A Dress to Die For

by Christine Demaio-Rice

  Jimmy handed her the phone. “You were a trooper.”

  She snatched it and checked the texts. Ruby asking about Mom. Jeremy reporting that the fitting was fine, but another Heidi screw-up was costing them a bank’s worth of money. He also reminded her that she loved him.

  “Are you going back to work?” Jimmy asked.

  “What did the Harbor Unit say?”

  He didn’t answer right away, but he scanned the lobby as he jingled his keys.

  She lost patience. “I waited until—”

  “Let’s go.” He walked deeper into the hospital, down a hallway, and out an industrial-looking door with a clacking bar across it.

  She practically had to run to keep up, but she knew better than to ask for details. If he felt that he needed to go elsewhere, she wasn’t going to question him. Yet. They exited into an underground parking lot.

  “You took a car?” She knew few people who owned or needed a car and even fewer who would bother taking it into Manhattan to pay exorbitant parking fees or deal with standstill gridlock.

  “I hate the subway,” he replied, blooping the alarm for a boxy SUV. “Get in.”

  She opened the passenger door and climbed up into the seat. Jimmy got behind the wheel.

  “I heard from harbor,” he said. “And they put me through to someone you know.”

  “Cangemi? Crap. So you have nothing. I’m back to square one.”

  “Yes. Detective Cangemi, who likes you, by the way. What you and Jeremy did for those three girls? He told me about it. You get a lot of leeway with him after that. So, here’s what I got. A Brunican sailboat’s got a berth at Chelsea Piers. It’s called Beloved Isla. And it’s not docked right now.”

  She sucked in her lower lip because she wanted to say something but needed to think first. Should she ask for more information, like the size of the boat or the name of the person one might speak to in order to ask all sorts of questions about when the boat came and went? Should she ask for a lift over there? Should she see if he wanted to go, as well? Her mind turned all those questions like a kneading machine, mixing it up with the batter of what she actually wanted, which was to thank him, then go out there and figure it all out herself.

  Jimmy started the car and pulled out of the spot. “They’ve been watching it, but no action. I told him what you found out with the storage room and all the rest. He says to be careful. He says there’s stuff you don’t know, and I think he’s right.” He paid the cashier, and the gate arm lifted. Rain poured down in sheets, overflowing gutters and drains.

  “Whatever I don’t know probably brought the high prince into town.”

  “You’re going to get yourself in trouble again.”

  “Why are you going east? I’m going to work. You can drop me at the L train.”

  “You ain’t going to work. I don’t know you, but I know you. And I’m not telling your mother I let you go to the pier alone.”

  **

  Chelsea Piers used to be dangerous, back when they were just poured concrete slabs lined with wood pilings and covered in filth. Though still quite expensive to rent a berth, in the past ten years, “expensive” had changed to “affordable by conglomerates and monarchies.”

  Jimmy parked on a side street in a loading zone. Retired cops didn’t get tickets, apparently, and though she asked what secret code alerted the ticket writers that the owner of an illegally parked vehicle was in the force, his answer was an unsatisfactory grunt. She wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck, tucking it in. The cashmere wouldn’t survive the rain. Another expensive accessory ruined. She felt like a luxury repellent.

  They ran across the West Side Highway to a three-story sports complex, blocks long and extending far into the Hudson. They skirted the southernmost end of the complex where the driving range loomed above, palatial nets keeping the golf balls from littering the river. The rain kept the golfers away but couldn’t drown out the thumping of a huge event taking place inside the complex. The music rattled the pier. She’d been to an event or two there. The first had been with Ruby, and it began at one in the morning. The place had been a sweatbox of dancing men and spilled drinks in plastic cups. The second event had silver dinnerware, and she’d accompanied Jeremy. She had fond memories of both but didn’t feel the need to repeat either.

