Death Of A Supermodel Part 5

"Thanks, Unca Gee."

Cangemi walked in with a purposeful expression and motioned her out of the room.

"I have to go." Laura tossed the phone onto the bed and followed the detective into the backyard.

Mom had started organizing the soil into borders and beds. A little overhang against the house sheltered a long metal table with boxes of bulbs, pots, and bags of soil and compost. It had all been moved out of Ruby's kitchen after an epic freak-out about personal s.p.a.ce and cleanliness versus the ease of using the garden apartment for the gardening. Mom's eviction from her rent-controlled apartment had reawakened her love of flowers, and bulb-planting season would not go by unfulfilled, even if it meant traipsing through Ruby's own little private Idaho.

"You really upset my sister."

"We have a warrant."

She wanted to call him out for being an officious jerk, but it was hard to do that with a name like "Detective."

"You never told me your first name," she said.

"Detective is fine."

"So what do you want?" she asked. "It's been a long day already."

"Did you see Thomasina taking anything? Pills? Shots? A snort?"

"On or off the record?"

"For now, we're off, but I reserve the right to bring you in for an on-the-record talk if I think you have more to say."

Laura mentally reconstructed the morning. She reviewed all the times she'd seen Thomasina in the previous weeks for fittings and blah-blahing with Ruby in the office. She thought of all the times the model's presence had annoyed her and how the gossiping had made Ruby squeal instead of work, times Thomasina could have been out partying, but instead hung around the office for an hour between gigs.

"I think I saw her eat like three times in the past four months. She was a freak about what she put in her body."

"Ever notice what came out?"

"Catty remarks in a German accent."

"Since this is the second murder to take place in a ten-yard radius of you, I'd keep the wisecracks to a minimum." He really was more fun when his girlfriend did his laundry.

"She puked. They all puke. It's like a reflex. Their stomachs are temporary receptacles for lettuce and almonds."

"And you let them?"

"What did you want me to do?"

"You're supposed to report it to MAAB."

"Oh, you know what? The whole model-babysitting thing is getting really old. Who reports high school football players who work out four hours a day to bulk up? Who reports Sumo wrestlers who eat so much they can't wear pants? What about the actor who loses weight to play an Auschwitz victim? Who reports those people? n.o.body."

"That's because-"

She'd heard it all before. "Because they're professionals? And somehow these girls aren't? They make five thousand dollars a day, and all they have to do for that money is walk back and forth and stay really, really skinny. That's their job. But we let football players, at any age, mind you, turn into Mack trucks. Why are they allowed to distort their bodies for our pleasure, but the models aren't?"

"Don't tell me. You have a theory."

"Because they're men. We trust that men have control over their bodies, but women don't. Women need nannies. And little girls are supposedly getting unrealistic ideas about body image because, again, they have no control over their own minds. But boys? Do we wonder if they're going to turn their arms into bazookas? Or distort their upper bodies to look like football players? No! Because there's an obesity epidemic at the same time we're freaking out about what grown women do to their bodies for a buck. So did she puke? You bet she did. Did she starve herself? Yes indeed. Because that's her job. If you don't like it, you should take a long hard look at yourself the next time you cheer on a linebacker."

Samuelson, Cangemi's partner, poked his head out and, with a nod, told them it was time to go. Cangemi nodded back and turned his attention back to Laura. "I'm not sure if you're an original thinker or very stupid."

"When you figure it out, let me know."

Laura fielded a few late-night texts about the next day's shoot: something about permits, which the safety team had, something else about Chase Charmain's dietary needs, and plenty else about the model change. Rowena's measurements were so close to Thomasina's, no middle of the night fitting was required, and any problems could be adjusted with a little basting and cutting. She went downstairs to update Ruby, but found her on the couch fifteen minutes into a sleeping pill. The cops had taped off her apartment. Her sister would probably be borrowing her clothes for the duration.

Laura went to bed, but she hadn't taken a pill, and she was too buzzed to close her eyes. So she memorized the cracks in the ceiling and wondered what the h.e.l.l was going on in her own house. The police had been looking for something in Ruby's apartment, and Thomasina had been poisoned. Obviously, they thought Ruby had some of the poison in the apartment. But they didn't know her sister. Ruby wouldn't know poison from a vitamin. Laura was completely confident that they had found nothing in the downstairs apartment, except maybe Thomasina's fingerprints, which was to be expected.

