Dead is the New Black Read online

  Dead Is the New Black

  by

  Christine DeMaio-Rice

  A Fashion Avenue Mystery

  Copyright © 2011 by Christine DeMaio-Rice

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.

  Cover Art designed by the author

  CHAPTER 1.

  Laura was late.

  Not so late that she’d walk into work after everyone had arrived, and it wasn’t as if she’d missed a conference call or a fitting, or anything like that. More like, conceptually late, because she usually arrived at seven thirty every morning so she could chat with her boss—winner of the CFDA award two years running and subject of more Vogue editorials than she could count. Prodigy. Wunderkind. Fashion icon. Jeremy St. James. Whom she loved. And who, naturally, was gay. So Laura wasn’t late for work so much as she was late for a casual conversation with a love interest incapable of loving her back.

  As she got into the elevator at eight thirty on that particular Sunday morning, joining a woman with a perfectly highlighted blond ponytail and a sales guy who smelled as though he’d had an eventful Saturday night, she knew it was worth it, or at least, that it couldn’t have been helped. She couldn’t have let the girl in the pink coat just walk off the R train without being questioned, because she was either the greatest home sewer in the tri-state area, or she was in possession of a first-class knockoff.

  Whichever the case, the girl needed either a job offer or an interrogation, because the pink coat in question was the best-selling, four-hundred-of-a-kind Donatella coat which, in a major flub by two well-paid, and soon to be unemployed, editors, was on the cover of both Bazaar and Elle simultaneously, two months ago, in their December issues. Thus, once the initial four hundred units sold out at Bergdorf’s and Bloomingdale’s, it became more expensive to buy the coat used than new.

  But the woman, who wasn’t a second over twenty-three and not an inch over five-two, with hair dyed a little too black, a straightening job a little too thorough, and a skirt about four inches past the point of flattering, wasn’t wearing a Donatella coat. Not by a long shot. She knew because the button thread on Ms. Hipster’s jacket matched the pink of the fabric. When Laura inched closer to the little hipster, acting as if she wanted to share door-leaning privileges, she caught the unmistakable aroma of a well-loved dog and saw that the pink thread was not only specious in that it was pink, but it was also cotton permacore.

  Laura knew for a fact that the rhinestone buttons on the Donatella coat were sewn on with thread that matched the silver of the button. And she knew because she and an assistant designer had chosen the thread from a rayon thread sample card. They had two shades of grey rayon twisted together to match the color depth of the metal, effectively making the thread disappear.

  However, she had seen no other imperfections in the faux designer coat. The fabric was the same. The collar lay straight on her neck. The stitching was to the St. James standard. Only the button thread gave it away.

  The train had stopped, and Ms. Hipster apparently thought she was just going to walk out at 31st Street with a knockoff of a Jeremy St. James coat.

  Laura had followed to find out where the girl had gotten it, because whomever she bought it from was selling counterfeit merchandise, the bane of the fashion industry, the huge sucking vortex that swallowed millions and left poor patternmakers like Laura without jobs. The black market of inferior-quality goods violated every trademark, copyright, and intellectual property law put into place to protect artists and artisans.

  Ms. Hipster was not just going to walk away, even if, as she approached 31st Street, Laura despaired of a way to ask the woman a polite question, a problem that didn’t rectify itself by the time she followed her to 29th Street, too far away from work just to turn back.

  No, once Laura saw her walk into a Korean market on Broadway, she knew she had passed the point of no return. She was committed to discovering the origins of the pink jacket. Best case scenario, Ms. Hipster’s dog, undoubtedly a smelly, drooling thing she kept in her studio apartment in Bushwick, had chewed off the buttons, and she replaced them with whatever thread she had in her sewing kit. Worst case, she was the mastermind behind a counterfeiting ring, and Laura was putting her life in danger by coming close to her.

  Laura blew into the Korean market and spotted Ms. Hipster at the coffee bar. Laura headed over there and poured herself the smallest size. It smelled stale, even for a Sunday, so Laura felt zero guilt about the wasted brew as she intentionally mismanaged the paper cup.

