“Bobcat Schmiller?”
Ruby paused. “I don’t think so.”
“I think we need to find out exactly what Bob found out in Germany. Ten bucks says it’s going to nail Rolf to the wall. Or Sabine. Whatever.”
“I don’t care.”
“And the girl at the airport that Rolf ‘got’? Don’t you care?”
“Nope.”
“You have something better to do than find out who killed Thomasina?”
She didn’t, and Laura happily took whatever motivation she could to get some company up to Central Park West.
Midmorning was busy at the Schmiller’s building. A truck was parked outside, making it difficult for the tenants to get a cab without taking a few steps out of their way. Apparently, that was an absolutely unacceptable inconvenience, so unacceptable that the doorman was occupied with stammering excuses to a particularly entitled gentleman carrying an alligator briefcase.
So occupied was he that Laura and Ruby slipped right by him, into the elevator.
“Bob was the only one,” Laura said. “No one else had the power over our company or enough information to sponsor people for a green card. Just him and his people.”
“He was out of the country when she was killed,” Ruby said.
“I didn’t say he killed her, but he has something to do with this whole mess.”
The doors slid open. As Laura raised her hand to knock on the door to the penthouse, it creaked open.
The first thing Laura noticed was the brown paper rolled across the rug in paths leading between doorways. It was stuck down at the edges with wide blue tape and crinkled with boot prints. She was about to toss out a profanity, but then saw that most of the furniture was draped with moving cloths. The zebra throw was twisted on the marble floor, and the Persian rug with the gold tassels was rolled up against the wall. The big stuff, china closet, sideboard, dining room table, were all present, but the shelves were empty, and the drawers were taped closed.
“I guess they’re moving,” Ruby said.
Laura didn’t answer, but headed right for the emotional center of the house—the kitchen. The pots and pans were gone. The drawers were pulled out and empty. Laura opened the fridge. Just some condiments and Whole Foods containers.
“You should grab the Taiwanese mustard,” a voice said from behind her. “It’s a hundred twenty a jar.”
She spun around.
“Hi, Bob,” Ruby said as if she belonged in the abandoned kitchen. “I like your shirt.” She spoke of a tattered grey sack of crap with the Penn State logo on the front.
As if they’d been there with an engraved invitation, he smiled and showed it off. “Got it when I was a freshman. Still fits.”
“Nice. Where are you going?” Ruby twisted her hips a little. She was flirting. Laura could hardly believe her ears.
“My wife,” he started, but switched gears entirely. “Can you get me that orange juice?”
Laura handed him the container. “I think the glasses are gone.”
He shrugged and took a swig from the carton. He didn’t look like a hedge fund manager in that moment, but a freshman varsity football player standing in front of his mother’s fridge.
“You came to talk about the backing thing. Sorry about that. Business.”
Laura latched onto the excuse. “I just wanted to ask if there was anything we could have done differently.”
“You were always a sweet kid.” Obviously, he knew a different person from everyone else. “But no. Nothing you coulda done. Sometimes you get lucky and live in a penthouse, and sometimes not so much. It’s not personal.” Bob sounded more like a football player and less like a corporate wonk once you got him outside the business milieu. She wasn’t sure which personality she liked less.
“Was it Thomasina dying during our show?”
“That sucked, but no. Yes, actually, but no.” He pointed at Ruby. “By the way, I’m sorry about that. I know you guys were, you know.”
He winked, and Laura wanted to punch him in the face with her broken arm.
He slid the OJ back into the door. “Here’s what I told my wife, and this is gonzo advice for anyone. Stick to stuff that only exists on paper. No one gets hurt that way. Low stakes, high returns. I buy a company, and they’re just rows of numbers. I break it apart, sell the pieces, and I never have to hear anyone badgering me because see, the whole thing was a piece of paper. I sell some stock here, hedge an option there, it doesn’t have a face. But does my wife listen? No. Wants to be in fashion, with models and glamour. Freaking waste. No offense.”
