2 Death of a Supermodel

by Christine Demaio-Rice

  The Garmento Ghetto had been moderately crowded on Tuesday, when she’d been there for Sartorial’s show, and the volume had increased steadily for the three days following, culminating in a balls-out fashion blowout Friday night. The last show was the monster, as it led directly to parties, and there were no showroom meetings after. That had traditionally been Jeremy’s spot. But since he’d taken a season off after Gracie’s death, he’d lost his treasured place. He had bought the second to last spot, and the two before it, which pissed off any number of designers, and used the time to rebuild the runway.

  Barry Tilden had partnered on the change. On Seventh, that might have been seen as a sign of weakness, because if you weren’t cutting someone’s throat, you were a weakling, but surprisingly, it had strengthened both of them. They actually seemed to like each other, and as two designers with lifestyle brands, Barry having done it already and Jeremy striving for it, they developed a runway design they could sink their teeth into.

  They tore down the bandshell’s center runway and replaced it with a design that splayed out like petals on a daisy. The center was a lazy Susan that spun the models onto one of the petals as they came out from the back. Each petal was meant for a buying category. So a model would come out with a special bag or shoes, and the lazy Susan would stop on the petal with seats for accessory buyers and photographers for accessory trade magazines. If she also had on an outfit meant for sportswear, outerwear, makeup, or textile buyers, she would return to the center and get spun onto that petal.

  Easier said than done, of course. The choreography was positively mathematical. Jeremy and Barry had spent weeks planning how it would work. Even though their shows weren’t combined, they found their efforts were more valuable when they worked together.

  Ruby drifted over to a klatch of garmentos she wanted to stroke. Laura beelined past the construction teams hastily building Jeremy and Barry’s stage, to the admin tent, which was half information desk meant to turn tourists away, and half actual administration. The MAAB desk was hidden way in the back.

  She walked in as if she owned the place, which if she counted the dues she paid to the CFDA, plus her taxes, she kind of did. “What do you mean I can’t come in?” she asked the guard at the front.

  He wore a tight T-shirt and sprayed on black jeans. He looked at his clipboard, then held it up for her to see. “Right there.” He cracked gum when he spoke, leaning on one foot as if he were planting bulbs and his boots were better than shovels. “It says, and I quote, ‘Admin tent for show day: patrons only.’ So, no tickee. No shirtee. Having a show Tuesday means you can’t come in on Friday. Do you want the MAAB office number? It’s right on 40th Street. They’ll be back on Monday.”

  “Penelope said I should come.” Lying was bound to go poorly, and it did.

  “Did she write you a yellow ticket?”

  “She must have forgotten.”

  “Call her and get one, and I can let you in.”

  Laura scanned the crowd for her sister and found her outside the biggest tent for the Ricardo Ofenhelb show. She stood with a fashion writer from Bazaar, the editorial director of Black Book, a reviewer from Apparel News, and a klatch of buyers from the juggernaut of Federated. They were laughing at something the VP of sales from Brandywine Girl said.

  That was why she needed Ruby, and why she resented her. That was why taking Debbie’s order seemed so right and so wrong. Because doing that sort of business meant Ruby’s skills were unnecessary, but cultivating as a business required exactly what Ruby had that Laura lacked.

  “Can you stop?” Laura whispered. “I just got turned away at the admin tent and don’t want to stand outside by myself like a loser.”

  Ruby said quick goodbyes.

  Stu showed up in front of the admin tent soon after. Laura thought that by the time she saw him, she’d at least know where Penelope was sitting for the next show, but she had nothing, and she felt crummy about that until she got a look at him. He wore his grey mis-buttoned cardigan, but it didn’t look intentional. It looked like the product of a disheveled mind.

  “You okay?” Laura asked. “They didn’t give you a hard time in jail or anything, did they?” He waved the notion away, but didn’t say anything. “What? It’s something.”

  He gave her a slight shrug. It wasn’t like him to avoid telling her anything, even if he were mad at her. So when he shrugged off a simple question, Laura worried.

  “Leave him alone,” Ruby said.

