Dead is the New Black (35 page)

Sheldon smiled proudly. “I wrote the book on ‘fuck you’ clauses. You shoulda seen your boss’s paper. It was a work of genius.”

“And why Pierre Sevion? Why did you get him to make me an offer?”

He paused, looked her over, then huffed. “Pierre made you an offer. Go figure.”

That was something to chew on. If not Sheldon, and not Jeremy, then who? And when? Could Gracie have set it up before she was killed, and Sevion followed through anyway? Carmella? Noë? Who else knew him?

They drove down Fifth. Laura watched the stores go by, and Sheldon changed the subject.

“I know what you all think.” Sheldon’s tone softened. “You think I didn’t care about Gracie. Well, that’s because you’ve been spending all this time thinking I killed her. But you have to understand, I could have pulled that business apart piece by piece and made a fortune, but I tried to save it to save her. It’s all about what she wanted. She had taste. Do you know what that means? It isn’t a small thing, taste. You’re either born with it or not, and she had it in spades. She built that little creep out of nothing. I was proud of her. What she did. She was like an artist. Only she could have made him into what he is today.” Laura didn’t mention the fact that Gracie was sleeping with the little creep, or that his talent had something to do with his success, partly because everyone needed their illusions. “What did she get in return? Huh? Strangled. And for what? Money? Love? What do you think, Mouth?”

“You know something the police don’t?”

“I know the little creep.”

“He really is, Sheldon.” Shonda patted his arm. “And he’s always been a little creep to people like us, until he wants something.”

Laura wondered who “people like us” were. Obviously, not the poor and downtrodden.

On the other hand, what sort of people did Jeremy treat poorly? Besides everyone? She was about to ask, when she saw Shonda take a plastic comb from her Louis Vuitton purse. It was a plain black men’s comb, and she used it to whisk down her bangs, which were totally out of style. Then, Laura knew that Sheldon and Shonda felt left out because they weren’t artists, or creative, or stylish. They were businesspeople, above all, but Shonda had felt the slight of Jeremy’s refusal to sell her his damages, and Sheldon had felt his wife gravitating to Jeremy because of their similar tastes. They were the people who hired home decorators to fill their bookshelves with the right titles and choose the frames around their children’s photos. They looked in magazines, not for inspiration, but for something to copy to give them entrance into the elite world of the trendsetters and tastemakers. They were regular people, but with money.

They pulled up onto 38th Street and Broadway.

“Thanks for the lift.” Laura opened the door.

Sheldon grasped her arm gently. “I want you to hear what I’m telling you. You gotta watch that guy.”

He looked at her, dead serious.

She pulled free. “Thanks,” she said, then got out.

The lobby was empty but for the night doorman. Laura waved and went to the elevator.

She’d been to the office after hours hundreds of times before, but tonight was different. Tonight, the air seemed heavier. The echoes, louder. The machinations of the elevator seemed creakier and more dangerous than ever before. She wondered if Gracie had had an inkling that her ride up the elevator two weeks ago would be her last.

Was Laura doing the same thing?

She shook it off and tried to recapture her surety of the early days after the murder. Jeremy did not do it. No way. He was at the factory.

Not like the factory was so far away.

Not like he couldn’t have done it in the seconds before she arrived.

No, but she would have heard a commotion.

Unless she didn’t.

Unless she was so focused on getting there in time to have her coffee.

Is that why Cangemi was calling her? To keep her away from Jeremy?

She stood at the office entrance, her fingers brushing the numbered buttons, so worried that she forgot her code for a second. She could turn back. She could go home. Forget Jeremy and all the fantasizing and dreaming she had done for five years. A voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Mom’s told her to go back to the elevator and press the button.

But she’d invested too much in this non-relationship. So, she put in her code. The door clicked. She walked into the lobby, and the door shut behind her. She looked behind her, to the deserted hallway. Last chance.

She walked past Renee’s desk and to Jeremy’s fancy office.

Not there.

The design room was also empty.

There was a click behind her, and she spun to see André coming out of the history closet with his finger looped around a pattern hook. With a pattern on the end. Her pattern.

“What are you doing? How did you get the code for the closet? I just changed it yesterday.”

