A Dress to Die For

by Christine Demaio-Rice

  “Uncle Graham’s not going to let you plead dementia. Give me a break.”

  Mom held up a finger. “Happens to the best of us.” On that, she spun on her heel and walked away.

  It was getting late already. Shadows lengthened across the street, and the air got just a hair snappier. “Mom, no!” Laura chased her, but the older woman kept a brisk pace east, to the train station, head cocked a little downward, hands balled into fists. Laura got in front of her and walked backward. “Do not go to the Iroquois. Do not, do not, do not.”

  Mom stopped. “The entourage stayed there twenty years ago. Did I tell you that?”

  “Yes, you did. You’re scaring the living daylights out of me. Did I tell you that?”

  “Too bad.”

  Laura had moved out when she turned eighteen, and while she packed up the contents of her closet, Mom came in and had a frank discussion with her about what it meant to be on her own, how she had to keep up with her bills, use birth control, eat right, and clean the house. When Laura had asked what her problem was, because, of course, all of that was obvious, Mom said, “You scare me sometimes.”

  And Laura had replied, “Too bad.”

  What she’d wanted Mom to do was to go away and leave her alone. Which Mom did, and Laura had missed her rent twice and a credit card payment for long enough to rack up a serious fee problem that had taken years to pay down. But the stakes seemed lower, because all that was gone, while the issue of Mom running uptown to stalk a tenant whose building manager had already threatened an order of protection seemed more urgent, more immediate, and more life-threatening.

  “I’ll go,” Laura said.

  “I thought you had seven businesses to run?”

  “You going to tell me the apartment number or what?”

  CHAPTER 8

  Laura couldn’t say much about the Iroquois that hadn’t been said by wittier and more erudite folks. It was the best building in Manhattan, period. That was less a matter of opinion than accepted as fact. The building took up one square block at 86th Street, including the entire square between Broadway and West End—twelve stories of prewar stone and leaded-glass glory, courtyard in the center, glorious rococo finishing throughout the three-story entrance, twelve-foot ceilings, average apartment size of two thousand square feet. One could go on and on and never touch the fact that half the monster was rent controlled, while the other half was selling as condos for three thousand dollars a square foot or renting at fifteen dollars a month. One might hail it as economically diverse, or one might cry about the injustice of your neighbor paying ten percent of your rent.

  What Laura realized as she got off the Westside train was that she couldn’t walk in the front door. That always seemed to occur to her too late. She walked past the courtyard entrance on Broadway, around 86th, past the second courtyard entrance on West End, then down 87th Street where the first pore appeared—a parking lot. The other pore was the pizza joint on Broadway, where she could feign stupidity and get lost on the way to the bathroom, hopefully finding some way into the residential part of the building through the kitchen or whatever. Both would let her into the correct part of the building. She flipped a coin: parking lot.

  She’d left Mom at the Herald Square station, with promises to do everything she could to speak to the person in apartment 7Da. If Laura failed, Mom promised to do it herself, whether she got arrested or not. Her mother’s enthusiasm could be compared to that of a pit bull at an intruder’s leg, and Laura was convinced that Mom was trying to make up for some forgotten or neglected task of twenty years ago.

  So failure was not an option. She had to report findings, or lack thereof, to Mom and get back to work. It already looked as though she was going to have to cancel her nightly conference call with Jeremy, and if that wouldn’t get his antennae up after her report about Barry’s offer, she didn’t know what would.

  She walked under the Park sign, following the car ramp. She caught the eye of the valet and smiled, jingling her keys at him. There wasn’t a car key on it. She didn’t even have a license, but he was too far away to discern key from key and waved at her.

  Keeping to the outer walls, she spotted a door. Finding it locked, she simply waited for someone who lived there to come through, which happened within a few minutes. The carpet was mustard and the lighting warm. She went up the elevator that opened to a hall much like the one she left. The walls were painted the creamiest cream from the ceilings to the six-inch-high moldings to the paneled wainscoting. She walked as if she knew where she was going.

  She stopped in front of 7Da for a second, then knocked. And waited. And nothing happened. She knocked again, then checked her watch—6:40, twenty minutes to Jeremy. She was never going to make it. Maybe she could come back after the call because Mom wasn’t going to wait another twelve hours before putting herself into the sights of a cranky cop who wouldn’t want to play fashion police. She walked back down the hall, but got lost, backtracked, made a wrong left, then another left, and wound up in front of 7Ca. Somehow, she’d gone around the corner to the Broadway side. All the doors looked the same, and all the hallways were clones of one another.

  She heard something bounce on the carpet, and a platoon of clementine oranges attacked her feet, surrendering when they hit the soles of her shoes.

  “Oh, dear,” came a voice from down the hall. A woman of about Mom’s age stood at the corner of the hall with a tipped Cuties box in her hand, which must have been the source of the clementine attack, and cans of tomato paste at her feet. Two more bags were in her other hand, and though they weren’t broken, they did look heavy. Laura picked up as many Cuties as she could.

  “Why, thank you.” The woman’s brown eyes were lively and bright, big round chocolate cookies.

