Designer Knockoff (36 page)
“Go to hell. You and your crummy paper.” He grabbed his coffee and paper and stormed out. He jumped into a white Toyota Camry and roared out of the parking lot.
She was shaking and had to sit down again to calm her nerves. She tried to concentrate on the paper, but she couldn’t finish the story; she stuck it in her bag. Maybe she would look at it later. Lacey finished her coffee and a protein bar, then spent a long moment trying to remember where she parked her big bland blue box of a rental car.
chapter 24
Lacey bought a large box of Godiva chocolates and an armload of fresh fall flowers, making sure it was large and colorful with lots of cheerful yellow and orange trumpet lilies and scarlet chrysanthemums. She didn’t think Cable or anyone else had followed her to Eastwood Greens, the facility where Dorrie Rogers lived. She locked the rental car while balancing a few other little items for Dorrie in her arms. It seemed like a nice enough place, Lacey supposed, but it was an impersonal low-slung brick building. Opening the large glass-front door, Lacey caught a whiff of pine-scented cleaner mixed with an institutional medicinal smell, as if vaccinations were the order of the day. The linoleum floors were polished but not homey. Lacey stood before a large cheerful receptionist with bright pink blush painted on her cheeks and too much eyeliner on her wrinkled eyes.
“Dorothy Rogers? Why, I can’t remember the last time she had a guest. And who did you say you are?”
“Lacey Smith—I’m a distant relative, actually. We’d really lost track of Great-aunt Dorrie. But when I heard she was here and I was near the area, I simply had to visit.”
“Why, that’s just lovely, dear. And you’ve brought her such a beautiful bouquet.” The woman got the attention of an aide nearby who was pulling dead flowers out of a vase. “Chandra, would you please take Miss Smith to the dayroom? I believe Dorothy is in there.” The young woman showed Lacey to a large room, where she was met by a tiny woman with wire-framed glasses that enlarged her eyes. She was pushing her rollator, a walker with wheels, a small seat, and a basket, in which she carried magazines and box of Kleenex.
“Aunt Dorrie?” Lacey asked. She hoped she was right.
“Why, my, oh, my, it must be my little great-niece, Lacey Smith,” she said, and she managed to give Lacey a wink behind the aide’s back. “My dear, you are all grown up.”
The aide looked surprised. “ ‘Dorrie’?”
“Oh, it’s an old family name, Chandra; I haven’t been called Dorrie in at least twenty years. Everybody here calls me Dorothy, Lacey, and I don’t let anybody call me Dot.”
Dorothy Rogers looked quite frail, but she had eyes that sparkled with energy and humor. Lacey thought she had probably started out at five feet tall, but she was considerably shorter than that now. Her iron-gray hair was cut in a short Dutch-boy bob with bangs framing fierce brown eyes. Her face was wrinkled, but she looked lively. She rarely had visitors, it seemed, and Lacey guessed she was going to make the most of this one.
“Let’s sit awhile; let me show you off. Wait till they see I’ve got my family visiting me.”
This sunlit room was more inviting than the reception area, and the furniture looked fresh and clean. Lacey sat on a moss-green velvet sofa, while Dorrie eased herself into a rose-striped satin wing chair. She steadied herself with her hands; then Lacey offered her the flowers and two small packages. “I brought you a little something, Aunt Dorrie.”
The old woman laughed with delight. “Would you look at this booty! Chandra, please go get me a vase for these flowers.”
The aide went in search of a vase, and several older women watched with interest. Dorrie picked up the gold box with green ribbons. “Godiva chocolates! You’re pretty bright, Lacey. You’re from the smart side of the family. It’s so pretty, I’m going to save this for later. Now what else did you bring me? It’s too much.” Her hands reached eagerly. “I swear this is better than Christmas.”
Dorrie carefully opened the other small package, setting aside the pink satin ribbon. Her hands were large for her small frame and heavily veined, but they were deliberate and dexterous, the hands of a seamstress. She lifted the top of the box and folded back a layer of pink tissue paper to reveal three pairs of soft slipper socks in pastel colors. Dorrie clapped her hands. “You must know that old people have cold feet. These are very pretty.” She put one of the socks on her hand and admired it. Then she carefully put them back in the box and tucked them along with her chocolates into the basket of her rollator.
