The Craigslist Murders (17 page)

Thanks,

Gina

Charlotte improvised a quick resume and e-mailed back. She wrote down the woman’s number and logged off. Picking up her purse, she decided to walk two blocks to Bergdorf’s on Fifth Avenue. Maybe she’d even call Gina from a payphone and set up a time to meet. Charlotte was good on the phone.

Charlotte’s mouth was dry and her neck was itching. What she’d wanted seemed so simple: a three-ply cream silk shirt to go with the velvet shawl that she’d picked up years ago in Rajasthan. The shawl was magnificent. A six-foot piece of burgundy velvet, hand-embroidered with seed pearls and gem-like crystals. But after an hour at Bergdorf’s, she was still searching. God! How she hated shopping for clothing, the sifting through racks and racks of clothing and getting undressed in rooms that were probably wired for everything, including sound.

“It’s part of the process, Charlotte,” Vicky had said the last time Charlotte complained.
When had shopping, like grieving, become a process, anyway?
Probably at the same time the sales help had become “associates.” And who the hell was Vicky
to talk about
process?
Nobody with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder had the patience for “process.” For Vicky, it was all about
evading
, not enduring process. When her “associate” Samantha tapped on the dressing room door with yet another armful of suggestions, Charlotte barked, “No more!”

Twenty minutes later, Charlotte was still stuck in a cab on her way downtown. Madly scratching at her neck, she listened to her cell messages: Anna congratulating her on the sale, Darryl’s handlers at the fashion company, and Rita.

Rita was furious. “Call me the minute you get this, Charlotte. That library desk you bought is a FAKE! Do you hear me … $700,000 and it’s a fake!”

Charlotte’s hands were shaking as she drummed her feet on the floor.

“Driver, driver,” she shouted. “You should’ve taken Fifth. It’s sequential lights. I could have been home by now!”

The driver just kept talking into the headset of his cell phone.

“Stop! Stop right now!” she said, banging on the plastic window that separated her from the front seat.

Speed-dialing Rita, she jumped out of the cab and raced across 51
^st
Street toward the Lexington Avenue subway. Ignoring the red light, she nearly knocked a one-legged messenger off his bike. Both of them looked at one another, stunned and angry, then laughed.

“Sorry! I’m so sorry!” Charlotte said, bending down to pick up his bag. “I was in such a hurry, I didn’t look.”

“Yeah! I understand,” the messenger said, rearranging his bag and walkie-talkie. “We’re all in a hurry, ain’t we?”

As the subway rattled through the darkness, Charlotte
played her favorite “what if” game. What if Rita knew that every time she invited Charlotte into her house and closed the door, she locked herself in with a murderer? What if she knew that every time she bitched about the height of a bedside table, or the color of a swatch, or the weave of a Dhurri carpet, Charlotte fantasized about smashing her head in with a poker? Just withholding this information from Rita made Charlotte feel powerful and generous. She wasn’t Rita’s lackey, she was a giver and a taker of life. How did Rita’s billions compare to that kind of omnipotence?

When you worship appearances, especially your own, it doesn’t pay to skimp on closet space. Which was why Rita, her closet consultant, and a team of Irish mill workers had devoted the same painstaking detail and exorbitant sum of money to the building of her refrigerated sycamore closets as the faithful once devoted to the construction of cathedrals. (Rita also rented an additional climate-controlled storage unit in upstate Connecticut “for the good stuff.”) The clothing in town was arranged alphabetically and chronologically by designer, color, and season. One morning the previous spring, Charlotte had seen Rita respond to the discovery of a single Prada dress out of place with the same level of hysteria as she once did to the discovery of cysts on her ovaries and the news of 3,000 people killed downtown.

Rita was whining. “I’m just not sure, Diane. It has to be
exactly
right. This is the first time the Johnsons have invited us to the opera.” The clothing stylist reassured her client with a steady stream of quiet patter. It was a familiar technique. The patter eventually eroded away at the objections and a choice was made.

“Charlotte, come in here, please,” Rita begged. “I want to know what you think.”