  “No problem. I was wondering… I’m trying to get out, and all the exit signs just turned me all around.” She snapped up some cans and as many little Cuties as she could, trying to keep them from rolling too far down the hall.

  “Of course. Right down this hall, left. Door at the end of the hall.” She opened 7Ca into what would have been a lovely apartment if it weren’t so filled with crap. “Do you think you can help me into the kitchen?”

  “Sure,” Laura said, entering the apartment.

  Boxes were piled everywhere, cardboard crumpling and marker streaking down the corrugated sides. Some of them looked as though they had been out in the rain. The floor, or what Laura could see of it, looked like a herringbone-patterned hardwood shined to the point of reflectiveness. The windows were covered with white gauze. The entire place looked as if it had just been occupied recently and the tenant had never unpacked.

  “This side was redone by the real estate agent,” Cutie Lady said. “I hate the drapes. What do you think?”

  “They’re a little generic.”

  Cutie Lady smiled warmly. “Good way to put it. Come.”

  They went through a bedroom and an odd little hallway with a wide-open closet that had men’s suits spilling out of it. She was led through rooms and halls until they wound up in the kitchen. It hadn’t been modernized since the eighties and was done in mauve, grey, and pale turquoise.

  “This is a great apartment,” Laura said.

  “Indeed. This side hasn’t been renovated, as you can see.”

  “It’s very Miami Vice.”

  “Oh, you’re funny. My name is Jobeth Fialla, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Laura Carnegie. No relation.” She shook Jobeth’s hand between unloading Cuties and cans of tomato paste.

  “You know, you can get out on this side. It’s a combo. This apartment is combined with the next. So the maid’s stairwell will lead you right where you want to go.”

  “This side wouldn’t happen to be 7Da?”

  “Yes, it is, as a matter of fact.”

  “Ah. Well.” She was suddenly struck by how presumptuous it would be to ask the woman, who had possibly donated a dress anonymously through Bernard Nestor, why she
had done it, how she knew the princess, and if she was aware that the world’s most famous gown had been switched with an icky fake. The cops had undoubtedly already asked Jobeth a bunch of questions, and there Laura was with the same questions, but no badge.

  Laura glanced at the clock—6:50. Jeremy was at the conference screen in his hotel room on a Saturday morning in China, popping handfuls of pills and waiting for her. Again. “May I use your restroom?”

  “Out here and to the right.”

  “Thanks.”

  Laura sat on the bowl and texted.

  —Something came up. Not at the office—

  —Ok, call me later—

  And that was it. He was so easy, almost as if he didn’t care whether he spoke to her or not. She didn’t know if her insecurity was what led her to believe she was an optional appointment, or if despite everything he did and said, she really didn’t matter to him. Laura flushed the toilet in case the woman was listening and headed back to the kitchen.

  Jobeth was putting away the Cuties. “Should I walk you out?”

  “Can I ask you something first? And with the understanding that you can throw me out any time? Because I don’t expect you to care one way or the other what I have to say, but maybe I’m wrong, and there’s a part of you that does care, a little.”

  “That sure is an interesting way to start, dear. You ever try that one for a pick-up line?”

  “I’m not smooth enough to make it work.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. Can I make you some tea? I have some cinnamon spice stuff. Very nice for Christmas. Go sit.” She pointed at a little Formica table with chrome legs.

  Laura feared she’d gotten trapped in an apartment with a lonely older lady who had nothing to do with the missing gown. Mom wouldn’t wait much longer, and Jeremy would forget her somewhere in China just as she was starting to remember him.

  “So what do you have to ask me with such an opening?” Jobeth asked. She was quite tall, having no problem reaching from the stove to the cabinet on the other side of the galley kitchen.

  “Well, I don’t know if you know, but there’s been a woman around the building asking for you.”

  “For me?”

  “For the person who loaned the Brunico Saffron Gown to the Met.” The woman let that hang there long enough for Laura to have to fill the space in the conversation. “Which I’m not saying you are, but my mom did some deductive reasoning that I’m not going to pretend I can follow that led her to think the owner of the dress lives in apartment 7Da.”

  “The staff here is very secretive. Your mother must be a very persuasive person.”

  “She’s very something,” Laura said. “So is it your dress?”

  The teapot tooted. Jobeth turned down the heat and paused, staring at the steam blowing out the spout. “I have a pair of the princess’s shoes, too. Do you want to see them?”

  “God, yes.”

  Jobeth ran out on tiptoes, as if she couldn’t wait to show off those shoes.

  Laura liked her despite having just met her. She couldn’t help it and didn’t understand it, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to deliver any bad news or get Jobeth into trouble.

  The shoes were in a box that looked like any shoebox, except for the fact that it was brown leather with white stitching. Jose Inuego. They had to be worth over two thousand dollars new. A vintage pair would actually be worth more. Jobeth slid off the top. Linen tissue pleated over itself and collapsed around a pair of supple brown calfskin shoes with four-inch heels tapered at the bottom into a deadly spike.

  “They’re just perfect,” Laura said.

  “They’re too small for me. You want to try them on?”

  “Can I run around the block in them?”