Together, she and Ruby said, “None taken.”
He gestured toward Laura. “The second you started talking about ordering fabric, she was checked out.”
“So,” Ruby said, “I’m wondering, your trip, earlier this week?” If they were sitting at dinner, Laura would have kicked her under the table.
Laura broke in, “We have a problem.”
“I probably can’t help you.” He glanced at the door, which enraged Laura because what did he think she was, a piece of paper? Was she nothing but a row of red numbers? Or another kind of liability? Even though she was trespassing and possibly breaking and entering, Laura wasn’t about to take any of it.
“We have three immigrants from Eastern Europe, two Romanians and a Hungarian, officially employed by Sartorial. And I didn’t hire them, I promise you, but they came here on our sponsorship. The only person with the wherewithal to pull that kind of trick is you.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” His smarmy look and the speed of his denial, coupled with the lack of pointed questions, told her he knew all about it.
“I’ll bet it’s a federal offense, whoever was doing it,” she said.
“Better get your lawyers right on that,” he responded dismissively, which really meant he had a legal team and could take on the federal government on a whim. It also meant that, for whatever reason, the “employees” had somehow all been a hundred, or at least 89 percent, legitimate.
“But why?” Laura asked. “Why bring them in like that? I mean, I’m not saying you did it, but if you did, why would you?”
“Maybe whoever it was had to move them right away or they were getting shipped out to service jobs, if you know what I mean. You don’t know what happens to girls in some of these places.”
“I never said they were girls.”
Possibly, she should have held back that little zinger for later, but she’d never had that kind of foresight or mental fortitude. If she had someone, she had them.
He was pretty pissed. She could tell by the way he pushed the toaster back against the wall. “You could shut up long enough to help them before they get deported back to where they’re going to get hurt.”
Laura took a stab in the dark, “Rolf has them. We think he snagged one at the airport the morning Thomasina was killed. He killed another one already. Ivanah’s assistant.”
Bob rubbed his eyes. “I shoulda locked the door.”
Ruby put her hand on Laura’s shoulder. “We should go.”
“Where is he?” Laura asked. “Do you know?”
“Are you kidding? He’s got more names, more money, and more passports than we know how to track. And what he’s doing? With the women? It’s the only thing he enjoys. If I were you, I’d stay out of his way. He’s crazy. Over and out. You know where the door is.”
They found the door, which was still open. Two moving guys carried a love seat into the hall, and Laura wondered if Rolf was scary enough to scare the Schmillers out of their house.
CHAPTER 23.
“I’m sorry, Yoni. The contract says you’ll be paid, but it’s over. They pulled everything.” Laura stood in their empty showroom, talking on the phone and listening to the hubbub next door as Jeremy’s team prepped for his show that night. She kept trying to rub her eyes with her right hand, but her arm was set and wouldn’t bend that way. Ruby snapped the samples away and did the job of folding. She was th
e only one who was going to fit into them anyway.
“Yes, even the tack on. And I know he’s going to be pissed,” Laura said. Yoni was in the process of a breakdown. She did not manage change or failure well. “I’ll tell him. No problem. Just try to rest okay?” She hung up before Yoni could argue further.
She held up Debbie Hayworth’s wool crepe dress. It looked fantastic on a hanger, which was mandatory. If it looked bad on a hanger, the customer would never try it on. And if she didn’t try it on, she wouldn’t buy it. The store buyers who came into the showroom knew it, and so the samples were made to look good on a hanger to appease the buyers. The smaller the size, the better the hanger appeal, but that meant the girls on the runway had to be no more than hangers to wear the samples, hence the issue over skinny models.
“Was Thomasina taking them? The pills?” Laura asked. “Because there’s no way someone could have injected her with anything unless she expected it.”