  “Tell me what you have since last night,” Stu said in a flat voice.

  She didn’t like it. Not one bit, and though she had let their romance slip through the cracks, she would not let their friendship. “No, you have to at least tell me the general area of what’s bothering you.”

  “Tofu,” he said, pronouncing it exactly the way it was spelled, and with relish, as though he wanted to insult.

  “She didn’t like you getting arrested?”

  “Not when I was out gallivanting with you, she didn’t.”

  Laura couldn’t tell if he was angry at Tofu or himself.

  Ruby, not content to sit in a mystery for too long, interjected, “You set her straight, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “and she went straight for the door. Anything else you want to choke out of me? Because you can see how much I want to talk about this.”

  It was out of character for Stu to behave that way. Typically, nothing was too painful for him to admit, and she was torn between being happy he was free of the catty bitch and angry at Tofu for treating him so shoddily. She also thought for a second that it might be the perfect time for her to slip in. He was free. Technically, she was free. Except for Jeremy. She knew she didn’t have it in her to juggle two men.

  She changed the subject. “So, why did you get arrested yesterday and not me?”

  “I told them I told you I had access to the office.”

  “And they believed that? Even Cangemi believed it?”

  “We believe what we already have in our heads. Isn’t that what you say?”

  “Did he tell you about my team of female Eastern European staffers, running around, doing my bidding?”

  While they dodged crowds and circled tents all over the Garmento Ghetto, she explained the immigration laundering at White Rose, the origins of the purple pills, the social strata at Marlene X, the eyedropper, and Bob’s exit from his overdesigned penthouse.

  “He’s right to leave,” Stu said. “Rolf, Sabine, he’s both. He’s wiggled out of at least four murders in his home country. Brutal, all of them.” He pointed at Laura and dropped his voice half an octave. “You need to stay away from him. I have never been so serious in my life.”

  “I get it.”

  “I wanted to tell you in person. The next time we meet this guy, you’re not pissing him off, and you’re running into a crowded place, and then you’re changing your name and moving out of state.”

  “Jesus, Stu.” She didn’t appreciate the drama, not when they had so much else going on, nor did she appreciate hearing the message again from yet another person who wanted her to sit and sew.

  As they made their way across the park to a food court, the schedule began, and the tent city that had been so full of bodies emptied like a crowded highway after a popular off ramp.

  They stopped at the tent marked “Café Couture” and ordered three four-dollar coffees.

  “Okay,” Stu said, “what I’m hearing is that Thomasina was given the poison sometime between when she saw Ruby in the morning, and when she got to the tent to do your show.”

  “Right,” Laura answered.

  “And what you’ve put together, so far, is that she left home and then what?”

  Since Ruby didn’t correct Thomasina’s point of exit, Laura decided not to either. “Marlene X, then the tents. Poisoned somewhere in there. She saw all her high-end buddies at Marlene X, and I think she was in the cab with Rolf.”

  “And from the cab to the dressing area? Something could
have happened then.”

  “Ruby walked her in; I saw them.”

  Ruby interjected, “I saw her outside the MAAB offices, and we walked back together.” Laura noticed her sister’s cheeks redden.

  “Right back all the way?” Laura asked.

  Her sister reddened further, and Laura realized it was because Stu was there. “No,” Ruby said, “we made a pit stop. Uhm, there’s this corner behind the generator for the makeup tent, and ah, we…”

  Stu’s face was blank. Either he had no idea or he had on his journalist face. Laura wanted to fill him in, without awkwardness, and knew she’d failed in her mission before the words even left her lips. “You guys had a make out session or something?”

  “Little bit,” Ruby said into her cup.

  “Wow,” Stu said with his face still emotionless. “Big wows.”

  Ruby tightened like a drum. “ShutupStuIhateyou!”

  He leaned back. “No, come on. She was hot. Nice going.”

  “Stu! Are you baiting her on purpose?”

  He looked incredulous. “She was not hot? Am I supposed to say that? Or like I should pretend it’s not a big deal?”

