Some Like It Haute: A Humorous Fashion Mystery (Style & Error Book 4) (25 page)

“They’re pretty, aren’t they? I love Clementine season.”

“Clementines,” I repeated. “smaller and sweeter than oranges, aren’t they?”

“Easier to peel, too.” She stood up and leaned over the vase, taking a deep breath over the vase. “They smell good too. Go ahead, give them a whiff.”

I tentatively stepped closer to the vase. From a distance of two feet away, I breathed in the scent. It took me back to the attack. Right before I was hit. I pushed away from the desk and yelled, “No!”

The receptionist, not willing to have a potentially deranged stranger hanging around her lobby, stood from her desk and very quickly escorted me to Oscar’s office on the third floor. He appeared to be waiting for me.

“You must be Samantha. Come on in,” he said. “Care for a drink?” he asked. A fully stocked bar cart sat to the right of his desk.

Knocking back a shot of vodka wouldn’t do much in the way of making me feel better. I considered asking if he had any meatball sandwiches lying around, but instead politely declined his offer.

Before diving directly into felony-committing mode, I set my belongings on the table and looked around. If Oscar had any hints to his personality hidden in the room, I wasn’t seeing them. The walls were lined with images of airbrushed models and not much more. His desk was immaculate, as were his bookshelves. Knick Knacks were kept to a minimum, which seemed to be a nice gesture to have done for the cleaning service.

Nope, if I was going to engage Oscar LeVay into any kind of secret-spilling banter, I was going to have to play the cards I was dealt.

“Mr. LeVay, I wondered if I could trouble you for an opinion,” I said. I eased the stack of Dante’s photos out of the envelope. “You’re a respected expert in discovering models. I recently had these photos taken. Do you think I have a future in the business?”

He took the photos and studied the one on top. The red dress. He flipped to the next one, and the one after that. “You have a certain charm. Perhaps catalog modeling for the plus size market.”

“Excuse me?”

“Plus size models are in the ten to twelve range. You’re—how tall? Five six?”

“Seven. Five seven. And a half.”

“A bit on the short side, and a little old for this kind of work, but there’s a place for big boned girls like you.”

My cheeks flushed red. The last time I’d checked, I was below the national average for women in the United States, but thirty seconds with Oscar and I felt like an undesirable. Was this how he spoke to everybody who walked into his office asking about their chances for success?

Focus, Samantha.

“What about Harper Ashton? She’s one of your top models, isn’t she?”

“Was. I expected her to work or me for a long time. All she had to do was steer clear of the darkness of the industry and she could have become one of the great. Like Christie and Linda. Bring back the All-American look.”

“I never thought about it, but she would have been perfect for Amanda’s other collections. Before Amanda went with the sci-fi look.”

“You’re right. She was to become the centerpiece of Amanda’s collection. Classic American Sportswear on a classic American beauty. The two could have helped each other, made each other famous. But then Amanda had this”—he waved his fingertips by his temples—“this hallucination of silver lamé. I tried to get Harper pulled from the show. She didn’t need to be a part of Amanda’s train wreck.”

“You said ‘was.’ Isn’t Harper with your agency anymore?”

“Harper disappeared after the show. I exhausted countless resources trying to make sure she wasn’t injured or in any kind of danger. There was a lot at stake. And then she sends a postcard from Mexico. No apology. No explanation. But I know who was behind it.”

“Who?”

“Her sister.”

“Harper has a sister?”

Oscar opened a leather-bound binder that sat on the corner of his desk and flipped through several pages of photos. He stopped on the second one from the end, pulled the glossy image out of its plastic sleeve, and held it up. “Her sister. Molly Diers.”

31

The face that stared back at me was only slightly familiar. It was a different Molly than the one who needed my help to find an outfit for the awkward family gathering. The woman in the photo was airbrushed and glamorous in a minimalistic late-70s kind of way. I guess even in her modeling days, Molly Diers was into the Bohemian look.

Oscar set the photo down and stared at the image. “Molly had the body and the attitude, but after the incident, she was over.”