  “Oh, geez!” Laura exclaimed, as Ms. Hipster arched her back away from Laura’s flying coffee. “I’m so sorry! Did it get anywhere?” A spot of coffee clung to the fabric hairs on the front, about to soak in. The woman had to go ballistic. Who wouldn’t? A Donatella coat cost four thousand dollars. The girl didn’t look like she could afford more than a vintage find from Goodwill.

  Ms. Hipster daubed it with a napkin. “It’s all right. I think it’s mostly off.”

  Mostly? She was either loaded—that was out, judging from the rest of her ensemble—or the coat was cheap. Laura held out more napkins, and they moved out of the way of the cashier line. “I think there’s a little on the button, too.” Ms. Hipster looked, but of course there was nothing. Laura continued, “If the button is stained, I saw the same ones at Harry’s. I don’t know where you’d get the thread to match, though.”

  Laura waited. Ms. Hipster looked at her button, “No, it looks okay. And the thread is just pink. No big. I can buy that anywhere.” She gave a noncommittal smile and backed into the cashier line.

  She didn’t have pink thread at home.

  Meaning she hadn’t resewn the buttons.

  Meaning the coat buttons came with pink permacore thread.

  So it’s fake. Fakefakefake.

  “It’s really cool, the coat,” Laura said from behind Ms. Hipster, who was counting out nickels and pennies to pay for her coffee. “Where did you get it?”

  “My mom brought it back from China.” The girl spun on her vintage 1970s cowboy boots and left. She didn’t seem to know, or care, that Jeremy’s stuff was made in the U.S.A., on 40th Street for that matter, and didn’t ship to Asia. There was always the possibility that she was trying to throw Laura off the trail of a cool new store by claiming the coat came from overseas, a common trick, but if that was the case, there was no way Laura would be able to choke the source of the coat from the hipster anyway. So she just went to the office, quite a far walk from the little Korean grocery with the stale coffee.

  She might be late but, as Laura got into the elevator with the other Sunday workaholics, she knew there was most certainly going to be a meaty conversation with Jeremy. Her reflection in the shiny brass of the elevator doors showed a woman who didn’t look as confident as she felt. She straightened her hair and, struck by the futility of it, pulled her wooly cap further down.

  The mission of the house of Jeremy St. James was to clothe women who were ashamed of neither their bodies nor their discretionary income. If there was a breast to push up, a patch of skin to expose, or a waist to accentuate, Jeremy’s clothes pushed it up, exposed it, or sucked it in. If there was a straying husband, the clothes were meant to bring him home. If there was a lover to attract, Jeremy St. James had a five-hundred-dollar shirt that would inch you toward that goal.

  Jeremy’s clothes simply looked too good, too sexy, too gay to be the work of a heterosexual mind. That intensified Laura’s crush. He was gorgeous, brilliant, and safe. Otherwise, she’d be too nervous even to talk to him, and talking to him was why she got up early and dragged hersel
f to the office.

  Eight in the morning was still too early for just about everyone but Laura and Jeremy to be at work. The reception area glowed from the concealed lighting, warming the white walls, dark woods, and rare red orchids. The cement floor was tinted a grey only a shade warmer than a city street. The glass and wood reception desk sat unmanned, but the crumpled environmentally friendly napkin from HasBean in the wire garbage can told her Jeremy was already in, and that there would be a cup at her desk. She put in her code and rehearsed the counterfeit Donatella story in her mind.

  Laura dropped the lousy Korean convenience store coffee into the trash. It had been a prop, and now it was a cold prop. She didn’t need it any more than the pisswater gurgling like a well-fed baby in the break room.

  Every morning, Jeremy brought her some fancy brew from the artisanal coffee joint by his co-op, surprising her with something different every couple of weeks, a new syrup or foamy treatment. The attention was delicious, but nerve-wracking, because he would sometimes stop and chat at her table for ten minutes about the neighbor downstairs or a new restaurant. Other times he’d drop it in front of her with little more than a “good morning” and walk away, wrinkling her heart like a raisin.