  Ruby balled up a napkin and threw it at him. “I can see your freaking imagination. Stop it.”

  Stu turned to Laura, completely unflustered, and spoke as if delivering the weather report. “I had the most incredible sex with Jeremy St. James last night.”

  She spit out her coffee. Ruby cried out an exclamation that was lost in the white noise of the wind.

  “Wipe the pictures from your mind, the two of you.” He leaned back and sipped his coffee. “Pots and kettles, ladies. All black, all the time.”

  Ruby snapped a used WWD from an adjacent table, as if in a huff.

  Laura turned to Stu. “We need to find Penelope. I want to return the dropper and see what she says, but she could be anywhere here. I think Ruby should ask around.”

  “You’re going to openly accuse her of poisoning Thomasina Wente?”

  “Maybe it was an accident. I don’t know.”

  “You’re—”

  Ruby interrupted by reading, “‘A kiss-off to the overtly commercial dreck meant to attract Target business that designers are trotting down the runway this season, Sartorial Sandwich is refreshing, spirited, wholly sophisticated, and just the right side of wearable.’ And look! Your origami failure!”

  Laura snapped the paper from Ruby. Sidewinder’s review, which Ruby had read in its entirety, was jammed in the side with a picture of the trapezoid dress. “This is excellent!” She pulled out the full weight of her sarcasm skills, to say cheerfully and loudly, “Too bad we don’t have a company anymore!”

  “We’re getting this backer tomorrow.” Ruby snatched at the paper, but Laura held it away with her one good hand. “He’s mine. Or she. Whatever.”

  “Gonna be hard to accuse her of murder after a review like that,” Stu said, which was exactly what Laura was thinking as she stared at her own little rectangle on page seven.

  Ruby cried, “We earned that review.”

  As if somewhere there was a cue, or a bell, people started drifting out of the tents and making their way to the coffee tent and the bathroom. They gathered in clusters and klatches, and laughed or spoke in hushed voices, gossiping and kvetching, sometimes comparing notes about what would sell and what was going to be on clearance a month after delivery.

  Ruby snapped her paper shut. “Barry’s on after this. You going to see the lazy Susan?”

  “I’ll just go to Jeremy’s. There’s like half an hour between, so we have an hour and some.”

  “Okay,” Ruby said. “It’s fifteen minutes until the next session. I’ll be back before Barry even starts.” She took off into the crowd, all smiles and pleasantness, with sunshine and rainbows coming right out of her ass.

  CHAPTER 24.

  Laura sat across from Stu, hogging a table when there were people more important and entitled than them waiting to sit. She glanced at him, he glanced back, and they moved their chairs from the coveted table, which was descended upon and covered with papers and phones before they’d even settled the chairs three feet away.

  “Maybe you should take the dropper to someone who can detect what’s in there,” Stu said.

  “It’s vitamin D. I’m sure she’s not poisoning someone every day.”

  “Do you ever think how crazy you have to be to kill someone? How many times a day do you want to commit murder, or how many times a month? And think about how few people actually do it. We’re actually doing all right, as a species.”

  She had a hundred comments, all involving a question about his actual identity, because the man sitting next to her, saying that, was not the Stu she knew. Stu complained about horrible injustice and accused CEOs and media magnates of murder by proxy.

  The crowd thinned again as the next show began, and they knew Penelope would be at Jeremy’s in half an hour, but there was still no sign of Ruby. Laura’s phone blooped. Chase’s top ten pictures came in. Even though it was pointless and she’d have to cancel the editorial in Black Book, she wanted to see how the shots from the rooftop looked.

  “Should we go look for her?” Stu asked.

  “Why?” She shook her phone as if that would get the pictures to load faster.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she’s chasing around a murderer?”

  “What’s Sidewinder going to do? Drag her behind a tent and poison her?”

  “Don’t forget Rolf. I don’t think he’s in custody for that girl behind the strip mall.”

  The pictures loaded. She didn’t look at them because Ruby ran out from between two tents, her heels digging in the grass and forcing her to tiptoes, which would have been funny if her expression hadn’t been so serious. Laura and Stu stood up and grabbed their bags and jackets.