  Jimmy stopped her under an awning. He took a scrap of paper from his pocket and pointed past a chain-link fence to the two long piers on the other side. “Okay, Five B. There’s row A. Second one in.” He used his finger to count. “Spot one, two, three, four, five. It’s empty. Okay? Am I driving you back to work? It’s ten o’clock at night.”

  The pier was full of boats, fancy ones, mostly with masts and tall hulls, rocking in the ice-cold December rain.

  “Yeah. Fortieth and Eleventh. I have patterns to check.”

  “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  “Yes.” She started walking back toward the highway. If there was no boat, that meant the dress was somewhere in New York, probably not too far away. As soon as that boat arrived, though, the Saffron gown was going to be carted off to Brunico and destroyed, and whatever secrets it held would go with it.

  She looked back at the pier, mostly to memorize the spot because she could stop by again after work, maybe just drive by in a cab to see if a boat was moored. The chain-link fence was six feet tall. Easy pickings. More of a psychological barrier, actually, and she wondered if she could climb it later if a boat happened to be there.

  She tugged on Jimmy’s sleeve. “That’s row B? Because it looks like that’s D, which makes that C and the row closer to us is B. Which means there’s a boat there.” It was hard to see in the rain, but she was sure she had the correct row. The boat was a three-mast sailboat. A silhouetted figure worked on a wet deck. She didn’t know anything about sailing, so the guy could have been putting the sails up, dropping anchor, or repairing some part she had no idea even existed.

  Jimmy squinted, then stepped back. “We’ll call Cangemi.” He took out his phone.

  “You’re going to call a homicide detective who would rather eat his shoe than chase around this dress? To tell him what? A boat’s moored? He already doesn’t care. He’s probably chasing a killer down an alley right now.”

  “Then we should just go.” He stepped out from under the awning and into the driving rain.

  “You miss it,” she shouted over the wind.

  “What?”

  “That’s why you’re trying to mentor me. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you tracked down this boat in the first place. Because you miss the life you had before you retired. You made a difference.”

  He strode toward her, finger pointed as though he was going to give her a piece of his mind. “Don’t you tell me what I do that makes a difference.”

  “You miss that badge. You miss being in charge. Why else would you chase reporters away from my front door with a crowbar?”

  “Because I care about your mother. You? You’re a pain in the ass.”

  He was lit from behind for a second by the headlights of an oncoming van. She shielded her eyes. Jimmy looked, as well, and they watched as the vehicle turned and rolled down the A/B pier. The van was white with a green stripe down the side.

  “That’s the van that picked up the dress from Jobeth,” Laura said. “The Brunicans had it from jump. The real one never made it to the museum.”

  “Okay, so what do you want to do?”

  “The real dress is in that van.”

  “What do you want to do? I’m asking you again because you’re all energy and no focus.”

  She looked back at the van and the boat. The van had cut the lights, and the two were no more than black blurs against the distant streetlights of the highway. “I want to go look. Maybe we’ll see the dress. Or if we can get the plate number, maybe we can report back to Cangemi. Come on, Jimmy. What are you going to do? Go home to an empty house and wonder what would have happened if you’d gone thirty feet that way?”


  “No,” he said. But no didn’t mean no. His body leaned toward the boat as if the wind was going to take him. All he needed was a little push. Unfortunately, outside of begging and pleading, she was out of ammunition.

  Without an umbrella or hood, she resigned herself to ruining her cashmere scarf and ran past Jimmy, into the rain. She hooked her fingers in the fence, hitched up one leg, and slipped her foot into one of the openings. She wasn’t a kid anymore. She couldn’t get half a sneaker in there, but she had enough purchase to get her other foot up and her fingers found higher links. She heard Jimmy splash up behind her, but she swung her leg over the top edge, the points of the links digging into her thighs. She knew how to climb over a fence. It was fingers on the way down and a controlled slide into a puddle. She’d ripped her leggings, and her high-heeled leather boots were wet. She hadn’t had nice things when she was a kid getting into trouble in Hell’s Kitchen. She still didn’t, apparently, but she was on the other side. She looked at Jimmy. He shook his head.

