2 Death of a Supermodel (18 page)

Laura avoided the news van parked across the street. The police tape was still across the garden apartment door. She walked up to Mom’s apartment and there they were, sitting at the dining room table, looking sad and dim, with two sets of puffed eyes and a general attitude of the put-upon.

Ruby ran into her arms, and Mom went back into the kitchen for another teacup.

Neither Laura nor Ruby cared much for tea, outside the odd red African variety served at a thirty-grand-per-year social club, but they warmed their hands on the cups and let Mom give them as much sugar as she thought they wanted.

“They swabbed me,” Ruby said. “Do you know how humiliating that was? They wore gloves and scraped the insides of my cheeks, and Uncle Graham let them.” She worked herself up into crying.

Laura put up her hand. “If you’re going to make this into a CBS drama event, I’m going to bed.”

Shockingly, she got no resistance from Mom or Ruby, and she realized it was because they were utterly rudderless without her. She was in charge. Talk about putting the blind guy behind the wheel.

“Rubes, I just need to ask you,” Laura said, needing to get some preliminaries out of the way, “were you running a modeling agency of underage girls with Thomasina?”

“Where would I find time to do that? I was working on Sartorial, like, all the time.”

As far as Laura was concerned, one could easily work Ruby’s hours and run an agency or two on the side: a few phone calls, some air kisses at a party, have a lawyer draw up a contract or two. “What about Thomasina?”

Ruby shook her head. “Nope.”

“What about the White Rose thing? For the orphans in Eastern Europe? It was in Thomasina’s obit, and I just found out the Schmillers were involved.”

Mom fussed with the teaspoons and sugar. “I don’t want you upsetting your sister, dear. She’s had a bad day.”

Laura was never one to be deterred by Mom. “Did she do it alone, or was there someone else in with her? Or was it you?”

Ruby answered tersely, like someone who had no choice but to comply for her own good. “I don’t know, I don’t know, and no.”

“Didn’t you give to that foundation or something?”

Ruby sniffed and nodded, noisily sipping less than a drop of hot tea. “We both did.”

She’d almost forgotten—a dinner and a speech, before Ruby and Thomasina had kissed and made up, back when Laura carried a forty-pound grudge in the door and laid it on the table like a sack of lard. The model, having suffered the barbs of the public and nearly losing Roquelle as an agent after knocking Ruby over, had taken them to dinner and laid out her case. Thomasina wasn’t evil. She had a lot on her mind, specifically the situation in Eastern Europe for beautiful young women. The horrible suffering. The rapes. The killings. The aftermath of wars, and the worst, of course, being the economic distress that the western world ignored because the victims were white and beautiful. The suffering of young girls in the third-worldish parts of Hungary and Slovakia was brutal, even compared to what was happening in Africa and the Arab world, apparently. Laura, who had walked in sour and was determined to stay that way, pushed her food around on her plate. Ruby, bless her, love her, misted over like a fast-moving low cloud, and as coldhearted as her reputation had her, Laura could not stand her sister’s tears. Laura had gotten roped into writing a check.

“There was a brochure, wasn’t there?”

“I have it.” Ruby waved her hand toward the floor. “It’s in a box in my apartment.”

“Well, that takes care of that,” Mom said, picking up all three teacups in one hand. “The police taped it off. Uncle Graham can help you get down there. We’ll call him tomorrow.”

When Laura looked at Ruby, she knew Uncle Graham could sleep in late for all they cared.

Mom protested every inch of the way. In the name of a good night’s sleep. In the name of protecting themselves. In the name of their security deposit. In the name of the law.

There was only one way down to Ruby’s apartment that wouldn’t break police tape, and that was through the broom closet. The house had been built as a vertical living space with a kitchen in the basement, living space in the middle floor at the top of the stoop, and a top floor with bedrooms. It was meant for one family with a dumbwaiter to move food around. When the bottom floor had been converted into a separate apartment sometime during the Great Depression, the stairs had been closed off. The space under the steps to the top floor was converted by adding a floor, a door, and some wall. In Ruby’s downstairs apartment, she had two closets, the original one that had been under the stairs coming from the top floor, and one over the stairs. When she opened the door to the closet, there were steps she used as shelves. Had Jimmy taken them out, Ruby would have had one long closet. But he didn’t, and that was to their benefit.

Laura stormed into the broom closet and removed dozens of cleaning products, nondescript shoeboxes, a set of vintage Samsonite luggage no one would ever travel with, and rolls of shelving paper. Once the floor was clear, she looked at the edges of it. The 1950s abstract linoleum curled up at the corners where the glue had lost its stick power, and she was sure the dirt she brushed away had settled on a clean floor fifty years ago. She grabbed the most promising corner and yanked it as far back as she could. Then she did the next corner, and the next. The last corner was tough, and she used a pair of pliers to pry the linoleum from its place. That was so successful, she used the tool on the other three corners, making a ripping, cracking, grunting racket that made her glad the walls between the buildings were stone. By the time she’d hit all four corners and the cutouts at the doorframe, there was nothing but a two-foot piece of linoleum stuck to the center of the closet and a curling mass of aged flooring making it nearly impossible to get in there.

Mom stood behind her, arms folded. “Don’t do this.”

“I’ll help,” Ruby said, arms out.

“No, I got it.”

But Ruby would not be deterred, and Mom, seeing that her daughters were about to do exactly what she told them not to do, emitted a resigned sigh.

Laura scanned the mess in the hallway and found the cordless drill. She checked the charge, which was 65 percent dead, or 35 percent charged if you were a glass half-full type. The tool
whirred
like a seven-pound cricket when she pulled the trigger. She passed the drill to Mom.