I rested my butt on the arm of the chair across from Oscar’s desk. “What incident?” I asked.

“Molly took a job that nobody knew about. It was a closed set and involved a bit of nudity. She was just a girl. There should have been a guardian, but there wasn’t. Molly claimed abuse. Her mother, who denied giving permission for the job, came after me for sending a girl her age into an adult situation without supervision, and Molly dropped out of sight. The photographer left the country and only worked abroad until recently.”

“Let me guess. The photographer was Clive Barrington.”

“Yes.” Oscar had been speaking from a collection of memories too strong to keep suppressed, but my interjection pulled him back to the present. He took in how I was resting on the arm of his probably very expensive office chair, and stood to his full imposing height. I stood up straight too, even though five foot seven and a half wasn’t particularly imposing.

“Samantha, I believe you are here to deliver a check.” He tapped the edges of my photos on his desk to line them up and handed them to me.

I tucked them under my arm while I felt around in my handbag for the envelope containing the check. As soon as he had it, I would be dismissed. Which was fine, because I had to get out of there.

I set it on the corner of his desk. He picked it up and looked inside. Satisfied with what a cursory glance told him, he looked up.

“Let me know if you’d like help putting your portfolio together.”

Sure. The next time I needed someone to pummel my self-esteem, I’d be sure to give him a call.

I threw the car into gear and peeled out of the parking lot. There was no way Molly Diers’ arrival on my doorstep had been coincidence. Especially now that I knew something had happened between Molly and Clive in the past. Add in that Oscar had represented Molly at the time of the incident.

Molly had dropped out of the modeling world, gotten married, let herself go, and gotten divorced. Three people who had a connection to Amanda’s ill-fated runway show were at the same place at the same time. It seemed like someone was putting the band back together, and at the top of the list of potential ringleaders was Molly Diers.

According to the police, the only crime to be investigated was that of arson. Could Molly be guilty of setting the fires around town? She had motive: create a diversion to get her sister away from Clive Barrington. If Molly had taken note of the photos in the darkroom, then the fire at my house could have been a deterrent. Like the attack on me the night before the show. A message for me to mind my own business.

I drove to Warehouse Five. Traffic was light and I arrived quickly. Two cars were parked in the lot: Amanda’s little black coupe and a gold sedan with a dent on the rear passenger side. I pulled into the space next to Amanda’s and got out.

Someone had propped the door open with a brick. I entered. Charred air perfumed the interior. I stood still and listened for the sound of voices. There were none. There was only the leftover smell of burnt building. My stomach turned. I moved forward.

The auditorium where Amanda’s show was to have taken place was on the left hand side of the building. I assumed that’s where I’d find Amanda. I assumed wrong. The room was empty.

Although I’d been back at Warehouse Five to talk to Santangelo Toma, this was the first time I’d been inside the auditorium since the night of the fashion show.

The room remained largely untouched from the chaos that had ensued. Chairs had been tipped over  and pushed to the side to make way for patrons to flee. Scars of soot marred the walls. Burnt bits of rose petals crunched under my feet like discarded cornflakes.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I climbed up onto the catwalk. The original white plastic floor covering had melted in the fire and was fused to the damaged platform underneath. The smell was unbearable and probably toxic. I knotted my scarf around my neck and spun the knot to the back like a robber in an old western, and then pulled the wool up over my mouth and breathed through it. Not much better.

I dropped down to all fours and ran my hand across the surface of the floor. I still didn’t understand how the fire had started. I sat for a second and closed my eyes to recall what I’d seen both in person and on the videotape. Five models had walked down that catwalk before Harper. Nothing had happened to any of them. And then she’d strutted her stuff, oversized kimono sleeves dragging along the floor behind her. The kimono went up in flames.

The
kimono
went up in flames. The flames started at the tip of the sleeves and climbed the garment.