  “What’s the matter? Can’t climb a fence anymore?”

  “You’re going to get arrested,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.” She walked toward row B, hair soaked, mascara flowing, fingertips crinkled and cold. Behind her, the fence rattled, and she heard the splash of him running through a puddle.

  “You’re a pain in the ass,” Jimmy said as he caught up to her. Laura smiled.

  They slowed as they approached the van, then crouched behind a set of wide pilings. If she shifted her head a little, she could see the van between the pilings, two boats, and seemingly infinite diagonal ropes. The doors were open, and a man in a raincoat and construction boots spoke to a bald man wearing a big hood.

  “That’s the waiter in the café,” she whispered. “The one in the loud prints.”

  “Picking up the wine,” Jimmy said, looking around the side of the piling.

  As if on cue, another man came out carrying a crate. He gave it to Poly Print, who slid it into the back of the van. Three guys. Were there more? How big a crew did one need to get a three-mast sailboat from Brunico to New York?

  There was more discussion between the three shadowy men, then they looked into the back of the van.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Laura saw a little light; Jimmy had his phone out. “What the hell are you doing? They’re going to see us.”

  “I’m doing what you should be doing: texting Cangemi. His guys are either looking at the wrong berth, or they can’t see in the rain.”

  She looked back at the three guys. Poly Print pointed in their general direction.

  She crouched lower and peeked from a different spot. “Crap.”

  All three of the guys stared in her direction, pieces of their faces covered by hoods and hats. Construction Boots shut the doors of the van. Poly Print ran around the side. The third man turned out to be a woman, and she ran back onto the boat.

  “They’re getting away!” Laura shouted, standing.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” Jimmy said, trying to grab her.

  As she ran, she heard her own breath inside her scarf, which stuck to the bottom of her face like a mask. Her ruined leather boots splashed in the puddles, smacking on the pavement. They weren’t terribly high-heeled but high enough to make running in the rain rather treacherous. The surprise of her bolting away was going to wear off in half a second, and Jimmy would catch her very soon after that.

  When the van exited, she slipped under a barrier. Jimmy couldn’t be that fast. He was in his sixties and out of shape. She felt a shot of fear that she was going to cause him a heart attack, like Mom. But before she could stop, the van turned left onto the West Side Highway and stopped at the light half a block away.

  The highway was crowded, and visibility was crap. But the dress was in the back of that van. She’d bet her life on it. Closure for Mom. The bond money for Jeremy. A path to Dad.

  She stepped into the street. The driver of the white Mercedes sedan didn’t see her at all, and she stepped back enough to have no more than the snaps of her jacket grazed. Of course, she was wearing a matte-black bomber jacket because that was what designers in New York wore that year, and that choice was going to get her killed. She pulled out her ponytail, hoping her blond hair was at least a little more visible, then remembered she was wearing a yellow damask shirt under the bomber. She pulled off the jacket, another nice thing that was about to end up in a greasy puddle. The yellow shirt practically glowed in the dark. She stepped into the street again, holding up her hands.

  A Toyota of indiscriminate color skidded but stopped as she banged on its hood. A Ford SUV slowed and stopped. She stepped back for a two-ton projectile she couldn’t identify and bolted in the wet wake it left, making it to the concrete median amid the curses and blasphemies of people who had almost killed her. She ignored them, lining her sights on the white van with the green stripe, and took off down the median. She was going to have to cross more moving traffic if she waited, but the red light that stopped the van also stopped all the other cars.

  Behind her, on the west side of the street, safely on the sidewalk, Jimmy called out something, probably “Stop” or “Don’t.” She dodged between stopped cars, knocking on hoods to let the drivers know she was there, turning sideways for people who meant it when they said “bumper to bumper” and, not even knowing what she intended to do when she got there, reached the van’s lane.

