Fashionably Late (The Ladies Smythe & Westin)

by Lisa Q. Mathews

  “You called the police?” Nadine’s jaw dropped halfway down her long, tanned neck. “Here? What on earth for?”

  “One of the models is missing,” Summer said. “Angelica Downs. My friend Dorothy and I are really worried about her.”

  Nadine’s face didn’t look so tanned anymore. “Oh, this is terrible,” she said, bringing a hand to her cheek. “Waterman’s can’t afford one more shred of bad publicity. Especially right now.”

  Was this woman for real? Who cared about the stupid restaurant?

  “When someone calls 911 and hangs up on them, they can trace it, you know,” Summer said. “The cops will be here any second, whether you like it or not.”

  “No one mentioned anything to me about a problem,” the hostess said. “And I assure you, I’d be the first person to hear. Besides, I just saw Angelica with Monique about half an hour ago in the dining room, and she was perfectly fine. She’s probably onstage right now, in fact.”

  Summer was already scanning the room over the woman’s shoulder. Nope, no sign of Angelica. Bryana, the pale, younger model whose dress Esmé had pinned, was walking quickly down the wide aisle that had been set up between the tables. When she reached the middle of the room, she stopped, swung out her bony hip, and started back again, without a glance at any of the clapping women in the audience.

  She seemed very professional. The ugly purple, angel-wing sleeves of her dress were a little distracting, though, as she moved.

  Now everyone in the crowd was focused on a whole string of models starting down the aisle. They were carrying those dumb baskets again, and every few seconds they tossed little prizes out to the audience, enclosed in filmy, black gift bags. But none of the models was Angelica.

  “Gotta go,” Summer told Nadine. “Send the cops backstage when they get here, okay?”

  The hostess glared back at her.

  Summer snuck another peek back into the dining room as she turned away. Were they actually playing another song with a cat in it? Yep. Who’d thought up that crazy theme for a holiday fashion show? You couldn’t make this stuff up.

  Gladys Rumway grabbed for a gift bag that had fallen on the floor, and almost tripped the poor model.

  Jeez. People were so greedy, Summer thought, as she headed down the hall. It was obvious no one was paying attention to anything but the free swag. They could care less about the ugly clothes.

  Would they even notice if someone was kidnapped and carted out of the restaurant, screaming? Probably not.

  “Where have you been?” Dorothy asked, when Summer found her surrounded by racks of garment bags in the far corner of the now-deserted backstage area. “No sign of Angelica. It seems she simply vanished. Did you reach 911, I hope?”

  “Yep,” Summer said. Her friend looked really upset and frustrated. That wasn’t like Dorothy at all. She hardly ever lost her cool. “Here, let me do some looking around for clues. You sit down and chill.”

  “I’m fine.” Dorothy’s lips were set in a thin line. “But you could check those shelves over there. Some of the models left their street clothes and bags on them, and I didn’t do a very thorough job of going through them. Maybe, if we can find anything at all that might belong to Angelica, it will give us a start.”

  “Got it.” Summer crossed the black-and-white checkered floor. She hated to agree with Monique, but what if Angelica was just a thief who’d lifted a dress and a few pieces of pricey jewelry?

  But how could she have snuck out of the restaurant wearing that long, seafoam chiffon dress? Wouldn’t someone have noticed? If Angelica had had enough time to change—pretty doubtful—she might have been carrying a garment bag or something, but the hostess would have spotted her for sure.

  Well, maybe not. Nadine hadn’t been paying attention a couple of minutes ago. She’d had her back turned as she watched the fashion show, long enough to have her cell phone nabbed at the hostess stand. Borrowed, Summer corrected herself, as she started sifting through the models’ bags and scarves and tees.

  What a mess. Some people would have to do a lot of clothes steaming before they left. No one went around looking like a slob in Milano. If they did, they’d probably be beaten with wire hangers and run out of town by the Fashion Police. Even the very oldest ladies at Hibiscus Pointe never missed a hair appointment at the community’s salon.

