***
I’d promised Peri I would email her the menu for the dessert stations as soon as I received it from the caterer, but I decided to deliver it in person instead. This would provide good cover for checking things out at KGE.
I parked my Honda in a lot on Magnolia Boulevard and headed for the building. Across the street, Starbucks called to me. Really. It’s like there’s a psychic connection, or something. But I’d called Peri on the drive over. She was expecting me and I didn’t want to keep her waiting, so I kept walking.
I can make the hard decisions when I have to.
Besides, I could always get a frappie on my way out.
In the lobby, the old-guy security guard spotted me immediately, frowned, and reached for the phone on his console.
Oh my God. Had the homicide detectives told him to report my presence in the building? Was I under surveillance?
Not a great feeling.
I hurried up the stairs.
As I approached the KGE office I heard a voice drifting into the deserted hallway. Through the smoked glass panel, I spotted Katrina standing in the lobby.
My first instinct was to whip around and hide out in the ladies room until she left, and I would have done that but I spotted the security guard at the top of the staircase, eyeing me. Oh my God, he’d actually followed me.
Damn. Leaving now would make me look hugely suspicious. I pushed through the door.
Misty stood at attention behind her reception desk, and two models clutching their KGE backpacks sat up straight in their chairs. Katrina had planted herself in the middle of the lobby and was talking on her cell phone.
“Libby? Libby? Libby, where are you?” she said into her phone. “Where are you? Libby? Libby, which aisle are you on?”
Nobody in the lobby moved or spoke. Everyone stared like passersby at a train wreck.
“Libby? Libby, what are you seeing? Tell me what you’re seeing.”
Today Katrina had on what I could only think was a hippie retro style, recalling the you-call-that-fashion Haight-Ashbury look—elephant-leg jeans, a peasant blouse, and moccasins.
Really, if you’re old enough to have worn it the first time around, it’s best to stay away.
“Libby? Libby, are they the brown rice tortillas, or the corn tortillas?” Katrina asked. “Now look closely, Libby. Are they the handmade, or are they original?”
I wasn’t sure why we’d all been subjected to Katrina’s phone call but here we were, frozen in a Libby-goes-shopping tableau.
“Libby? Libby? Read the back, Libby. Look at the ingredients. Are you reading the ingredients, Libby?”
It was as if Katrina had her own gravitational pull that nobody could escape.
“And they’re gluten free? You’re sure? You looked? And they’re brown rice? Handmade? Libby, did you look?”
There isn’t a dollar figure high enough to get me to take Libby’s job.
“All right, Libby. If you’re sure you’ve got the right thing. Are you sure, Libby? Okay. Come back to the office, Libby.”
Katrina ended the call, releasing all of us from the weird tractor beam holding us in place. Fearing Katrina would make another call, I darted past the reception desk and down the hall to Peri’s office.
She sat behind her desk looking chic and pulled together. I, on the other hand, must have looked a little shell-shocked because she said, “Katrina?”
“Yeah,” I said, and dropped into the chair in front of her desk. “How can Libby stand to work for her?”
“Their relationship is bizarre,” Peri said. “Libby used to model for KGE.”
Libby had the figure and face for modeling so it surprised me that she’d stepped down to a personal assistant job when modeling paid so much better.
Sensing major gossip was in play, I asked, “Why the change? What happened?”
Peri shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly. I stay out of Katrina’s business, and I don’t know Libby well enough to ask.”
Okay, that was disappointing. Still, I wasn’t giving up so easily.
“Maybe I should mention a job change to Libby,” I said.
“Don’t waste your breath,” Peri told me. She gestured to the L.A. Affairs portfolio I’d brought with me. “Is that the menu for the dessert stations?”
Huh. Somebody who worked in an office but didn’t want to engage in office gossip? Weird.
I presented her with the menu and she looked it over. The caterer, one of my regulars, had done a bang-up job of putting together a wide selection of cookies, pastries, and cupcakes.
“Maybe some fruit?” Peri suggested.
Fruit? At a dessert station? Had I somehow phased into an alternate, less-chocolate-is-more universe?
Then I realized Peri was right. There was nothing like the presence of designer fashions and does-she-look-better-than-me concerns to make a woman up her fashion game, resurrect her New Year’s resolution, and want to eat better and lose weight.
“Yes, I already made a note about adding fruit,” I said.
It was a total lie, but so what?
Then, just to give my event planner extraordinaire reputation a bump, I added, “And some sugar-free items, of course.”
I almost gagged when I said that.
“Great idea,” Peri said and passed the menu back to me.
“So,” I said, tucking it away and trying to sound casual. “How’s everybody doing here? You know, after what happened yesterday?”
“That was really awful, wasn’t it, Rayna falling like that,” Peri said.
I took that to mean word hadn’t spread through KGE that Rayna had been murdered—not yet, anyway.
“I didn’t know Rayna very well,” Peri said. “I handle the business end of things and do the client billing, along with anything else that gets dumped on my desk. I don’t have much contact with the models unless there’s a problem collecting their fee.”
The inner workings of KGE were a mystery to me, but I figured it was like most every other type of agency and they got a cut of whatever money their employees brought in.
