A Dress to Die For (2 page)

Laura blinked. The rest of the world called Jeremy’s higher-priced line “black label.” Inside the company, they called it JSJ. “Yes.” Her phone dinged. She opened her bag and checked the screen. A text from Mom. Weird. She looked over at her mom, standing by the suit Jackie O had worn to meet Marilyn Monroe.

“Laura is the best partner I could imagine,” Jeremy said. “She has a sharp eye and fantastic taste. I’ve never heard her make a bad call.”

Laura heard Ruby’s phone ding. Mom again? Ruby glanced at her screen and then over at Laura. Both of them looked back at Mom, who was pointing behind them, to the princess’s gown. Laura never should have bought Mom that phone. The woman had already taken it apart and reassembled it twice.

“What’s your title?” Dionne asked Laura, pen poised for the answer.

But Laura had no answer. All the titles Jeremy had come up with were too big. They made her feel as if she’d climbed the ladder of success using his headboard, and the hideous rumors about her ravenous ambition, even before everyone had officially known they shared a bed, made it even worse. Besides, not enough time had passed to see how much she could manage, though it was turning out to be quite a lot. The taste thing was for show. Yes, she had fine taste, but that took up about ten percent of her day. Her technical skill and her quick decision-making were the things that made her the perfect partner for Jeremy. He meant it when he said he’d never seen her make a bad call, because every decision she made was exactly what he would have done. They were extensions of each other.

“We’re considering VP of Everything,” Jeremy said.

Dionne smiled. Ruby laughed for show while Laura read her multiple texts from Mom.

—
The buttons shouldn’t be functional
—

—
On the cuff
—

Ruby, who must have been getting the same texts, held up her phone and looked behind her at the orange gown. Ding again. Laura looked up at Mom to see if she had lost her mind, but her mother was tapping her phone furiously.

—
Wake up! why would there be a metal shank on a cuff? look at it. it’s drooping. I know it had an interior shank. I sewed it on myself. that dress isn’t the right one
—

Laura glanced up at the orange dress in all its darkest saffron glory. The little sleeves had cuffs, and the cuffs had buttons—metal shank buttons that drooped.

Buttons on couture gowns did not droop.

The dress was fakefakefake.

Laura stared at Dionne Frescan and smiled like an idiot.

CHAPTER 2

Laura thought of her desk: a stack of care instruction codes that needed sorting against Bureau Veritas testing standards, three different grades of Italian calfskin that needed approval or correction, a stack of Sartorial patterns, folders of swipes, sketches, and fabric headers for Fall of next year, and year-end reviews for forty-two employees.

But there she was at the Met, with the catering people picking up the last glasses left on ledges and in corners, and cops were everywhere. More photos and flashes. Thankfully, none of her. She’d wiped off her lipstick an hour ago, and her feet were bare on the cool wood.

So if the dress was fake... why? And when? The piece had been verified by Lloyd’s of London. So when had the switch taken place? And where was the real dress?

“Someone has to go back to the office,” she told Jeremy, who sat next to her on a bench. “You’re going to China in three days, and you’re swamped. Go. I’ll stay here with Mom.”

He didn’t say anything, just watched as they took the gown and form off the pedestal.

“This’ll take hours,” she said, thinking about the way the dress had entered the show. It was a last-minute addition after a surprise phone call from Bernard Nestor, the curator.

Jeremy hadn’t answered, but he looked at her, reading her face.

She stared back at him. “What’s on your mind, JJ?”

“You and cops in the same room.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He put his hand on hers and pulled her to her feet. “Come with me.”

She wished she had slipped her shoes back on as she pattered barefoot through marble hallways, over industrial carpet, and into an unlit hidden gallery of seventeenth-century furniture. When they were far enough away from cops and catering people, he put his hands on her cheeks and kissed her. He kissed her as if he meant it in every bend of his lips and tightening of his jaw, and she fell right into it, his tongue filling her mouth, all salt and wetness. When he stepped forward, gently pressing her against the wall, she pulled in a breath that caught in her vocal cords in a long vowel escaping her throat.

She gasped. “What are you doing?”

“Getting your attention.”

“You’re going to have to put out tonight if you keep that up.”

“All the better.” He moved to her neck, which made her crazy every time.

“Jeremy, stop. Come on. It’s… we can’t… not here.”

He pulled back, leaving them both in a state. She saw in his face that if she had surrendered in the slightest, they’d have gotten arrested for making love against a wall at the Met, a circumstance ripe for a gossip-hungry press.

He cupped her cheeks again. His face was close to hers, his skin lit by the exit lights and eyes black with urgency. “Listen to me. In three days, Ruby and I and my entire design team are going to be in the Hong Kong office. We’ll be up when you’re sleeping and sleeping when you’re at work. You’re on your own. You’re running three companies without me. I trust you. I trust what’s in your heart. I trust your skill. But I don’t trust your curiosity. If this dress thing catches it, you’re going to drop the ball.”

“You and Barry put up the bond for that dress. How much?”

“I put it up myself.”

“What?”

“Barry’s assets are tied up with his IPO and his backer. He paid for the transportation and the curator. It was a wash if nothing got stolen.”

“You can’t lose that kind of money,” she protested.

He put his fingers to her lips. “I saw your face in there, and I’ve seen that face before. I can’t say enough that I trust you. But there are only so many hours in a day. I need your attention on what’s going on here, not on a stolen dress. We’ll figure it out when I get back.”

She wanted to tell him he was wrong, that nothing was more important to her than her work, but she stopped herself. She shouldn’t have to explain. She’d worked with him long enough already. “Go back to the office,” she said. “I’ll meet you there once Mom is finished.”

She kissed him, trying to transmit confidence.

