Only once did she make any reference to the date she had broken in New York, and he was ready for that, handling it as he had made up his mind to do, casually and without emphasis.
“You left early, didn’t you?” she said. “In New York, I mean.”
“Yes,” he said. “Something came up.” And it was hard not to elaborate and say what he really thought. To put temptation behind him he tried to concentrate on the pose he wanted. “I’d like to see that right hand a little higher,” he said. “And that right shoulder—No, that doesn’t do anything for us. Loosen up a little and let’s see how the profile goes. That’s it, that’s it—”
And all the time he was thinking of that afternoon in New York when he had worked with her for the Jewelers’ Guild. He was not, as Brad Lathrop intimated, completely ignorant of the general deportment and mental processes of models. Nor did he wholly subscribe to Lathrop’s thesis that as a class models were out for all they could get.
As for himself, he had not yet grown so callous during his relatively short experience as a fashion photographer that models had no effect on him, but he had learned to discount much of the surface charm and beauty, knowing that behind a pretty face and lovely figure there often lurked a calculating disposition and an enlarged ego, which he found hard to cope with during an evening out. Possibly for this reason Linda Courtney made no great impression on him when she came to the New York studio that day and was introduced by Kate Harper.
Linda was pretty in a fresh, blond way and she had a lovely skin and a graceful, slender figure. She greeted him pleasantly and without affectation, but there was no sudden rush of blood to Jerry Nason’s head or any feeling that here was the girl he had been waiting for. She was simply a good-looking model, and this job was important to him, and not until later, when the work was done, did he begin to experience such things as increased pulse and blood pressure and an over-all excitement that built slowly but surely the longer he was with her.
It started when they finished work and he asked her if she would like a drink before she went home. By that time he had come to appreciate her co-operation and unaffected charm and he liked the casual, friendly manner with which she accepted his invitation. She had no preference as to where to have the drink but walked along Madison Avenue with him until he turned off on Fifty-Second and stepped into a bar that he knew.
At the time he had a lower on the midnight for Boston and nothing much on his mind, but with the drink came certain personal revelations and he learned that she was an orphan whose mother had died while she was in the Philippines with the Red Cross. When he discovered that she had been in New Caledonia and New Guinea, he began to compare notes with her and presently they were discussing familiar scenes and discovering common experiences and mutual friends.
Without realizing it, Nason found he was talking about himself and his business and what he hoped to do with it, and now it was no longer important that he go back to Boston on the midnight; what was important was that they be together as long as possible, and so he had asked the headwaiter about a table in the dining-room and looked to her for confirmation, his fingers crossed.
Later, when he asked if she would like to go somewhere and dance, she did not suggest the Stork or El Morocco or Coq Rouge; she said it would be fun and would he mind going to some place where there was a good band, a recording-broadcasting band and not the more intimate, society type?
“Les Brown is at the Pennsylvania,” she said, “if you like that kind of music.”
By that time Nason did not know if he liked that kind of music, or care. He liked the way her gray eyes smiled, the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed, the way her blond hair framed her face. It no longer mattered what the background was, just being with her was enough.
Irma Heath had moved up behind the camera stand, and he realized that while part of his mind had been busy with the past, the other part had been working on the job at hand, posing the girl, arranging and regulating his lights.
Now, as he took the picture, the woman said, “I think that should be a good one. Now if we can get one of the necklace, perhaps just the head and shoulders—”
Nason agreed. He said they might try one sitting. “Take a rest,” he said to Linda. “You’re getting a little tired.”
The girl arched her back and sighed. She took a cigarette from the woman while Nason killed his lights and replaced the model stand with a table. As he arranged it in front of the camera he glanced about, but the dressing-room door was closed and there was no sign of Nate Fallon.
“He never bothers with this part of the job,” Irma Heath said, as though reading his mind. “I think it bores him.”
Nason made some comment without knowing what he said. It was hard to keep from watching Linda and even more difficult to go on with his act and maintain any outward display of casualness and good humor. Feeling the girl’s eyes inspect him, he began at once to discuss the next pose with Irma Heath, asking if she had any ideas for background, anything special in mind.
She shook her head and gave him her heavy-lidded smile. She smoothed her dress across her full hips and said she would leave it to him. He watched her sit down and for a moment he had the curious feeling that she was less concerned about how the pictures came out than he was. Something about her manner suggested that she was inwardly amused by what was taking place, and, because he could not understand why this should be, he forgot about it and got to work again, his mind turning inevitably back to that evening in New York.
He remembered how they had stopped at Grand Central while he canceled his reservation. He remembered the Cafe Rouge at the Pennsylvania and how they decided on a banquette on the far wall instead of a table on the floor. They had danced but twice, silently, aware of the quick adjustment of their steps and bodies and the effortless grace that the rhythm of the band called forth in them.
And the magic of their words and thoughts and personalities remained. To Nason it seemed that he had only begun to enjoy himself when the orchestra began packing instruments and it was time to go. Then, because he hated so to have the evening end, he had suggested one more drink on the ride uptown, and she squeezed his arm, smiling up at him in the shadows of the taxi.
