2 Death of a Supermodel

by Christine Demaio-Rice

  They paused. Rowena looked in the mirror, and Laura stared into the middle distance, thinking of every model she knew or had known. Ruby might be able to do it. She was certainly gorgeous enough, if three inches shorter than Thomasina, but she was loath to ask her sister to cross from designing into modeling again. She simply didn’t have the temperament.

  Rowena piped up. “If I skip a party tonight, I guess I can make it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Rowena shrugged, staring at Laura with heavy brown eyes, as if she meant to squeeze eight hours of sleep into three because she was that powerful and her dreams were that big.

  “Call is at six thirty,” Laura said, “and if Thomasina makes it, you’ll be getting up for nothing.”

  “Good.”

  They were interrupted by a perfunctory knock, followed by the door opening and a parade of competent people pushing through the entry.

  “Carnegie,” Detective Cangemi said, “shoulda known.”

  Paramedics descended on Thomasina. From their reaction, Laura surmised that the woman still had life in her as they pressed, pushed, and shouted for things.

  Cangemi gently led Rowena and Laura out of the room.

  “What were you thinking?” Cangemi asked after Laura described what had happened and how she’d contaminated the scene. “Of all people to know better.” He’d moved everyone who had seen the body to a corner of the back room. He’d rolled full garment racks around an area with two folding chairs, so they couldn’t be seen, but there was no sound protection, and they spoke quietly. The tent would be closed down for the rest of the day, which would disrupt just about everyone but the cops.

  “It was a borrowed shoe, and I was just thinking I had to return it or I was going to have to pay for it.”

  “You don’t buy your own shoes?”

  She rolled her eyes. “We rent them. They’re like eight hundred dollars a pair.”

  “I thought you were a big, successful designer now.”

  “I don’t even know how I’m paying my rent next month.”

  “Did you touch anything else?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How have you been?”

  Laura sighed. She hadn’t seen him since a week after she’d discovered André, Jeremy’s VP of sales, had killed his backer, Gracie Pomerantz, over a counterfeiting ring. They had a follow-up lunch to tie up some loose ends, and she agreed never to try to chase killers all over town again. He’d solved the case, and she’d only succeeded in nearly getting herself killed.

  “In the last six months or since Thomasina dropped dead in a luxury port-a-potty?”

  “We don’t know if she’s dead yet,” he said.

  “You’re a monumental hairsplitter.”

  “I think the last time I saw Thomasina Wente was on a runway with her elbow in your sister’s ribs. How did she end up doing your show?”

  Such a straightforward question, yet fraught with side meanings. What happened that killed her at your show? How pissed were you? Tell me a good story because I’m looking for the cracks in it.

  “Ruby doesn’t like conflict. So when Thomasina went down the runway crying, and then apologized in like three magazines and took out that full-page ad in Women’s Wear, Ruby finally picked up the phone for her. Then they became best friends, like…” Laura crossed her index and middle fingers and held them up. “And then she started showing up at the office late at night to pick Ruby up for whatever, and trying on the clothes, so then she became like, my sister’s muse or something.”

  “How do you feel about her?” he asked.

  “In general, I don’t trust people who didn’t make their money honestly. But Ruby likes her, so she kind of grew on me. And she’s a professional, even when she’s bitchy. And she knows her way around a garment. A lot of these girls act like we’re imposing on them. She never did.”

  Cangemi made a note. She leaned forward to see what he was writing, and he glanced up at her without moving the book because he must have known she couldn’t read it. Either the words were in shorthand or his handwriting was so bad it was unreadable.

  “How is it going with the blond guy?” he asked. “I let him interview me. Didn’t like it.”

  Stu had pitched the tale of Gracie Pomerantz’s murder to the New Yorker and, much to his surprise, had been offered a feature. He’d just been happy to get in the room; getting paid to write the article was a dream come true. Then the interviews started. Every conversation with him became an interrogation. Every question was loaded. He was much more fun when he was a bike messenger.