“Mimi always liked warm socks,” Lacey said.
“Ah, yes, Mimi. You look like her,” Dorrie said, studying Lacey. “Not her hair, of course—her hair was the most beautiful auburn, a real dark Irish red.”
Chandra returned to the room with a large vase full of the colorful flowers, artlessly arranged, which caused quite a stir among the other occupants. “I think those are some of the prettiest blossoms I’ve ever seen,” Dorrie said. “I’m going to write to your mother and tell her what a smart and pretty great-niece I have.” The old woman was obviously performing for the crowd, or maybe herself. Lacey took it upon herself to rearrange the flowers with a bit more care.
Dorrie suggested they should go where they could talk more privately. Before leaving the day room, however, she made sure to introduce her “great-niece” to several groups of women in the room. She waved to them and gestured Lacey into the hallway.
“They’re all supposed to be deaf, but you’d never know it by the way they gossip. News travels at the speed of light around here. So come to my room.” Dorrie gave one last look into the dayroom at the old people. “Besides, it will just make it more interesting for them to wonder what I’m telling you. After you are gone I can make up anything I want.”
“Just make it a good story,” Lacey said. “I’m a sucker for a good story.” They walked down the hallway, took a right past the windows overlooking the garden, and found Dorrie’s cozy room.
Painted a soft peach with white trim, it was large enough for her bed, a small sofa and matching easy chair, and a faux-wood dinette set. There was also a tiny kitchen and a handicapped-accessible bathroom. The bed had a handmade quilt with matching pillows, and a bright yellow handmade rag rug lay on the floor. Dorrie wheeled over to her easy chair. Lacey followed behind, carrying the vase full of flowers. “Just put those down on the dining table. It’s Formica; you can’t hurt it,” Dorrie said.
Once they were settled, Lacey pulled out the pictures of Gloria and the two photographs from the picnic at Great Falls. Dorrie traced the images with her fingers. The photos seemed to have the same effect on her as on Honey Martin. “So young. Why, I wasn’t half bad-looking, you know. Look how young we all were.”
“Full of life,” Lacey agreed. Then softly, “What do you remember about Mimi?”
“I met her only a few times before Gloria went missing, at that picnic for one. It was a beautiful day, around Easter, I think. Mimi had heard I didn’t have plans, so she told Gloria I should join them for the weekend. You see, my mother was dead and my father worked two jobs and he was seeing a widow at the time. There wasn’t any room for me. But after the city and the factory I was happy to spend a couple of days in Virginia. Gloria said it was a town, Falls Church it was called, but it sure seemed like the country to me.”
“You were Gloria’s roommate, but you two weren’t really friends. Is that right?”
Dorrie nodded. “We were thrown together because of the war, like so many people. I was a fabric cutter and Gloria was a draper with higher ambitions. We both could sew better than the average factory girl. I was pretty glad just to have a job, but Gloria thought she wasn’t rising fast enough.” Dorrie moved around in her seat as if to get up. The clock with extra large numbers indicated it was three o’clock. “Now what kind of hostess am I? Can I get you a cup of tea? I usually put a kettle on the stove this time of day.”
“That sounds great, but why don’t you let me do it?” Lacey said. She filled the bright red kettle with water and put it on the stove. She located Earl Grey tea bags and a couple of cups.
“I like it with some sugar, and there are some cookies in the cupboard,” Dorrie instructed.
“When we talked the other day, you said you been waiting for this call for fifty years,” Lacey said, as she stood by the stove waiting for the water to boil.
“Yes. Oh, my, yes. It seemed that somebody would care someday. Of course, Mimi cared about what happened. But at the time I wasn’t really sure of what I knew, and I was afraid of losing my job, or worse. If I went missing, there would be no one like Mimi to come around and ask questions. My father would have missed me, I guess, but he sure wasn’t one to go stirring up trouble.”
“Mimi thought it had something to do with the black market and Hugh Bentley.”
“You’d have to be deaf and dumb not to notice certain things,” Dorrie said. “Gloria complained about the rationing and government restrictions on clothing, like L-85, but she managed to get little treasures from Hugh Bentley—fine red wool for a coat, and there was some silk, I remember. It was different for the rest of us.”
