2 Death of a Supermodel (10 page)

Rolf stepped around to get in front of Laura. He spoke in a quieter voice, more pleading and less demanding. “Where we’re from, we can’t go anywhere. We can’t leave the estate. Everyone knows us, and there are those who would do away with us very quickly. She needed another name. So did I.”

“So she could go to the grocery store, I guess?”

“Sure,” he said, as if conceding the point.

She checked her watch as she walked over to Rowena with the bracelets. Over her shoulder, she said, “I had it this morning, but it should be with the police by now.”

He paused for a second, as if he wanted more from her, then left.

The shoot had two more hours, and most of that time was spent perfecting Rowena’s hair, makeup, and clothing. Chase used real film, not digital, and didn’t change it once. Everything shot in those three hours fit on a single roll, which concerned Laura. Photographers tended to press the shutter and keep their finger there, blowing through hundreds of frames to get one shot. Laura asked one of his assistants about it.

The girl, who couldn’t have a been a day over the dewiest weeks of nineteen, responded, “He needs five for the spread and takes ten just to give the editors something to choose from. But he always knows the shot, and he always gets it. He’s amazing.” Her eyes practically welled with tears.

One accessed the roof from a nine-foot-tall shed with a metal door that sat atop the inside stairs. The last bit of the shoot had Rowena sitting on top of that structure with her legs spread as if daring someone to look up her dress, a dark grey rubberized poly draped and rigid at the same time. She ate the camera alive, turning to make sure the red stitching at the hem was visible.

A tinkling noise went off on some glass-covered phone somewhere, and Rowena stepped off the top of the little shed and down the portable steps to the building roof. It was over. She said goodbye in passing, rushing to Central Park for the shows, taking her platform heels for a canter as she hurled herself to the elevator.

Ruby looked concerned as she watched Chase pack up his camera and leave.

“They say he can get everything in fifteen shots,” Laura said.

“Yeah.”

“And Rowena looked great.”

“Yeah.”

“Except for the brown smear on her ankle.”

“Yeah.”

“Ruby. What’s on your mind?”

“Where did you hear that name? Sabine Fosh?”

Laura didn’t want to admit she had poked around Thomasina’s bag twice, so she hewed close to the truth without admitting that she had turned a corner and driven down Busybody Street at full speed. “I found her bag with the rental shoes and opened the wallet.”

“Is that how you found out about Bob?”

“Yes.”

Ruby turned and looked her in the eyes. “You always seem like such a cold-hearted bitch, like you don’t care about anything but business. But you’re not. You say every horrible thing about Thomasina and you go on with your life like she never mattered. But you’re going to find out why she died, aren’t you? You’re going to get justice for her.”

Laura rolled her eyes. Ruby held her shoulders at arm’s length and said, “Stu!”

“What about him?”

“He knows everyone and everything. We can ask him what he thinks.”

“Ruby, we have work to do. Corky’s in the showroom by himself.”

“Everyone’s at the shows. Come on. It’s not like anyone has any money to buy anything until next month, anyway.”

“An hour ago, you were telling me to mind my own goddamn business.”

But Ruby, the fickle fiend, pulled her out into the street and east to Bedford Avenue, where the hipsters roamed, and the artists and unemployed played.

CHAPTER 6.

Nine in the morning was early for some people, if the bleary eyes and slow gaits down the Avenue were to be believed. A line of bearded boys and persimmon-haired girls staring at their phones curled out the front door of the artisanal coffee joint. After the swill of the craft services table, Laura was tempted to get at the end of the line, but knew she was only avoiding the inevitable. Ruby, sensing her slowed pace while passing the long, trend-forward coffee line, walked faster.

“I don’t know what makes you think Stu knows anything,” Laura mumbled.

“It’s not what he knows. It’s what he can find out, and what his brain can figure out.”

Under different circumstances, Stu would be her first stop any time something bothered her or didn’t seem right. But things had changed between them. Or they hadn’t changed in the way that had been expected, and the confusion led to a discomfort she took great pains to avoid experiencing.

After Gracie’s killer had been found, everyone knew she and Stu were going to be together. Nadal regularly called them boyfriend and girlfriend before they’d even held hands, and Ruby, having been released from her engagement to Michael the douchebag, passed all her wedding dress sketches to Laura. It was so ingrained that Laura immediately dove into seventy-hour workweeks, and Stu began research on a piece about the Pomerantz murder and her part in solving it. Their time together, which should have been spent in dimly-lit restaurants and locked rooms, was instead spent with Laura hunched over her work, answering pointed questions about the two weeks in February she had spent unraveling a counterfeiting ring and catching a killer. Then Stu went off to write his piece, which had been picked up by the
New Yorker
. They required another five thousand words and three months of research, and the pressure of a byline in the most prestigious magazine in the world—Stu’s words—turned him into a hermit. He even quit his bike messenger job, his sound mixing job, and his internship at
Cultcha Bustas
magazine.

Then, while she was pinning the rhombus-shaped crotch of the Parsippany pants and thinking about everything but him, he had called. After the usual niceties, he said, “I have to tell you something.”

Still too stupid to be worried, she said, “Good thing you have me on the phone.”

“Well,” he started, then stopped. It was the first time he had ever seemed uncomfortable saying anything at all, and though she noted it, she did not stop pinning the pants for one second.

“You could be talking instead of doing whatever it is that you’re doing now.” She said it with good humor, but he had been looking for an opening to the conversation, and she realized weeks later that she’d handed it to him on silver platter.

“We’re very efficient, you and I,” he said. “We go out to dinner, and I bring my notebook. We meet at your office for lunch so you don’t have to stop working.”