Why would they suspect Ruby in the first place? Someone must have said something. No evidence pointed to her besides the fact that she'd found Thomasina in the bathroom, but since Ruby had been sick, she'd had every reason to be there. It was kind of poetic that Thomasina had collapsed in a bathroom and Ruby found her there. Those two had spent more time together in bathrooms than any other two people Laura knew.

She sat awake as the clock ticked to midnight because she remembered that though she'd been staring Cangemi in the face not two hours ago, she'd never told him about the bag she'd found, and she'd never called the cops to tell them she had it because her mind was elsewhere. Sabine Fosh's credit cards notwithstanding, the bag was definitely Thomasina's. Laura still had access to it, and she wasn't about to let it slip through her fingers without a second look.

Laura called a cab, got dressed, and went to the showroom because she didn't have a choice. Well, she did have a choice. She could have called the cops and told them everything, and they'd pick up the bag in the morning. But that would mean she'd never get her eyes on it. She'd never be able to protect her sister if the police got something stupid in their collective heads. Mostly, she'd never know what was in the bag, and if she wasn't going to sleep no matter what she did, she was going to satisfy her curiosity.

When she went outside to meet the cab, she saw police tape stretched across her sister's front door. Jimmy was slumped in his doorway, with a crowbar in one hand and a phone dropping out of the other. She could hear his snoring in the silence of the night. She felt a pang of grat.i.tude for him. He cared about the three women who rented the house next door more than any conglomerate could. As she got in the cab, she noticed the big cameraman standing across the street, leaning on an unmarked van. He sipped from a bottle of soda and nodded at her as the cab pulled away.

She'd been in the office at one in the morning before, so the overall desolation and creepiness had no effect on her. The reporters had gone to report something else and might very well be back in a few hours, but it was quiet at the moment.

The elevators exited in front of Jeremy's showroom. The lights were on, so someone was home. Likely, Jeremy was talking to some new factory in China or prepping for his show, which would begin his drive toward total lifestyle brand domination. She resisted the urge to knock on the door to see how he was doing. He was probably engrossed in something, and her visit would not be welcome.

She walked down the hall to her showroom. In the darkness, she almost knocked over Corky's Danish Modern table trying to unlock the door.

The bag was in the drawer where she'd left it. She slapped it onto the table, the buckles clattering against the lacquered wood. Under that noise, she heard another sound, like a clicking, but she couldn't place it. She was aware that she was putting her fingers all over what could be evidence, and Cangemi would give her a hard time. But she'd already put her mitts all over the bag's contents yesterday, so there didn't seem any harm in doing it again.

She started by carefully unloading the objects onto the table, one thing at a time: face cream, cellphone, wallet, three pens, makeup kit to be unzipped and emptied later, three packets of gluten-free Tamari, a little Coach wallet full of receipts.

The makeup bag was filled with little plastic containers of brand new, super-expensive makeup made in Sweden. She pulled out an unmarked amber bottle of pills. She turned the plastic cylinder in her palm and estimated about ten capsules clicking away in there. Putting the bottle to the side, she moved to the wallet. Every card listed Sabine Fosh, which must have been some sort of fake name. Or maybe Thomasina was the fake name. But who would fake-name themselves Thomasina? She couldn't have chosen something less catchy.

The receipts created a problem. She couldn't write down everything about them, and she wasn't so past the point of no return that she'd keep them. She heard a hard hacking cough from the other side of the paper-thin wall. She pressed her ear to it and heard another cough as if it were in her own bedroom, but she heard no other voices. She knocked gently on the wall.

"Jeremy?"

His voice came in from the other side. "I knew it was you back there. Your show is done. Go home. Take a few hours off."

"Can I borrow your copy machine?"

"Come around."

She grabbed the little wallet and the receipts and walked down the hall.

He was already waiting for her at his office door. He unlocked it and stood aside. "You know where it is."

She didn't look at him because she was trying not to think about what she was doing. She was taking receipts from a dead woman's wallet and photocopying them before she handed them over to the police, because... why?

Because she knew in her heart that she was going to try to pull another Pomerantz. She had no time, no s.p.a.ce in her life to do it. She had been told not to. It was stupid and egotistical. But her sister was in trouble, and she didn't know why. Though she wanted to trust the system, and maybe she did trust the system, she was going to see if she could solve another murder. She tried not to think about it, and the more she tried not to, the more the truth stamped its feet and demanded attention.