  When he got in first, like today, her coffee would be waiting with a stirrer and two kinds of sweetener on top, and he’d be in his office already, yelling at their goddamned factory, or hunched over those son-of-a-bitch spreadsheets. He’d wave her off when she went to thank him for the coffee. On those days, she had to remind herself that he was gay. He liked female friends and big dicks. She was wasting her time. She should just give up on men entirely.

  She got to her table and, before she could even put her bag down, she noticed that her coffee was spilled. That in itself was a shock. Jeremy wasn’t a mess-maker. He couldn’t abide negligence in any form. Her paper scissors were wet, so she snapped them up and wiped them with a half-soaked napkin. The rest of the damage was manageable, but irritating. Her pattern weight and her rabbit would need to be dried thoroughly, as they were iron and prone to rust. The nice clean oaktag needed to be changed, but her patterns hung safely to the left of her chair.

  She pulled a dripping pushpin out of the puddle, then didn’t know where to put it. Jeremy had put the pin on her desk yesterday when he’d seen the head designer’s Fall sketches pinned to a foamcore board. He’d swaggered past Carmella, the designer in question, and barely looking at her whole presentation, focused on one item, a shirtwaist jacket. He snapped the scrap of paper off the board, sending the pushpin flying, held it up in front of Carmella, and yelled, “Does anyone want to bang this woman? Is she on the kitchen floor fifteen minutes after her date rings the bell? What happened? Did we just transport this whole goddamn office to Tenne-fucking-see?”

  Gracie Pomerantz, the money behind the company, stood there in her Chanel suit and Brazilian blowout, giggling. Laura knew the coquettish squirt of laughter was meant to humiliate Carmella, but it still seemed inappropriate coming from a middle-aged woman.

  Jeremy pretended he didn’t hear Gracie. He picked up the pin and placed it on Laura’s table, then pointed at Carmella, saying, “Stop wasting time. We have a Spring show in two weeks, and you don’t have time to piss around for Fall,” or something like that, something scary that made the world sound bigger than any one woman could manage. But Carmella did, every time. The more stressed out Jeremy got, the more creative she became.

  “Jeremy?” Laura called out. She didn’t know whether to clean up the mess or find him first. She guessed the coffee wasn’t going to get any more spilled, so she took the short walk down the hall to Jeremy’s office. She brought her scissors along to wipe as she walked. Having coffee on them would drive her insane, and they had to be tended to immediately. She could hear Jeremy breathing, which was unusual, and she quickened her step down the hall.

  Jeremy’s office was an unholy mess, with fabric swatches, mood boards, and trims all over the floor. The desk was uncharacteristically bare. Then she noticed Jeremy, still gorgeous even when looking like a stunned animal, chocolate eyes huge, brown hair a little more disheveled than usual. He wore a knit blazer and Henley, his usual attire for weekends. His fists hovered in front of him as if he were landing an invisible plane. He clutched a zebra-printed charmeuse cutting that he was considering for the Spring line.

  “Jeremy? Are you okay?”

  He looked at her and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  “You’re catching flies, Jeremy,” she said, meaning to make him laugh. He didn’t. He looked at the floor.

  Laura followed his gaze and almost dropped her scissors on the dead body.

  CHAPTER 2.

  No one heard it but her and Jeremy, as the body on the office floor no longer had functioning ears. With the face covered by a Beckerman greatcoat, it wasn’t immediately apparent for whom Laura screamed.

  Jeremy cringed.

  “What happened?” she asked, after she caught her breath.

  “I just came in, and she was here.” When Laura looked at the fabric twisted in his hands, he added, “I took this off her neck. I thought it would save her. Taking it off.”

  One of the woman’s pumps lay on its side a few feet away, the inner sole advertising for Via Spiga; the other still clung to the left foot. Tanned arms and legs, toned from hours with a personal trainer, lolled akimbo, giving her the look of a middle-aged doll left in the gutter. Her fur coat and matching hat were crumpled in the corner like a dead animal. Her hand clutched a cluster of shredded white paper, more of which covered the floor like sauerkraut.

