Garcia’s murder. “Eduardo Lebreaux might have had a motive for instigating the poisoning at the Blend. But he has no motive I can see for poisoning Rena Garcia, which pretty much rules out Matteo’s theory that Lebreaux is behind all this.”
“Eduardo is a cad and a criminal,” said Madame, “and he may even be capable of murder. But only if it’s in his interest, and I must agree with you, Clare, that I don’t see the motive for murdering Rena Garcia, that poor girl. If Eduardo were truly behind it, wouldn’t he have waited for a more public affair to poison someone with a Village Blend drink?”
“Like tomorrow’s runway show,” I automatically replied, and then cringed at the thought that the murderer might indeed be striking again at that very event, which meant I had less than twenty-four hours. I massaged my temples, feeling a headache coming on. “I have to solve this, Madame.”
“Yes, my dear, but how?”
I leaned back in the car seat and gazed at the passing shops and restaurants, the crowded sidewalks. I tried to remember some of the cases Quinn had discussed with me while he was drinking latte after latte at my coffee bar over the last few months.
“The murderer’s first target wasn’t random, and it wasn’t Ricky or Jeff. It was Lottie. I’m sure of it. And since we know Rena was the second target, what does that tell us? Who would want Lottie and Rena dead?”
“Tad Benedict?” offered Madame.
“Detective Quinn ruled him out and for now I have to agree. But, according to Tad, Fen was blackmailing Rena for control of the label.”
Madame’s eyes widened. “So
“Yet…it still doesn’t quite fit,” I said, tapping my chin. “I mean, Fen killing Rena makes sense. He tried to blackmail her. Maybe he found out about her and Tad’s plans to cut and run by selling their shares to other investors. He might have become angry and killed her—or had her killed. But why would Fen have tried to kill Lottie herself? She’s the sole creative talent behind her label, so killing her means killing the label too.”
“It sounds to me like Fen wants to control Lottie Harmon, not kill her,” noted Madame. “And there may be more than one motive for that.”
“What do you mean, more than one motive?”
Madame smiled enigmatically. “Fen and Lottie were an item years ago.”
“An item?”
“Lovers.”
“Lovers?” I echoed. “But I’ve known Lottie for over a year, and I’ve never even seen her in the company of Fen. There’s nothing about them in the gossip columns or paparazzi photos that I can recall either.”
“These days, Lottie is only interested in Fen in terms of the business. Nothing else. I was curious about it, of course, and I asked her about him a few times, but she said she has absolutely no interest in her old flame as anything but a business associate and that’s the way she wants it.”
Madame’s eyebrow rose. “It certainly explains his going to such extreme lengths to obtain the stock. When passion is the motivation, better judgement tends to go out the window.”
“Didn’t you say something else about Lottie earlier today? You thought the years had changed her?”
“Yes, that’s right. Less comfortable in her own skin. You know, more than once, I asked her why she quit the business, asked her to fill in the blanks about her years living abroad, but she always glossed over the answers, turned the subject to another topic—and always with that strained, high-pitched laugh.”
“She did that to me, too. She’s very guarded about her past.”
I met Madame’s eyes and we both nodded, obviously thinking the same thing. Lottie’s past was sure to hold some valuable answers. Just then, Mr. Raj pulled up to the coffeehouse. I kissed Madame good-bye and thanked her for her help.
“Do let me know what you discover, my dear,” said Madame, her eyes once again bright with obvious curiosity.
“Of course.”
As I stepped out of the car, I could see that the “Fugu thrill-seekers” were still out in full force. The East Village crowd—with tattoos and multiple body piercings—loitered on the sidewalk around the Blend’s old wrought iron front bench. No doubt they were waiting for one of their numbers to drop dead from a poisoned take-out. As I passed through an odd-smelling cloud, I sensed not everyone was smoking tobacco.
Entering, I saw Esther servicing a line of customers at the counter, Moira and Matt were busily mixing coffee drinks behind the bar. Either things got crazy and my ex had volunteered to pitch in, or Matt was deliberately exercising his barista skills in anticipation of demonstrations for investors in his kiosk scheme.
Esther spied me as I rushed by and was about to call out. I shushed her with my hand, then flashed her ten fingers. “Back in ten minutes” I mouthed to her. Then I raced up the spiral staircase in the dining room.
Inside my small, second-floor office I tossed my purse on the desk, peeled off my coat, and fired up the computer. Since I knew next to nothing about the history of Lottie’s label, I decided to use the Internet to see what I could turn up. I began by Googling the name “Lottie Harmon.” The search yielded 9,003 entries. I narrowed the search by entering “history of Lottie Harmon label.” That brought me a workable 1,456 entries—workable because hundreds of links were essentially the same story, a reprint of a long and uninformative (for my purposes anyway) press release issued by Rena Garcia when the label was resurrected last year. I eliminated all of those entries and narrowed the search to the early 1980s—the first blush of the Lottie Harmon line. I came up with a tidy 717 entries and began calling them up.
After eliminating the useless links, the most common of which was a widely reprinted Associated Press Hollywood glitz and glamour story featuring the passage “…Morgan Fairchild and
The homepage for EightiesNeverDied.com featured a montage of pop culture icons posed along the lines of the old album cover for the Beatles’
Music was represented by Devo sporting their signature red plastic domes, Madonna looking anything but virginal, Billy Idol’s sneer, Boy George, Duran Duran, George Michael, and Michael Jackson. Featured movie stars came from the signature films of the era—Jennifer Beals in her oversized sweatshirt from
In the background, presiding over all, the twinkling eyes of President Ronald Wilson Reagan, The Gipper. Down either side of the page were plenty of links to various aspects of life in the 1980s, all with catchy titles like “Decade of Greed” for the business section (though it seemed to me there’d been as much or more greed and ruthless dishonesty during the dot bomb bubble of the 1990s), “We Are the Music,” “The Vices of Television,” “Cold War,” “Idol Worship,” “Go Goth,” and more of the same.
I followed the link dubbed “Shoulder-pads and Legwarmers” and found an eighties fashion page with a list of articles. Most of the features, I learned, had been culled from the fashion magazines of the day, the pages dutifully scanned and posted on the site by its webmaster—probably in violation of numerous copyright laws. There were
