“It’s really Rose, Rose Moss,” she said. “People call me Rosie, mostly.”
Jury smiled, thinking of one of the little girls they’d rescued from the Hester Street operation. And then he stopped smiling, remembering the cupboard full of little clothes, miniature versions of the costumes he imagined this Rosie might have in her own cupboard. Hester Street had been a pederast ring. That tiny girl’s name had been Rosie, too.
Rosie said, “Blanche Vann—she runs the place where I work—says we’re to have phony names to make us untraceable. Like we couldn’t have clients coming round or ringing us in the middle of the night, could we?”
Untraceable. No matter how clear the prints of the Jimmy Choo shoes, they might not lead to the killer.
Rosie was giving him a great deal of unasked-for information. He’d said nothing about where she worked. Now she continued.
“I just thought, you know, Rosie was kind of unsophisticated. You know, childish.”
Which fit her perfectly, for it was the way she looked, childlike, and the way she coiled an errant lock of dark hair round her finger. No makeup. Skin as pale and smooth as sand left by receding waves. Startled brown eyes; small, neat nose.
“Thing is,” she went on to say after they were seated on the sofa, and as if she’d read his mind, “I’m popular with the clients who’ve got these little-girl fantasies, you know what I mean.”
Yes. They’re a step away from pederasty. Again, he thought of Hester Street.
“I can dress up—I’ve got like schoolgirl costumes—”
Jury thought she would have been a knockout as a child. He felt himself flush at such a thought. And he wondered if pederasts saw the woman in the child, the child holding the woman at bay. A strange inversion of woman and child.
“But of course, I can be an adult, too, if required.” She lit a cigarette.
What a bleak statement. But he had to smile at the way she was processing her cigarette, blowing smoke out in little puffs, off to the side so as not to blow it his way. She did this in the way Bette Davis did it. No one smoked the way Bette Davis had smoked. All About Eve. “I ran all the way.” Phyllis Nancy, rain-soaked, in his doorway, saying that. Lu Aguilar. The crashed car. Jury tried to shut it all out.
“... nervous. You know.”
He’d missed her first few words. “Nervous?”
“You being Scotland Yard. Being here.”
“Please don’t be. It’s only routine. We just need your help with information about Stacy—the name she was using, Stacy Storm.” What sadly affected made-up names. “Mariah Cox was her real name.”
“I know. But I can’t see how I’ll be much help.”
“Your friendship with her could be important. You’d be surprised at how sparse the information has been on her.”
Rosie picked up her glass, whiskey or tea, rattled the ice cubes in it. “I don’t know as I’d call it friendship, exactly; I mean, she never talked, well, hardly ever talked about her other life.”
“Well, mates, then.”
Her accent was a little rough around the edges, a little nasal, a far cry from Chelsea or Knightsbridge, more Brixton, perhaps. She could relate to “mates.”
“Yeah, mebbe. You could say. We worked together, I mean for the same firm.”
“This is Valentine’s?”
She shrugged. “Yeah. Nothing to tell except that I think they treated the girls fair. I been working there years.”
“You don’t look old enough.”
“Now, how old do you think I am?” She stubbed out her cigarette.
Jury shrugged, generously guessing, “Twenty?”
That went further than two dozen roses would have. “Listen to you. I’m thirty-one years old.”
She was, too. The eyes always give it away. In hers was a kind of flatness, inexpressiveness, weariness. “My Lord, Rosie. Where’s the fountain of youth? I could use a glassful of that stuff.”
Now, she’d be on his side. “Oh, I don’t know. You look okay to me.” Fetchingly she said this, as she let one leg slide off the sofa.
Before a full-blown flirtation could get under way, he said, “How did Stacy feel about her job? Did she ever mention any of the men she dated?”
Rosie leaned forward and shook another cigarette out of a pack, lit it, then minded her manners and pushed the pack toward Jury.
“No thanks.” Jury thought everyone in Britain must smoke except him, Dora, and Harry’s dog, Mungo. And he wouldn’t take bets on Mungo.
