Dead is the New Black (18 page)

How much of this had Pierre instigated? Carmella might have had an idea to subvert the wife and go to Sheldon, the husband, who had more background in the business than Gracie herself. The question was, did she loop in Sheldon before, or after, Gracie was killed? Was it after the insult, or after the murder? Or did Carmella’s contact with Sheldon bring about the round of insults at Grotto? Which begged the question of how long Carmella had been jockeying for Jeremy’s backer.

No wonder Carmella had supported Laura taking over when she returned from Rikers. It wasn’t a lack of ambition. She was backstabbing Jeremy the whole time.

“What are you doing over there?” asked a voice from behind her. It was Carmella.

Laura’s first reaction was to make an excuse and apologize, but she clamped it down. “What are you and Sheldon meeting about?”

“Not about anything that’s your business. Go pin something,” Carmella snapped up her cigarettes, then turned to Tiffany, who stared wide-eyed. “Keep this bitch out of my things.” She spun on her heel and headed for the door.

“Someone got up on the wrong side of the curb this morning,” André said.

Carmella pushed past him, her bag nearly knocking him over. He shrugged and handed Laura a piece of paper. “Bloomie’s is having an issue with that JSJ button on the gabardine suit. They’re saying it’s antique nickel instead of pewter.”

“Civilians can’t tell the difference unless one of us told them.”

“I need seven dozen. You don’t have that from sampling?”

She might, in the history closet, but that was hardly the point. “This is a production issue. You have to go to Yoni.”

“She said to come to you.”

“Yoni’s not in today.”

André paused before he answered, “This was yesterday.”

Laura knew Yoni had been in yesterday, but she still didn’t believe she would refer André to her. These were JSJ logo buttons—under lock and key. They weren’t meant to be tooled all over town. He was obviously trying to expedite the matter for his customer.

Laura handed him back the paper. “Ask Yoni.”

André snapped the paper away. “This is a lot of people to piss off before ten a.m.”

Laura shrugged. “If Yoni tells me to get the buttons, I’ll be happy to do it. Until then, either Bloomie’s has to wait, or you have to break into the storage closet and steal them.”

“Which closet?”

She couldn’t believe his gall. “The one I have the code for. Do you want Yoni’s cell?” She reached for her notebook, which held a disorganized pile of cards and scraps stapled to page corners. Yoni’s number was in there somewhere. “Call her and explain, then transfer her over to me when she says yes,” Laura continued, rifling through the notebook. When she found it, she wrote it down for André. He and his sour puss left. No gold star and a pat on the head for her today.

Laura, creature of habit, did what she always did when she opened her notebook. She checked her pockets for cards and numbers that were in danger of getting lost in the laundry or the lining of her bag. Checking also had the additional advantage of creating another distraction from making patterns.

She was just stapling Pierre Sevion’s card to the corner of a page when she heard the phone ring.

Tiffany clicked her pen and scribbled something before saying, “You’re not coming back? Who’s going to prep the—” She stopped suddenly, then said, “Okay,” before hanging up.

“She coming back?” Laura asked.

“No, and so now I have to do all the boards? How is that cool?” Tiffany stormed out.

Normally, Laura would have assumed Carmella was either preparing for, or coming down from, a party. But today felt like dirty dealings and, when Laura clacked the staple into the business card, she thought it might be a great time to call Mr. Sevion.

She picked up the phone, put it down, then breathed through her nose three times.

That didn’t help at all.

She was obviously out of her mind. That man had no desire to speak to her. He had just given her his card because, well, she didn’t know why. But the reasons didn’t matter, did they? The prestige of the card wore off as hours and days passed. He had other things on his mind, and he would forget her like a mediocre meal. She needed him. He knew Carmella, traveled in the right circles, and had access to information that she could acquire if she asked the right questions in the right order, without revealing anything, of course. She imagined every worst-case scenario. One, he asked her who she was repeatedly until she just got off the phone in shame. Two, she accidentally revealed that she was a suspect in the murder of his friend. Three, he didn’t know anything about the party Carmella attended the night of the murder, and she looked like an idiot for asking.