“Had Rayna worked here long?” I asked.
“About a year or so, I think,” Peri said. “She was one of our fit models.”
When most people heard the term “fit model” they assumed it had something to do with working out, the gym, or some kind of exercise, which would seem odd given that Rayna was a plus-size girl.
Actually, a fit model was used by fashion designers and clothing manufacturers to check the fit of their designs on a real person, sort of like a living mannequin. They required very specific body types and measurements.
But the models didn’t just wear the garments so the designer could check the fit. They gave input on the feel of the garment’s fabric, how it moved, whether or not it was comfortable, all of which could make or break a fashion line.
It was a cool job to have—plus it paid a fortune, over a hundred bucks an hour. It had to, given that the models had to always maintain exacting measurements and stand for hours in different heel-heights while they were chalked, pinned, and talked about by a design team as if they were, in fact, a mannequin. A designer’s entire fashion line was based on that model’s specs. If she gained or lost even a fraction of an inch, it could completely throw off the fit of the garments, wreak havoc at the factory, and add additional costs.
“So you’re short a model now,” I said.
“We’re short a number of people.” Peri gestured to a stack of file folders on the corner of her desk. “IT techs, an admin assistant. We lost one of our two agents, so now Chrissie is handling the bookings for all of our models. And, of course, we need models.”
“Katrina must be scrambling to hire replacements,” I said.
Peri gave me a sour smile. “You’d think.”
“I’m guessing the models are the hardest to find,” I said.
“Plus-size girls are almost impossible to find. There are only a few working in all of L.A. Most are represented
by an agency. A few are independent,” Peri said.
I could see where going the independent route could be desirable, since the model could set her own fee and not worry about an agency’s commission taking a bite out of her income.
“Actually, we’re down two plus-size models now,” Peri said. “Colleen was our go-to girl. She had a dozen clients and usually worked forty hours per week.”
Wow, KGE must have been making major bucks off of Colleen.
“A model doesn’t work for one specific designer?” I asked.
“Most of the models work for lots of different designers. You know, an hour here, two hours there, always traveling from place to place for a fitting,” Peri said. “I guess Colleen had enough of dealing with the traffic and rushing to keep her appointments so she took a full-time job fitting for a designer in El Segundo.”
Peri didn’t say so but I knew that meant KGE had lost the commission Colleen brought in—unless, of course, KGE had another plus-size model that the designers felt could replace Colleen.
“What happened to her clients?” I asked. “Did she just leave everybody hanging?”
“That’s the other sad part about Rayna falling down the stairs,” Peri said. “Colleen had almost all of the plus-size jobs locked up, so Rayna had been getting just a few hours of work every month. But with Colleen out of the way Rayna could have picked up some, or maybe all, of her clients.”
Rayna would have jumped from a few hours a month to thirty or forty per week? At a hundred-plus per hour? Wow, that would have been a major, life changing, I’m-hitting-the-mall increase.
“So who’ll get those designers now?” I asked.
“Probably Ivy. She’s our other plus-size. Her measurements were close to Colleen’s. Rayna had almost identical measurements but with her gone, the designers will have to do minimal adjustments to their patterns and make-do with Ivy,” Peri said. “At least the work won’t be going to a different agency.”
I knew what she really meant was that the model’s commission wouldn’t be going to another agency. Not that I blamed her, of course. Businesses, especially small ones, needed every dime they could get to stay afloat. KGE didn’t have that problem, but there was no reason to let income slip away.
“Ivy must feel kind of bad that she’s getting all the work just because Rayna died,” I said.
“I doubt it,” Peri told me. “All the fit models usually get along—not her and Rayna. Ivy is very competitive. They were always competing for whatever bookings Colleen couldn’t handle.”
My senses jumped to high alert.
“Ivy will have it made now, with Rayna out of the picture,” Peri said.
“Good for Ivy,” I said.
But what I was really thinking was, good for me. I’d found my first murder suspect.
Chapter 5
I left the KGE office—thankfully, Katrina was nowhere in sight—and headed for the staircase at the front of the building. Halfway there, I stopped.
The security guard was probably in the lobby—hopefully he was providing some actual security now, considering somebody had gotten murdered on his watch—and I wasn’t all that anxious to subject myself to his I-know-you-did-it stare. I decided this was a good time to check out the info I’d just received from Peri about Ivy and Rayna competing for the clients who’d just become available, thanks to Colleen’s departure from KGE.
Money, of course, was one of the top motives for murder. Major bucks were in play. I didn’t like thinking Ivy had resorted to killing someone, but greed did crazy things to people.
I pulled out my cell phone and checked the KGE website. I wanted to get a look at Ivy, my new murder suspect, so I clicked on the fit models tab. The images of three girls, all dressed in black leggings and tank tops, appeared along with their first names and statistics.
One of them was Rayna. It made me kind of sad seeing her like this, smiling, posing, showing off her figure, a look of happiness on her face hinting that she knew better things were coming her way. Now she was dead—and not just dead, murdered.
It irked me that KGE’s IT team didn’t have their stuff together enough to have already taken down her photo. Then I saw that Colleen’s picture was still on their site, too. What were those guys doing, playing Call of Duty all day? Yeah, okay, Peri had told me the agency was short on IT techs, but still.
