Stacey and the Fashion Victim

  “I’ll never start smoking,” said Andrew. “Cross my heart.” He made a sweeping gesture over his chest.

  “No moke,” said Emily, who had found a ladybug while the others were talking.

  “I wish Daddy would quit those cigars,” said Karen. “I mean, I bet if he could go a little while without one, he’d see that he didn’t really need to smoke them at all.”

  “Like the Great American Smokeout,” said Kristy, musing.

  “The what?” asked David Michael.

  “It’s this day planned by a group called the American Lung Association,” explained Kristy. “They had an assembly about it at school last year. What they do is ask smokers all over the country to promise not to smoke for just one day. Some people end up quitting forever.”

  “Why isn’t there a Great Stoneybrook Smokeout?” Karen asked.

  “There could be,” said David Michael slowly. “Couldn’t there?” he asked Kristy. “I mean,” he continued, gathering steam, “why not? We could ask all the grown-ups to quit for one day — like, this Saturday, even! It’d be cool. We’ll make them sign pledges —”

  “And the kids could sign pledges, too,” Karen added excitedly. “Saying they’ll never even start smoking in the first place —”

  “Mr. Spinoli might do it,” Andrew put in.

  That stopped everybody in their tracks. “Uh, who’s Mr. Spinoli?” asked Kristy.

  “You know,” said Andrew. “Mr. Spinoli. The hardware store man. He stands out on the sidewalk. He smokes cigarettes all the time.”

  Kristy smiled. “Sure, Mr. Spinoli might do it,” she said. “But you guys are talking about a big project. Are you sure we can organize it so fast?”

  “Definitely!” said Karen, jumping up and down. “Let’s call some other kids so they can come over and help.”

  Kristy told me later that the kids’ enthusiasm was contagious. She and her charges went inside and started to make calls, and an hour later a planning session was in full swing.

  Buddy and Lindsey were there, and so were Jessi and her younger sister, Becca, who’s eight. Abby had come along, bringing the kids she was sitting for: James, Johnny, and Mathew Hobart. Mrs. Hobart had been able to give them a ride. Mary Anne had arrived last, along with eight-year-old Charlotte Johanssen, who’s one of the BSC’s favorite charges.

  Everybody gathered under the apple tree. Kristy had brought out a pad and pencil, and as the kids started tossing ideas around, she wrote them down. Some of the ideas were a little silly — such as Karen’s plan for arming kids with water pistols they could shoot at anyone they saw smoking — but most of them were terrific.

  “We should give out free gum,” suggested Buddy. “Franklin always chews a ton of gum when he’s trying to stop smoking.”

  “We can make buttons for the people who sign the pledge,” said James. “That way everybody will know who they are, and we can tell them how great they’re doing all day.”

  “I bet even Aunt Cecelia would sign the pledge,” said Becca.

  “Aunt Cecelia smokes?” asked Mary Anne. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Not many people do,” said Jessi. “She doesn’t smoke a lot, and she never does it in public. She just sneaks one once in awhile. But I bet Becca’s right. If we ask her, she’ll try quitting for a day.”

  “So will Mr. Spinoli,” said Andrew.

  “And Mr. Milton,” added Karen. “And Watson, definitely.”

  “And our mom,” said James Hobart. “She’s always saying she wishes she could quit.”

  Kristy was making a list of names. “I’ll create a pledge form on my computer,” she said. “We can print up a lot of copies and hand them out to every smoker we know.”

  “Don’t forget the kids’ pledge, too,” said David Michael. “I bet every kid in my class will sign that one.”

  “Mine, too,” said Becca. “Especially since your mom did that special assembly about how bad smoking is for you.” She was talking to Charlotte, whose mother is a doctor.

  Charlotte nodded. “My mom has lots of pamphlets and stuff, too,” she said. “I bet she’d let us pass them out.”

  “Excellent, excellent, excellent,” said Kristy, who had been writing so fast that her hand was cramping up. “I think the Great Stoneybrook Smokeout is going to be a great success.”

  Emily Michelle smiled up at her. “No more uck,” she said.