What the hell? They were all pretty bad in different ways. She dialed his number. Then, she hung up. Then, dialed again, expecting a secretary or an assistant to put her off for between one minute and one week.

“Sevion,” he answered in full French accent.

She had called his cell phone. There was no way around it now.

“Hi, Mr. Sevion, this is Laura Carnegie. We met at Gracie’s funeral?” She stopped there, because she could go on with endless, unflattering descriptions of herself.

“Of course, the Irish twin.”

She’d heard that expression before, but never with a French accent. “I just wanted to talk to you about something.” She realized she’d talked herself into a corner and, in order to get out, she had to make it worse. “My sister is starting a bridal line, and I wanted to get your advice on it.”

“I’m having lunch at Lanky Dove, shall you join?”

“Well, Ruby’s at work.”

“Just you is fine. Be there at twelve-thirty.”

And he hung up, just like that.

Laura had no time to worry about what she would wear to Lanky Dove. It was lunch, so less pressure. It was also a hipster café in a basement, not a cavernous nightspot full of the rich and gastronomically selective. And she had patterns to do. Lots of them. She really had no business leaving the office for lunch at all, much less stepping out for a meal twelve blocks away.

She was gathering her coat and bag when Tinto called with the number for a lawyer. She scribbled it onto a scrap of paper and stuffed in her pocket.

“How is Jeremy?” she asked.

“He’s a pain in my ass,” Tinto answered.

“I need to see him about the show.”

“I’m sorry, No Relation.” Apparently, that was his new name for her. “You can’t see him again until I get the go-ahead. Let someone else handle the show.”

That someone would be Carmella, typically. But since Laura was beholden to not talk, she couldn’t tell him why the designer was fully unqualified for leadership at the House of Jeremy St. James.

They were going to have to muddle through. Mom’s needles clicked as she knotted her crochet beading, humming jingles from commercials. Tony muddled through his Stone Rocker patterns without direction. Tiffany listlessly put little sketches onto foamcore, and Chilly worked up illustrations for the look book. André was selling non-existent colors and dreaming of redistributing buttons. Carmella was who-knows-where. Yoni was out. Ephraim didn’t have the TOP, and Laura plowed through what she could of her work, leaving at 12:15 without a word about her lunch with uber-fashion agent and talent-sucking humpback whale, Pierre Sevion.

CHAPTER 18.

No matter how often she told herself to relax, Laura found her back stiffening and her hands clutching the strap of her bag as if someone wanted to take it. She had been five minutes late, thinking that was fashionable enough, but she was the first one there, in a restaurant without reservations, with no idea of how big a table she should save. So she sat in the window seat and played with her phone, pushing aside the T&C catalogs that lined the sill, trying to look nonchalant. She wished she had a standby switch that would put her into a sort of fully relaxed fugue state.

By the time Sevion and the white-haired lady showed up, Laura was as tense as an expectant father. In the intervening ten minutes, she had run down four ways the conversation could go, but was sure they were all inadequate. Sevion wouldn’t give her the information she needed to corner Carmella. Worse, as he opened the door for the Romanian, Laura was sure he wouldn’t even recognize her. Surely, he thought she was someone else when she called, and she was about to get a quizzical look and an apology.

“Ah, Miss Carnegie!” Sevion said when he saw her. “So glad you could come. You remember my wife, Hortensia?”

“Nice to see you again,” Laura said.

Hortensia nodded.

“I didn’t know how big a table to save,” Laura said.

“No need, it’s just us.”

The hostess heard and got them a yellow gingham-covered table in the corner. Laura felt stiff, overly polite, tense—very adjective that would pinpoint her as a socially-stunted rube. But the Sevions didn’t seem to notice.