I concentrated harder on the memory. The fire had been started at ground level. What was it, a trigger wire under the flooring? I scoured the floor for signs that the platform had been tampered with, but expected nothing. The fire inspector had been through here looking for this very thing, and it was a given he actually knew what a trigger wire would look like, unlike me. If signs of tampering had been left behind, they would have been found by now. By Gigger or Amanda or Tiny or an insurance agent who wanted to prove that someone else was responsible for the fire. The only thing left for me to see were melted plastic and long strands of metallic thread. The threads clung to the wool of my coat like sticky cobwebs. I’d seen these metallic threads before. They’d clung to my glove the night I’d felt around the macadam of the parking lot.

I reached down and peeled a strand of the metallic thread from my coat. I tried to tear it, but couldn’t. It wasn’t thread at all. It was a thin, flexible wick. A few stray threads that matched those of Harper’s kimono clung to the end as though the two had been connected.

And I knew. This was how the fire had been started. The long, barely visible wick had been attached to the oversized, dragging sleeves of the kimono and lit from backstage. The fire traveled the length of it until it reached the sleeve of the kimono. If I had a chance to examine that garment, I’d bet something had been hidden in the edges of the sleeves to make it combust.

Molly hadn’t had the opportunity to tamper with Harper’s kimono.

Tiny had.

The night I’d gone to Tiny about Harper’s kimono, she’d been holding spools of metallic thread. She said she’d look at the ill-fitting garment and make adjustments if there was time. She hadn’t been willing to make adjustments. Her only concern had been making sure the wick remained intact. She’d planned all along to use that kimono to set fire to the show.

I tucked the cluster of metallic threads into my bra, not wanting to take a chance on them falling from a pocket. I climbed down from the platform and went backstage. The fire had destroyed most of the room, leaving an empty cavern. Anything that burned had been consumed by the flames, leaving exposed metal frames to the furniture. The walls looked like a graffiti artist had airbrushed on black soot marks, growing increasingly darker around the windows and the door.

The smell of the fire was stronger back here. Almost a week had passed, and just standing here, I could see the fire, smell the fire, feel the fire. The memory was as strong as it had been the night of the show.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t reliving a memory. A new fire had been set and was burning down what was left of Warehouse Five.

32

Smoke trickled into the room from around a closed door at the rear. Worse, sounds came from inside. The same sounds I’d listened for when I first arrived.

I moved closer and reached out for the knob. The heat burned my fingers before contact. I dumped the contents of my handbag and turned it inside out, and then used it like an oven-mitt to grab at the knob. It opened. Smoke poured out of the door as it swung open. And then, something caught my ankle. I screamed and kicked away. The cloudy air made it difficult to see, but I squinted through the smoke to see what it was. A hand.

Tears clouded my vision. The scarf was no match for the smoke. I had to get outside where the air was clear. Phone, wallet, everything that had been in my handbag now lay scattered on the floor. All of that could be replaced. My life could not. Neither could the life of the person in the closet.

I looked down at the person on the ground. It was Amanda.

“Get out of here!” I called. I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward me. She fought my efforts.

She panted for air and coughed. I pulled the scarf down from my face so she could hear me. “You have to get out of here. Now!” I dragged her toward the back door. She stumbled through it and got about ten feet away from the building before collapsing onto the gravel, knees first. She turned over onto her back and coughed like a thirty-year smoker.

I stumbled away from the building and saw a car partially hidden down the road. It faced me. I ran toward it. My legs gave way halfway there. I fell. I scrambled back up to my feet. The engine started and the car backed away. Tiny’s face laughed at me through the windshield. She was going to get away.

I dove onto the hood and grabbed the antenna. The car backed up and I slid, my grip on the thin metal spoke the only thing that kept me tethered. Tiny’s face was red with rage.

She twisted the steering wheel hard. I swung to the side of the hood. My body, sore from residual bruises and new injuries, was no match for her. I couldn’t even scream, my voice hoarse from inhaling so much smoke. She arced the car sharply and spun the car the opposite direction. I clung to the antenna. She cursed. The brakes slammed on. She reversed and drove, reversed and drove. I gripped the antenna tighter.