  “It’s fine,” she said, because Stu was none of his business.

  “And the company? How is it going?”

  He seemed genuinely interested and warm, and Laura needed a friend after the show, the stress of prepping for it, then the episode with Thomasina. “We got a backer through our agent, Pierre Sevion, and that was okay, but it was only enough to pay for everything up to the show, which was today. After that, there was supposed to be matching backing from somewhere. I don’t know where, Pierre wouldn’t say. But if we get favorable reviews from a major, or any kind of celebrity placement, which is when they wear our stuff to an event and mention it, we get some vague amount of matching dollars that might, and I’m saying might, cover our production. Except in order to get the review and the placement, we had to go all out whole hog on the show, and that means the fabric is super expensive, and the matching backing may not cover it. And here’s the other thing. Without that matching money, we have to crawl back to the initial investor, Bob Schmiller, whose wife is Ivanah Schmiller, who according to Ruby, has been telling everyone she wants more say in the line.”

  “Ivanah Schmiller, the interior designer?”

  “Decorator. She’s a decorator. And yes. If you like vomiting animal skin prints on crushed velvet and chrome, she’s an interior decorator. Can you imagine what she’d do to my line? We’re built on simplicity and solid workmanship, and she’s about rhinestone zipper pulls. So here we are, and Penelope Sidewinder, the most important reviewer in the land, is in the front row, looking at a bunch of models from the dregs of the headshot book who can’t be a day over fourteen. Nice, right? Please, shoot me in the face.”

  He smirked. “How many hours a week you put in here?”

  “That’s the same thing you asked me the first time we met.”

  “You look even more tired.”

  “It’s worth it. Having my own line is worth every bit of it.” She was determined to believe that, even though her problems hadn’t ended, but begun with, Sartorial Sandwich. And it wasn’t just her line, but Ruby’s, too. Even if she was putting in fewer hours, Laura had to admit she was of equal value. The time spent clubbing and glad-handing might look like hell on a financial spreadsheet, but the general goodwill and chit-chatty publicity had created enough buzz to earn them a two-thirds full tent and a little discount with Mermaid, the modeling agency.

  “Maybe you can tell me something.” He leaned forward. “What’s this all about, these shows? This stuff, it’s all summery-looking, and we’re headed into the coldest part of the year. Who’s buying?”

  “Well, if you want something in the stores in March, you have to have it in the warehouse in mid-February. And if you want it in the warehouse in mid-February, you need a month to pack and ship it, so you have to start making it in early December, in which case you need to…” She paused, counting on her fingers as she was wont to do whenever she had to wrap her mind around the calendar. “… order fabric in something like October because it has to be spun and dyed and shipped and so… what is it now?”

  “Second week of September.”

  “Right. So now is when everyone shows the stores what they’re going to make. We do one of everything and present it at a show, and then the buyers come to the showroom and look at it and negotiate quantities and prices. Then we make stuff to send to the stores, and you do that whole thing I just did, but frontwards.”
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br />   “Sounds like a great way to go nuts.”

  “I’m sure your job is easier.” As usual when talking to him, she felt as though she had revealed everything, and he’d revealed nothing. “How have you been?”

  He lifted his pant leg to show her his socks. The elastic clung to his leg. The last time they’d met, one sock drooped at the top edge.

  “Your girlfriend stopped rolling them into balls, I see,” she said.

  “She just stopped doing my laundry.”

  “Ah, sorry. Wasn’t over the management of the socks, was it?”

  “She says if I’m gonna answer the phone at two in the morning, I can do my own chores.”

  “I want to ask you something else, but it’s really personal.”

  He grinned. “This should be interesting.”

  “Do you have a first name?”

  Cangemi looked as though he was about to answer when a woman in head-to-toe Italian black tailoring strode up in bootie black heels and pushed a rack out of the way—Roquelle Rik, owner of Mermaid Modeling. She had turned straightforward hostility into her own personal brand, and it sold like hotcakes. Her attention was a wall of will, making Laura shift in her seat.