Pulling over a tin ashtray that advertised a pub named “Batty’s” or maybe it was a beer, she said, “Thing is, she never told me their names.”
“Whose names?”
“There was this one bloke she really liked; she dated him awhile—I mean, off the clock. Well, we’re not supposed to, you know.”
“Was she serious about him?”
Rosie looked away and out the window behind them. “Not really. I think she just liked him better than the others.”
“Did she describe him? Do you have any idea what he looks like?”
She shook her head. “Only he was handsome, is all. He bought her things. ‘Like a prince,’ he was, she once said.”
Was it the Cinderella story in Jimmy Choo shoes? Or Snow White’s story, the men always charming, handsome, rich? The women always in jeopardy? He didn’t imagine any of Valentine’s clients would have qualified as Prince Charming. In any event, Prince Charming wouldn’t have needed Valentine’s.
“Funny thing, though. He wanted her to dress a certain way and change her hair.”
“What do you mean?”
“Stacy said it must be someone in his past. He wanted her to color her hair red. So she did. I mean, I did.”
“You did?”
“See, I used to be a stylist. I was in that real chic shop in Bayswater. I was good at color. Good at makeup, too.”
Jury asked, “You mean every weekend she’d have you color her hair?”
She nodded. “With this semipermanent color I use, it’s not so hard on the hair. But her real hair was darkish brown, and it’s tricky turning that coppery color back to brown. You have to use an ash brown to get it that shade. Her clothes, though, he must’ve paid for most of them. Those shoes alone cost seven, eight hundred quid.” Rosie stretched out one leg and moved the furry slipper up and down. “Me, I got myself a pair of Christian Louboutin for a tiny price at one of those consignment stores. It’s called Go Around Twice.”
Jury had a feeling it was hard enough for Rosie to go around once. “How does it work? How do you meet up with the clients?”
“Blanche calls us—that’s Blanche Vann, did I say?—and tells us who and where to meet the bloke. He’d already have paid. So any money changes hands between me and him, that’s a tip.”
“And what about you? Ever met anybody who’s like that? The man Stacy met?”
“Ha! Not bloody likely.” Again, she looped a strand of hair round her finger, curled it and uncurled it.
“Still, it’s possible.”
But as he was the police and fairly out of bounds as a client, she said only, “Yeah.”
Jury said, “Her aunt didn’t know about Stacy Storm, either. Mariah kept the two identities separate.”
“You know, I always did think—”
Jury sensed hindsight coming down the road.
“—she was worried about something, something was bothering her, and I asked, but she never would say. I don’t think it was him, though, causing whatever the trouble was. Not him—he was ever so generous.” She sighed. “Stacy, she was always a bit of a mystery, wasn’t she?”
He wasn’t expected to answer that. He said, “Did he buy her the Saint Laurent she was wearing when she died?”
“He must’ve bought it all.”
Yves Saint Laurent was on Upper Sloane Street; so was Jimmy Choo. He rose. “Thank you so much, Rosie. You’ve really been a big help. I may want to talk to you again.”
“All righ
t,” she said. Saddened by the death of her friend or by his leaving or both, as if he’d brought Stacy with him and was now taking her away, Rosie got up and walked with him to the door.
In the hallway, he gave her his card and told her to get in touch if she remembered anything else. He looked down at her.
Rosie Moss, in her candy-cane-striped dress, her furry slippers, and her hair in bunches, and felt as if he’d weep, and turned away.
17
The door buzzed as Jury entered; a salesperson in a knockout draped black dress came toward him. The dress would look stunning on Phyllis, but then again, what wouldn’t?
“Sir?” Her smile was wide, but it faded when he showed her his ID. She looked stricken, as if he’d slapped her.
Then Jury smiled and all was well again, the waters calm. “I just need to ask you a few questions, Miss ... ?”
“Ondine—”
Did she work for Valentine’s, too, with a name like that?
“—Overalls.”
No. “Miss Overalls—” He bit his lip to keep from smiling.
“Just Ondine.”
