“You sure tried,” Summer said. “You scared me.”
“Someone had better explain this whole thing,” Dash said. “Or I am going to blow a gasket.”
“Juliette-Margot was not afraid,” the little girl said to Frankie, with a sniff. “She and Summer would dance Swan Lake for you now, Madame, but Summer must get ready.”
With that, she took her father’s hand and led him back down the hall. Dash looked back once or twice over his shoulder at Summer, but she just smiled and waved at him as she held on to Frankie again. “Enjoy the show,” she called. “I’ll explain everything later.”
“All right, Summer,” Dorothy said, as soon as Dash and Juliette-Margot were out of sight. “Why don’t you fill me in on what happened before we got here?”
Frankie started to open her mouth, but Summer beat her to it. “Nothing, really,” she said. “The Stick-’em-Up Queen here tried to pretend she had a gun, but it was just the end of a flashlight. I had to protect Juliette-Margot, so I shut her in the conference room after I grabbed Frankie and took her fake weapon away.”
“Admit it,” Frankie said. “I had you fooled for a minute there.”
Dorothy frowned. Was this some kind of joke to her, or a result of her mental issues? Why had Angelica’s mother done such a thing?
“I can’t believe you tried to scare me and a little kid, too,” Summer said. “Don’t you understand how wrong that was?”
“I said I was sorry,” Frankie said. “I didn’t mean to scare the kid. And I didn’t really have a gun. But I knew you’d seen me, and were trying to follow me. And I am not going back to Hibiscus Glen. I have important stuff to take care of.”
Oh my. Dorothy exchanged a glance with Summer. What was it, exactly, that Frankie needed to accomplish? And what should they do with her now? The show was about to start.
“Summer, Juliette-Margot was right,” she broke in. “You need to get to Ballroom A with the rest of the models. I’ll take care of Frankie.”
“Take care of me how?” Frankie said, frowning.
“Oh, I’ll figure out something,” Dorothy said. If that sounded like a vague threat, so be it. She couldn’t trust Angelica’s mother for a minute. They needed to talk with her again before handing her over to anyone, but this was not a good time. And the tiny woman would be a considerable flight risk.
“Can Frankie sit with you at the show?” Summer said. “We’ll deal with her later.”
“The heck you will, Goddaughter.” Frankie crossed her arms and glared at them both.
“But we don’t have a ticket for her,” Dorothy said. “I’m afraid they won’t let her in. They’re being quite strict at the door.”
“Oh, I have a ticket,” Frankie said, reaching inside her blouse to bring out an engraved white card printed with a circle of holly leaves. “See?”
Dorothy peered closer. The ticket was made out to Margaret E. Donovan. “This isn’t yours, Frankie,” she said. “It belongs to Detective Donovan’s grandmother.”
Frankie shrugged. “Hey, it’s legit, okay? I found it on our bedroom floor of that horror hole we were stuck in. She couldn’t come here, anyway, with that giant boot on her foot.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Summer said. “Her grandson is bringing her.”
That didn’t surprise Dorothy. It was hard to imagine that Peggy would be easily discouraged from attending the fashion event of the season, injury or no injury. And if she did show up, the detective’s grandmother was likely to throw quite a fit when she learned her roommate had stolen her ticket.
But at the moment, she and Summer had no choice but to let Frankie get away with it.
“All right, Frankie,” Dorothy said, taking the blue-haired woman firmly by the elbow. “You can sit right next to me.”
And you’d better not twitch a muscle, Dorothy added silently. Sorry as she was for Frankie’s loss, she couldn’t help but worry that Angelica’s mother was up to no good.
*
Summer squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself as Petra, her stylist, sprayed half a can of hair product into her chin-length bob. “Ew, that stuff burns my eyeballs,” she said, as they watered up in spite of her efforts.
Ugh. She should have kept her mouth shut, because now it was full of chemicals, too.
“Tell me about it,” Petra said. “I get to breathe it every day. You’re getting off easy, though, because you have great hair. We don’t have time to do a different style, anyway.”
“Sorry,” Summer said, her voice muffled behind her hands. “Something came up.”
