“When did you see her last?”
“About fifteen minutes ago.” She smiled wanly, getting nowhere with the guy. “Okay, kidding. Last night, we were all here until about seven, and she came in at about… I don’t know, ten in the morning or something, and she and Jeremy were in the front office for hours. I have no idea what they were talking about.”
“What time did she leave?”
“I want to say two o’clock, but I was really busy. Could have been later. She said some really bitchy thing and walked out. But that’s normal for her, so, whatever.”
He nodded once, making eye contact, an expression meant to tell her to be more specific without actually nagging her. He probably learned that at the academy, too.
“I was working on this dress, and it was on the mannequin. She came by, and said ‘That looks like a potato sack, Laura. If you’re not going to do the job right, we can find another kid right out of school to do it.’ Which she said because Jeremy hired me right out of Parsons, and she didn’t like that. Anyway, I could like, feel the stress coming off her, so I said, ‘Do you mean the waist is too big, or is the length wrong, or what do you think?’ She grabbed my pins and started pinning all over, thinking she’s doing it right but instead, she’s making this terrible mess. So I just let her finish, and when she did I said, ‘Oh, okay sure, I can make it like that,’ which by the way, was a disaster, but I didn’t say that. She put my pins down and walked out. The whole thing was weird, except, you know, she always kind of acted like she could do my job better than me because she used to sew from Butterick patterns.”
“Did she say anything to anyone else before she left?”
Laura replayed those moments in her mind, imagining Gracie walking away from her. She had been wearing a lavender suit that fit like plastic surgery and matching stilettos that would surely necessitate actual surgery.
“She said something to Jeremy I didn’t hear. And he said, ‘Don’t you dare go.’ I couldn’t hear the rest. They were at each other’s throats all day, about what, I don’t know.”
“You’re very frank,” Cangemi said. “I like that in a witness.”
“Thank you.” Unable to resist, she continued like a vaudevillian, “And don’t call me Frank.”
He nodded, acknowledging the joke, but not the fact that it was hilarious. Cangemi closed his little notebook and promised more questions as they arose. As she walked back to her desk, she passed what used to be Jeremy’s office, but was now a crime scene. Camera flashes blazed. Handheld radios buzzed. Tall men shouted orders. A lady in a blue uniform slid Laura’s paper scissors into a plastic bag.
“I need those,” she cried.
Cangemi saw her distress. “You’ve got only one pair of scissors?”
“I have fabric scissors. If I cut paper with them, they’re ruined.”
He looked at her as though she had lost her mind. She tried to remember he wasn’t a cutter. He lived like the rest of the population. Scissors were tools you bought at Target while you were there for something else, then lost immediately, and found in a drawer a year later. To her, they were an extension of herself. She wanted to ask him if he’d use just any gun he found in the back of the drawer, but she needed her scissors and didn’t want to risk out-joking him again.
“They were on the scene,” he replied. “We gotta log them in.”
“I can’t work without them.”
“What were they doing in here?”
“I was drying them off. They had coffee on them.”
“You spilled coffee when you got here?” He made a note.
“It was already spilled.” She pointed in the general direction of her workspace.
When Laura saw Cangemi make another note, she knew she’d just opened up a world of trouble.
Chapter 3
The police took Jeremy to the precinct for questioning. She didn’t get a chance to say goodbye or get detailed instructions, and she didn’t know what it meant to be brought in, anyway. Was it the same as an arrest? Were they accusing him? She became frustrated with her own ignorance. She watched the occasional crime show and blew through the headlines as she walked by newsstands, but the ins and outs of criminal procedures had never mattered to her.
They covered the body before they hauled it away in a black bag. They made phone calls and picked up stuff with tweezers. They photographed the coffee stain on Laura’s desk from four angles. Once they had secured the crime scene with yellow tape, they all left, except for the detectives, who stayed and waited for the rest of the employees to show up.
Laura figured she’d be able to continue working until this all cleared up, and that the show would proceed as normal next Friday. But when people started showing up at ten, they needed briefings, recounts, and storytelling.