  Eww. She drew back in disgust. There on the shelf, underneath the T-shirt she’d just lifted, someone had left a pair of strappy, size-twelve sandals. The soles were covered with gobs of black, sticky stuff that was now all over her hands. Probably tar from the Bay Village Pier outside Waterman’s window. Or the restaurant’s half-melted parking lot.

  How could the person not have noticed? “Thanks, whoever-you-are,” she muttered, moving the models’ things aside with her elbow. “You’re super thoughtful.”

  As she was trying to scrape the gross tar off her hands onto the edge of the shelf, she noticed another door half-hidden in the wall behind the mountains of piled-up clothes.

  Huh. Where did that lead to? Was it just a closet—or a closed-off exit? Maybe that’s how Angelica had made her getaway.

  Summer grabbed the left-hand bars of the rolling shelves and pushed the whole thing down a few feet, very carefully. She didn’t need the ginormous shelf to collapse on her. It looked like one of those assemble-yourself deals, and she’d never had much luck with them.

  At least she could get to the door now. But Dorothy came up and beat her to it. “I’ll get it, dear, your hands are filthy,” her friend said, reaching across her to twist the fake-brass knob.

  The door opened easily, and an oversized, pink-and-green hanging storage bag fell out on the floor in front of them.

  Summer tugged on the bag and dragged it all the way from the closet. It was super bulky. Heavy, too, she told herself.

  She definitely had a bad feeling about this.

  Dorothy sprang forward and pulled on the zipper. It moved just a few inches before it stopped short, with a crunch of metal and a nasty, ripping sound.

  “Oh, no.” Dorothy stared at the broken zipper. “I pulled it too hard.”

  “Don’t worry,” Summer said. “It’s just off track. There’s a trick to fix that. I think I saw a pencil around here somewhere.”

  She glanced around the room, then rushed over to the table that had held Monique’s color-coded gift baskets and dropped to her hands and knees. After a second or two of feeling around on the dusty floor, she popped back up in triumph. “Found it!”

  It only took a few seconds of rubbing the pencil point across the metal track to put the zipper back on track. There was a small hole in the fabric of the garment bag, but that was okay. They just had to get the stupid thing open.

  As soon as she did, Summer wished that pencil trick she’d seen in a YouTube video once hadn’t worked.

  Angelica Downs lay crumpled inside, still wearing her seafoam dress—and a clear plastic dry cleaner’s bag over her head.

  Chapter Three

  “No, no, no!” Dorothy clawed desperately at the clammy plastic wound tightly across Angelica’s face. The poor woman was probably half suffocated.

  “Dorothy, stop.” A pair of gentle, but very strong, hands descended firmly on her shaking shoulders. “I checked her pulse,” Summer said. “There isn’t one. I’m really sorry.”

  Dorothy didn’t want to look more closely at the model’s face. Because now she’d realized it was an ominous, purplish red, with chilling blue lips.

  If she didn’t glance again, it might not be real.

  “Come on, let’s get you to a chair.” Summer took Dorothy by the elbow to help her up.

  Dorothy shook herself from her friend’s grip. “No. We have to get that bag off of Angelica.”

  “It’s a crime scene now.” Summer’s tone was calm and soothing, but Dorothy could see her friend trembling. Or maybe it was herself who was shaking? “The police will be here any second,” Summer added. “See, someone just showed up. Over here!
” she called, over Dorothy’s shoulder.

  A young woman in dark clothes jogged up, frowning. Officer Caputo, Dorothy remembered. She recognized her from the last crime scene she and Summer had stumbled into, when a librarian was murdered in their very own Hibiscus Pointe library.

  The last crime scene. How was it possible she’d had to use such an awful phrase, even to herself?

  “What’s happened here?” the officer asked. Judging by the black pantsuit, crisp white button-up shirt, and bright gold badge at her waist, she was now Detective Caputo.

  Goodness, Dorothy thought. And she’d thought the young woman was fresh out of the academy.

  “That missing person we called 911 about, Angelica Downs?” Summer stepped back and pointed toward the storage—now body—bag. “It’s too late.”

  “Mmm,” Detective Caputo said, with a brief glance in the direction of the deceased. “How long?”