Charlotte entered the dressing room. “You look lovely, Rita!” she said, winking at the stylist.

“Really?”

“Absolutely. The blue is the same color as your eyes. And I love the ruching.”

“Alright, Diane. Tell Oscar I’ll take it. Just make sure the alterations are done by Wednesday.”

As Diane unzipped the gown and Rita stepped out from its cocoon of foamy azure satin, she looked at Charlotte’s reflection in the wall of full-length mirrors.

“Why have you got a pin in her hand, Charlotte?”

“I’m going to show you how to tell the fake from the real thing, Rita. I’ll meet you in the bedroom.”

Rita’s eyes lit up. This was the thing about obsessive compulsives; they weren’t just perfectionists; they were always
right
. “But the desk you bought is downstairs in the library,” she said.

“I know,” Charlotte said, turning and heading out of the dressing room. “But the fake is in your bedroom.”

She was hauling the Venetian Baroque chest of drawers out from against the wall when Rita jogged into the room.

“What are you doing?” she squawked. “Caroline picked
that out for me, Charlotte. It was owned by the same Italian family for three centuries.”

“Maybe,” Charlotte said, pushing her straight pin into a wormhole in the diamond patterned marquetry. Rita came over and huddled over the chest as Charlotte pulled out the pin.

“Go ahead, Rita. You do it.”

Rita stuck the pin in and out. “What’s your point, Charlotte?”

“The point is, Rita, the only worm at work here is Caroline. That little tunnel shouldn’t be straight. It should be sort of irregular. That’s how nature creates those holes. And let me show you something else,” Charlotte said, moving around towards the back of the chest of drawers.

Rita was following her, more curious than angry.

“Look at the wood. It’s walnut, the same as the rest of the piece, right?”

“Obviously,” Rita replied, smirking.

“It shouldn’t be,” Charlotte said. “It should be a cheaper wood.”

“What are you talking about?” Rita pouted, peering at the back.

“If this were three centuries old, the guy who made it would have used a cheaper wood for the back. Something like pine. Same for the inside. That’s how they did it then.”

“Oh my God!” Rita said, lurching back and leaning against the wall. “What else?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Abe’ll murder me. That piece cost him more than the one you bought.”

Charlotte took Rita by the hand and circled towards the front of the chest.

“See these drawers?” she asked, kneeling down and pulling one of them out. “Feel the bottom.”

Rita ran her hands across the bottom.

“Smooth, right?”

Rita nodded.

“They should be rough. And again, the wood should be different than the outside. And cheaper.”

Rita pulled her hand away as if she had been burned. Which, of course, she had. By Caroline.

“Now check the keyhole.”

Rita’s whole body sagged.

“Do you see any trace of polish, any scrapes?”

“No.”

“After three centuries, don’t you think there should be some sign of somebody cleaning it?”

“Oh God, Charlotte! Don’t tell me any more, please!”

Sitting in a heap on the carpet, a mere shadow of her former know-it-all self, Charlotte almost felt sorry for Rita.

“How old do you think it really is?” she asked, glumly rising to her feet.

“You mean, how young?” Charlotte replied. “Some parts of it are probably very old. You wouldn’t believe what these craftsmen can do in England and China.”

“China?” Rita groaned.

“Yeah. There’s a repro guy on my block downtown. Until a month ago when he got thrown in jail for arms and drug dealing, he was bringing in stuff that even fooled the antique experts at H.M. Luther.”

Her mission accomplished, Charlotte patted Rita on the hand and passed her the straight pin. “Use it to test the piece I bought in the library, Rita.”

“You promise you won’t say anything to Abe, right?”

“Of course, I promise,” Charlotte said, as they walked, arm in arm, towards the stairs. Secrets were like money in the bank for Charlotte. They gave her a nice bit of leverage when clients got out of control.

“Not that I really care, Rita,” Charlotte said as the housekeeper helped her into her Searle parka. “But who told you my piece was a fake?”

Rita blushed. “It was the color consultant.”