The first person to arrive was Carmella. Her alibi checked out by the reek of cigarettes, alcohol, and stale sweat. It was Sunday morning, after all, so the cops let her go to her desk and get to work. Laura remembered crossing paths with her at a loft party the night before, which had been conveniently located less than three blocks from work. Carmella’d had some kind of altercation with an outer-borough-looking guy Laura had never seen before and, somehow in the noise and heat and press of bodies, she’d lost Carmella and just gone home early.
Jeremy had told Laura he’d hired Carmella as a senior designer from a dead division at the LVMH offices in Milan. He said all her talent was in her nose, which was a compliment, since the protrusion at the center of her face required its own zip code. She wore it like an asset, and it was, because everything else about her physical appearance was perfect. She was five-nine, size six, with flawless skin, a cute little pixie cut, straight teeth, long neck, etcetera, etcetera. Laura would have traded that nose for half her physical assets.
“What happened last night?” Laura asked, “Who was that guy?”
Carmella waved a hand dismissively, her red-rimmed eyes swollen like rising dough. “Some guinea asshole who almost hit me when I crossed Eighth,” she said, likely elaborating for the sake of drama. “I called him a testa di cazzo, but I didn’t know he could speak Italian. He followed me three blocks to let me know he had understood me, and then asked for my number.” She fished a bottle of eye drops out of her bag. “So, the witch is dead?”
Laura nodded, trying to figure out how she was going to slash a shoulder seam without scissors. “They took Jeremy for questioning. He’ll be back.”
“They told me they arrested him.” Drop, drop. Blink.
Laura’s breath hitched a little. “Well, that’s ridiculous. Why would he kill his backer? It’s like the goose with the golden egg.”
Carmella sidled up to Laura’s table, apparently giving up on the idea of getting anything done today. She wasn’t known for her work ethic, which was why Jeremy’d had the pushpin-flying tantrum over the shirtwaist jacket. If Carmella would get her work done on time, Laura could sit home watching TV on Sundays.
“Did you ever see their contract?” Carmella asked.
“Why would I look at Jeremy’s contracts?”
“Well, everybody knows it was the worst in the business. It practically forced him not to make money. And you know how our St. James is about the making of money.”
“That makes no sense.”
Carmella rolled her eyes. Because Laura had unfettered access to Jeremy, she didn’t participate in office gossip or spread rumors. If she wanted to know something, she went to the source, as Jeremy had mandated. “My patternmaker is my vision,” he had said on her second day. “If you’re not the eyes and ears of the design room, I’m blind.” She thought patternmakers always enjoyed such contact with the company founder.
“Darling, this lady handcuffed him,” Carmella said, pulling out a pack of Gitanes. Laura could feel the jones coming off her as she counted on the fingers of her non-Gitanes-clutching hand. “He couldn’t even start another line with his own name. He couldn’t take orders over a certain number without her signing it,
and he had to sell only to certain stores, or she could take over the business. And it was a twenty-year contract that she could renew if she wanted to, but he couldn’t get out of.”
“He’d never agree to that.”
“He was nineteen. What did he know?”
The thought of anyone taking advantage of Jeremy shocked Laura. He was an arrogant, cocksure prick when he wanted to be, which was most of the time, and good business practice was nearly a religion to him.
Carmella eyed Jeremy’s office. The smoking section—AKA the balcony—was past it, but the door was closed. A sticker with dire warnings was fixed in the seam between door and jamb.
“But, killing her? Doesn’t that seem a little extreme?” Laura asked.
“Did I say he planned it? Darling, please. I’m only suggesting he had a reason to be pissed off. Listen, I need to go down for a smoke. You want one?”
“No, thanks. You coming back?”
Carmella shrugged and tapped something into her cell phone. “I have to do some things. Then, I’m going home to sleep. That party last night wouldn’t end. If I go back, it’ll still be going, I swear.” In an incredible act of multitasking, she did a little dance with her skinny butt and put on her coat while pressing her cell phone to her ear. She probably would go back to the party.