“Ondine. Thank you. Is this the main Yves Saint Laurent in London?”
“Of course. We’re not a chain.” She whipped out a “just kidding” smile.
“Ah. I’m interested in a dress purchased by this woman—” Jury hated showing morgue shots, but the only others would have been of a very different-looking Mariah Cox. The photographer had managed to polish this one so that she didn’t look, well, too dead.
Ondine picked up narrow glasses with metal frames and put them on. Her head bent over the photo, she nodded. “I remember. I thought she was a model; I mean, the way she moved. She looked wonderful in our gowns.”
She gestured toward the mannequins stationed side by side in one area, as at the rail of a luxury ocean liner, watching, blind-eyed as they were, the coast of some country fall away.
Ondine looked like a model herself, makeup perfectly applied in little dots of cream-something, gray dust whisked across her eyelids with a supple brush, lipstick drawn on.
“You mean she’s—dead?”
“I’m afraid so. She was shot to death.”
Ondine looked a little wildly around the shop and at the mannequins, as if some guilt might attach to them. Then, sensibly, she placed her hand on her breast and took a deep breath, then another. She said, “Yes, that’s one of ours. Poor thing, she’ll never wear it again.”
Jury smiled a little at this summing-up of the good life.
“When was she here?”
“It was ... Tuesday week. I remember it very well. She tried on several dresses and looked, I must say, delicious in each. That”—she looked again at the picture as she spoke—“was the best of them. Well, given the price”—she looked round the room, blameless and empty except for the mannequins—“it should have been: three thousand seven hundred pounds.”
Jury gave a low, appreciative whistle. “Was she alone?”
“Oh, yes, quite alone. But she did make a call. I didn’t hear what she said.”
“Did she use a mobile phone?”
“Yes. The battery was down in hers, so I let her use mine.”
“You did? Do you have it here?”
Ondine moved over to a counter, reached behind it, and came back and handed the mobile phone to Jury. He brought up a list of phone calls; there were probably a good fifty of them. “Have you erased any outgoing calls here?”
“Not lately. I forget to do it, anyway.”
Jury handed back the mobile, saying, “Take a look at these and see if there are any numbers you don’t recognize.”
Ondine ran her eyes down the list and was about to say something when the door chimed and a couple walked in, probably in their seventies, clearly rich and rather fragile. They moved with their torsos slightly inclined, not bent, just forward, as if trying to get somewhere ahead of themselves. They both wore light gray capes, his part of his coat, hers a coat in itself. They made Jury think of shorebirds.
“Excuse me just a moment,” Ondine whispered before she went to the couple to offer assistance. Jury couldn’t hear what she said; he thought it rather pleasant that nothing got above a murmur in this elegant, graceful room. As moneyed as these people seemed to be and as expensive as the clothes that were sold, the atmosphere still wasn’t steeped in materialism.
Ondine was back. “Let me look at this—” She took the mobile and pointed out a number. “I think it was this one: I don’t know it, and it was placed just about when she was here.”
Jury pulled out his notebook, wrote it down, a London number.
At this juncture, the gray-haired couple, who appeared to act always in concert, raised their hands to beckon Ondine over.
“Sorry,” she whispered again. “There’s just me here today. Charlotte’s sick again.” She sighed. As if Jury knew Charlotte and her sham illnesses.
Jury watched her glide over to them. Murmurs again.
Honestly, the place would do for a meditation center; he smiled at the idea of several monks sitting around the room on the silk and satin cushions. He watched Ondine go to the counter, where she seemed to be checking something, possibly the price of the gray gown the two of them—the man and the woman—were holding between them. Folds of gray chiffon and silk. The man seemed perfectly at ease in this room sacred to women.
Wiggins walked through the glass door at that moment. “Guv. Blanche—”
Wiggins got on a first-name basis very quickly with witnesses.