“Tell her to stick to paint chips in the future, will you?” Charlotte said, making no attempt to disguise her ear-to-ear grin.

Charlotte sang to herself as she rubbed a pearl-sized dot of La Prairie moisturizer onto her face, a barely-there layer of bronze powder to her cheeks, and a bit of Arden Eight Hour Cream on her lips.

Thank God I’ve always avoided the sun
, she thought, searching for nonexistent pores in the mirror. What was it Vicky had raved about before leaving for the safari? Collagens derived from human foreskins?
Whose foreskins?
She’d wondered. Where do you get human foreskins? From dead men? Did husbands pluck them off the penises of defeated rivals? Did they buy them from
moyels
, the people who performed
ritual circumcisions? Just the idea of it made Charlotte sick. Tying her freshly-shampooed hair up in a velvet hair-band, she was still singing when she hit the sidewalk.

Before taking off on her power walk, Charlotte hurried over to West Broadway and slid a quarter into the payphone. She had already left three messages on Gina’s cell. When she heard an actual voice, she blanked for a moment.

“Gina?

Silence.

“Gina? It’s Kate, from Craigslist.”

“Ahhh, yes.” The high-pitched voice sounded like a child. “Listen, I think I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to sell the silver, after all.”

“I understand,” Charlotte replied, softly. “You’re probably as nervous as I am, right? I mean, I sold a St. Laurent last week and …”

“Oh My God!” the woman squealed. “Couture or ready-to-wear?”

Charlotte laughed. “Couture, of course. Fall 1977.”

“Tell me you’re joking, Kate! Wasn’t that the year of his Chinese Collection?”

“Yup. One of his best, I think. Anyway, I got $12,000 for it.”

“I’m swooning, I’m positively swooning. Couture is the one thing I just cannot talk Steve into buying for me. ‘It’s absurd, darling,’ he says to me. ‘$50,000 for a stupid dress.’ ”

“Ah well,” Charlotte giggled. “Men have a lot to learn, don’t they?”

“They sure do,” Gina sighed. “So. Would you be willing to pay cash, do you think?”

Charlotte grinned. Thank God for greed! “Oh definitely! I only take cash, myself. And if you’re anxious about letting me in, I could meet you at Starbucks or something. That story in the
Post
really spooked me.”

“No! No!” the girl said, back-tracking. “Don’t be silly. You don’t sound like a killer. I mean, how many killers wear couture St. Laurent, right?” She laughed. “But listen, Steve’s away and I’m going up to my ashram for a week. Could you come to the house next Tuesday? I’m done with yoga at noon.”

“Oh wow!” Charlotte exclaimed. “You’re into yoga, too? I think it saved my life. I mean, I’m so hooked I carry my mat around with me everywhere.”

“Me, too! Me, too!” the girl echoed, delightedly. “This might actually be fun.”

Charlotte scribbled down the Tribeca address. “Is there a doorman, Gina?”

“He was fired last week. Turns out the guy was a convicted
felon.”
Of course, Gina wanted her to know that it was
usually
a doorman building, not some yet-unrenovated
walk-up
.

“Jesus!” Charlotte commiserated. “What a bore for you.”

“Yeah. But luckily there’s a new guy starting at the end of the month.”

Charlotte smiled.

How the hell the concierge at the Mandarin Oriental had
confused Per Se with Pure, the vegan joint on Irving Place, was a question Charlotte would address later. The restaurant served no animal products and no food heated above 115 degrees—in other words, raw. For now, she sat back and surveyed the room. There was Jessica Davies Morton, too taut to talk, her skin stretched tighter than a jib in a gale. Her husband, Mort, had just succeeded in running some gigantic toy company into the ground and walking away with $300 million. “Failure is a great teacher,” he’d said to reporters with a wink, as he left the company’s corporate headquarters.

At the sound of Pavel’s voice, her focus quickly shifted back to her own table. He was bellowing at the Armani-clad waiter cowering behind her.

“Is my problem, you say? All I ask for is a piece of bread.”