  “What happened to Thomasina,” Roquelle said as if stating a fact. Laura had learned the woman never spoke in a question, even when she asked one.

  Cangemi broke in to ask, “Who are you?”

  “All these models are mine. I’m responsible for them. So—” She let the sentence hang off a cliff as if that was exactly where it belonged.

  “So?” Cangemi seemed amused, which would invariably make Roquelle boil.

  “So if someone hurt my assets, they’ve run counter to my interests. I’m going to need to know who they are. I have a legal team.” She turned to Laura. “What was happening here? What were the girls taking?”

  “What do you mean taking?”

  Roquelle snapped open a green microfiber cloth with an embroidered X in the corner, took off her glasses, and wiped them. “You were watching them for drugs and alcohol, or not.”

  “I’m not a babysitter,” Laura said.

  The other thing Roquelle was known for was fixing things. When Thomasina had knocked Ruby over on Friday, Roquelle was the one who got the full-page apology in WWD on Tuesday, and the interviews with the Today show. She also arranged for the German heiress and the designer from Hell’s Kitchen to meet at Grotto, where they could be photographed, leaving not a whit of hostility in the public imagination.

  Cangemi moved to stand between the women and indicated Laura’s seat. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  “I don’t need to sit,” Roquelle said. “I have a life to clean up. I have a family to call. Tell me what I’m telling them.”

  “She doesn’t have any family,” Laura said, then was immediately cowed by Roquelle’s laser gaze.

  “I’m glad you know her so well,” Roquelle said before turning back to Cangemi. “So.”

  “So. I’m just a detective. You might want to talk to our media liaison.”

  “Oh, that’s just rich.” She spun on her heel and took two steps toward the exit.

  Cangemi, who did not like to be outdone in anything, called out, “Excuse me, ma’am?”

  Roquelle turned.

  “Why don’t you sit down so I can ask you a few questions?”

  Thus, Laura was dismissed.

  September was unseasonably seasonable. Almost a cliché of itself. Snappy breezes that were just mild enough to avoid being called a wind slipped under the leafy drifts that spotted the sidewalks, lifting them like souls carried to heaven.

  The thought brought Laura to Thomasina, the big bummer ending at the end of the show. Or was it? Gracie Pomerantz’s murder hadn’t hurt Jeremy one bit, once he was exonerated, of course. Maybe Thomasina’s collapse could be turned into a positive. It would put the name of the brand in front of everyone for a while. And when she got better, the name would be out in front again. And who better to have something horrible happen to them than the awful heiress giraffe, Thomasina Wente?

  By the time Laura got to 38th Street, she’d convinced herself the incident was an incredible stroke of luck. The show was done. The clothes looked good. Everyone had behaved, and the room was three-quarters full, not bad for the single worst slot of the week in the smallest tent. It was also not bad for two newbies who were running out of their backing money too fast even to know where it was getting spent. All they had to do was sell to the buyers, and they were set.

  Jeremy had been almost too good to be true, and Laura spent nights looking at the ceiling and wondering why. When the cutting table and cabinets had grown out of the dining room of her house in Bay Ridge, he offered the closed counterfeit floor of his 40th Street factory, with the machines right there. When they needed a showroom space, they started looking for a sales agent to take them on. But he waved off the idea and gave them a corner in his own showroom, constructing an entryway so there would be no confusion from buyers.

  All of that created more confusion for Laura. Learning that he had been counterfeiting his own line and using her patterns to do it had shut something off in her. As if he sensed that, he pursued her friendship almost constantly. When she needed something, someone in the industry heard about it and relayed it to him like one of a swarm of carrier pigeons, and he would call with the exact solution. At first, she’d wanted nothing to do with him or anything he had to offer, but Ruby was not one to reject the straightest point between where she was and where she wanted to be. So they had the factory floor at 1970s rent, a tiny, but adequate showroom space at a terrific address, and they had Yoni, Jeremy’s production genius, part time, which was the last gift she was accepting. That was it. Really it.