“Pierre tells me you do the fit for Jeremy St. James,” Hortensia said, leaning forward on her elbows as if Laura was the most interesting person in the world.

“Just the structured wovens and, really, Jeremy tells me how it should look, and I just do it. He’s the North Star of the fit.”

“Because I want to tell you, his clothes, I feel perfect in them. I have some custom-made things, and his clothes fit just as good. Don’t you think, Pierre?”

Sevion answered his wife by directing his attention to Laura. “His clothes are exquisite on the body; everyone knows it.”

“I can’t wait to tell him you said so.” Laura beamed.

Husband and wife looked at each other, then back to Laura. “So,” Sevion said, “where did you grow up?”

Laura was so happy to have a direct question to answer, she forgot to not babble. Or maybe she was being entertaining. She had no way of knowing. But she started in Hell’s Kitchen, in the era where it earned the name, with her mother, her sister, their absent father, and a public school system that left the girls to their own devices until Mom had enough. “She had to get us into private school, but she had no money. So we were the first white kids at the Dalton School to get financial aid. See, Mom had sewn for every First Lady since Barbara Bush, so she promised couture suits to auction off for fundraisers.”

“Ah! She was at Scaasi!” Sevion said. “You and your sister were born for this.”

“I used to go to the stores on Fifth Avenue, like Chanel, and go into the dressing rooms to rip out the labels so I could sew them into my own stuff.” She paused for Pierre’s laugh. “That was to get into the really cool crowd at Dalton, which was run like a garrison by Caitlin Wenderspier, who wouldn’t hang out with anyone who shopped at Gap. So, I finally got her attention with this turquoise dupioni jacket that I put an Alexander McQueen label in, and she invited me to her birthday party at Windows on the World. I was so excited, I started sewing something else, a lace maxi dress, I think, and I asked my sister Ruby what label I should steal for it. Well, Ruby told Caitlin I put stolen labels into a home-sewn jacket.”

“Terrible!” Sevion said.

“And did you go to the party?” Hortensia asked.

“Yeah, but no one talked to me the whole time. It was the last time I tried to counterfeit something.”

Half an hour had gone by, and she was no closer to getting what she needed from Sevion. She was good at derailing conversations, not directing them.

“Your sister is starting a bridal line?” Sevion asked. “And you wanted to ask me about it? Will you be working with her?”

Laura was stymied for an answer. She wanted to stick to the truth, so that when she spoke to Ruby, her fibs wouldn’t seem so outlandish. And in the same breath, she had to ask them about Carmella.

“Well, I told her about Carmella starting her own thing.” Laura paused, gauging their reactions. She couldn’t detect a flicker or change in either of them. Damn professionals. “And then we had this long conversation about how she always wanted to do bridal, and I thought I’d ask Carmella how she was managing, but she’s being real cagey about it, so I figured I’d ask you how you thought Ruby should go about it. I mean, should it be different than what Carmella’s doing?”

“No one can emulate the methods of someone else’s success,” Sevion replied. “Though, to be honest, we haven’t seen her success yet. Not since her potential backer was killed.”

“It’s funny,” Laura said. “That night, when Gracie was killed, I was at a loft party, and you know, I feel like, I was two blocks away. I could have done something.”

Her comment hadn’t drawn Sevion back in, but Hortensia was fully engaged. “On 36th?”

“Yeah. I left a little early. Were you there?”

“I was there fifteen minutes. I swear it was like being at a football game. And one bathroom was not long for this world.”

“You told me,” Sevion said, waving his hand. “I avoid those things entirely.”

“Yeah,” Laura said, “and Carmella was having it out with this guy in a white tracksuit, which was weird, because I’ve never seen him before.”

Hortensia smirked. “That’s her boyfriend.” Laura’s emotions must have been all over her face, because Hortensia laughed a cruel, catty laugh. Laura made a mental note to never tell Hortensia anything at all, ever, about anything. Hortensia continued, “He owns a club on Staten Island, where she’s from.”