  Jobeth looked up at Laura and winked. “You break a heel, and I’m suing.”

  Laura slipped on the shoes. “Oh, they feel like they were meant for my feet.” She stood. She felt a hundred feet tall, as if she could run a marathon and spike a volleyball. She turned her feet up and looked at them, adorable with the skinny jeans and probably just about everything she owned or would ever own in the future. Nice fantasy. She pulled them off and put them back in the box.

  “My mother worked on that dress,” Laura said. “When it went up at the Met, she got a little obsessed. I think it was from a better time in her life, so it set her off a little.”

  Jobeth nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Can you tell me how you got it? I think it would mean the world to her if she knew what happened to it after it left her hands.”

  Jobeth poured tea. “I could. But you have to promise me one thing.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t send your mother up here. I’m sure she’s a lovely woman, but I don’t want to talk to too many people. Would that be all right? And no phone calls.”

  “Sure.”

  Jobeth took a sip of her tea. “The princess was in New York twenty years ago, which is when the dress was made. She brought her entourage with her. She was, at the time, a superstar. A celebrity. We had more princesses then. Monaco. England. And these women were graceful and charming, but none were as stunning as Philomena. You have never seen a woman move or dance until you’ve seen her. See if you can get some video. She was the picture of poise. And if you ever met her, which I did, you’d know her generosity of spirit. She treated everyone from the lowest stable hand to the high prince himself with the same respect.” She seemed to be misting up, as if their meeting had been a spiritual experience.

  “And her husband just let her come out here for a month? For a dress?” Laura couldn’t imagine being away from someone she loved for so long.

  Jobeth waved her hand. “These people are different. Yes, she could be away for a month, because that’s what they do. They travel. They do what they want. He wanted her to look like a princess to rival the rest of them, to put Brunico on the map, culturally. She said she couldn’t do it with a Brunican gown. She told me he finally relented after she hid his crossbow.”

  “Huh. How did you get it? The dress? I’m sorry. Is that too forward?”

  “It’s not a secret.”

  “You are an anonymous donor.”

  “I just didn’t want to go to any parties, and I didn’t want to be asked for anything else because I have nothing else but the shoes.” She took another sip of her tea. “My brother was in finance, and he spent time on the island, making deals. He never said more, but I can only imagine. He told me he fell in love with someone down there, but he wouldn’t tell me who. Then the entourage came, and I knew as soon as I saw them together.”

  “The princess?”

  Jobeth nodded.

  Laura asked, “He was having an affair with the princess right under the high prince’s nose?”

  “And Salvadore is not a man you want pissed off, believe me. He has a way of throwing people in jail for a long time in big stone buildings.” She shuddered. “Anyway. My brother was reckless and passionate. He sent me the dress and the shoes seven months ago. He said to just hang on to them. Then he died.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. How did it happen?”

  “Suicide is what they tell me.” Jobeth rolled her teacup between her palms. “He sounded scared, and I didn’t help him. I should have gone down there.”

  “Do you have a picture?” Laura figured if he was in the entourage, there must be matching photos in Mom’s collection.

  “I’d have to dig them out. Maybe you can come back some time.”

  “Sure. What was his name? Your brother? You keep not saying it.”

  Jobeth stared at her for a second, as if the question was unexpected. “Barnabas.” Tears welled in her eyes, and Laura felt awful for her, imagining losing Ruby in a country far, far away. “I feel powerless. I know he was murdered, but I don’t know who did it. I’m just an old woman.”

  “Well, I think whoever did it stole the gown.” Laura flinched a little. She shouldn’t have just assumed the police or insurance company had told
Jobeth the gown had been switched.

  Jobeth didn’t react, so she must have known, and Laura breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “They must have known you, or about you, because they were ready with a gown and another dress form.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why did you stipulate it only be moved on the form?”

  She shrugged and sipped her tea again as if she wanted to hide behind the cup. “It’s a weird Brunico thing. They believe that if anyone touches the inside of the gown, they’re touching the princess. You know where that came from, right?”

  “Not really.”

  “In 1910, there was an outbreak of typhus that wiped out half the island, and it was all traced back to this one seamstress. They say that by touching the insides of people’s clothes, she spread typhus to seventeen people and the eight-year-old prince. In Brunico, a superstition about touching clothes grew from it.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  Jobeth shrugged. “Who can explain the turn of the century? I just felt like it would be right to respect their traditions.”

  Laura looked into Jobeth’s face and saw pain there. Her donation must have been in honor of her brother’s memory, and Laura thought there was nothing more honest than helping a stranger and her mother at the same time. “Who would know that about Brunican tradition? It’s not like you can find out anything about their inner circle, anywhere. I looked and couldn’t even find where to book a hotel room.”

  Jobeth carefully placed her tea cup back in the saucer. “It’s tough to live there all year, so my brother came home for a few months in the winter. There’s a community of them, expatriates I guess you’d call them. They hang out at this place in the meat packing district called... God, I can’t even think of it.” She snapped her fingers as if trying to wake up her brain. “Ilha Grande Café. Once you know where it is, you can’t miss it.”

  **

  Laura checked her watch and called Jeremy on the way to the train station.