Laura was alone again, with only the two detectives waiting in reception, and no scissors to slash the shoulders. A dress form held the jacket she was correcting, a tweedy thing with rhinestones and a plunging neckline, meant to be worn with a see-through lace camisole. The sideseam was too long, and she had to shorten it by creating a fold in the paper under the arm, then opening the shoulder and adjusting everything else so the fabric was still cut straight. It was Patternmaking 101, if you were paying attention and had your supplies.
She stole a pair of scissors from Tiffany’s desk just as the assistant designer came in.
“Those have my name on them?” Tiffany asked. Though only a couple of years younger than Laura, technically, as assistant designer, Tiffany was three rungs below her on the office ladder. But as a designer, Tiffany could one day become Laura’s boss.
Laura explained why she took the scissors. Tiffany betrayed no emotion in that ‘I’m not thinking or feeling anything but a general sense of pleasantness’ Midwestern way, with her slightly tucked in cheeks and small puckering of the lips. She slipped Friday’s Women’s Wear Daily from a pile on Carmella’s table and went to her chair. She didn’t mention the scissors again and made no complaint when Laura borrowed her ruler.
Some of the sales people came in to catch up on paperwork. André, the head of sales, showed up first. He was a slicked-back metrosexual from some backwater in Belgium. He puffed his chest out like a peacock on most days, and bullied his staff on the rest. He was married to a stockbroker named Inge, who was naturally submissive and quiet, except at work, apparently, because her bonus checks were a matter of public record. If someone really wanted to piss him off, all they had to do was mention her name and the number published next to it in the Wall Street Journal. His whole body would turn into a closed fist at the mere thought of it.
Unlike Tiffany, who shrouded everything under an innocent stare, he took the news hard, saying, “Dead? Really dead?” a few times before Cangemi called his name and brought him into the reception area for his interview.
Sniffling, Tiffany spoke softly on the phone. “No, Mom. Please, don’t freak out, okay?” More tears, then, “I’m not coming home. I’m fine.” Which Laura thought was inevitable, since Tiffany’s little town in the great state of who-even-knows-what wasn’t accessible without a compass and a biplane, and she’d tasted New York. She was finished. She was most certainly not going home outside of Christmas break, even if office carnage became a daily occurrence.
Eve, the fabric buyer, came in to fax some purchase orders and threatened to quit on the spot. “My husband’s gonna pick me up and drop me off every day if he hears about this.”
She was joined by others. People tended to work on the weekends before the show. It was expected, and it was necessary. Buyers from all over the world came, and salespeople entertained them all week. However, paperwork still had to be processed, fabric had to be ordered from the mill, and purchase orders still came in. Those things were managed on the weekends, or from home.
André passed through after his interview, even though the design room wasn’t on the way to the showroom. “So,” he said, swaggering, “you found her. How did she look?”
“Dead,” Laura said without inflection.
“Of course, but…” He stopped on a Frenched wet “t” and opened his palm as though there were a piece of information he wanted Laura to drop into it. She said nothing. Seeing that she had no inclination to unravel what he meant, he dropped it.
“Hello, don’t they have cameras in the lobby?” Tiffany asked. “They shouldn’t even need to ask.”
“Gold star,” André said. He patted her on the head like a kindergarten teacher. “Where’s Chilly? How is the graphic artist not here?” He looked at Chilly’s desk, where the computer flashed a screensaver of the Coachella show, and then looked at Laura and Tiffany as if they had somehow failed in life because Chilly wasn’t in on a Sunday. “Show is in two weeks, and I have no look books. So why is this chair empty?” The look books, which featured photographs of the Spring outfits as they were meant to be worn, were handed out before the show. They were always late, but André was doing what he usually did, giving everyone else anxiety attacks because he had something on his mind.
“Do you want me to call his cell?” Tiffany asked.
“Where’s Jeremy?” he demanded.