“On and off.” Ruby lovingly folded samples and boxed them. “I talked her out of them when we started, you know, and then she had to stop eating because her boobs got too big. I tried to feed her, but…”
“You were interfering with her job,” Laura said. “You don’t get to do that. And you lose weight when you eat cookies.”
“Not my fault.”
Laura sat down, feeling defeated. “You know who I feel worst for? Corky. He came on, gave us everything he had, and we failed him.”
“You want to do the crepe dress for Debbie, don’t you?”
“We’d be able to pay him. He’s the only one not covered.”
“Can I think about it?”
“No. I can’t do it. You’re right. She’d have me trapped and I’d be her private label whore.”
Ruby snapped all the wool crepe dresses off the racks, sending hangers flying with the crack of wood hitting wood. She balled up the dresses and stuffed them in a plastic bag. “Done. You are not a whore.”
“Do you think Rolf is really crazy?” Laura wasn’t ready to accept or reject Debbie’s order with any finality. “Like crazy enough to scare Bob Schmiller out of his own house?”
“If that’s the case, I don’t want anything to do with any of it. Let the police take care of it. We’re out.”
Laura pressed her face to the cool wood of the table and saw the showroom sideways. Her phone blooped, and she looked at it without picking up her head. “Pierre wants us to meet him at Marlene X. God, I hate it there.” She looked at the clock. Barely noon, and Marlene X closed at one. The morning had been days long already.
Ruby dropped the bag of samples as if it were full of body parts and reached for her jacket. “Let’s get out of here.”
“He’s going to jerk us off about some crap. Don’t tell him about Debbie. He’ll make me take the job, and we need to decide for ourselves.”
Laura had a great view at Marlene X. At five-foot-four, she was eye level with boobs, pierced bellybuttons, and the occasional clavicle. None of the giraffes paid her any mind, as usual, not the ones who were there looking for an agent or the ones Roquelle had already scooped up. They glanced at Ruby. Some even smiled because they were taught to keep their enemies close. More than one bumped her a little because she was a squat five-seven, but still beautiful enough to be a threat.
The line was ten miles long, and they were cut more than once by giraffes with friends ahead of them, but giraffes don’t have friends, just competition. She elbowed one hipbone with her cast, but it yielded nothing but a smile, or maybe a snarl. She couldn’t tell the difference.
Laura was aware Marlene X was bringing out the surly worst in her, but it was awful, the single most despicable place in the world. Mirrors were everywhere, along with some wildly expensive greyish black wood. Green drapes with big metallic embroidered Xs on the borders hung over the windows. Chintz cups lay next to modernist silverware, which shouldn’t work. None of it should work, but it did, and it awed and infuriated her because a place with that kind of bad vibe should look as bad as it felt. There were pitiful few tables, all booths around the perimeter, and they were all taken up by important people. The rest of the patrons stood. And if someone sat where they shouldn’t, they were told politely to get the hell up. The problem was that one was never told who was important enough to sit, people just knew or they didn’t.
Despite the floor’s dense population of giraffes, the tables were near empty. Everyone who was important enough to sit at the tables was at the bandshell and surrounding tents. The models were either getting primped for the first round of shows or managing the primped. The hangers-on and second-rate beauties were left.
Pierre had a corner booth and tapped something into his phone while some gorgeous thing of about fifteen summers sat up straight and moved her lips. Laura thought underage models shouldn’t be allowed to talk. It polluted the space around them terribly. Marlene X was notorious for poor bussing because it was hard to move, so Pierre’s table was cluttered with dirty cups and plates.
When they sat, Fifteen Summers glared at Ruby and didn’t even acknowledge Laura’s existence. Laura wished she had the opportunity to not hire the girl, but her spite wouldn’t be satisfied that season, or the next. Or possibly ever.
A glance from Pierre sent Fifteen Summers scuttling away.
“You’re not thinking of repping models now, are you?” Laura asked.
“And cross Roquelle?” he answered, putting down his phone. “I’d start writing my suicide note now.”