“You know, I’m getting a little tired of getting the interrogation from you. You are a patternmaker. I am the VP of sales. Do you need a little chart for me to explain it to you?” He walked to Carmella’s old desk and opened his bag, revealing the Delphi green twill.

“You can’t just steal it.”

“You got a problem, you can take it up with Jeremy.”

“He should be here right now, so hang on.” She stepped toward the hallway to look for him, but Andre´ got in her way. She was really annoyed at him. One, for being in her closet and stealing her patterns, and second, for even being there when she was supposed to be meeting Jeremy for what she knew was going to be an epic make-out session.

As he zipped up the bag, Laura remembered something about the Delphi green twill. It had been a contrasting trim for the matte jersey group a month ago, before Jeremy decided to use the dyed-to-match. The yardage André had in his bag was probably enough for neck trims and cuffs on a few hundred garments.

“You’re making the matte jersey group,” she said. “That’s the final pattern block on the tank top isn’t it? You’re cutting it out of the black rolls at the factory. But 40th Street’s been busted, André. It’s closed since the fakes desk found the Teresa jacket in Gracie’s closet. Where are you cutting the good stuff now?”

His eyes darted around the room, then settled back on her. She felt a cold chill run down her spine. She knew then that it didn’t matter where he was making the next shipment of counterfeits, because the whole story fell into place like a perfectly curved sleeve cap.

“She found out about you,” she said. “Carmella told Gracie what was going on, and Gracie found out about Noë before the dinner at Grotto, which is why she baited her.”

“If you even knew half of it, you’d know that what I’m doing isn’t illegal, and the sooner the cops find out, the better.”

“Gracie was shutting you down.” Laura narrated the story as it came together in her mind. “She came back here that night and found you shredding. She was going to put you out of business.”

André slung his bag over his shoulder, and Laura continued, “You took all the patterns, and you’re leaving town because you need that one last shipment. You need to sell your house and leave. Because it’s over. The whole thing is exposed.”

“There’s nothing wrong with what I’m doing.”

“It’s lying.”

But she knew it didn’t matter. People wanted to be lied to. They wanted that label on their backs. They paid good money for the opinions of others and, if they couldn’t afford it, someone like André would get those labels for them.

André laughed. “Lying? You’re lying to yourself if you think anyone cares about what’s real and what’s not. Why is it only rich bitches should have what everyone wants? You know Jeremy won’t cut XLs, but I do. I cut sizes for anyone who wants them. Big, little, whatever. It’s you people, you snobs, who think only rich ladies should have nice things. Why? Because they don’t have enough already? Is it because you want to be one of them? Little poor girl wants to grow up and be a rich lady, but doesn’t want to get her hands dirty. Well, let me tell you something, they all have their hands dirty, with their convenient marriages and their fake businesses and their little charities. They’re all liars, and they’re all filthy.”

He twisted around when she tried to get past him, and the huge bag he had slung over his shoulder knocked over the cup of coffee she’d left on her desk that morning. It sprayed all over her new oaktag, the phone, and her scissors. She remembered the panic of seeing coffee on her scissors on the morning she found Gracie’s body in the office.

She grabbed the scissors, and he stood in front of her again. There was an uncomfortable pause while she wondered if she was being physically threatened. “You were here when I left that Saturday, and when Gracie came in that night, she busted you. Why were you shredding already? Who tipped you off?”

“You really want to know?”

“Then, you went down the freight and came back in the morning late so you’d be in a crowd.”

“I asked, do you want to know who warned me Gracie was onto us?”

André advanced a step, and Laura moved back, deciding that, no, she wasn’t all that interested in who told André to start shredding documents, because it could only be one of two people. But that was wrong, because it could only be one person, one person who could get to the patterns, the factory, and the trims.

“Jeremy,” she breathed.

“Gold star.” André made a sudden move toward her, stepping forward with his palm out. When she stepped back, she felt her worktable at the small of her back and realized she was cornered in an empty office. Without thinking or pausing, she thrust her hand out to block him.

He pulled his arm back and held it. Blood oozed from between his fingers.

“What happened?” she asked, then felt the weight of the scissors in her hand. She looked down at them and saw blood on the blade. “Let me get the first aid kit.”

