“Actually, he can,” Cassady explained, gracefully stepping into the role of
consigliore.
Tricia and I had encountered her outside the precinct, as she’d been rushing up the steps to come save me from myself. I hadn’t even been aware that Tricia had been texting her, urging her to do just that, until Cassady arrived.
Thankful that we’d been allowed to leave as quickly as we had, Cassady had hustled us into a new cab and commanded that we be driven back to my office so she could rationally explain to my irrational boss why there could be a delay in finishing my article.
“There’s the potential for charges for materially interfering with an investigation, obstruction of justice, aiding and abetting—”
“Aiding and abetting? I’m not going to help her,” I protested.
“Her? Her who? Who do you think it is?” Eileen demanded, slithering to the edge of her desk. Tricia reached over and thoughtfully slid the phone and a full coffee cup out of her path before Eileen could kick them off.
“I’m advising my client not to discuss this matter with anyone until further notice,” Cassady said as calmly as she might have inquired about the color of Eileen’s nail polish.
The color of Eileen’s face was more to the point. Pale with rage, she scowled down at Cassady, though with Cassady in four-inch Kenneth Coles and Eileen barefoot on the desk, the distance wasn’t as great as Eileen might have liked. “Don’t pull this Judith Miller shit on me. I will not be scooped.”
“No, you won’t be. Quinn Harriman’s magazine is facing
the same restrictions,” Cassady assured her. We’d made a few phone calls in the cab to be sure of that.
Not getting enough of a reaction out of Cassady, Eileen swung her fury in my direction. “I asked you for a simple profile—”
“You asked me to prove that Gwen Lincoln is innocent and that’s what I’m trying to do. And I’m still going to do that before the deadline. All this means is you can’t show up tonight and announce we’ve got proof Gwen didn’t do it,” I explained, trying to match Cassady’s lightness of tone.
Eileen straightened up, petulantly yanking her skirt away from the seamstress. That’s precisely what she’d hope to do—make her grand pronouncement, then sashay down the catwalk as the savior of the evening. This had nothing to do with journalistic ethics or competition or, heaven forbid, doing the right thing. This was all about Eileen being the star. If I’d been less focused on the story, I would’ve been more aware of that. “I’m very disappointed,” Eileen said and I almost stepped out of the way to avoid the venom dripping from the words.
“So am I,” I replied sincerely, “but I’ll still deliver the article to you by its due date and I promise you, you’ll be pleased then.”
“I’d better be,” she said in her threatening voice, which was growing nearly indistinguishable from her normal voice due to constant use.
“I, for one, can’t wait to read the article that will not only clear Gwen Lincoln, but will explain to the entire city the role this magazine had in setting things right,” Tricia said. “Your publisher will be able to dine out on this one for months because he gave you the freedom to pursue the story and you passed that along to Molly.” A threatening tone never came within a mile of Tricia’s voice, but Eileen pulled back like a toddler whose hand had just been slapped. Tricia had put the chain of command in her head and I could see that Eileen was already testing possible combinations of greed, ambition, and self-promotion to see what approach
would benefit her best as she strove to take full credit for whatever I came up with.
Fine with me. As long as I was able to come up with it. And how I was going to do that when I’d been placed on double not-so-secret probation was beyond me. Having to hold back until Detective Donovan gave me the “all clear,” at which point everything would be over except the Monday morning quarterbacking, was maddening. There had to be some way to talk to Lindsay before then without tipping my hand. The trick was to do it so there was no possibility of getting busted in any form by any party.
But doing anything necessitated getting away from Eileen, who was considering Tricia’s view of the future and warming to it. Given what the Girls at GHInc. were willing to do to get what they wanted, Eileen’s purely political conniving was almost refreshing.
Eileen let go of her skirt and gestured for the seamstress to return to her work. “Fine. But if I get scooped …”
“You won’t,” I promised.
“Then go work on something else and keep yourself out of trouble. And don’t be late tonight. I don’t want Emile to think my staff is rude.”
Choosing discretion over zinger, I led Cassady and Tricia from the office, closing the door behind me to shield the tender hearts in the bull pen from the sight of our fearless leader dancing on the furniture. Save that for the gala.
Pausing by my desk, Tricia checked her watch. “Lunch would do us all much good.”
“Is it that time already?” I asked, distracted by a half-formed thought buzzing around in the back of my brain.
“Time flies when you’re being questioned,” Cassady said. “Come on, let’s find somewhere we can eat where we can protect you from the legions with whom you are not to have contact.”
I hesitated, still trying to identify the thought. “Seriously, I’m not sure I’m hungry.”
“What are you wearing tonight?” Tricia asked.
“I still don’t know,” I answered.
“First things first,” Cassady said. “Unless you don’t feel like shopping either.”