  The light changed. The van was third from the light, and she was half a car length behind it. She saw Construction Boots’s face in the side mirror. He was a bald man with mocha skin and a thick black moustache. They made eye contact through the mirror as she headed straight for him. He must have known she was trouble, because when the light changed, he leaned on his horn and gunned ahead three feet, almost hitting the car in front of him. She got on the front bumper of the car behind the van. The driver leaned on his own horn, bellowing expletives, while Laura used his bumper to lean against so she could grab the handle on the van’s back door.

  The van took off just as she heard a clack. The van swerved, attempting to make a right from the center lane, and the back door swung all the way open. Crates and boxes dumped out all over the highway. Cars drifted and veered, screeching their tires on the rain-slicked asphalt.

  Laura rolled onto the icy wet street, her bicep smacking against the pavement. A cab barreled toward her. She closed her eyes. It was too late to move. She was frozen, thinking, “I’m going to die before Jeremy, and he’s going to be so pissed.” Water splashed on her as the cab skidded to a stop. The tire stopped half an inch from her face. The water coming from it was hot from friction.

  She rolled to see the van skip on the curb and tip against a pole, scraping a few feet before settling against it. Cops appeared out of nowhere, lights flashing, as if they’d been watching the docks the entire time.

  Laura scanned the casualties and saw she’d managed not to kill anyone. No one looked more than wet and mad. She ran for the van, tripping over broken bottles of Brunican wine, wooden shards, and the contents of the crate. In the crosswalk was a dress form on a wire base, with a pole in the middle, old-school canvas soaked. Stamped across the hips was PHILOMENA, and though the posture had a forward hip thrust usually associated with women’s forms of decades past, the body shape, in all its slim, breastless wonder, was definitely that of a man.

  That had to be the original form.

  Princess Philomena had been a man.

  CHAPTER 17

  Laura couldn’t hold a spoon, which felt as ridiculous as her chattering teeth. One, her hand was twisted under blankets, and two, she shivered so hard not a drop of soup would have made it to her mouth. Jeremy had bundled her as soon as he got her on his couch. Jimmy had wanted to take her home after Cangemi spoke to her, but she didn’t want to wait for more cops and paramedics to do their business. She’d called Jeremy, and when he arrived, he took her home in a cab while no one was looking. They never had a word of discussion about her
going to Brooklyn for the night.

  “Open,” he said, holding out a spoon.

  She tried, but her teeth clacked, and she made a rrrr sound not conducive to soup-eating.

  He pushed the spoon toward her again. “I slaved over this can of soup.”

  She got a mouthful of unbelievably soothing, yet scalding chicken soup down her throat. “Hot.”

  “Yes. I made it that way. On the stove. That was the slaving part. And opening the can. This part of my thumb will never be the same. Here.” He blew on the soup and put another spoonful in her mouth. “Did you call your mother? She might want to hear her husband didn’t leave her for another woman.”

  She’d tried as soon as she was in the cab with Jeremy, but her hands were shaking so hard she nearly dropped it. “She’s sleeping anyway.”

  “No one sleeps in the hospital. Trust me. It’s like Grand Central. Every shift change, someone comes to take your blood pressure.” He out held the spoon, and she opened her mouth. “You should go in the morning. First thing.”

  She swallowed. “Now we know why the interior of the dress was constructed separately. It was for a man, and the whole form thing, of course, the Met had to use the form it came on because if anyone saw it, they’d know. Must be the hugest secret in the known universe. Princess Philomena was a man. I can’t even believe it when I say it. But Dad ran off with her, and you know what? I bet she was going to expose the truth, and he had half the court saying, ‘Yes, let’s do it! Let’s be modern.’ And the other half, which was the high prince’s half, saying, ‘No, we need to stay Brunican.’ Then they put Dad away and made him build stuff for them.”

  “There are a hundred holes in that story. Why would your father get all the way there to cause trouble? Why wouldn’t he get a lawyer? Why wasn’t the princess thrown in jail?”