“—was pretty cooperative, and it may be you were right about the names: there were no matches with the Rexroths, but Blanche did turn up two Simons—a Simon St. Cyr and a Simon Smith.” He was looking at his notebook and thumbed up a page. “According to the Valentine’s records, Simon Smith was down with Stacy Storm five times. I’ve got the dates. Five isn’t much for a hot romance, but he was down in the book those five times, and something tells me that’s not every time that he saw her.”
Jury nodded. “According to Rose Moss, she was seeing some fellow off the books. I don’t suppose Blanche Vann could describe him.”
Wiggins shook his head. “Their clients don’t call round; they ring and set up times according to Valentine’s schedule. The office isn’t much, just a room. But it’s nicely fitted out: big, airy, fresh flowers and fruit. The girls come round every so often. ‘My girls,’ she calls them. Bit of a mother hen, you ask me. I got the impression she was genuinely fond of Stacy. Pretty broken up about her death. And very surprised about this double life Stacy and Mariah led.”
“How’d she find out? Papers?”
“No, from your Adele Astaire. Blanche said she rang up and told her. Blanche doesn’t read the papers a lot.”
“Okay, get onto Thames Valley, to DS Cummins, and get this Simon Smith’s address, or, rather, get him to find out if the Rexroths have any idea who the ‘Smith’ might actually be.”
Wiggins nodded, turned away while punching in the number on his mobile phone.
Finding Ondine free of the gray-winged couple, Jury walked over to the counter. “Ondine.”
She looked up with a slightly mischievous smile.
“How did Stacy Storm pay for the dress?”
Ondine pulled over a large black ledger, opened it, and ran a red-coated fingernail up and down columns. “Barclaycard.”
“That must have been quite a credit line she had.”
“I don’t know, except it was approved.”
“All right. I won’t take up any more of your time. You’ve been a world of help, Ondine.” He handed her his card. “If you remember anything at all—”
“Including my name.” Big smile. “Believe me, I will.”
What a flirt.
“I have a friend who’d look terrific in that black gown in the window.”
Again, Ondine whispered, “Tell her to pop round. I might be able to give her a very nice price.”
“I’ll do that,” Jury whispered
back.
The doorman or security guard or greeter at the door told them in chilly tones that the shop was just closing.
“No, it isn’t,” said Jury, holding up his ID and pushing past him into the light, bright air of Jimmy Choo.
Whereupon the man immediately went to get someone else, a lithesome-looking woman who had a way of standing with her feet crossed and her hands crossed inside out before her. He thought this difficult pose came naturally to her, and he wondered if she had been a model. Models seemed able to accomplish the most unusual and uncomfortable-looking postures.
In this clear and uncluttered interior, Jury thought he might be reassessing the common attitudes toward wealth and materialism. In the cathedral-like quiet, in their little niches, the artfully arranged jewel-toned shoes covered the walls like stained-glass windows.
These shoes looked both impossibly rich and flyaway at the same time. They were displayed, in their lit-up little alcoves, as works of art. And rightly so, Jury thought as he took in that metallic silver sandal with the jewels running all the way up the instep, or that silver snakeskin with its four-inch heel and straps twining up the ankle, or that glittery leather with its narrow straps impossibly entwined. The architectural detail of these sandals was remarkable. Wiggins was nearly inhaling them, he was so close to the wall. He was getting down with the shoes.
Jury made a guess and asked the saleswoman if she recalled a woman purchasing the shoes in the photo he held out, perhaps a week ago? He thought after buying the dress, Mariah might have walked across the street to Jimmy Choo’s.
He was right. The purchase had been made, but there was no phone call that she remembered. Yes, she’d paid with a Barclaycard.
He walked over to Wiggins. “You thinking of buying a pair for that cousin in Manchester?”
“Not bloody likely; do you see what these things cost? That’d be—” Wiggins’s mobile sounded, and he flipped it open, spoke his name, and listened. Then he thanked the caller. “That was Cummins. Simon Smith is probably Simon Santos. He knows Timothy Rexroth from his work in the City. Simon’s in mergers and acquisitions. And we’re in luck; he lives right around the corner.” Wiggins inclined his head in that direction. “Pont Street. I’ve the number; should I call?”
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