She turned away from Ada and knelt down by the garment rack to select a pair of black pumps.
Ada’s eyes took in the array of footwear. ‘Not the green ones?’
‘No,’ Peggy said. ‘Too matchy.’
Ada thought through the different reasons why mentioning Lenore would make Peggy shut down. ‘Fourteen years, that’s a lot of wardrobe changes. It’s strange,’ Ada said, trying to get her to open up. ‘For someone who till a few days ago knew nothing about what goes on behind the scenes of a TV show, it’s been a crash course. But you’ve been doing this for—’
‘Forever.’ The woman knelt in front of Ada and slipped on the shoes. Her experienced fingers smoothed the stockings to leave no wrinkles.
‘I can’t help being a little star struck,’ Ada said. ‘Lenore was huge.’
‘She’d kill you if she heard you say that.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I do, but Lenore wasn’t good with jokes, especially about herself,’ Peggy said.
Encouraged, Ada pressed on. ‘But she kind of set herself up for that. Everything about her looked so perfect … so polished. I suspect you had a hand in that.’
‘Thank you,’ Peggy said, as she retrieved a red enamel tool box from the base of the garment rack. She placed it on the marble countertop and opened it to reveal a fortune in jewelry, most of it vintage.
‘Wow!’ Ada stared in as Peggy removed the top tray and displayed a second layer of opened jewelry boxes − from Tiffany, Cartier, Bulgari. ‘I’m assuming I don’t get to keep these.’
‘That would be correct,’ Peggy chuckled. ‘Although if you get big enough, everything is negotiable.’ She stepped back and examined Ada. ‘You have lovely bone structure, great neck. I’m thinking a pair of chandeliers, not too big, and maybe a statement bracelet.’
As she spoke, Ada continued to try and get a feel for this woman who would have had daily, and fairly intimate, access to Lenore. Playing a hunch, she offered a bit of herself. ‘I think my girlfriend would be jealous to hear you say that.’
Peggy paused, and then pulled out a pair of exquisite Bulgari emerald and diamond earrings. ‘The two of you been together long?’
‘There’s together and then there’s together. We were friends first, and then it went on from there.’
‘That’s nice,’ Peggy said. ‘She’s the tall blonde who was at the cemetery?’
‘Lil, yes.’
‘You make an attractive couple.’
‘I think so − do you have someone?’
‘No, and if you know someone good, I’m in the market.’
‘Not to be completely crass,’ Ada said, ‘are we talking male or female?’
Peggy eased on the right earring. ‘I’m gay,’ she said. ‘And I imagine you’ve heard the gossip about Lenore. One of the best-kept secrets that everyone knew.’
‘Yeah, and yet she never acknowledged it.’
Peggy swallowed and stepped back. ‘No, she didn’t.’
And then Ada took another calculated leap. ‘That must have been hard … for you.’
Peggy’s lips drew back into a grimace. Her shoulders sagged and she started to sob.
Ada was out of the chair and quickly shut and locked the bathroom door. ‘It’s OK, Peggy.’ Not certain as to the source of the woman’s grief.
‘You’d think,’ she wheezed, ‘that after the way she treated me, I wouldn’t feel so … sad.’
‘You were her girlfriend.’
‘Once, but that’s ancient history.’
‘Sweetie,’ Ada said. ‘It’s clear you still have feelings for her. That must have been hard. You just lost someone you cared for.’
Peggy shook her head. ‘Please, I lost Lenore a long time ago.’
Ada quickly reassessed. If it wasn’t Lenore’s murder, then … ‘Oh.’
‘Yeah, big sad “Oh”. I don’t do this kind of thing. I’m thirty-eight, and you’d think I’d know enough just to move on, and now …’
‘She’s dead …’ Ada said, trying to imagine Peggy with Lenore. There was a fourteen year age difference, and if Peggy had been Lenore’s dresser, and sometime girlfriend, for years … Other pieces slipped into place.
‘A bracelet,’ Peggy said. She batted back tears and hunted through the lower section of the tool box.
‘How old were you when you and Lenore …’
‘Hooked up?’ Peggy asked. She held a heavy gold bracelet in the shape of a jaguar, its eyes studded with emeralds. ‘Twenty-two.’ She opened the catch.
‘Right or left?’ Ada asked, realizing that Peggy’s relationship with Lenore had probably ended years ago, but apparently the woman’s flame hadn’t gone out. ‘Clearly it’s none of my business, but why stay?’