Maybe Katrina should pay more attention to this kind of thing, and less to the hunt for handmade, gluten-free, brown rice tortillas.
Libby would likely appreciate the break.
The other model pictured on the site was Ivy. She looked to be around my age, maybe a couple of years older, and had long blonde hair.
Then it hit me—I’d seen her before. On the day of Rayna’s murder, I’d seen Ivy seated in the KGE lobby when I’d arrived for my meeting with Peri.
Then something else hit me—she wasn’t there when I left.
Oh my God. Was I looking at a murderer?
In my head, a vision appeared of Rayna running into Ivy at the top of the staircase, an argument breaking out over which of them would take over Colleen’s clients, an argument that escalated into a physical altercation that sent Rayna tumbling to her death.
Maybe it had been an accident. Maybe it hadn’t. But I could see it happening.
All I needed was some evidence.
I still wasn’t up for dealing with the security guard down on the first floor, so I headed for the steps at the rear of the building. As I passed the staircase where Rayna had died—which kind of creeped me out—Libby came rushing up the steps.
She had on a black and white checked skirt and a white sweater that—yikes!—I’d seen at Holt’s, and she carried a department-store-brand shoulder bag and a backpack with the KGE logo on the front. A few strands of hair had come loose from her bun. She seemed slightly out of breath as she rushed past me.
“Libby?” I called.
She whipped around and spotted me.
“Oh, yeah, Haley. Hi,” she said, and started walking away.
Libby always seemed slightly frazzled—I suppose anyone would who had to deal with Katrina all the time.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Libby didn’t look any worse now than at the other times I’d seen her. But I hoped she could give me some intel on what was going on with Rayna and Ivy, and feigning concern—yes, I know, it wasn’t very nice of me but oh well—seemed like a good way to get the spill-your-guts ball rolling.
Libby turned back. “Yeah, sure, I’m fine.”
“I thought maybe you were upset about being here,” I said, gesturing to the staircase. “You know, after what happened to Rayna yesterday.”
“Oh.”
Libby eyed the stairs, then looked at me and straightened her shoulders, pulling herself together, it seemed.
“We always use this staircase,” she said. “The employee parking is downstairs, just outside the door.”
I hadn’t realized that. It meant that, if what I suspected was true, Ivy could have slipped in and out of the building without the security guard at the front desk knowing she was on the premises.
Libby walked a little closer. “Yes. Yes, of course what happened is upsetting. I’m very upset. It’s terrible. Terrible.”
“Did you know Rayna well?” I asked.
“I know all the models … kind of,” Libby said. “They come into the office to drop off their vouchers.”
“Vouchers?”
“You know, the paperwork the designers sign when they finish a fitting that tells how many hours they worked,” Libby said. “Katrina has to review them before they go to Peri for billing. The models come in to pick up their paychecks, too, to save the mailing time.”
“I guess everybody at the agency is pretty shaken up by what happened to Rayna,” I said.
“I guess.” Libby glanced down the hall. “I’ve got to go.”
She was definitely not working with me, which was kind of annoying, so I tried another tactic.
/>
“Listen, I know everybody here is busy, but Rayna’s photo is still on the agency’s website,” I said. “You might want to make sure it’s taken down.”
Libby gasped and twisted her fingers together. “Oh my God, Katrina doesn’t know, does she?”
“I didn’t tell her,” I said.
“Oh. Okay. Well, thanks.”
I waited, expecting Libby to bring forth some juicy piece of office gossip in exchange for the helpful little tidbit of info I’d just given her—something that I could twist into evidence in my murder investigation, of course—but she didn’t say anything.
I hate it when that happens.
Either Libby really didn’t have any useful information about the rivalry that existed between Rayna and Ivy, or she just wasn’t picking up on my oh-so-subtle hints. I decided to move on.
“See you later,” I said, and headed down the hallway.
“Haley?”
I turned back. Libby hesitated a few seconds, then walked over.
“There’s a rumor going around,” she said.
Okay, now we were rolling.
“Somebody said that maybe Rayna’s fall wasn’t an accident,” Libby said.
Oh, crap. Not exactly what I needed.
“Where did you hear that?” I asked.
“Some of the girls were talking about it in the office,” Libby said. She paused, glanced around, then leaned in and said, “I think maybe something was going on with Rayna.”
My major-gossip-maybe-a-major-clue invisible antenna sprang up.
“Rayna had gotten mixed up in a problem … a big problem … with one of her clients,” Libby said.
My brain jumped from investigative-mode to intrigued-mode.
“What kind of problem?” I asked.
Libby’s finger twisting increased. “The fit models are with the designers for hours at a time, usually several days a week. They see and hear what’s going on there. You know, the internal problems, the personnel issues.”
Libby paused.
I hate it when somebody pauses right when they get to the good part.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Well, Rayna witnessed some kind of abuse going on. There was a big investigation, a really big investigation, and … and now there’s a lawsuit. She was supposed to testify.”
Backpacks and Betrayals (A Haley Randolph Mystery) Page 4