  Laura pushed the coat off the woman’s face, spilling a half-dozen Jeremy St. James logo buttons, and as they clicked to the floor, she saw dozens more dotting the tiles. It looked as if someone had opened a box of them and shook it hard.

  “It’s Mrs. Pomerantz,” she whispered, feeling her neck for a pulse. She didn’t know if she was feeling in the right place, but the skin was cold and, when she saw Gracie Pomerantz’s eyes, with mascara caked around them and a contact lens slipping off the iris, she realized it didn’t matter if she knew where to find a pulse. “Did you call the police?”

  “Get out,” Jeremy said. “We need to get out of this office.” He dropped the fabric as though it were made of warm dog leavings and pointed her toward the door. She couldn’t disobey. He followed her into the hall and gripped her arm, pulling her to the design room. He loosened his grip when they got there, and she went to her desk. The phone was covered in coffee, but she didn’t care anymore. She dialed 911 while Jeremy leaned on Carmella’s desk. She told the dispatcher everything he needed to know, but hung up when he asked for her driver’s license number. The police could take her info in person when they got there. She didn’t think she’d be penalized for rudeness.

  “What happened?” she asked again.

  “What do you mean, what happened?” His crossed his arms, his tone one he generally reserved for the rest of his staff, not her. He never gave her his short voice, and she was taken off-guard.

  “Gracie is dead in your office.” Gracie had her own office upstairs, a fancy one she shared with Jeremy to entertain clients and buyers. Laura knew what Gracie did, in theory. As Jeremy’s financial backer, she was the source of cash flow in the tight times of the year, which always happened between fabric buys. She also added more cash when he wanted to grow and then took whatever percentage of profits they had agreed upon. In exchange, she had a say in what made the line, who they bought fabric from, where the money went, and—what seemed most egregious to Laura—everyone had to be super nice to her. She had abused that privilege on a daily basis.

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” Jeremy said. “I want you to answer the police truthfully and candidly when they ask you a question, and I’ll do the same, okay? Outside that, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry I was late today.” Laura tried to deflect the unpleasantness.

  “Why? Did you kill her b
etween seven thirty and eight?”

  “No!”

  “Then keep out of it. Whatever happens here today, we have to stay focused. There’s a show in two weeks, and it goes off the rails if we let it.” He was right, if not a little freakishly callous. His company was his life. She had never heard him speak of a love interest of any gender. He had friends, or people he knew in the business. The two were one in the same. His parents lived in Canada, and he never spoke of any other family. No pets even.

  He travelled frequently and without notice. After arriving at work, Carmella or Laura would get a call in the morning from his personal assistant, Tinto Benito, a man they had never met, informing them that Jeremy would be traveling for two weeks or ten days or whatever, and Gracie was in charge. No calls. No emails. No nothing. Sometimes, Gracie would tell them Jeremy wasn’t coming in, and they were going to have to manage without their boss for a time. But when he came back, there was hell to pay. That was the side of him she saw now—terse and bitchy.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. Before she could stop herself, she added, “I won’t let the business go off the rails.” It was a promise she had no idea how to keep.

  “I’m counting on you,” he replied, making it much, much worse.

  “I saw a fake Donatella,” she said. He raised an eyebrow. “Some lady on the train. I followed her. That’s why I was later than usual.”

  “You followed her?”

  “She said her mother got it in China. So someone’s knocking you off in Asia.”

  He grinned. She focused on the beautiful little crease in his bottom lip that disappeared when he smiled.

  “You stopped her and asked her where she got it?”

  “Yeah. I figured you could tell Gracie, because I don’t want to. She’s liable to go bananas on me for not ripping it off her.” And then Laura realized she was speaking about Gracie as if she were still alive, which she wasn’t. She guessed Jeremy was now in charge of hunting down and suing counterfeiters, which Gracie did—no, had done—with relish.