“Yeah.” She wrestled the pants off the form and turned them inside out, stuffing one leg inside the other so she could see the crotch. The shape that looked so bad when worn wasn’t immediately apparent on the pattern, but when the pants were twisted that way, she could see the shape had changed during sewing.

“We don’t actually act like two people who are dating,” he continued.

Her heart felt like a finger had reached out and poked it. Something was wrong, and her answer that they weren’t like everyone else wasn’t going to cut it. “We agreed to hold off until the article came out and I had my first show.”

“I met someone,” he blurted.

“What?”

“The last time I kissed you was outside a bar, and you told me to take it back. We’ve just been assuming we’re together ever since, and really, it’s not the same as actually doing it.”

“Is this about sex?”

“Don’t get petty on me. You’re too good for that.”

“How am I supposed to get? Who is she?”

“I wish I hadn’t said this on the phone.”

“Are you seriously avoiding the question? Who are you?” She had actually stopped working on the pants and looked out the window. It was night, and most of the office lights were off. She looked at the clock—nine thirty.

“I met her at a protest at City Hall that Nadal dragged me to. She’s nice, but it’s not about her.”

“Right,” Laura said, “it’s about the non-entity of
us
, right? Which only started bothering you when someone else came along?” He might have said something, but she didn’t give him a chance. “What’s her name?”

He said something. It wasn’t Mary or Jane or Stephanie, but something foreign and exotic sounding.

“Tofu?” she cried. “You’re dating someone named after pressed vegetable protein?”

“Laura, please, don’t let this be something it’s not. We should always have stayed friends.”

“A white square floating in stagnant water? That’s who you’re with?”

“I’m not letting this get ugly.”

“That is unbelievably passive-aggressive, even for you.” She had clutched the Parsippany pants so hard she creased them.

As she walked down Bedford with her sister, she thought of the few stilted conversations she’d had with Stu since then, conversations he’d initiated so that their falling-out would be mitigated. She cooked up a few hundred reasons why they should avoid seeing him or talking to him entirely.

“It’s too early,” she said.

Ruby, who knew the whole story inside and out, knew what she was doing and ignored her completely. Laura would have sworn Ruby walked faster, forcing her to trot to North Fourth Street and turn right before she could think of another excuse or wonder at Ruby’s real motivations. They stopped in front of Stu’s little brownstone, which looked like every other brownstone on the block and appreciated in value by the minute. She remembered telling him he was overpaying and that he was too classy to rub in how very wrong she was.

Ruby hit the doorbell before Laura could stall, and as the seconds ticked by, she saw herself in the window’s reflection. Monty had never finished her face. Her right eye was mascaraed and shadowed, and her left had some sort of base and a little of something else, but didn’t look made up at all.

“I look like a Merle Norman ad!” she cried, but it was too late. The front door opened, and there was Stu, fully dressed and showered. Laura suddenly felt tired and worn down.

“Hey, Ruby,” he said. His smile when he saw Laura was genuine enough and put her at ease. Whatever happened, he still liked her. That and a full MetroCard would get her a trip uptown.

“Stu,” Ruby said, “we need your brain.”

“You can have whatever’s left of it.” He glanced at Laura before he stepped aside and let them in the house.

The dark wood stairway was topped by a skylight that sent shafts of light into the foyer. The effect made Stu look angelic and mysterious, with his pale face cast in shadow and the light glowing in his yellow hair. That was not what Laura needed. She needed him to gain fifty pounds and smell like stale coffee and fresh garlic. Alas, he was still the same Stu she had thrown away. Or more accurately, the Stu she had let fall out of her pocket while she was running for the bus.

“What’s on your face?” he asked.

She spun to the mirror. The house was a hundred years old, and the wood trims were exactly as they’d been when it was built. The foyer had a wooden bench with a hat rack and coat hooks attached. A mirror served as the centerpiece, and Laura turned her face from side to side. Monty had gotten her whole face with the powder, thankfully.

“Looks nice,” Stu added.

“Which side?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Ruby giggled, but Laura didn’t think it was funny. His answer made her feel as though he didn’t care for either side, but she wasn’t about to morph into a crazy broad and press him for more.

“Come on up.” He led the way, his old man’s slippers chuff-chuffing on the wooden stairs. He wore skinny jeans, a cotton shirt, and a fine-gauge cardigan that was buttoned wrong, hipster-style. The wrongness of the buttoning seemed to improve the fit of the sweater, making it asymmetrical in a controlled way, and interesting. It was hard to not look at him twice because her mind wanted to correct the buttons, then it decided they were okay.

Oh, how she wanted to hate him.

As soon as she got into the apartment, she really did hate him. A fringed leather bag sat on the coffee table, along with banker boxes of files, a laptop, and a sleek little printer. Stu was not a messy guy, as far as she knew, and he didn’t carry around fringed bags.

“What happened in here?” she asked.

Ruby punched her arm.

He headed for the kitchen. “I’ve been doing my piece. Do you want coffee?”

“Does the Pope crap in the woods?”

Ruby glanced down at the papers. “Why hasn’t your story come out yet?”

“Ruby!” Laura hissed.

Stu continued as if the question wasn’t rude. “It started out as amateur sleuth, your sister, hunts down rich woman’s killer. But I’m rooting out a lot of corruption. So it’s taking on a life of its own. The whole thing’s moving somewhere different. The editors are so cool. They advocate me taking it where it’s going to go. As long as it’s clean and on time and I loop them in, it’s no problem.”

“Cool. Hey, I need to use the ladies’,” Ruby said. Like a quick answer, a white noise they hadn’t noticed stopped, and the room got a little too quiet. It had been the shower, and whoever was in there was finished. Ruby cleared her throat and sat down. The silence was thicker than a down coat.