"What are you doing?" Jeremy asked as he pulled a bottle of water from the fridge.

"No. What are you doing? You look like h.e.l.l."

"Thanks." He smiled, and she smiled back, then he coughed again. "Paper needs to be pushed even on a show week. Come on, you used to be full time here. You know the drill." He pulled a pill bottle from his pocket and tapped out a couple.

"Yeah, but I didn't know then what I know now. Are you getting sick?"

"Fighting it. The plane rides to China are brutal. Even in first cla.s.s, everyone's spitting phlegm. Beijing's a sewer of germs. I met the president of this manufacturing conglomerate and he was hocking in the street." He slid the pills into his mouth and knocked them back with a swig from the water bottle.

"Okay. Gross." She separated the receipts by date, placing them on the gla.s.s to fit one day per page. "You can't do this unless you're going to start walking around the office in an iron lung."

She expected an argument, but instead, he said, "Gracie might have been right."

"She wasn't right. She was scared. You just have to do it differently than everyone else. You can't fly all around the world looking at factories, period. You're no good to anyone dead."

He leaned on the fridge with his bottle of water, looking tired and drawn, as though he wanted to say something he was holding back. "When is Ivanah going to start bossing you around?" She sensed that wasn't what he'd really wanted to discuss.

"I'm sure that we're going to have to take money from them in about two weeks, when we run dry. She'll start b.u.t.ting in right after. Figure I'll be in your office in about three weeks to borrow your rhinestone sample books." She gathered the receipts, which Jeremy probably a.s.sumed were hers, and stuffed them back into the wallet.

"You know, she has a big PR machine that could help put a lid on the Thomasina Wente thing. Between now and the next two weeks, it would be in her interest to help you with it." He sipped his water and looked for her reaction over the bottle.

On a whim, and because she wasn't ready to walk out of the office yet, she copied the credit cards. "You saying I should draw her in now, a.s.suming she's going to be a creative partner, and ask her to get her public relations people or press agent or whoever to spin the Thomasina thing? Then what if Pierre actually comes up with the alternate backing he keeps promising?"

He shrugged. "The PR firm's on retainer. No loss for her, really."

She had no idea how it all worked, nor did she understand how you kept a firm on retainer, though she knew that was something you did if you were really loaded. What she did understand was that Jeremy was the same manipulative user he'd always been, and she was glad he was on her side.

"How's Ruby holding up?" he asked.

"The cops are grilling her good, and she's supposed to be in the showroom, otherwise-"

"I mean about Thomasina."

"Fine, I guess."

He tossed the empty bottle away. "Well, now that the show's over, you can pay attention to your boyfriend. He can't like your hours."

"Who?"

"The guy in the bike shorts." Jeremy waved his hand, as if to draw the name into his head.

"Stu?"

"Right. The one who interviewed me for some article."

"He's not my boyfriend."

Jeremy sucked his lips in, and the lower part of his face got very tense. She thought maybe he was trying not to smile, but then pushed the thought out of her head.

"Ruby said-"

Laura cut him off. "Ruby subsists on hope and imagination. He and I were over before we started."

"How do you feel about that?" He was smiling again, which freaked her out almost as much as a question with the word feel in it. Jeremy didn't ask about feelings, and he didn't talk about them either. Feelings weren't business.

"I feel fine," she said.

"Good. I'm very happy to hear it. Very happy."

He looked as though he wanted to say more, but Laura couldn't think of a practical reason to linger. On her way out, she glanced back at him. He stood in front of Renee's desk, smiling.

When she returned to her showroom, she stuffed the papers back into the wallet. As she was about to put the pill bottle back into the inside pocket, she covered her hand with her sleeve, opened the bottle, and popped a little capsule into her palm. Having gone over the edge into b.u.t.tinski mode, she saw no reason to hold back and slipped the pill into her pocket. Then she picked up the cellphone and checked for new messages. Nothing. Bobcat had been the last. She guessed everyone knew there was no point in texting a dead woman.

Bobcat.

Stupid. Of course, it was Bob Schmiller. She marveled at the complete douchebaggery of it. She got angry on Ivanah's behalf and wondered if he'd invested in Sartorial to gain access to Thomasina, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g over Ivanah's desire for her own company. By the time she had the bag repacked, she was mad as h.e.l.l. She wanted nothing to do with him. Then, she thought, maybe, just maybe, she should get to know him a little better if she wanted to find out who had killed Thomasina Wente.