  At that, everybody cracked up. In three little words, Emily Michelle had summed up their entire goal.

  By Thursday, my friends and I had decided to step up our efforts to solve the mystery at Bellair’s. We’d talked at our Wednesday meeting about everything that had happened, about suspects, about clues. Then we’d each chosen a clue or a suspect to follow up more thoroughly, and we’d agreed to write down all our findings in the mystery notebook.

  Were we on the ball? Definitely.

  Did we solve the mystery? Well …

  The point is that we worked hard at trying to solve it. And maybe we came a little closer.

  I’d chosen to investigate that first incident, when Harmony was poisoned. (No matter what Mrs. Skye said, I was still convinced that it had been a poisoning.) For example, how could I be sure that the tea really had been meant for Harmony? The cup she’d been drinking from was identical to every other cup on the catering table. For all I knew, the poisoner might have been trying to make someone else — one of the other girls who likes tea — sick. Or maybe it was just a random poisoning. That thought still made me feel queasy. It meant that somebody had just wanted to poison a model, any model. It could have been me.

  I decided to spend some time near the catering table, so I could scope out who drank tea and who didn’t. Maybe, by the process of elimination, I could figure out if anyone besides Harmony might have been the poisoner’s target.

  Luckily, I didn’t have a very heavy modeling schedule that day. Julio only wanted me in one group shot for the catalog, and Mrs. Maslin had told us that since the fashion show that evening was highlighting maternity wear, she’d be using some of her older models. This gave me more time to investigate.

  I’d already had my hair and makeup done, and my outfit — a flowery, ankle-length dress that I liked a lot — was hanging in the dressing room. I was ready whenever Julio called me. Meanwhile, I was free to lounge around in my jeans and a smock top.

  I stationed myself near Gretchen, the smiling, energetic woman who’d been doing the catering all week.

  “Need something to drink?” she asked me, waving a hand at the array of fruit juices, sodas, and bottled water on her table.

  “No, thanks —” I began. Then I realized it might look suspicious if I hung out there without drinking anything, so I started again. “Actually, sure. I’ll have some water.” Regular soda was out, because of my diabetes, and I didn’t feel like a diet soda or a hot drink. Especially tea.

  Gretchen told me to help myself. I took a bottle of water and settled into a folding chair next to the table.

  “Going to be here for a few?” Gretchen asked.

  I nodded.

  “Mind watching things?” She smiled. “I have to run out for more diet soda. I can’t seem to keep enough in stock.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Like any of you really need to diet,” she added. “I’m the one who should be drinking the stuff.”

  “You look great,” I told her. It was true. She may not have been a beanpole like Sydney, but she had a nice figure. “And I’ll be glad to watch things.” Glad? I was thrilled. It was the perfect excuse for spying on the drinking habits of my fellow models. “Take your time,” I added.

  Gretchen left, and almost immediately my first “customer” showed up: Harmony. “Hi,” I said. “How about something to drink? Some tea?”

  Harmony made a face. “I don’t know if I’ll ever drink tea again.”

  “Oops, sorry,” I said. “I should have realized. Do you want some juice instead?” I offered her a bottle, and she took it. “I like your outfit,” I told her.
She was wearing a long skirt with a cropped white T-shirt top.

  “Do you?” she asked. “It’s for the shoot.” She didn’t look too thrilled.

  “I think some of the clothes are awesome,” I said. “And modeling is cool. But I guess you’re used to it.”

  “I guess I am,” she said, sounding bored. “Well, thanks for the juice.” She saluted me with the bottle and wandered off. I watched her go. She seemed so listless. I wondered if it had something to do with the poison. Maybe she was still feeling under the weather.

  Sydney showed up next, and although I offered her tea, she wouldn’t take any. “My skin really reacts if I drink anything but water,” she said, tossing her hair back. She walked off, after grabbing a bottle of water, without saying anything else.