“In which case we’re taking you to the hospital,” Tricia said. “But not the one Peter’s in, because that would upset too many detectives.”
“And we don’t want to do that,” Cassady emphasized, arching an eyebrow that Tricia chose to ignore.
“It’s not that dire,” I assured them. “Let’s shop.”
The palliative secret of shopping is the distraction. You get caught up in a vision of the future in which you’ll be happy in this dress or at the place where you can wear these shoes and you stop thinking about your problems, disappointments, and deadlines for at least a few moments. But the magic wasn’t working yet again. There I stood, back in Saks, surrounded by the stuff of daydreams, and I couldn’t shake that gnawing feeling that I was missing something. Something important.
Tricia pulled a slinky satin sheath the color of lemon sherbet off a rack and draped it over her arm for my inspection. “This would look great on you. And bring out the highlights in your hair.”
I looked at the dress, but all that was going through my head was, “
The Yellow Wallpaper.
”
“Whose yellow wallpaper?”
“Remember that English class we took sophomore year? Professor Alexander?”
“Charlotte Perkins Gilman, that
Yellow Wallpaper
?” Cassady asked from the other side of the dress rack.
“Where the woman’s trapped behind the wallpaper and the narrator keeps seeing her trying to get out.”
“Why are we discussing early feminist literature in the evening-wear section of Saks? It’s not so much ironic as inappropriate,” Cassady asked, exchanging a look with Tricia, who slowly hung the lemon sheath back up.
“This thought’s stuck in my head, slinking around behind the wallpaper, and I can’t get it to come out and identify itself.”
“Molly, you’re stressed. It’s been a hectic couple of days.
Lots of shooting and not enough sleeping. You need to relax,” Tricia said.
Cassady nodded firmly. “You have that great dark blue gown from Andrea Sebastian’s wedding, wear that tonight and we’ll go get lunch, maybe even an afternoon cocktail, and sort it out, whatever it is.”
I agreed. My Visa balance didn’t need to contend with another semiformal dress that I wouldn’t wear often enough to justify and it might do my lurking thought good to contend with a glass of pinot grigio and a chicken Caesar. Then Tricia and Cassady each held a hand out to me, in friendship and support, and the lurking thought burst forth. This gnawing sensation hadn’t been my frustration at being brought to heel by Detective Donovan. It had been my frustration at being taken in by Lindsay, who had presented herself as a friend. As I looked gratefully at my two best friends, I felt like an idiot not to have seen the machinations behind Lindsay wanting to help, to have dinner with Kyle and me, to cozy up to me. I tried to form a cogent statement about the nastiness of this particular brand of betrayal, but all I could think was:
Bitch.
But as freeing as it was to let that thought out from behind the wallpaper, I was stunned by the next thought, which came so clearly that it might as well have been scrawled on the now-exposed wall:
Lindsay didn’t do it.
TRICIA AND CASSADY SPENT THE rest of the afternoon trying to convince me of three things: Kyle would make it to the gala on time, I needed to do something with my hair, and Lindsay Franklin had killed Garth Henderson. Even after the two of them left to get ready themselves, I tried to be won over by their trio of reasonable statements.
I knew I couldn’t control Kyle’s schedule, I could only have faith in his pledge to be there. And I couldn’t do much to control my hair, but spending half an hour scorching myself with a curling iron also gave me time to stand still and listen to the inner voice that insisted Lindsay was innocent.
Yes, the blouse wrapped around the gun looked just like the ones I’d seen her in. Yes, she’d told me she took bags of donations to the thrift shop on a regular basis, which supported both the bags being there and no one at the shop being particularly concerned about the contents. Yes, she’d been prevented from advancing her career by a man who cared more about his libido than his livelihood and that could be enough to provoke a murderous rage. Yes, she’d essentially stalked me to keep track of where I was in my investigation.
But I couldn’t get past the Success.
If Lindsay was highly allergic to the perfume—a fact her colleagues had attested to freely—how did she handle sufficient
quantities to soak the blouse and make the hotel room reek without showing any adverse effects? As closely as this group watched each other, wouldn’t someone have noticed if Lindsay had broken out in hives upon the death of their boss?
But if Lindsay didn’t kill Garth, who did? And was she knowingly covering for the killer or had she been duped? I tried to imagine someone like Wendy or Tessa setting up someone like Lindsay, but once you’ve imagined someone pulling the trigger, it gets a whole lot easier to imagine them doing all sorts of antisocial things.
By the time Tricia buzzed me from downstairs, my hair had gained nothing but static electricity from my attempts with the curling iron, my chest and neck were blotchy from nerves, and even my kate spade sams, my favorite dress shoes, were pinching my toes—out of spite, it seemed. If I’d had the sense to recognize these as harbingers of the evening to come, I would’ve stayed home in my pajamas, turned on Turner Classic Movies, and built a bomb shelter in my bathroom.