‘Job, bills, masochism … hope …’
‘That you’d get back together?’
‘Yeah, pathetic. And like I said, I’m in the market. At this point even my delusions of romance can’t bring her back from the grave. Ada, I can’t believe I’m spewing like this. It’s not me.’
‘You’ve been carrying this for years? How horrible. Do you think she knew?’
‘That I still had a thing for her, was still in love with her? Yeah. Do I think it registered in any way? Absolutely not.’ She looked down. ‘She likes them young and pretty, and I was, and then I wasn’t.’
‘In the end,’ Ada asked, ‘did she have a girlfriend?’
Peggy put the red tool chest back together and closed it. ‘Girlfriends, plural … I think the day I realized that was the day I should have run. Lenore wasn’t exclusive. If you ask me, that’s why she was shot. She treated the people who cared for her the most like dirt. She probably treated the wrong person like crap, and bang.’
‘Not to pry, but how did you find out?’
‘That I wasn’t her one and only? I came up the booty trail and found her with another bunny.’
‘Translation, please?’
‘Lenore’s private entrance and exit to LPP. She liked to come and go unobserved, and she liked her playmates to do the same. I told the cops all this. I’m probably still on their list of likely suspects. It’s clear that whoever killed Lenore knew all about the booty trail. In through the garage, then up her elevator, shoot her and then leave the same way. The elevator opens outside her dressing room, where not even her security can see who’s coming and going.’
‘No attendant in the garage?’
‘It’s tiny, just Lenore and the top executives. You get in and out with a pass card.’
‘Cameras?’
‘You’d think so, but no. Lenore wanted to keep any records of her flings private.’
‘She wasn’t stupid,’ Ada said. ‘What about when the affairs ended? They’d still have the pass card, or would she ask for it back?’
Peggy snorted. ‘She’d have the code changed, and they’d have a worthless piece of plastic.’
There was a loud rap at the bathroom door. Melanie’s voice came from the other side. ‘Ada, you ready?’
‘Couple minutes,’ she shouted. She grabbed tissues and handed them to Peggy. ‘You’re smudged,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
Ada bit her bottom lip and watched as Peggy wiped away her eye liner. ‘I can’t imagine what that must have been like, seeing her with other people.’
‘Not
a picnic but, like I said, I was pretty, young and stupid.’
‘No,’ Ada said, ‘getting your heart broken isn’t stupid. It shows you’ve got a heart, and from what you say − and pretty much everyone else too − she didn’t.’ And then, figuring she’d not get the chance again, ‘Do you know who her current girlfriends were?’
Peggy took a big breath. ‘I don’t know that I’d even use the term girlfriend, especially over the last few years. Now that I’m finally getting some clarity, you don’t usually think about women in this way.’
‘What way?’
‘Predatory, like a man; she didn’t have girlfriends and, looking back, maybe I thought of her as my girlfriend, and that was a mistake. I was pretty and I was young and that was all she cared about. It’s like she wanted to have me and, once she did, she was on to the next … and when you’re Lenore, you get what you want.’
Ada stared into the mirror, looking from her own flawless make-up and glamorous outfit to Peggy’s red-rimmed eyes. ‘By predatory, you’re saying she’d use her position to get women to sleep with her.’
‘Oh yeah. You want to get on a show? You want to get ahead? Well, you’ve got to give something to get something. That’s entertainment.’
TWENTY-SIX
Barry looked between the monitor and the talent, Ada and that Tolliver guy. They were in Lenore’s paneled library and this was the scene where each of the antique dealers made their pitch for the estate.
With too little sleep and too much caffeine, Barry was desperate to get this pilot into the can. ‘Just forty-eight hours,’ he muttered, still fuming over the latest bullshit phone call from LPP’s Chief Financial Officer, Patty Corcoran, neither confirming nor denying that Final Reckoning had the green light. Although he was able to get her to cough up the funds for two more days of shooting − today and their balls-to-the-walls plans for tomorrow. It left him drained and scared. She’d informed him that three-quarters of the producers at LPP had been let go. ‘If you’re not producing revenue,’ she’d said, ‘LPP can’t carry you through the reorganization. It’s the new world order.’ He’d counted; she’d used the word ‘reorganize’ over eight times in a five minute conversation. Between the lines, it was pretty clear that Patty had her eye on the CEO spot.
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