“I’d love to, Jerry,” she said, “but I have a nine-o’clock appointment.”
He remembered all of this, the soft cadence of her voice, the sudden emptiness inside him brought on by the realization that the evening was finally over.
“Could we have lunch tomorrow?”
Linda said she was sorry and sounded as if she meant it. She had a full day. She would be busy until five and possibly later.
“But maybe we could have dinner,” she said. “I can’t promise, but I think—”
“Good enough,” he said, cutting her off in his relief. He said he had some things to do himself. He said he would phone her and she said it would be better if she called him.
“I’ll know by six,” she said. “I’ll call you at your hotel.”
He awoke the next morning to think of her and recall with intimate pleasure each detail of the previous evening. He spent the day in a glow of anticipation. He went around with a grin on his face and a tight tingle of excitement driving him while he called on some advertising-agency friends and talked with art directors. He bought a camellia on the way to the hotel, and when he arrived, promptly at six, he made sure there was no message in his box and went directly to his room so that he would be sure to get her call when it came—
He realized someone had spoken and found Irma Heath beside him. “I beg your pardon,” he said.
“I wondered how it would be if she looked right into the camera this time?” the woman said.
“Like this?” Linda Courtney said, turning her head. Nason stepped back so Irma Heath could look into the ground glass. “That’s fine,” she said.
Nason looked at the girl, his eyes humid, his mouth humorless. It was hard now to keep his voice pleasant, to remember his resolve not to let he
r suspect how he felt. His tone as he told her to smile, to tilt her head a little more, to raise her chin, was curt and flat, and when he had his picture the girl relaxed and said, “Are you always so grim when you work, Jerry?”
“Am I grim?” he said, killing his lights again.
She did not reply, and he did not look at her. When he came back to his camera he saw that Nate Fallon had come out of the dressing-room and was talking with Irma Heath.
They came toward him, and Fallon said, “We’d like one more picture but we have to get that five-o’clock back to New York.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s twenty of now, so how would it be if we ran along and let you take it on your own? You won’t need us, will you?”
“A full-length pose,” Irma Heath said. “And you can wear the bracelet this time, dear,” she said to Linda.
Nason eyed the couple curiously, watching Fallon put on his coat and feeling again a certain incongruity between the nondescript, skinny little man with his thick-lensed glasses and the full-blown, overdressed woman with her world-weary glance and enigmatic smile. He was surprised, too, that they should be leaving, and now he knew why.
He had expected in the beginning that, since the pictures were for a jewelry company, most of them would be close-ups of samples—in this case the three pieces Linda Courtney had brought—showing them in the best possible clarity and detail. Now, though he did not understand it, it appeared that he was mistaken. A full-length and he was through.
“All right,” he said. “I guess we can get something.”
“On the idea of that picture in Fashion Parade,” Irma Heath said. “I expect to be in town again Wednesday and if you can have proofs by then—”
Nason said they would be ready. He walked to the door with them. As he opened it he thanked them for the opportunity of working for them.
“Don’t thank us,” Fallon said. “Thank Miss Courtney.”
Nason stared, and Irma Heath smiled at him, her dark eyes speculative. “Yes,” she said. “Linda recommended you. I thought you knew.”
Nason watched them go. He shut the door, and it took him a second or two to accept the woman’s statement, to readjust his views somewhat, and discard the assumption he had maintained, that Linda’s presence was due to nothing more than a trick of fate with an ironic twist.
She laughed lightly as he turned away. “Did you think it just coincidence?” she asked.
He still could not meet her glance. “I guess I did,” he said. “I guess I wasn’t very clever. Do you want to get that bracelet? We might as well get it over with.”
He was all right when she came back and walked to the model stand. He set to work with his lights, everything neatly resolved in his mind. She had played a lousy trick on him and done her good deed to make up for it, and he was forced to admit that she was an excellent model, easy to work with, pleasant, helpful, co-operative.
Now she was standing there in her black dress, not a Spanish creation like the one in Fashion Parade but a straight-hanging, almost severe gown that molded affectionately her slender young figure, accentuating the slim waist and clean line of her breasts and throat. But she was no longer smiling. A tiny frown had begun to warp her brows.
“Jerry,” she said. “Did you notice anything funny about Heath and Fallon?”
“Funny? Like what?”
“Well—did they act the way you’d expect? I mean, like people in the advertising business?”
Nason considered this. He said he didn’t know, but he was thinking now because he was aware that he had wondered about this very thing before, just as he had wondered why there had been no close-ups of the costume pieces alone.
“Heath didn’t seem to care much,” he said, remembering the woman’s heavy-lidded smiles and speculative glances. “But you could tell she’d been around photographers.”
“But Fallon.”
“How do I know? What can you tell about a guy who spends the afternoon sleeping off a hang-over? Look, let’s get that right shoulder up a little. And turn the chin a little more.”
“That’s what I mean,” Linda said, obeying his directions. “It was like that other times. He always stays in the dressing-room.”
“What other times?”
“I posed for them twice before.” She hesitated, the frown deepening. “Look, Jerry,” she said. “I’ve got to talk to you.”