When they walked back into the gallery housing
Dressed for Infamy
, the dress had been taken from the form. Though the garment had been contracted to stay on the form, even in earthquake, flood, or terrorist attack, it had been removed. The canvas-covered, headless mannequin seemed hardly worth the effort to hide. A forensics person directed Laura to a small office, where Mom stood over the dress, which was laid on a long table used to lay out canvases and tapestries. A man’s back was to the door. The dress was splayed open at the bust, with the skirt draping over the sides of the table. It looked like the scene of an autopsy.

Laura lingered in the entryway. “Mom, it’s late.”

The man turned around—Detective Cangemi.

Laura tried to look nonplussed, but she may have smiled a little. “I thought you were homicide.”

“I am,” he said. “But since, oh, I don’t know, two cases with you, I’m now the fashion police because I know all about pre-production samples and cotton permacore.”

She wondered if he was going to rib her again about the first time they met, when she’d solved the Gracie Pomerantz murder an hour and a half after he did, a ninety minutes that had almost gotten her killed. She smiled at him and got a scowl in return. He usually cracked four or five jokes in the first few minutes after a greeting, but he seemed too subdued to bother.

“Well, nice to see you again,” she said.

“Wish the feeling was mutual.”

If she thought he was sour the last time they’d met, when she’d caught Thomasina Wente’s killer and he’d let the supermodel’s sociopathic brother, Rolf, slip away for another murder, she had been mistaken. That was lemonade. At the moment, he was a fully puckered mouthful of white vinegar.

Mom put out her hand and showed Laura the inside of the dress. “Look at this. Five thread overlock, right here. I mean, come on. I didn’t use an overlock machine until 2010. And these beads are acrylic. I can’t believe no one noticed. Look at the boning.” Mom pulled back a seam to reveal cheap plastic boning.

“Okay. Well, I’ll just give the detective the curator’s number, and he can take care of it.”

“Look at this edging,” Mom said, ignoring Laura’s remark. “It was cut with a steak knife, but I use pinking shears to trim this. And don’t get me started on the cuff buttons.”

“Mom? Can you just make a list and pass it over?”

“I mean who lays a seam like that?” Mom asked, as if she hadn’t heard.

Cangemi interjected, “Mrs. Carnegie.” He snapped his fingers. “Wake up. Lightning strikes twice. Pigs are flying. The Mets win the series. Your daughter’s making sense.”

That was kind of a joke, wasn’t it? At her expense, of course, but she’d take it in a pinch. When Laura looked up at him, she saw him checking the clock.

Mom took the pencil and paper from Cangemi and wrote a numbered list of everything wrong with the dress, but her face had a faraway expression. Laura wondered if that was the look Jeremy had seen right before he started worrying.

**

At that late hour, the workplace was empty and dark, except for one room—Laura and Jeremy’s office. With its two desks, one sloppy—Laura’s—and one neat—Jeremy’s—its corner of modernist couches and drawers of things to inspire, surprise, and bore, it was the scene of most of their late nights.

Jeremy sat on one of the couches, rubbing his eye with one knuckle. “That was quick.” Stacks of paper were piled on the table. He’d been marking things with a highlighter.

“She was impossible to get out of there,” Laura said. “She started going on about how it was fit differently than any dress she’d ever worked on, and I’m just too tired.”

He held out his hand. “You know I have faith in you.”

She took his hand and sat next to him. “And you’re happy to use sex to show it?”

“A guy can’t get away with anything around here.”

“You get away with plenty.” She peered at his papers.

He pulled a stapled stack of cost sheets from the pile, handling the corner with his fingertips. “Maybe you can talk to your sister about this? I think she used real glitter on it.”

The cost sheets were meant to describe how much a garment cost to make, trim, and ship. Ruby’s cost sheets for the few pieces Sartorial did overseas were color-coded in pinks and yellows with stickers and ribbons.

“I think that was considered normal at Tollridge.”

“Can you tell her my spreadsheets are black, white, and red? And I don’t like too much red. Okay?” He coughed. That meant it was time for his physiotherapy and a warm bed.

She took the bright cost sheets from him, put them behind her, and wove her arms around his waist. “I sent Mom home in the last cab in Manhattan.”

“Well,” he said, “you’ll have to stay at my place then.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

**

The first time she had seen Jeremy’s loft, she’d been so overwhelmed that almost no memory of anything besides him, his body, and his soft whispers stuck in her memory. The second time had been a week later, after he’d offered her simultaneous financial backing, a job, and a relationship. She’d spent that time deciding if that made her a prostitute and then whether she was okay with that or not. On the day she was ready to talk to him, the sky opened, and she’d come to him through a torrential downpour without an umbrella.

“It’s been a week,” she’d said when he opened the door.

He was unshaven and wore it well, with dark hair sticking out at all angles. He was dressed in sweats and a white T-shirt that fit poorly enough to stretch across his chest. She would have fixed it in a fitting, but it was flattering enough to stop her heart for a second.

“A week and half a day,” he replied, letting her in.

She dripped on the hardwood. The sleek new nylon cast on her arm was waterproof and barely discernible under a jacket. She’d earned it only a week before, while chasing the man she thought had killed Thomasina Wente down a stairwell and smashing her humerus into a fire alarm box. With the humming of the ventilation system in the background, the reasons for her broken arm seemed a million miles away.

She saw the loft as if for the first time. Last time, she’d been so busy being with the man she’d longed for for six years, she didn’t notice the floor-to-ceiling industrial windows and little patio, but she was sure the dress form with fabrics draped all over it hadn’t been pulled into the middle of his living room. “You’re working,” she said.

He carried a towel out of the bathroom and held it out to her, but she didn’t take it. She put her head forward and let him rub her hair dry.