“I have him locked in the tower,” Laura answered, and Tiffany’s lips got thin as she tried not to laugh. André was not amused. The bags under his eyes told the story of a long night, and Laura’s desire to bait him could backfire in a blink. She had to remind herself that, though André was a bully and a jerk, he and Jeremy were very, even weirdly, close. Jeremy never denied or confirmed that they were lovers, but neither Laura nor anyone else had ever asked, either.
André strode out of the design room, one hand in his pocket, looking at everyone’s computer screen to make sure they weren’t on Facebook or something. Bad habit. Jeremy didn’t care if you went on Facebook, as long as your work was perfect. André’s last job was at a clearinghouse for discount retailers like Centennial and Mitzi’s. Working there must have been a real freaking joy.
Tiffany caught up whomever else strolled in, adding her own speculations about what they would do on CSI, the terrible security in the office, and the less than savory characters hanging around 38th and Broadway on weekends. Every woman in the office knew where to get a can of pepper spray, and there were more than a few takers for a self-defense class.
But nothing was getting done, and Laura despaired of Jeremy’s reaction when he came in tomorrow. By the time she finished the jacket, a crowd had gathered around Tiffany’s desk. There was talk of the lazy night watchman, the regular homeless guy who opened the door for people in the morning, the valuables around the office, and the creepy feeling everyone claimed to have when walking by the police tape in Jeremy’s doorway.
No one had a kind word or remorseful feeling for Gracie Pomerantz, except the old ‘I wouldn’t wish that kind of death on anyone.’ Few of them had ever been charmed by her. There were no sweet stories of this or that nice thing she did that one time, because that one time had never happened. Gracie was famous for philanthropy—an expert ribbon-cutter at school playgrounds and inner-city hospital wings. On a slow week, she even responded to the occasional hard-luck story, using her relationship with the mayor—they both went to Cornell—to stand up for the poor and downtrodden, acquiring enormous prominence for herself, eating her fame like soft cookies still warm from the oven.
But she cared for no one within arm’s reach.
No one entertained the thought that Jeremy had strangled her with a silk zebra-pr
int header. He was a jerk, impatient, and an absurd perfectionist, but he was not a murderer. On that, they agreed. He would most certainly be in tomorrow, first thing, breaking everyone’s ass over the lost half-Sunday of work.
When the news vans pulled up outside at 11:30, lipstick was applied, and the room cleared. It was interview time.
Laura was alone in the office once again and wondering about getting some pepper spray herself. The walls were closing in on her, and she feared putting her headphones on because she might not hear the murdering bastard creep up behind her. Every noise was magnified tenfold, every snap of paper, every click of scissors, every scratch of a pencil. She draped a muslin for the Emily skirt, pinned the fabric, turned it, and snipped around the waistline until it fell across the mannequin’s thighs in big, looping flares. When the sideseams matched, she unpinned it. The squeaking of the mannequin echoed against the walls of the empty office. When she laid out the fabric to trace the shape for her pattern, she clicked her pencil—out of lead. She took that as a sign that her day was over. She couldn’t score another line. The drape was done, but the pattern would have to wait.
Laura waited for the elevator, tracing the steps the killer might have taken. Jeremy St. James was on the fourth floor, on the border between guilt for taking the elevator instead of getting an ass-kicking workout. Typically, Laura chose guilt over the workout. She wondered if the murderer had done the same. And how did Gracie Pomerantz get upstairs? And why?
While waiting, she looked down the hallway. It was an old building. The brass and glass mail tubes still ran between floors. There were sconces and old paint. The other side of the hall had glass doors with Jeremy’s name painted on them, and wooden opaque doors behind led to a non-functioning back entrance with the hum of the sample floor behind it.
The elevator dinged, and Laura got in. She stood alone in one of two elevator cars. Remembering what Tiffany had said about cameras, she looked for one on the ceiling and was greeted by a glass orb smeared with marker and another substance she was at pains to name. She hoped the police weren’t depending on the elevator cameras to find the killer.
Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories Page 45