Nason heard her but he was close to the pose he wanted now and the photographer in him dominated his thoughts. “You’ll have to smile a little,” he said. “And that dress isn’t quite right.”
She fixed it, but it didn’t suit him, and he came to her, not seeing her face now but only the neckline of her gown. He straightened one side of this so that the V was smooth and the brooch straight, not like a man in love, with pride and affection, not taking liberties, either, but simply as a photographer working with a manikin.
“That’s better,” he said. “Now hold your head as it is and lift your eyes—Not too much—That’s it. And a little more smile. Pretend you like being here. That’s it, that’s it!”
He pressed the shutter release and stepped back. He said okay, and Linda’s smile went away and the frown came back.
She waited until he had turned off his lights, then said, “I’ve been a little worried. That’s one reason why I decided to come here.”
“Oh?” Nason kept his tone indulgent. “I thought it was because I’m such a nice guy.”
“Yes. That, too,” Linda said, and she was not smiling. She stepped from the model stand and walked slowly toward the desk, her mouth twisted but not unpleasant. “But I wouldn’t have come to Boston at all with them if I hadn’t known I could come here.” She turned and looked right at him. “Do you mind if I tell you about it?”
“Mind?” Nason waved one hand negligently. “Why should I?”
Linda studied him, the worry still in her gaze. Then, as though finding no encouragement in his face but determined to continue, she said, “You seemed different today. I wondered if—”
“Go ahead,” Nason said. “I’m listening.”
She was at the desk now and she picked up the copy of Fashion Parade, opening it and glancing at her picture. “I suppose it started with this,” she said. “It came out last Monday—a week ago—and Tuesday afternoon I got a call from Mr. Carson.”
Nason offered a cigarette and nodded. He did not know John Carson but he had heard of the model agency-Carson ran through other photographers.
“I went down to the office in the morning,” Linda said, “and Heath and Fallon were there with Mr. Carson. It’s not like the larger agencies, you know, with a dozen girls at the switchboard and the charts of the models all over the wall and the phones ringing like mad and operators assigning girls. It’s much smaller and more personal.” She paused, as if aware of her digression and said, “Well, anyway, Mr. Carson introduced them and said they wanted me to work on some pictures for a client of theirs who had liked the picture in Fashion Parade. Heath said the client was particularly impressed with the three costume pieces. He wanted me to wear them in his pictures if possible, and I said that would be all right and we made a date for that afternoon.”
She hesitated while she removed the bracelet and put it on the desk. “So we went to this place on Eighth Avenue. It was a room on the sixth floor in the back, big and bare, with no dressing-room but a corner that had been curtained off. There was a table and a chair and a cot in it, but in the studio there were no props, just damp-on lights and a couple of standards and a plain cloth background. I’d never seen the photographer before—I’ve even forgotten his name—but we got right to work and were busy all afternoon.”
“What kind of pictures?” Nason asked, and watched her remove the brooch, her head bent, the blond hair curling softly at the nape of her neck. “What were they supposed to advertise?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” She put the brooch down and shook back her hair. “They were close-ups mostly. We took several of just my
hand and arm and the bracelet. We took a lot of head-and-shoulder shots, sometimes with the brooch, sometimes with the necklace, and sometimes with both.”
“Well, what’s funny with that?”
“Nothing,” Linda said. “At least I didn’t think so at the time. I thought it a little odd that Mr. Fallon should spend so much time in the dressing-room and the studio seemed awfully bare and barny—as though no one had used it in months—but there was nothing wrong. We worked until dusk. They paid me. I left alone, and there was a car parked across the street, a gray coupé, and I didn’t think about that, either, until later. When I got out of the taxi in front of my apartment I saw the coupé go by. I saw it at least a half-dozen times in the next few days, and always the same man driving it.”
Nason watched her remove the necklace. He thought he knew the sort of story he would hear and he knew it would be a phony. But now he wanted to play along; he wanted to hear her out before he told her what he thought.
“What kind of a man?”
“I never did get a good look at him.” Linda toyed with the bracelet as she spoke. “It was mostly at night that I noticed the car, and all I’m sure of is that he had a broad, sort of blunt face, with a bushy mustache, not a wide one but thick.”
“He had his hat pulled down, huh?”
“Why, yes,” she said, not recognizing the irony of his remark. “How did you know?”
Nason’s grin was fixed and unamused. “What’s the rest of it?”
“Mr. Carson called me again the next afternoon. He said Heath and Fallon’s client was enthusiastic about the pictures and they had another client that would like to use me and the costume pieces the next day. He said they would pick me up around ten in the morning at my place.”
She put the necklace aside and said, “We went to a brownstone on Lexington—the third floor. Fallon opened the door—Heath called for me alone—and this place was just the opposite of the first one. This looked like an apartment someone was living in, a man’s place. But there was a big studio in the rear and the same photographer was setting up his things. I used a bedroom for a dressing-room, and in the studio I noticed a couple of easels; behind a curtain were racks of canvases and frames. There was a painting on one of the easels, I think, but it was covered with a cloth and I couldn’t see what it was.”
Fashioned for Murder Page 2