Ruby pushed away the dirty cups. “You need to find us something. My sister is going to break down. Look at her.”
Pierre looked at her, which was incredibly uncomfortable.
“I’m fine,” she said.
He cleared his throat and watched the door as it opened, but it was apparently no one he wanted to speak to. “I may have something of interest. Tomorrow morning. Saturday. You need to be here. At this table.”
Ruby clapped, but Laura held her own as the jaded one of the pair. “Who is it?”
“I can’t say.”
“You’re just popping them on us? How can we prepare?” Ruby asked.
“You can start by making sure you both look presentable and have something to talk about. Besides the bodies falling all around you, of course. The news already has too much to say about that. You’d think Greyson was pulling strings. Bring nothing for design. They don’t want to see it. They know what you do. Do something stylish with that sling. My God, did it come in another color?”
“You mean we’ll keep getting to do what we like without rhinestone buttons?” Laura asked, hoping against hope that her life would be restored.
The busboy rushed over and picked saucers and teacups off the table. Laura caught a glimpse of something on a saucer that didn’t belong there.
“No promises,” he replied, sipping from his little chintz teacup. He pointed at Laura. “You need to just make sure there’s no more chasing around after murders unless that murder is your own. No?”
“I understand.” But when the busboy turned to leave, Laura said, “Excuse me?” and picked the foreign object off the saucer. It was an eyedropper. “Is this Penelope’s?” she asked, remembering the vitamin boost at Baxter City.
“Ah.” Pierre held out his hand. “She was here. Give it to me; I’ll return it.”
“No, I’ll do it. Come on, Rubes. We have to go.” She shoved Ruby out of the booth and out the door.
“What?” Ruby shouted once they were on Third Avenue. “Why are you pushing?”
Laura held up the eyedropper. “It doesn’t matter who was in the cab with her because that’s not where it happened. It was in Marlene X.” Laura filled in the blanks for Ruby. “Penelope had a really tough time when she became a model. Like really tough. Like rape tough. That’s why she’s hell-bent on protecting models from themselves. So what do you think happens when she finds out Thomasina’s importing sex toys and telling them they’re going to model? And then finding out she can’t do an
ything about it because Rolf’s covering his tracks?”
“She’s not crazy.”
“Oh, yes, she is. And she droppers her tea with vitamin D and sat at the same table with Thomasina that morning because they all sit in that corner. So how hard would it be just to put something else in it? Something that’s the same as what she knows Thomasina’s already taking, but strong enough to kill her?”
“So, what do you want to do? Because I know you’re not calling that detective.”
“Let’s go return this dropper.”
On the way to Central Park, she realized that Stu had gotten into a brawl with a psychopath dangerous enough to frighten a hedge fund manager out of his ivory tower. She called him.
“I wanted to tell you what I found out about Rolf.”
“You mean Sabine?”
“He’s scary.”
“You have no idea. Where are you?”
“On the way to the shows in the park.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
Laura had a plan for their trip to Garmento Ghetto, naturally, and it involved going to the MAAB table in the administration tent. All the models had to register there, get weighed in, and have a good talk if they were new or a pat on a bony shoulder if they were old hands. If Penelope wasn’t present, there should be more than a few acolytes to direct her to the correct show, interview, or weigh-in.
The street running through the park was closed off and well-populated with coffee-holding buyers and fashionistas with cellphones and damp hair. There were the usual altercations between joggers and cyclists and the oblivious ditzes with zero situational awareness who walked in front of their well-scored paths. Collisions, altercations, elbowings, and fistfights were reported daily. Rather than move the shows, yet again, to a different venue, the city sprayed Central Park with police.
Laura kept her wits about her when she crossed the road, guiding Ruby by the elbow because her sister was texting. They’d been lectured by Stu numerous times on how hard it was to be a cyclist anywhere in the city, and Laura didn’t want to be a part of the problem.
2 Death of a Supermodel Page 22