“Here,” Petra said, handing her a clammy towel to hold over her face. “Your bangs keep falling all over your face. Maybe we should spike them up a little. And hey, quit crying, okay? You’ll ruin your mascara.”
She wasn’t crying. That was the hairspray. But she’d already gotten a glimpse of her makeup in the mirror, and she’d hardly recognized herself. Maybe that was a good thing, because then Shane Donovan wouldn’t realize it was her out there, looking stupid.
She had to admit, though, this show was a notch or two higher on the cool meter than the one at Waterman’s. Most of the models were around her age this time—totally over the hill, she reminded herself—and some of the clothes were halfway decent, from what she’d seen everyone wearing so far around Ballroom A. Maybe she could take a few of the samples home.
“Is that what they’re having you wear?” Petra asked, when she’d finished spraying and Summer had reluctantly ditched the towel. “I mean, it’s a great outfit and all, but it’s not really very holiday-ish.”
“I have no idea,” Summer said. “Nobody’s said anything to me yet about clothes.” At this point, maybe she’d end up modeling the dress she and Dash and Juliette-Margot had picked out from her closet.
The chair beside her spun around, and now that Summer’s eyes weren’t killing her anymore she recognized the occupant. It was the red-haired model from Waterman’s, the one Esmé had told not to eat anything after pinning her dress. She was reading a trashy magazine with a bad photo of ZeeZee and Zoe arguing on the cover.
What was her name again? Brie, like the cheese? Diana?
No. Bryana. A manicurist was just rolling a cart up next to the model’s chair to do her nails to match her outfit. Summer quickly sat on her hands so no one would notice they were bitten down to the quick at the moment, thanks to Angelica being murdered and her almost losing Frankie and worrying about her pathetic love life.
“You were supposed to stop by Wardrobe so they could assign a rack of clothes to you,” Bryana said, holding out her hands to the manicurist. Another woman zoomed up and rummaged through the colorful bottles to select a shade for the model’s toes. “Didn’t your booker give you the info?”
“Nope,” Summer said. Actually, she hadn’t checked her phone for a while. Maybe she should have. “I’m kind of a last minute sub.”
“Monique came by looking for you earlier,” Petra said, rubbing some kind of sticky goop between her hands and creating stiff little points out of Summer’s bangs. “I told her you were in the ladies room, so it’s lucky for me you finally showed up.”
Phew. Well, that was nice of her, especially since the stylist hadn’t even met her before. “Thanks, Petra,” Summer said. “You’re the best. So you know Monique, huh?”
“Unfortunately,” Petra said. “I worked the Waterman’s show on Wednesday.”
Summer sat up straighter. “Really? Did you know Angelica Downs, too?”
Petra turned away to drop the comb she’d been using earlier into a glass container of Barbicide. “Yeah. Just from these shows, though. We worked together a lot. I almost backed out today, because I was so freaked out after what happened to her, but I really need the money. I’m a single mom and my kid and I live in a dump. The Milano Arms, ever hear of it?”
Esmé’s place. “Um, yeah.” Summer carefully suppressed a shudder. “Did Angelica ever say she thought she might be in any kind of danger or trouble?
Or her mom was, maybe? My detective partner and I are trying to help solve the case.”
Petra glanced around, suddenly looking nervous. “Are you some kind of undercover cop or something?”
“No, nothing like that,” Summer said quickly. Was it possible the stylist really did have info about Angelica’s murder? Petra’s English was great and all, but she did have some kind of accent. Maybe she was worried about being kicked out of the country because she’d overstayed her visa or something.
“Dorothy and I are just, uh, really tight with the family,” Summer said.
“Oh.” Petra let out her breath. “Well, she did say something kind of strange that day, but I didn’t think much about it until afterward. I mean, it may not be important. But now that Angelica’s dead, I guess I can tell you.”
“We’ll take anything you’ve got,” Summer said.
The stylist lowered her voice. “Angelica had confided in me a few weeks ago that she’d gotten back together with some guy who’d broken her heart once. She didn’t tell me his name but I got the idea they were keeping things on the down low for some reason.”