Downstairs, Danny, our doorman, was making a marvelous fuss over Tricia. She did look magnificent in an ice blue vintage Armani, her hair swept up behind her ears with marcasite combs. She cooed over me, but I felt like I was heading to a costume ball, a bundle of nerves masquerading as a journalist.
“Try to put everything else out of your mind except the comic possibilities of your editor on the catwalk,” Tricia said, knowing exactly what I was struggling with. “Don’t think about your article until tomorrow.”
“I’m not worried about the article,” I said as she walked me out the door to the waiting cab. Cassady and Aaron were meeting us at the gala; Kyle and Detective Donovan were supposed to do the same.
“Liar,” she said gently.
“Okay, the article isn’t my primary concern.”
“No, your primary concern is getting in the backseat of a cab in that slim skirt.” Tricia clutched her evening bag in front of her, smiled expectantly, and waited for the show to begin.
Getting in and out of a cab elegantly is something of an art. In a gown, it’s something of an impossibility. That’s the real reason red-carpet walkers arrive at events in limos; limos come equipped with strong men who pull you to your feet, making you appear lithe and graceful. This cab came equipped with a large, sullen woman who wasn’t about to move anything but the steering wheel and was quickly growing impatient with my reluctance to dive in.
Through an interesting combination of leaning, spinning, and stumbling, I was able to inject myself into the backseat and slither over far enough for Tricia to slide in beside me. I hadn’t heard any stitches pop, my heels hadn’t caught in my hem, and my straps were still riding in the proper position. I could only hope the rest of the evening would go as smoothly, especially because a special brand of anxiety was settling over me.
When I turned sixteen, my best friends conspired to throw me a surprise party. They even managed to persuade Jerry Shannon, the basketball player who sat behind me in English and on whom I had a grand crush, to come to the party. The exhilaration of walking into my friend Mary’s basement and seeing Jerry there among my friends was matched only by the despair of realizing slightly later that he had brought along Bonnie Conneally, a cheerleader for our crosstown rivals, a girlfriend no one in my social group knew he had. The uneasy mixture of joy and disappointment stuck with me for days and, even now, I associate that uneasy brewing feeling in my stomach with that party.
Now I had another party I could associate it with. With each passing block, I grew more certain that Lindsay was covering for someone and might have done such a good job that she was going to take the fall for the whole thing. I didn’t find it hard to believe that one of the other Girls would let her take the fall, but I struggled with her willingness to do it. Even as the maternal one, her instinct for self-preservation had to kick in at some point.
Unless she was partly culpable. Or considered herself so. Maybe she hadn’t just disposed of the gun. Maybe she’d
helped get it. Or helped plan the killing. Maybe this was as fully orchestrated as one of their campaigns, and just crafted to look like a spur-of-the-moment crime of passion to throw everyone off their trail.
So was it Wendy? They’d both pled allergy to the perfume, but Wendy’s hadn’t provoked much comment. Maybe hers was fake. It played out neatly in my head. Wendy, who thought she deserved to move ahead of the pack as the new company formed, confronted Garth about his decision to keep things the way they were. She’d forced him to drink for a charm, then lost control—striking him and then shooting him. She’d called Lindsay for help and Lindsay had literally cleaned up after her, which is how her blouse wound up covered in perfume and wrapped around the gun.
Or was it Tessa? Had she disposed of her bracelet because she was afraid it would tie her to the murder? Or was it one of the other Girls who had been so careful that she’d flown under my radar?
“You’re detecting,” Tricia chided softly.
“I can’t help it.”
“You did promise.”
“Are you really interested in Wally Donovan?”
Tricia frowned. “Wally Donovan’s intriguing, but you’re evading.”
“I just feel rotten. I think I pointed them in the wrong direction.”
“Detective’s remorse? It’s not like you delivered her to the executioner. If the evidence doesn’t support your theory, you know Detective Donovan will happily tell you so.”
Tricia was right but that didn’t give me the comfort it usually does. Anxiety was along for the ride.
I shook it free for a moment as we entered the ballroom at the Palace Hotel, which was like dropping down onto the surface of another planet. The air inside was dizzyingly thick with Success. The regal space had been draped in metallic fabric and lit like a techno-pop dance club, constantly spinning bold splashes of color across every surface, while a thudding bass line shot up from the floor, straight
into your molars. A Plexiglas runway snaked among the tables in a circuitous route that was bound to delight the attendees and exhaust the models.
Above it all, twelve-foot-high banners on the walls proclaimed: SUCCESS. GET IT. TAKE IT. OWN IT. Each proclamation was paired with a picture of a devastatingly beautiful woman in an Emile-designed dress grabbing a bottle of the perfume with one hand and a devastatingly handsome man with the other, pulling the man by his tie or lapel or belt into a position of submission. Sex was moments from happening on each banner and the expressions on all the models let you know it was going to be steamy, spectacular, and sullen.