  Once Gracie’s killer had been put away and Jeremy no longer had a backer with a control problem, he set his heart on complete world domination. Without Gracie to keep the size of the business small so she could hold Jeremy down to her level, he set about exploding it into a lifestyle brand, complete with overseas production and package deals from factories. He found pent-up demand for his clothes, and the glamorous murder that had put the spotlight on him hadn’t hurt either. Jeremy carefully orchestrated the company’s wildfire growth, slowing it by missing the Winter shows in order to pull the whole operation together. His Spring show coming up on Friday was highly anticipated, possibly overblown, and for the first time in four years, in the second-best time slot, in the afternoon. He’d lost the coveted evening spot to Barry Tilden, a travesty he shrugged off. He had bigger steaks to grill.

  There were too many steaks, and she was right next door. She needed money, so she found herself picking up the odd patternmaking job from him to keep the rent checks flowing. Her fee was obscenely high, and he paid without complaint, which made it very hard for her to stay mad at him.

  Working for him and prepping for her own show had been crippling, but all she had to do was hold it together until the next season needed to be designed. Two weeks of eight-hour days was going to feel like a month on the beach to her.

  She crossed 49th in her reverie, where she felt the weight of the world lifting off her shoulders. She felt a pressure on her leg, then a little burning sensation. She caught sight of something very large and very close out of the corner of her eye. A bicycle messenger turned his front wheel away from her abraded calf, and the moment she registered her surprise and gasped, he apologized and sped away.

  “Well, go to hell!” she shouted.

  Reverie broken. Bike messengers reminded her of Stu, which reminded her that her life was turning into a series of missed opportunities at the tender age of twenty-five. She thought about him just about constantly, and when she wasn’t, she was working, which was most of the time.

  Which had been the problem.

  Exiting the subway, she realized her ringer had been off. She had eight messages: five from Corky, their salesperson, two from Ruby, and one from Yoni, who had gone on emergency medical leave when her secret pr
egnancy went bad and she was put on bed rest.

  Laura returned Yoni’s call as she walked. “You rang?”

  “I need my projections.”

  “Yoni, you’re just bored. You’ll get them after the buy date.”

  “Let me tell you something, little girl.” She sounded terse, which meant she cared, but she was still bored. Laura took the attitude because the hourly rate for a production person was the best she’d ever get. “You talk like you never looked at a calendar before. The wool crepe you insisted on for the Upstate group is spun in China, shipped to a mill in Italy, and finished and dyed in North Carolina. You can hand carry it yourself, and it would still take months, especially if we don’t order. If we don’t order it early, the mills will not make the opening to do the work. That means even if we order a hundred or a hundred thousand yards, they’re going to have other customers’ fabrics on the machines, and they have no time to put you in. I have to make reservations for time in three places, and to do that accurately, I need to know if they’re going to spend a week on a thousand yards or a day on a hundred. Do you understand?”

  “How can we order fabric if the buyers don’t have to put in POs for another month?”

  “Projections, Laura. Wake up. I need projections by Friday. And by the way, the Chinese won’t spin any order less than five hundred yards or they charge you an extra twenty percent. I simply cannot have this conversation anymore.” Yoni hung up.

  Laura made a mental note to never get pregnant, then remembered Yoni was always like that.

  She started to listen to the first of Corky’s messages, then stopped. Laura hadn’t wanted to hire a sales guy, since André, Jeremy’s head of sales, had been a counterfeiter and a killer, and even without all that, he was a real asshole even on a good day. But Corky couldn’t have been more different. She and Ruby had known him from Parsons, where he majored in merchandizing and was known to regale the student crowd at Valerie’s with tales of his cat. Ruby had kept in contact with him and pulled him up from the gutter of the last financial meltdown to offer him the crappy job at Sartorial. He’d taken it, and despite their ridiculously small showroom and a staff that could fit around a dinner table, he showed up every day as though he were the head of sales at Donna Karan.