She put the bag on the table with a note for Corky saying she realized it was Thomasina's. She left Cangemi's card so Corky could call for the police to come and get it. She had nothing else to do, and it was too late to go back to her bed in Bay Ridge, so she went to her shoot.

CHAPTER 5.

The train to Williamsburg was quiet, and she almost missed Bedford Avenue because she was dozing off. When she exited, it was four o'clock, two hours before call, and the bars were just closing. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning revelers strolled, stumbled, and rolled into the street. Gypsy cabs trolled under the lightening sky, radios buzzing, and slowed outside the station, looking for a fare too drunk to walk home.

She found a diner that had been in business since at least the 1970s, so unhip as to be wildly hip. The guy behind the counter looked as if he slept under the grill where the clattery metal cooking doodads were stored when he wasn't counting out greasy bills with Botox-injected fingers. She sat at the counter, trying not to notice the flakes of rainbow translucence floating on the surface of her coffee. A newspaper lay within reach-The Daily News, folded with the headline pressed against the counter. She slid it closer and opened it. She had made a point of avoiding the headlines when she pa.s.sed the newsstand because she knew something she didn't want to see would be on the front page. She was right, but her fear that it would be her face, in all its unmade-up exhaustion, was unfounded. Thomasina's job was to be in print, and she did it even after her death.

SUPERMODEL THOMASINA WENTE DEAD AT 27.

Laura realized she hadn't known how old the model was, as that wasn't generally a subject for discussion. The window of opportunity when one should be modeling, between eighteen and twenty-five, was too short. Either a woman was too young and a target for MAAB, or she was too old and a target for indifference. Thus, they lied. All of them. And their agents lied. Because it took two years to build a girl into a full-on giraffe and then the agents wanted enough time to capitalize on it before she had babies or drank herself into an unfittable twenty-seven-and-a-half-inch waist.

If the front page was any indication, she knew more than the reporters did. Sartorial Sandwich, along with her and Ruby's names, appeared at the bottom of page one. Also, Thomasina was featured in her first outfit, a rayon suit that draped on her like cigarette smoke over a coat rack.

The story continued on page eleven, where she was. .h.i.t full-on with her own face in stunning black and white. First runway show of her life and she couldn't drag a mascara stick over her eyes in the morning? Is that the way things would run her whole life, seeing herself and being stunned at the dishrag eyes and hay-bale hair? And why didn't they print Ruby, who always looked Photoshopped, even when she woke up hung over and cranky? Pretty news in the front, ugly news inside, she guessed. It took her another minute of shaking off her shock at seeing herself to get to the actual story.

"Ms. Wente was the founder of the White Rose Foundation, a rescue mission for young girls in Eastern Europe. She is survived by her brother, Rolf Wente, and sister, Hannah. Both live in Berlin."

The article didn't mention that she was one of the ostalgie heiresses, an old guard of East German wealth who had managed to get the mobs of protesters to protect them by saying that the new democracy would help them join the Wentes in the new meritocracy of the rich. Then, they played on the nostalgia of the prewar days and their part in the beauty of the East German countryside to keep protesters at bay. For that, they used the pa.s.sion and anger of the skinheads, who wanted to return to some past permutation of Germany. Brilliantly played, if ethically questionable.

When Laura saw the picture of Rolf, she knew why his sister had been so ashamed that she'd led Laura to believe she had no family, and why the celebrity-sucking media had only mentioned Thomasina's dead sister. Rolf Wente was a skinhead, and a mean-looking one at that. She hoped he stayed in Germany.

The Lancaster Gla.s.s building was a big pig on the waterfront that had captured the imaginations of developers, journalists, and activists. The building was twenty-two stories of fat red bricks and steel cas.e.m.e.nt windows that were mostly broken, not because the neighborhood was "bad," and not because the nearby residents didn't care. On the contrary, the building sat on some of the most valuable real estate in the city. Back in the eighties, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Williamsburg was the arson center of the city, Lancaster Gla.s.s, which had owned the building since 1850-something, abandoned their factory/warehouse and moved their manufacturing operations to China. n.o.body cared until the late nineties. Then, suddenly, everyone cared.

Floor-to-ceiling cas.e.m.e.nt windows. Exposed brick. Breathtaking views of the city. Expansive floor s.p.a.ce. A description of the building sounded like Realtor ad copy before the first busted window was replaced.