  Well, she was certainly all business. The detective’s pale eyelashes didn’t even flicker. But that was her job, Dorothy reminded herself quickly. Detectives were trained not to show emotion.

  “Forty-five minutes, maybe?” Summer’s voice was definitely unsteady. She was trying to be brave, Dorothy could tell, and not just for the police.

  “An hour.” Dorothy straightened her shoulders. She needed to pull herself together immediately. What good would she do poor Angelica as a nervous wreck? She and Summer had already failed her once.

  Actually, that wasn’t true. Summer had wanted to call for help right away. She was the one who had utterly failed Angelica. And now the poor woman was dead.

  “Okay. I need you two ladies to stay right here, until I say you can leave. Got it?”

  Dorothy and Summer both nodded.

  Detective Caputo took a few steps away, and spoke in clipped tones to someone on her phone. “Gosh, she’s cold,” Summer whispered.

  “It’s her job to be efficient.” And ours, too, she nearly added. They were detectives, after all. Amateurs, of course—but still…

  In no time at all, it seemed, the backstage area at Waterman’s on the Bay was swarming with activity. Emergency personnel, crime scene photographers and investigators, the coroner, and… Gladys Rumway.

  “I need deets on everything that happened before I got here, Dorothy.” Gladys leaned over Dorothy’s folding chair. Her well-padded fist held a Waterman’s pen poised above a matching Waterman’s paper beverage napkin.

  “Deets?” Dorothy said.

  “Someone got killed, Mrs. Rumway,” Summer said. “Is that enough detail for you?”

  “Shh, dear,” Dorothy murmured. “Don’t be rude. It won’t help things.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, missy.” Gladys’s pink-rimmed, beady eyes narrowed even further, giving her the appearance of an enormous—and furious—gray guinea pig. “You know, I find it really interesting that you and your snotty cheerleader nose have fallen over another stiff here in Milano. What’s the body count for you now, three? And how long have you been in town, camping out like a princess at Hibiscus Pointe? Very interesting.”

  “Summer and I both found Angelica,” Dorothy said. How dare Gladys refer to Angelica as a “stiff”?

  “And I’m not camping,” Summer added. “I pay rent. Well, my dad does, and I pay him. You can check that with Jennifer Margolis in Resident Services.”

  “You bet your skinny patootie I’ll have a chat with Jennifer,” Gladys said. “And Helen Murphy, our Residents Board president, is a good friend of mine. We don’t need any low-class troublemakers like you stinking up the HP.”

  “Fine, Mrs. Rumway,” Summer said. “You guys can find yourselves a new Aquatics Director, then, and you’ll have to actually pay her. She’ll probably flunk you on your Beginner swim test, too.”

  “Please, both of you.” Dorothy held up her hands. “Stop this silly bickering. It’s not respectful to Angelica, and it isn’t helpful toward finding whoever did this dreadful thing, either.”

  “Oh, I’m already on that, Dorothy,” Gladys said. “Don’t you worry. I was on the horn to my cousin Merle down at the Milano PD the minute I heard someone got bumped off.”

  Bumped off? Dorothy held her tongue. There was no point in objecting to Gladys’s unfortunate phrasing. She had the sensitivity of a fence post. Her cousin Merle was a volunteer clerk in the file room. Sometimes he answered the phones, if things got extra busy. Occasionally, he did provide some useful information, but Gladys never let her and Summer forget it. She fancied herself quite the detective.

  “Whaddaya say you and me team up together, Dorothy?” Gladys leaned in even closer, and Dorothy suppressed an involuntary shudder. “You know, just to solve this case a little faster. I don’t need a partner, really, but it’ll give you a good excuse to dump your freeloading string bean friend here. She’s dragging you down.”

  “Thank you for the offer, Gladys,” Dorothy said. “But no.”

  “Ma’am? Who are you, and why are you back here? This is a crime scene. See the yellow tape? Authorized persons only.”

  Dorothy breathed a sigh of relief, as Detective Caputo jerked her head at Gladys, indicating the door.

  Most likely, the Milano Police would solve the crime, anyway. They were a very well-regarded department across the state, and Dorothy had full confidence in their top-notch detective team, led by Senior Detective Shane Donovan.