Dorrie explained that their landlady demanded most of their coupons to buy food for the boardinghouse. Still, they managed to save a few to pool among friends for little parties.
The Bentley factory turned out inexpensive rayon dresses by the thousands. Many of them were cheaply made copies of the clothes that actors wore in popular movies. But for wealthy clients, Hugh Bentley always managed to provide premier materials, the kind you could get before the war. When he did this he said he was “exhausting the available stock,” because new stocks of wool and silk were supposed to go to the war effort. Nearly all the 100 percent virgin wool was commissioned by the armed forces. Companies advertised that their remaining stock was all that was available “for the duration,” until the war was over. But Hugh Bentley’s stock, Dorrie said, never seemed to go down. He was a magician, pulling fine materials out of a hat, waving his magic wand and producing bolts and bolts of forbidden silk and increasingly rare wools.
“He was definitely involved in the black market?” Lacey asked as she brought in a tray with the cups of tea, sugar, and spoons. Dorrie put in several spoonfuls of sugar; she liked it extra sweet. And she had a taste for chocolate-covered graham crackers.
“Oh, he had to be, but no one could ever prove it. Although they sent those poor boys to prison for driving deliveries.”
“Yes, but Bentley never went to jail.”
“He skated scot-free his whole life.”
“Tell me about Gloria; what was she like?”
“The way she ran after Hugh Bentley scandalized me.” Dorrie clicked her tongue, still slightly scandalized. “We worked together in Hugh’s design studio. It was really just a big room with mirrors, sewing machines, table, and dress dummies. It was much better than working on the factory floor. Hugh had big ideas to do more than make dresses. He wanted to design them, make a name for himself.”
“And he did, didn’t he?” Lacey said.
“Yes, he did. He could cut and tailor nicely—after all, it ran in the family. But he wasn’t quick about it, not like Gloria. She was like lightning. Gloria would get an idea and she would be grabbing for a pencil to get it down. Napkins, envelopes, sometimes she would even use the underside of her smock.” Dorrie shook her head at the memory, as if it were the nuttiest thing. “You could see her mind catch on fire. She would not be happy until she had a complete picture and pattern pieces drawn out. For Hugh it was harder. He didn’t have the flair for it.”
“Did Hugh put his name on her designs?”
“Oh, yes, that was their deal.”
“They had a deal?”
“She called herself Hugh’s ‘secret weapon.’ And he kept all of those sketches of hers. He probably had enough ideas for five years after she disappeared.”
Eight hours a day with Gloria Adams would have been enough for Dorrie, but housing was scarce and the factory had a rooming house. “That’s how she and I wound up as roommates,” Dorrie explained. “I was quiet back then, but she was a talker. Even when she was drawing a design, she always kept up a running conversation. ‘Do you like the sleeves, Dorrie? Should I give them a contrasting cuff? Do you think I should use piping and big buttons or small?’ Or she would ask what I would like in an evening gown. As if I would ever have the occasion to wear an evening gown. Gloria would wake me up just to ask me questions and I would have to put my pillow over my head to get her to stop bothering me. I needed my sleep,” Dorrie complained. “Gloria was enthusiastic, but it wore me to a frazzle.”
“Do you remember the last time you saw Gloria Adams?”
“It was May eleventh, 1944. It was a Thursday.” The way she said it, so sure, so simple, let Lacey know Dorrie had gone over the details of that day in her mind a thousand times.
Dorrie didn’t know that she would never see Gloria again, but she had a bad feeling that day. Orders were rushed; there was always so much work to be done for the war effort.
Don’t you know there’s a war on?
was the catchphrase. And Dorrie had been pulled from her regular job to work on a special project for Hugh Bentley, helping to prepare his fiancée Marilyn Hutton’s trousseau. Nothing as insignificant as World War II would be allowed to intrude on the beautiful debutante’s wedding.
Don’t you know there’s a war on?
was the catchphrase. And Dorrie had been pulled from her regular job to work on a special project for Hugh Bentley, helping to prepare his fiancée Marilyn Hutton’s trousseau. Nothing as insignificant as World War II would be allowed to intrude on the beautiful debutante’s wedding.
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