“I’m sold,” Tricia said with a smile. “Where do I get mine?”
“The perfume, the man, or the clothes?”
“Yes.”
“I’m just trying to imagine how big the swag bags have to be for you to get all three home.”
“He can carry me, I’ll carry the rest.”
We made our way across the room, which was filling rapidly with a kaleidoscope of guests ranging from relatively conservative business types to outrageous fashion types and a little something for everyone in between. Cocktail hour was nearly over and the high pitch of forced laughter was a counterpoint to the thundering bass. Everyone moved grandly from point to point as though performing dance steps. It was like drifting through the opening number of a comic opera.
Our table was pretty central, at the corner where the runway turned back from its farthest projection into the room. It would certainly give us a unique perspective on Eileen and the other models as they swept by at shoulder level. Just as long as no one lost their shoe in my consommé, it would be entertaining.
Cassady and Aaron were at our table, still standing to better survey the crowd. Aaron was elegant in a Hugo Boss tuxedo and Cassady intensely classic in a black and white Chanel strapless. They made a stunning couple, both of them drawing approving glances from the people eddying by.
Cassady greeted us both with hugs and Aaron wryly kissed our hands. “Let me assault a waiter and get you both a glass of champagne,” Cassady insisted. “Not that you can taste anything with that perfume drowning everything, but you can still feel the bubbles and the buzz.”
I turned to help Cassady scan the room and found myself almost nose to nose with Lindsay. I gasped in spite of myself and she smiled. “Thank you,” she said, thinking I was left breathless by her ruby red BCBG dress. “I love yours, too.”
“Lindsay,” was all I could say.
Tricia slid her arm through Lindsay’s. “Such a great color on you.”
I almost choked, but Tricia didn’t bat an eye and didn’t meet mine either. Instead, she skillfully turned Lindsay away from me, asking, “So point out all the most eligible bachelors in the room so I know on whom to focus my charms tonight.”
Lindsay hesitated, glancing back toward me. “No offense, but I wanted to talk to Molly.”
“It’s okay,” I said, grabbing my bag again. “Hang with them while I run to the ladies’ room. We can talk when I get back.”
Cassady stepped forward. “Which one of you came up with this wonderful campaign? I’m really impressed by its muscle.”
Lindsay hesitated, debating whether to stray from the party line and give one person credit, and I walked away quickly, pretending I knew where the restrooms were, and thanking God for my friends.
But I wasn’t more than a few steps away when a hand grabbed my arm with more than friendly force. Lindsay had shaken off Tricia and Cassady, no mean feat, and was determined to talk to me. “Let me go with you,” she said, as though she were offering to accompany me behind enemy lines rather than to the restroom.
We all stopped, Lindsay caught between me and my friends. Tricia and Cassady looked as perplexed as I felt. I didn’t want to break my promise to Kyle, but I felt awful leaving Lindsay hanging like this when I’d been questioning
her guilt all afternoon. I remembered what Tricia had said about the value of dissembling, but this situation demanded the truth. “I can’t talk to you,” I said simply.
Lindsay released my arm slowly. “Why not?”
“Conflict of interest,” Cassady explained.
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. Later,” I said. When Detective Donovan comes to get you. But I couldn’t say that or she’d run for the door. And that was an option I was reserving for myself.
“You should really go sit down, Lindsay,” Tricia urged. “They’re about to start the show.”
The soundtrack had shifted to something more bluesy, full of synthesizer arpeggios. The Success theme song, I supposed. Up on the catwalk in black tie and tails and a fuschia shirt, Emile was yelling into a wireless mic, welcoming his friends and peers to his extravaganza. The crowd was applauding, whooping, or screaming, depending on their level of inebriation.
Lindsay wouldn’t budge. “Why won’t you talk to me?”
“Please go sit down,” I said, glancing guiltily at the doors.
“What did I do?”
It was the question I’d been struggling with all afternoon and I was shocked at how disingenuous it sounded coming from her. “Nothing,” I said flatly. “Right?”
The wounded expression on her face gave way to something more guarded. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s not talking about anything,” Tricia said, inserting herself between us. “We need to sit down and so do you.” Tricia took me by the arm, blocking Lindsay’s attempt to do the same, and walked me back toward our table.
If I’d just followed her and kept my mouth shut, it might have all been fine. But I couldn’t do it. I had to say back over my shoulder, “Whoever you’re covering for, I hope they’re worth it.”
“Molly!” Tricia hissed, yanking on my arm as though it were a cutoff valve.
“What are you talking about?” Lindsay repeated, sounding angry this time.