  Perhaps she and Summer had simply gotten lucky in solving those other cases, Dorothy thought. But in her heart she knew that wasn’t true. The two of them worked hard on their investigations, and they’d run into considerable danger several times. And if they could lend assistance to the Milano PD in solving Angelica’s murder…

  “Oh, I think you’ll be glad I’m here, Detective.” Gladys waved the scribbled napkin in Caputo’s face. “I’m already working the case, see?”

  The detective’s expression didn’t change. “Do you have any information you can give us about the deceased?”

  “Not yet,” Gladys said. “But I will.”

  “Were you present in this room at any time today, or did you notice anything unusual out in the dining section, before or during the show?”

  “I notice a lot of things,” Gladys said.

  The detective seemed unimpressed. “Please go back and wait in the dining room,” she said, nodding toward the door again. “We’ll be taking contact information from everyone in the building very shortly, as possible witnesses. Thanks for your patience.”

  “You’re making a big mistake, Detective. I have connections down at the PD. Unlike some other people in here.” When the detective remained silent, Gladys stomped from the backstage area, muttering under her breath. On her way, she knocked a container of colorful baubles to the floor with her gigantic, multi-buckled purse, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Do you need us to leave the area, also?” Dorothy asked Detective Caputo. “Summer and I will be happy to wait with the others.” Maybe they could question a few people themselves, in case anyone had noticed anything out of the ordinary—or seen Angelica.

  Stunning as the senior model had been, had anyone really noticed her? Dorothy wondered. Besides Monique, of course. And where was the boutique owner right now, anyway? Now there was someone who had been extremely visible this afternoon—practically every minute.

  “You two can wait here,” Detective Caputo said. “We’ll interview you first. The coroner will remove the body very shortly. I’ll be back.”

  “At least we’ll get out of here soon,” Summer said to Dorothy, as the detective walked briskly over to speak to a pair of crime scene investigators. “We need to find Zoe Z and her agent. And my phone.”

  “I’m more worried about Frankie Downs, back at Hibiscus Pointe,” Dorothy said. “Angelica seemed so worried about her mother. She might be in danger, too.”

  “Shouldn’t we tell…”

  “Absolutely.” Dorothy stood up so quickly, she felt a little dizzy. But she wasn’t going to wait too long t
o get help this time. They needed to inform Detective Caputo about Frankie, and Angelica’s obvious concern, right away.

  Finding a body stuffed in an oversized garment bag had muddled her thinking.

  She and Summer had almost reached Detective Caputo, who was now conversing with a young woman carrying a fingerprint lifting kit, when Roland Cho burst through the curtain leading to the dining room.

  “Stop everything!” the designer shouted, rushing past a Waterman’s security guard. “Nobody move!”

  *

  Summer nabbed Roland Cho by his velvet jacket sleeve as he tried to plow straight through her. “Whoa, dude. What’s the problem? You’re not supposed to be back here.”

  He glared at her, and straightened his purple blazer as she loosened her grip. “Look what you’ve done, Blondie, you crushed the fabric. I’ll be sure to send you the dry cleaning bill. And I have every right to be in this room. I’m the celebrity guest designer for this show.”

  “What’s going on here?” Detective Caputo asked, coming up with a frown.

  “I’m Roland Cho, and I need to see the body,” Roland said. “Before you cart it away to wherever it’s going.”

  Beside her, Summer heard Dorothy draw in a sharp breath. “Really,” her friend said. She sounded ticked off again.

  “Negative on that, sir,” the detective said. “Sorry.”

  Caputo didn’t sound sorry. Zero emotion at all. No wonder she’d gotten promoted so fast. She made her boss, Detective Donovan, look like a stand-up comedian.

  The designer drew himself up to his full height, at least half a foot shorter than Summer. That was if you counted his gelled, spiky hair, which looked like ombré artificial turf. “I need my property back. Angelica Downs was wearing a Roland Cho original.”

  Wow. Roland was even colder than Caputo. What a jerk.

  “Any items on the deceased’s person will be returned at a future date,” Detective Caputo said. “The team here is taking plenty of photos, and then the medical examiner will bag everything up for evidence.”