The not-new boyfriend had to be Monique’s ex-husband. Why else would they be keeping their relationship a secret? The last thing they’d want was to tick her off.
So far, thank the fashion gods, it looked like the Majesty backstage operations were temporarily witch-free, and a lot more efficient.
“Anyway, Angelica had seemed really happy lately,” Petra went on. “But at Waterman’s I could tell she was jittery about something because I couldn’t get her mascara on. She kept turning her head suddenly to look around, and her eyelids were fluttering like crazy.”
Probably worried about her boss finding out she’d been hooking up with the hubby again, Summer thought. Former hubby, she corrected herself quickly.
“I asked Angelica what was wrong, and she insisted it was nothing. But then she said something about bad things in people’s pasts coming back to haunt them. I thought that was kind of weird, so I asked her what she meant by that. All she said was, ‘There’s always payback, Petra. The truth always comes out.’”
“Huh,” Summer said. So Angelica believed in karma, too. Was she the one who’d done something bad, or some other person? Either way, Petra’s info didn’t seem like it would help much for the case. Too bad.
“Well, finally.”
Summer peeked out between her hands, which she’d already put up to her face to defend herself from Petra’s drippy spiking gel. Monique was standing next to the makeup chair, with an assistant hurriedly rolling up a dress rack behind her.
“I selected you for the honor of wearing my showstopper dress, but you were nowhere to be found, and now there’s no time for a proper fitting. All of you models are alike, no sense of time. But anyway, voilà.” Monique stepped aside like a game show hostess, revealing the hideous red dress Summer had seen hanging in the dressing room at her boutique.
No no no no. NO. She was not stepping out in front of half the world—and one cute detective in particular—in that disaster. The raggedy fur trim alone made her want to puke, and the crisscross pull-ties in the back, with…
Wait. No way. Was that a bow hanging down from the butt, or a tail?
“Um, I don’t think red is really my color,” Summer said, weakly. “I had a palette profile done once and that shade was, like, a total fail on me. The dress is so awesome, though. One of the other models would be really lucky to get to wear it.”
Behind her, Petra stifled a snort.
“Nonsense,” Monique said, in a brisk voice. “Everyone looks gorgeous in Hothouse Tomato. It just screams ‘holiday.’ But we’re saving this dress for the grand New Year’s collection finale. In the meantime, we’ll start you off with Christmas Casual.” She clapped her hands toward a young woman trying to hide behind another rack overloaded with ho ho—horrible holiday clothes of every kind. “Bonita, the pink sweater dress—the one with the darling silver bells.”
Summer squeezed her eyes shut, unable to look. But she couldn’t avoid hearing all of those little bells jingling like crazy as the assistant removed the outfit from the rack and headed toward her.
“There’s been a schedule change, Ms. Monique,” someone else said, coming up behind them. “The Christmas Fantasy collection goes first now. Something about the music queue. The other models are already dressed.”
“Well, this one will just have to wear whatever’s left over,” Monique said. “I certainly hope it fits.”
I’m totally doomed, Summer thought. But hey, what was an hour or two of humiliation compared to what had happened to poor Angelica? She could do this to solve a murder.
But she and Dorothy needed a break in the case soon. Somewhere out there—maybe even right here at the twinkle-lit Majesty Golf and Tennis Club—a killer was planning his or her next move.
And at this point, they had no idea who might be Victim Number Two.
Chapter Seventeen
The Majesty fashion show crowd was growing increasingly restless, waiting for the show to begin.
Dorothy sat on the edge of her velvet seat, fanning herself with the arty black-and-white program. She’d taken a quick glance through it first, but she hadn’t recognized the names of any of the famous designers. Except Roland Cho, of course.
When had she become so out of touch with fashion? she wondered. Or had she ever cared that much about it?
She’d always tried to look nice, of course. It was important to appear well put together, and she had to admit she’d enjoyed Harlan’s generous compliments over the years. Every now and then she’d splurged a bit on a fancy dress or shoes for extra-special occasions. She still did, thanks to Summer.
Some people were fascinated with clothes and accessories and such, though. Like Angelica Downs, for example. Perhaps it was in their genes. Dorothy stole a glance at a miserable-looking Frankie seated on the chair beside her, arms crossed.
