Read Online 2 Death of a Supermodel by Christine DeMaio-Rice - Free Book Online Page B

moved to the wallet. Every card listed Sabine Fosh, which must have been some sort of fake name. Or maybe Thomasina was the fake name. But who would fake-name themselves Thomasina? She couldn’t have chosen something less catchy.
    The receipts created a problem. She couldn’t write down everything about them, and she wasn’t so past the point of no return that she’d keep them. She heard a hard hacking cough from the other side of the paper-thin wall. She pressed her ear to it and heard another cough as if it were in her own bedroom, but she heard no other voices. She knocked gently on the wall.
    “Jeremy?”
    His voice came in from the other side. “I knew it was you back there. Your show is done. Go home. Take a few hours off.”
    “Can I borrow your copy machine?”
    “Come around.”
    She grabbed the little wallet and the receipts and walked down the hall.
    He was already waiting for her at his office door. He unlocked it and stood aside. “You know where it is.”
    She didn’t look at him because she was trying not to think about what she was doing. She was taking receipts from a dead woman’s wallet and photocopying them before she handed them over to the police, because… why?
    Because she knew in her heart that she was going to try to pull another Pomerantz. She had no time, no space in her life to do it. She had been told not to. It was stupid and egotistical. But her sister was in trouble, and she didn’t know why. Though she wanted to trust the system, and maybe she did trust the system, she was going to see if she could solve another murder. She tried not to think about it, and the more she tried not to, the more the truth stamped its feet and demanded attention.
    “What are you doing?” Jeremy asked as he pulled a bottle of water from the fridge.
    “No. What are you doing? You look like hell.”
    “Thanks.” He smiled, and she smiled back, then he coughed again. “Paper needs to be pushed even on a show week. Come on, you used to be full time here. You know the drill.” He pulled a pill bottle from his pocket and tapped out a couple.
    “Yeah, but I didn’t know then what I know now. Are you getting sick?”
    “Fighting it. The plane rides to China are brutal. Even in first class, everyone’s spitting phlegm. Beijing’s a sewer of germs. I met the president of this manufacturing conglomerate and he was hocking in the street.” He slid the pills into his mouth and knocked them back with a swig from the water bottle.
    “Okay. Gross.” She separated the receipts by date, placing them on the glass to fit one day per page. “You can’t do this unless you’re going to start walking around the office in an iron lung.”
    She expected an argument, but instead, he said, “Gracie might have been right.”
    “She wasn’t right. She was scared. You just have to do it differently than everyone else. You can’t fly all around the world looking at factories, period. You’re no good to anyone dead.”
    He leaned on the fridge with his bottle of water, looking tired and drawn, as though he wanted to say something he was holding back. “When is Ivanah going to start bossing you around?” She sensed that wasn’t what he’d really wanted to discuss.
    “I’m sure that we’re going to have to take money from them in about two weeks, when we run dry. She’ll start butting in right after. Figure I’ll be in your office in about three weeks to borrow your rhinestone sample books.” She gathered the receipts, which Jeremy probably assumed were hers, and stuffed them back into the wallet.
    “You know, she has a big PR machine that could help put a lid on the Thomasina Wente thing. Between now and the next two weeks, it would be in her interest to help you with it.” He sipped his water and looked for her reaction over the bottle.
    On a whim, and because she wasn’t ready to walk out of the office yet, she copied the credit cards. “You saying I should draw her in now, assuming she’s going