“What a scene!” Roberta looked around the lobby of the Pier Six Hotel and Convention Center and shook her head. “I can’t believe that all these people care who the International Face is.”
“Neither can I,” Jaime said. “And I can’t believe I have to wait on all of them.”
“You’re the ones who wanted to work as busboys.”
“We should probably report to work in the kitchen,” Sherman said. “Before all the good tables are taken.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “If you know what I mean.”
“I forgot, I’m working with the world’s largest testosterone producer.” Jaime shook his head. “Just try to control yourself.”
“See if you can get the head table, where Eleanor Whistler and DeDario will be,” Mollie said. “And keep your eyes out for a short guy in a black suit.”
“I think I’ll look around and see what I can find out on my own,” Johnny said.
“Okay, but look out for Eleanor and Parker,” Mollie teased. “They’ll have you up on the runway in seconds.”
Johnny headed off with Jaime and Sherman. The International Face Show was opening with a fashion show and a gourmet sit-down dinner in the hotel’s grand ballroom. Three more fashion shows would be held on Saturday, when the winner would then be chosen. The opening-night festivities were supposed to draw over five hundred people, and almost as many photographers. This year the contest winner would receive one hundred thousand dollars and a contract to represent Illusion Cosmetics for one year.
“It’s hard to imagine that Rahel once won this contest,” Meredith said as they made their way through the hotel lobby.
“Wait.” Mollie stopped dead in her tracks. Across the lobby she saw Parker Davies, the photo editor from Femme. “There’s the woman who said I was ugly.”
“Which one?” asked Meredith.
“She’s tall and she has short reddish brown hair. She’s over there telling some photographer what to do,” Mollie said.
“Oh, Parker. She’s a real witch,” Meredith said.
“Is she that bad?” Roberta asked.
“She’s that bad,” Mollie said. “Let’s hit the gift shop. I want to get a pack of gum.” They wandered into the hotel shop. Mollie grabbed a pack of peppermint gum and was waiting for the clerk to ring it up when she spotted a neon pink bumper sticker. “I’ll take this, too,” she said, placing it on the counter.
“What are you getting that for?” Roberta asked.
“I’m following Moeller’s philosophy. There’s nothing as sweet as revenge. Didn’t somebody famous say that?” Mollie paid for the gum and bumper sticker, and they walked back into the lobby.
“We’re here for something serious, not to run around playing jokes on people,” Roberta said.
“Come on, it’ll only take a second.” Mollie walked up to the hotel check-in desk. “Do you have some scissors I could borrow?” she asked.
The clerk handed her a miniature sewing kit with a tiny pair of scissors inside. “Thanks, I think,” Mollie said. She took the scissors out and started to hack away at the bumper sticker. Originally, it had said, LIFE’S A BITCH. She cut off the first two words and peeled the adhesive backing off the sticker.
“What are you doing?” Meredith asked.
“Wait here, I’ll be right back.” Mollie made her way through the crowded lobby. She fit the sticker into the palm of her hand, adhesive facing out. “Parker!” she called out cheerfully as she approached the editor. “Parker, it’s so great to see you again!”
Parker turned around to look at Mollie, and Mollie patted her on the back—firmly attaching the neon BITCH sticker to the back of Parker’s linen blazer. “Who are you?” Parker asked.
“We met in New York, don’t you remember? Oh, well, never mind. I can see you’re busy,” Mollie said, backing away. “Nice seeing you!”
“I can’t believe you just did that,” Roberta said when Mollie joined them.
Meredith giggled. “She didn’t even notice.”
Mollie smiled at her. It was the first time she’d heard Meredith laugh in almost two weeks. “I told you, revenge is the sweetest reward. Did I get that quote right yet?”
“Do I look like a dictionary?” Roberta shook her head. “I think we should try to find Hilary before the show starts. Is that okay with you, Meredith?”
Meredith nodded. “She’s probably backstage, in the dressing room.”
“I’d better be careful,” Mollie said. “If anyone I met in New York’s in there, I might be in trouble.”
“Like who?”
“Like everyone I met there who I told I was Bitsy Carlisle,” Mollie said.
“Just walk behind us,” Roberta said. “We’re taller than you, anyway, so we’ll hide you.”
Mollie rolled her eyes as she followed her friends. The dressing room was a madhouse. Racks of clothes blocked their way in the door. Dozens of temporary partition walls were set up so that each model could change in privacy. There were long counters against the walls for the models to sit at for makeup, and mirrors covered all available wall space. Assistants were bustling around holding irons, steamers, hair dryers, and bottles of mineral water.
“There she is.” Meredith pointed to the far corner of the dressing room, and they walked over to Hilary. “Hi, Hilary,” Meredith said shyly. Mollie stepped out from behind her and smiled.