Or perhaps not.
“When will the models come out, Madame Dorothy?” Juliette-Margot asked, from her perch on Dash’s lap, on the other side of Frankie. “Juliette-Margot is tired of waiting.”
“You and me both,” Dash said, without looking up from his phone. Fortunately, he’d been too polite to question why the grumpy older woman had squeezed in with them.
“I’m sure the show will start soon,” Dorothy assured Juliette-Margot. Goodness, she hoped so. It was nearly nine o’clock, and the enormous stage curtain hadn’t even rustled. “Just a little bit longer, I think.”
At least she didn’t have to worry about Frankie now. Well, not for the moment, at least. What were she and Summer going to do with her after the show? Turn her over to Hibiscus Glen?
After trying once again to get some answers from her for the case, of course. Dorothy had a feeling that might take a while.
“Yoo-hoo, Dorothy!” Gladys Rumway twisted around in her seat three rows up. “Isn’t this exciting? And hey, nice dress. A little peekaboo action with the legs, huh?”
Oh my. Dorothy’s face burned as several well-dressed and coiffed audience members turned to stare in her direction.
“The shorter hemline is on trend now for women d’un certain âge, Madame Gladys,” Juliette-Margot said. “You need to read the fashion magazines.”
Gladys’s thick eyebrows shot toward the ceiling, and several people around them tittered.
“Okay, that’s it.” Dash finally glanced up from his phone. “I don’t care what Grandmère says, she’s canceling that Vogue subscription.”
“So who’s this, Dorothy?” Undeterred, Gladys jerked her large chin toward Frankie. “A new resident from the Pointe?”
“None of your beeswax,” Frankie said, glaring.
Fortunately, the lights dimmed before Gladys had a chance to respond, and Martha Kirk, the Milano Women’s League president, appeared in a blue spotlight to the side of the stage.
Tonight Martha was tightly enveloped in an all-gold version of the silver dr
ess she’d worn for her emcee duties on Wednesday. The canned music tape slowly cut out, and a tuxedo-clad man seated at a baby grand piano played a few bars softly in the background as Martha bid everyone welcome to the Twenty-fourth Silver Belles Annual Holiday Fashion Show.
Feeling a bit of déjà vu, Dorothy hardly listened to Martha’s rather drawn out speech, which entailed an overview of the Majesty Golf and Tennis Club’s long, prestigious history, enthusiastic plugs for the various designers who had donated their time and creations, and the introduction of her very good friend, the founder of Silver Belles.
Ugh. Dorothy had finally managed to forget about the online dating service Summer had signed her up for as a cover to meet a lonely hearts suspect during their last investigation. She greatly preferred to think of the name “Silver Belles” in reference to the show’s holiday theme.
Finally, Martha exited the stage on the arm of the dapper pianist. To the accompaniment of unusually loud, driving taped music, the curtain quickly rose on a line of models in every imaginable—and unimaginable—type of holiday garb.
“Where is Summer?” Juliette-Margot said, craning her neck.
Dorothy had been wondering the same thing. “There she is,” she told the little girl, pointing. “Near the back, in the black cape.”
Summer, wearing high black boots, a considerable amount of black eyeliner and a startlingly hard expression, marched toward the audience with a group of tall, younger women modeling similar designs. They nearly ran over the models directly in front of them, who were rather unfortunately dressed in netted hoop skirts that gave them the appearance of floating cupcakes. Others were wrapped head-to-toe in red and white like human candy canes.
“A Christmas nightmare. Amazing.” Dash seemed as fascinated now as Juliette-Margot, who had bounced off her father’s knee to lean eagerly over the shoulders of the people in front of them.
“It’s high fashion,” Juliette-Margot said.
“It’s garbage.” Frankie’s outlook had clearly not improved. “My daughter never wore anything like that.”
Summer’s line strutted to the front, dropping their capes to reveal red leather merry widows with black belts and rhinestone buckles as they twirled and struck a pose.
Fashionably Late (The Ladies Smythe & Westin) Page 15