  Then came Blaine, Cokie, and Cynthia, in that order. Not one of them seemed tempted by tea. (I was starting to wonder if everyone was avoiding the tea on purpose, because they were nervous about being poisoned.) Blaine and Cynthia grabbed diet sodas, and Cokie did, too. I had a feeling Cokie was just drinking the stuff because all the other models did. I hoped that didn’t mean she would also start smoking. Cokie might not be my best bud, but I’d hate to see anyone take up such a nasty habit.

  “Mason! Gilbert!”

  “That’s us,” said Cokie. “I guess they’re ready for our shoot.” She preened a little, showing off her flowered short-shorts. “I’m in two group shots today,” she said, “and I have one close-up, for a hair accessories shot.”

  Big whoop.

  “Plus, I hear I have some excellent assignments for the final show,” she added. “My agent is making sure of that.”

  Blaine and Cynthia just rolled their eyes, which is the only proper response to the kind of bragging Cokie was doing. Then Blaine tugged on Cokie’s arm. “Let’s go,” she said, “or else they’ll find somebody else for all those ‘excellent’ assignments.”

  As soon as they left, Cynthia leaned toward me. “Stacey,” she said, “can I talk to you?”

  I was so involved with the mystery that I thought she must be about to tell me she knew who’d been pulling the pranks. “Of course,” I said, leaning forward.

  “I have this problem,” she began.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s just that … that I don’t really know if I want to keep on modeling or not,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I mean, I know most girls would kill to be in my position —”

  We looked at each other, a little shocked at what she had just said. “I don’t mean like poisoning Harmony,” she said quickly. “I don’t know anything about the stuff that’s been going on. I just mean that I know other girls would be envious. But sometimes I think I’d like to chuck it all and just have a normal life. I mean, school and giggling in the hallways. Sending notes to boys. Going to basketball games. I miss those things.”

  I nodded, sympathetic but secretly disappointed. I’d been hoping for a clue. “Maybe you should quit modeling for a while,” I suggested. “I mean, you can always go back to it. You’re only sixteen. If you took time off you could concentrate on your life and your friends.”

  We talked for quite a while. I talked about school and friends and the BSC. She talked about modeling, and how it was fun and exciting at first but how it was starting to feel like a drag. “After all, it’s work,” she said. “And I’m not sure I’m ready for a full-time job.”

  By the time Gretchen returned, I’d learned a lot. Not about the mystery, or about who else the poisoner might have been after, but about Cynthia and the real world of modeling. I was sorry I hadn’t come any closer to solving the mystery, but I was glad about one thing.

  I’d begun to make a new friend.

  Claudia had decided to keep a close eye on Roger Bellair. Since she worked with him, that wasn’t too hard. She’d been suspicious of him because of his connection to Sydney, but until that afternoon she hadn’t known much about his personality. He worked hard during the shoots. Claudia thought he wanted to impress Jamie. But when she started to follow him, Claudia began to see another side of Roger Bellair.

  The jerky side.

  The side that never let anyone forget he was the boss’s son, and that someday he would inherit Bellair’s. As he cruised through the store, Claudia noticed that he ordered people around as if they were slaves. “That display is a mess,” he told a clerk in the men’s department. “Fold those shirts and tidy it up.” He treated Gretchen as if she were his personal cook. He told off one of the elevator operators for closing the doors too quickly. And he acted as if all these people should be calling him Prince Roger.

  Claudia was grossed out, but by the end of the day she felt pretty confident about crossing Roger off the suspect list. “After all,” she reasoned, “if he did want to help or harm Sydney’s career, wouldn’t he use his status at the store? I mean, he’d just have her fired, or have all the other models fired, or whatever.”

  I had to agree that she was probably right. But I urged her to keep an eye on him anyway. It never pays to cross off a suspect too early.

  Mary Anne was keeping an eye on Dylan Trueheart. Of course, she could only follow him when she was on a break from the Kid Center. Fortunately, there weren’t too many kids to care for that afternoon, so she and Mal were able to slip away a few times.

  The first “secret conference” Mary Anne saw was between Cokie and Dylan Trueheart. They were whispering away in a corner when Mary Anne passed them. Next, she saw the agent chatting with Blaine Gilbert. Were they hatching a plot? Mary Anne knew that Blaine was ambitious. Was she ambitious enough to join Dylan Trueheart in pulling a series of scary pranks?