Mom crouched as the drill groaned when she jammed the bit into the screw holes that had been there for sixty years, give or take. Naturally, pulling up all the screws revealed nails, which needed to be pried up with a screwdriver, or the back of a hammer, or a butter knife. Some required all three, and Laura bumped backs with her mother in the closet removing them. The last one was in so tight, Mom chiseled the plywood around it until she could use pliers on the entire thing.

They were sweaty, and exhausted, and in too deep to give up. Mom used a crowbar to pry up the wood, which she couldn’t do while standing inside the closet, so she did it from the hall, which had become a wild junkyard of crap from the broom closet and pieces of linoleum they’d scrapped.

The plywood came up, then slapped back down with a
huff
of stale air. Mom pried it up again so they could get their hands under it, then shoulders. Mom yanked it toward the door, which got her nowhere because it was bigger than the frame at that angle. So Laura, who was shorter, got in and twisted, and turned, and called on more strength than she actually had to turn the wood around and gently ease it toward the door. It wasn’t coming out, but she’d made enough room so she could look at what was under there.

Ruby’s broom closet was as neat as everything else in the house. The cleaning products, which were used on a regular basis, lay like sleeping children in cute plaid boxes. If Laura went into the corners, she was sure she wouldn’t see sixty years’ worth of someone else’s dust.

Mom had flashlights ready. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “I don’t want any part of this.” She walked upstairs as if she could make that statement true retroactively.

Ruby was ready to go. Laura stepped down, kicking boxes of cleaning things out of the way before she opened the closet door. They didn’t dare turn on any lights or point the flashlights out the windows, where the snoops in the news van could see. Her sister grabbed her hand and pulled her into the bedroom.

Ruby yanked a polka-dotted box from under the bed and, kneeling in front of it, threw off the lid. She pulled out a pile of paper and handed half the stack to Laura. “It’s in here,” she said, flipping through her half. “Somewhere. Ah! Here.” They huddled in the corner and held their flashlights close to the paper. The brochure was an eight-page full-color foldout for the White Rose Foundation, an organization dedicated to moving girls sold into prostitution in Eastern Europe out of harm’s way.

“Flip to the back,” Laura whispered. There, they saw Thomasina’s picture over a plea for donations, with a signature that was boldly capped and broadly finished, and mention of an unpictured co-chair, Randolf Fosh. “Rolf?”

Ruby shrugged and flipped over the brochure. On the cover, a pretty young thing, smiling and gloriously backlit, unselfconscious about her simple hair and tattered clothes, looked at them with big, meatball eyes.

Laura recognized her immediately. “This is Thomasina’s foundation, which Ivanah and Bob are involved in. I saw Rolf with this girl the other day, and she was also in the Pandora modeling catalog. She’s the link. She can tell us what all these things have to do with each other.”

“Okay. Like what?”

“Someone is pissed at someone else for something to do with this, and if they were pissed enough to kill Thomasina, your problems are over.” She was making it up as she went. Her mind was a pure blank. She was tired, frustrated, and restless, and her thinking was a web of nonsense.

Ruby, for having had one of the worst days of her life, was on the ball. She snapped up the brochure and stuffed it in the box. “Let’s bring it all upstairs. We need to look at everything.”

Laura nodded, but knew she wasn’t going to make it. If she didn’t sleep, she was going to collapse in her own spit and sweat. Mom, who was waiting for them in the hallway, walked her up to bed while Ruby gathered makeup, shoes, and other necessities from her closed-off apartment. The sheets were cool and dry, and Mom pulled the covers over her as if she were seven years old.

“Mom?”

“Go to sleep.”

“I kissed Jeremy today.”

“The one you used to work for?”

“Him.”

“That you still work for?”

“Just sometimes.”

Mom paused as though she wanted to say something. Laura knew what her mother would say. Jeremy was a user and manipulator. He’d never be with her unless he wanted something from her. But she was quite willing to give it. She’d pined after him for six years and finally had the opportunity to be with him. If he wanted to use her, she was his. And manipulation was barely required.

Mom closed the door softly without saying a word. Laura didn’t tell her about the wool crepe order tack on because she was tired. But Mom would be proud to know Laura had found as much use for Jeremy as he could find for her. Maybe more. She fell asleep to the sounds of the cordless drill whirring as the floor to the broom closet was replaced as if nothing had ever happened.

CHAPTER 14.

Laura wasn’t one to act on dreams. She didn’t cuddle crystals or entertain talk about past lives. No tarot cards, palm readings, or talk of Jesus. She worshipped at a sewing machine and prayed to the pattern. Even the idea of “style” or “fashion” was hard to get her head around because it was ethereal and subjective. She preferred an out-of-style jacket that fit beautifully to an up-to-the-minute garment from H&M, a chain that would put intricate beading and embroidery on an armhole shaped like a highway off-ramp.

But insofar as dreams were catalogs of the previous day’s events, a meatball made an appearance. No, it was the idea of a meatball, because she and Stu had been searching Central Park for it, but finding only globs of horse poop that looked like meatballs.

She went downstairs to find Ruby sleeping on the couch and her polka dot document box on the dining room table. Last night’s observations had happened quickly and in low light. The documents could have said anything. The girl on the back of the brochure could have been anyone.

Right?

No. It was Meatball Eyes, definitely the best looking of the bunch. A picture was emerging. Thomasina chaired an organization to help young women, bringing them into the country and getting them jobs as models. How Roquelle Rik allowed it with her territorial leanings was the source of Laura’s bafflement. She snapped up her phone and dialed the number on the back of the White Rose brochure.

She heard a couple of harsh beeps and a notice that the number had been disconnected.

Behind her, Ruby stirred and sat up, groaning.

“Good morning,” Laura said.

Ruby threw herself in a dining room chair and put her head down. “I don’t want to go into the showroom today.”