When she tried to move toward the hall, he sidestepped in front of her, his loafer streaking blood across the floor. She smelled the sweat on him and, for the first time, noticed his day-old beard. His shoulders seemed broader, and the rolled-up sleeves exposed the hair on his forearms. The preening metrosexual she knew and worked with every day didn’t stand in front of her. She was seeing the side of him that bullied and pushed, the side that fostered a deep and dangerous rage.

“André, I’m—”

“A bitch, Laura. A real slice of bitch.” He dropped his forty-pound bag on the floor between her and the exit. She’d have to leap over it to get away.

He stepped toward her again, but she had no room to move back.

“Respect, Laura. You’ve always had a problem with respect. You need to respect my space and respect my privacy and, most of all, you need to respect my authority. Do you understand?”

“I respect you, André. I really—”

“Give me the scissors.” He held out his hand. She didn’t believe the peaceful gesture for one second. The last thing she wanted to do was give him a sharp object.

“I didn’t mean to cut you,” she practically whispered, her shears going limp in her fingertips.

“Give me the scissors.”

“I’ll put them down.”

He grabbed for them. She gasped and held them out, nearly cutting him again.

He shouted so loudly she jumped. “Give me the goddamn scissors!” She pointed them at him with both hands shaking.

He took half a step back and put up his palms. “No, no. This is… I’m not here to hurt you. I just saw a little blood, and I have a thing with blood.”

“I understand,” she said, wondering if she could leap over that duffel bag and make it to the exit without falling and stabbing herself with the scissors.

André lowered his hands. “I can’t talk to you when you have those things out like that. Hand them here.”

Hands still shaking, Laura grasped her scissors by the blades. She reached behind her to put them on her table and nearly missed. She glanced back at the table surface to right them and saw them swimming in a pool of spilled coffee.

In the second it took her to register the repeated image, André leapt. She gasped, jumping back, and he swiped at the scissors. They slipped and clattered to the floor. When she reached down to get them, he grabbed her with a bruising grip on her bicep.

“Let me go!”

“Forget the scissors.”

But she couldn’t forget them. They were hers. And there was coffee all over them again.

Again?

It wasn’t the first time her scissors had drowned in coffee. Then, the realization hit her. In that instant, the entire scene played in her mind.

“That was never my cup,” she said. “That was your cup, and it was your napkin in the pail on the way in. Jeremy didn’t bring me coffee from HasBean because he came from the factory. You went shredder crazy, then you went to get the buttons from the closet, the ones for the rust-colored Teresa jacket. You put the coffee on my desk and, when Gracie saw you, your bag knocked over the coffee. Then, you had a fight, or whatever, and you followed her to Jeremy’s office, and you killed her. That’s why the buttons were all over the floor. And that’s why you needed more, because they were stuck at the crime scene.”

“I left before her. She was alive then. They have us on the tape.”

“And they have a woman in a fur hat leaving ten minutes after. But it wasn’t her. It was you. You killed her, then you left out the front. You came back up on the freight and had Gracie make an appearance on the tape in her fur hat. Then, you came back down the freight for the last time. She was already dead.”

André eyed the door, then looked at her. She stepped out of the way, but he only moved with her.

“After that, Carmella came to get the buttons for Mario, because Bay Ridge is on the way home for him, but you couldn’t give them to her because there was a dead woman on top of them.”

André stepped forward again, scaring Laura. His eyes bulged. His cheeks reddened. His fists clenched.

Laura tried to keep her mouth shut, but she was thinking so fast her mouth had to operate to clear room in her head. “Jeremy was letting you take the matte jersey group. Why is he covering for you?”

“Covering for me? He did nothing but get out of his own way. He’s the worst of them. The whole thing was his idea. What did you think? He was going to live under that bitch’s thumb forever?” André dropped his bag in the middle of the spill on her desk and took a step toward her. “But you and the cops never even got close. Sure, I was on the tape, coming in after the murder, but Detective Lazy never asked if I was there earlier. They want it all handed to them on a silver platter, like those buyers who want to be spoon-fed displays and ideas. They want lunch and dinner from Indochine. They want me to chase down trims for them.”