“I thought you were in jail,” Hilary replied, giving Meredith a strange look.
Meredith’s face crumpled in a frown. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“No, Meredith, I wouldn’t like that,” Hilary said firmly. “You might not believe this, but I do care about you. All those times I might have told you how to do something, I was only trying to do what I thought older sisters were supposed to do. But you don’t care about that—or me or yourself. If you did, you wouldn’t have gone off and ruined your life by getting into drugs.”
“You really think I did it?” Meredith asked.
Hilary frowned. “Weren’t you listening to me?”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” Meredith reached out and hugged Hilary.
“What’s going on?” Hilary asked, pulling away.
“That means you weren’t part of the plan to set me up,” Meredith replied. “If you really thought I was guilty, you didn’t know I’d been framed.”
“I’d never do something like that to you. Mollie told me she thought it was a frame-up job, but she couldn’t prove it. Do you know now for sure who did it?”
“It was DeDario,” Mollie said. She didn’t want to alarm Hilary by mentioning Dayton Hughes yet. “And Detective Benjamin was in on it, too.”
“Uncle Dayton put them up to it,” Meredith added. “I know you’re still trying to protect me, Mollie, but it’s okay. Hilary should know.”
“What would he have to do with it? Why in the world would he frame you?” Hilary asked.
“Because I know something about him … something that could hurt him. I told him that I saw him push Martin Longherin into the water,” Meredith explained. She briefly recounted the story for her sister. “At least that’s what I think I saw,” she concluded.
“Oh my God! You know what? I saw that, too,” Hilary gasped. “I’ve never told anyone about it, either.”
“You were a lot older than Meredith when it happened,” Mollie said.
Hilary nodded. “I haven’t thought about it in years, except every now and then I’ll have a nightmare about drowning, and it starts to come back to me. I always make myself forget it again.”
“That’s what I did,” Meredith said. “I only remembered when I was stuck under that mall in the earthquake.”
“You were only little kids when it happened—your brains probably blocked out such a painful, strange memory,” Mollie said. “It’s not easy to admit that someone in your family is completely evil.”
“We still have a problem,” Roberta said. “Will the testimonies of a nine-year-old and a five-year-old, twelve years after the fact, be enough to convict your uncle?”
“Wait a minute.” Hilary grabbed Meredith’s arm. “What about the cook who works on Dayton’s yacht? He saw it, too—I think.”
“What cook?” Roberta asked.
“His name starts with an H. … I think it’s Han,” said Hilary. “Yeah, Han Wu. I know because we always used to tease him about it—obnoxious kid stuff.”
“He’s Chinese?” Mollie said.
Meredith nodded. “He was always really nice to me.”
“How do you know he saw Longherin go overboard?”
“I’d been looking at the stern, right? When I turned around, Han was standing at the top of the stairs going down to the gangway. He had a pot in his hands, and he was stirring it, but staring straight at the back of the boat, as if he were transfixed or something. When he saw me, he ran down the stairs,” Hilary said. “Part of the reason I thought I’d imagined the whole thing was because he never said anything about it. I thought if he was watching my uncle and he didn’t see anything strange—not enough to talk about, anyway—then nothing had happened.”
“He was probably afraid, too,” Meredith said. “If he made trouble for Uncle Dayton, he’d be fired—or worse. He’d just come to the country, I think. Remember how bad his English was?”
Hilary nodded.
“When we visited your uncle on his yacht, there was a Chinese cook there,” Mollie said. “He was really nervous, and he told us to leave Hughes alone.”
“Do you remember what he looked like?” Hilary asked.
“He had short black hair and a goatee,” Roberta said. “I can’t think of anything else.”
“It could be him,” Meredith said. “But we’d have to see him to know for sure.”
“Maybe your uncle’s kept Han around all this time because he knows the truth,” Roberta said. “If he fired him, what’s to keep Han from talking?”
“Or else he’s just a great cook,” Hilary said.
“We’ll find him later. Right now I think we should talk to the people who carried out Dayton’s orders in the setup,” Mollie said. “Have you seen DeDario around, Hilary?”
“Yes, I had the distinct displeasure of meeting him this afternoon,” Hilary said.
“Where do you think he is now?”
“The Whistler Agency has a huge suite upstairs that they’re using as an on-location office. I bet he’s hanging out there. The show isn’t starting for another half hour.”
“Or else he’s in his room, slicking back his hair for the big event,” Roberta said. “I pity the people who have to share his table.”
“With any luck, he’ll be eating dinner downtown at one of the city’s finer restaurants,” Mollie said.
Everyone looked at her with confused expressions.
“The police station,” she added.