  As it turned out, the answer was — probably not. Instead, Mary Anne found out, the secret conferences had to do with modeling assignments, and who was going to land which ones for the big show. How did she find out? By eavesdropping on one more conference, the one between Dylan Trueheart and Mrs. Maslin. He was “unofficially” representing Blaine, he told her, and wanted to make sure that both she and his other client, Cokie, were “treated well” when the time came to decide which models would wear which clothes. It was all just a part of the heavy competition going on all the time, Mary Anne concluded. She couldn’t say for sure that Dylan Trueheart was innocent but it certainly looked that way.

  Mal was the only one of us who hit pay dirt with her investigation. Can you guess what she found? That’s right: “the weapon.” The scissors that had been used to cut up the clothing were right where the cutter must have thrown them, behind a pile of boxes near the spot where the pj’s and bunny slippers had been viciously attacked. They were junky old scissors, spotted with what looked like pink paint and patches of rust, but they were very sharp. How did Mal know they were “the weapon”? Because they still had shreds of flannel clinging to the blades. There was no question about it. But there was one other question, one that each of us had raised about our investigation. Mal put it best, at the end of her entry in the mystery notebook.

  What we did was nothing. By the end of Thursday’s Fashion Week activities, we were completely exhausted. I, for one, was ready for a hot bath and a hot date — with my mom, a bowl of popcorn, and a movie on the VCR. I needed to veg for a few hours and forget about everything that was happening at Bellair’s. I mean, I didn’t mind the modeling part, though I was pretty sure I wouldn’t want to make a career out of it, but the mystery was driving me bonkers.

  During my bath, I realized something. Nothing horrible had happened that day. No spiders in shoes, no poison. Oh, there’d been a lipstick note on the bathroom mirror when we’d arrived, but those notes were beginning to seem routine. I was almost tempted to tell myself that everything had been blown out of proportion, that nobody was after me, that it was all just a series of silly pranks — and that the prankster had finally become bored.

  Then Friday rolled around and I was nearly killed.

  Well, maybe that’s putting it a little dramatically. But if you’d been there, you’d kno
w that what happened was pretty dramatic. I’ll back up and tell the whole story, and you’ll see what I mean.

  As my friends and I split up at Bellair’s front door on Friday afternoon, we promised each other we’d keep up the detective work. Time was running out; we had to work fast. Mal was hoping to find more clues that would connect “the weapon” to whoever it was who had sliced, diced, and shredded those pj’s. Claudia was going to continue to keep an eye on Roger Bellair, even though she was pretty sure he was innocent. (“Jerky, but innocent,” was how she put it.) Mary Anne was still thinking that Dylan Trueheart might be behind the pranks. There was just something sneaky about the way he operated, according to her. And me? I was going to concentrate on my fellow models, wondering which one might be ambitious enough to be willing to terrorize the rest of us.

  Ten minutes after I’d arrived, I was sitting at the dressing table while the hair and makeup people fussed over me, preparing me for that day’s catalog shoot. Monica was giving me a sixties look, with plenty of dark eyeliner and this wild, almost white, lipstick. Jacqui teased my hair until it was puffy, then teased it some more. They were transforming me completely, but I was barely paying attention. Instead, I was checking out the other models.

  Harmony was already made up. Her hair was done, and she was dressed in what I figured was her first outfit for the photo shoot. The shoot that day featured retro clothes — the mod, sixties look — and Harmony was wearing a neon paisley miniskirt, white go-go boots, and a fluffy white jacket made of very fake fur. As I watched, Harmony’s mom tugged at the hem of her miniskirt. “It’s too short,” she said.

  “Mom, it’s fine,” said Harmony.

  “I’m telling you, it’s too short. Isn’t this too short?” Harmony’s mom had grabbed Mrs. Maslin, who was trotting by with her clipboard.

  “It looks fine to me,” said Mrs. Maslin, barely slowing down.