  “What?” Laura cried.

  “Penelope’s gone,” Ruby panted, chest heaving from the run. “No one knows where she is. She wasn’t at the Champagne & Trash show, and now everyone’s talking about it.” She jerked her thumb toward the bandshell. “Jeremy’s seating now, and her chair’s empty.”

  Laura pursed her lips and thought for a minute.

  “What’s on your mind?” Stu asked.

  “If she killed Thomasina for abetting a prostitution ring, don’t you think she might go after someone feeding models diet pills? Like Roquelle Rik?”

  “You’re grasping,” Stu said.

  “You didn’t hear the story she told.”

  Ruby scraped the dirt off her shoes. “I saw Roquelle going into Jeremy’s show. Everyone’s there.”

  “We can get in through the back,” Laura said. “He’ll let me in. Come on.”

  It wasn’t a far walk, especially since the crowds were all seated. The back entrance to the bandshell structure was around a corner and past a fence. She walked with purpose until she heard a siren, then saw flashing lights.

  Laura turned and saw a trail of police cars speeding from road to grass to asphalt and stopping at the bandshell. In the other direction, an unmarked car parked in front of them.

  Ruby grabbed her hand. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing!”

  Car doors opened and were left that way as cops armed to the teeth got out and ran into the big tent, fanning out in a formation only they could see. Cangemi exited another unmarked car and ran toward them. She waved, but his intensity made her feel ridiculous.

  “You!” he shouted, pointing at her. “Get down!”

  She froze, but Stu pulled her and Ruby down to crouch on the grass. When Cangemi reached them, he grabbed Stu and Laura by the collars and pulled them into a black and white car.

  “What the heck?” she shouted as he stuffed Ruby in after her.

  “Stay here. Just sit and stay. Don’t move.”

  Not wanting to allow Cangemi to tell her the killer without getting in the first shot, she yelled, “It was Penelope!”

  “If Penelope had three women tied to a broken b
oiler in Washington Heights, I’m about to get fired.”

  “Rolf,” Stu said.

  “We think he’s after Ivanah Schmiller, so if you see her, give a shout.” Cangemi ran to the bandshell with the rest of the cops, jacket vents flying behind him like a comic book hero.

  Stu sat sideways on the seat, feet dangling outside. Ruby looked out the window and sighed. Laura, who felt trapped and infantilized by everyone around her, took out her phone to look at Chase’s selects. Ruby leaned over to see.

  “Oooh, that’s incredible,” she said when Laura flipped to Rowena in the sewn-shut dress, arms raised, looking for all the world as though she were about to drop from a rooftop into Manhattan. “Wait, I can see the wires.”

  “They’re not retouched yet.”

  Laura flipped to the next one: Rowena in the trapezoid failure, jumping on the roof’s shed. She looked as though she was flying. It was unbelievable. Breathtaking.

  The police shouted and ran, and more sirens came from some unidentified part of the park. Laura flipped to the next picture, trying not to catalog all the ways she might have pissed off Rolf, and came to a close up of Rowena’s face. She was monstrous, powerful, even without retouching. She was a beauty who could eat up an audience and spit out the bones.

  When Laura zoomed in, she saw a little flaw that seemed unusual. Then she knew that the subtext of Rowena’s gaze was the force of an unstoppable ambition because the flaw was not just a flaw. It was a little scratch on the eyeball, made in the death throes of someone who had stood in her way.

  She explained the scenario to Ruby and Stu. She related her conversations with Roscoe Knutt, when he had told her of the little bit of membrane under Thomasina’s fingernail. She told them how Rowena had inserted herself in the rooftop shoot almost immediately, and that Roquelle was at the corner table at Marlene X that morning. Rowena had gotten herself into the Hudson gown as if she knew she had the same measurements as Thomasina, and she had left the shoes in the bathroom because her feet were a size too big.

  “I told Penelope I thought Rowena was too young,” Laura said. “I was just making conversation. And now we can’t find her, so I’m wondering, and I’m only wondering…”