Once Bitten, Twice Dead Page 9

  “How come you know what to do? I’m supposed to be the detective.”

  “Being a reporter isn’t so much different. I have to get underneath things like you do to try to get at the truth.”

  “How have you liked working for the Times?”

  “It’s exciting. When I begin searching out a story, I never know quite where it’s going to end.”

  “That’s true on my end also, but that’s what’s frustrating me. I can’t see any finish line.”

  “Look at it like an adventure. Would you like to know exactly what was going to happen each day?”

  “Not really. That’s why I didn’t like school. Too predictable.”

  “See. You’re in the right career. Just keep going.”

  “I’m totally bothered because these killers are still on the loose. They certainly could kill again.”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve investigated some corruption in high places here in the City, and I couldn’t wait to uncover the culprits. You and I both don’t like to see the law being broken and harm coming to others. That’s a good quality we have.”

  “Again, I’m starting to feel better, Mark.”

  “Anytime—just call. No one makes it in this world by themselves, at least not without the pain of loneliness. We have each other, and we also don’t have the heartbreak of psoriasis.”

  I took Mark’s direction and checked further into the fashion industry, finding quite a cutthroat world there.

  It seemed that Carla’s toughest competitor in dress designing was Mimi Fortana, whose product line was called, “Allure.” Her clothes seemed to emphasize the curves of a woman’s body without showing too much skin. Her thinking was that a woman’s body was meant to entice. Mimi herself was an attractive person, not stunning, but pleasing to look at with: a tall woman with long flowing hair and an angular nose. When I met her, though, I was talking to an angry person.

  “I’ll come right to the point, Detective Stolle. Carla Strand stole my main design. I had been in the business ten years before she arrived on the scene. Suddenly, lately, designs began to appear that looked familiar to me. I knew Carla was copying me, but I couldn’t stop her. My lawyer said that an idea itself could not be copyrighted, and since Carla was not stealing my actual fabrics or the particular dresses themselves, there was nothing I could do.”

  “Maybe you stopped her by another means, throwing Carla off her balcony. You’re not a tiny woman—you could have lifted her up.”

  “You must be joking. You probably don’t know much about the fashion business. Despite, Carla, I remained successful. She did cut into my business, but ‘Allure’ clothes have been popular for so long that most of my loyal customers did not desert me. It was the principle of the thing that bothered me—what Carla did was unethical.”

  “But don’t people do that all the time? In literary circles, there was word that The Da Vinci Code author had copied the idea from another book. And then following that particular best seller about thirty other books came out dealing with historical ‘codes.’ Maybe people who lack creativity have to copy. Don’t you accept that?”

  “Not at all. I say if you can’t be original, get out of that kind of creative career. Obviously I’m still angry at Carla, and what makes me even angrier is that she’s dead, and I can’t do anything about it.”

  “Such sweet sentiment.”

  “It’s a rough business, Detective, and you have to be tough to stay on top. It took me a while to get there, but for at least the last seven years I’ve been on top, and I plan to stay there.”

  As I was walking out of Mimi’s garment factory, one of her assistants came up to me. I had seen her in the background, listening to our conversation.

  “I see you’ve been talking to the Queen herself.”

  “I have been doing that. Did you like overhearing what we said?”

  “What she’s been telling you is bullshit. She’s pretending to have all that integrity, but I’ve been with her since she started, and I know what she’s spouting off isn’t true.”

  “How so?”

  “When Mimi first started she copied everyone. In fact if you’ll check court records, you’ll see that there was an eventual lawsuit that was filed against her, and she lost the case. And the rumor around here is that actually one of her seamstresses came up with the ‘Allure’ design. Then Mimi fired her so she would have no claim to any of the money. The girl didn’t have enough funds to fight Mimi in court. So Miss High and Mighty that you were just talking to is really just another rag picker.”

  “Why do you work for her, then??”

  “It’s the money. Mimi’s at the top. She was telling the truth about that.”

  “Do you think Mimi had anything to do with Carla’s murder?”

  “The truth is exactly the opposite—Mimi wanted Carla to stay in business because Mimi was beginning to copy some of Carla’s ideas. She wouldn’t have been killing her competition. She would have been killing her gift horse. She wouldn’t have wanted to stop Carla’s supply of new ideas. Carla was much more creative than Mimi was telling you. All that bull she was telling you was just so Mimi could feed her ego that she’s the greatest. She perfectly obnoxious to be around, but I don’t think she’s a murderer.”

  I decided to go back to talk with Benito Rosca who had been regarded as Carla’s first mentor to see just how much creativity Carla had.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Rosca seemed to have an ego that matched Mimi Fortana’s.

  “Carla had many good ideas, but she never would have made it in this business if I hadn’t given her a start in it. I introduced her to many people and endorsed those ideas. I also loaned her $50,000 at the beginning.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “It was a simple swap. I’d help her in this business, and she’d give me sex.” Benito ran a hand over his bushy eyebrows and then seemed to hug himself in appreciation of how wonderful he was. His white suit and shoes in contrast with his thick dark slicked-back hair made it look like he’d just stepped out of a 1930’s film.

  “So you slept with Carla?”

  “Constantly. She was very good in bed.” Benito rose onto the balls of his feet as it he were going to hop up into the air.

  “Did this ‘trade’ with you ever bother her?”

  “It didn’t seem so. She told me that doing this was one of the ways she had made it big in Hollywood. Have you ever seen any of her movies?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “At her best, she was mediocre. I know ‘sleeping your way to the top’ seems like a hackneyed phrase, but Carla did exactly that. On my part, I hated to have our physical relationship stop.”

  “Why did it stop?”

  “Carla got independent. She was moving up in her designing field, and she felt she didn’t need me anymore, which was true. So one day she simply announced that there was to be no more ‘bed and breakfast.’ She was forming her own company.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  “Me? Oh, she had a right to do that. I really didn’t have any kind of hold on her.”

  Regret was part of Rosca’s tone. I wondered if he had tried to get the bedding part back, and Carla had resisted. He was an older man, but he did look like he could pick up the much smaller woman that Carla was and fling her off the balcony. There had been a high alcoholic content in Strand’s body the toxicologist had said, and so she probably didn’t offer much resistance to her killer.

  Rosca was in his declining years, and I could see where he might want to continue with the attention of the much younger Carla. Sex can be a powerful tool to convince yourself that you’re still young. Rosca wasn’t a particularly appealing physical specimen, and I also wondered, despite his words about Carla not being bothered by the relationship, if she might not have felt humiliated by continually giving herself to him. However, soon I was to find out that Rosca’s words about Carla’s sexual “generosity” to other was not a myth.

&n
bsp; Investigating another branch of Carla’s ventures, I ran into Pierre Lacomte, one of the leaders in the perfume industry. He, too, had reason to be not too happy with Ms. Strand.

  “About three years ago, Detective Stolle,” my main manufacturer deserted me. He had been the one who had supplied me with my best selling brand called, ‘Desire.’ With no warning at all, one day he notified me that he was going over to Carla’s shop. He wouldn’t tell me why, but I found out through the grapevine that he was sleeping with her. It took me almost a year to get another good supplier, and by that time Carla had surpassed me in sales. A year earlier she had even propositioned me to sleep with her. She would then make me manager of her company, she told me. Of course I refused—my sales at that time were twice as large as hers. Also, I knew all she wanted was to control me so she could control the perfume industry. So she then went another route and stole my supplier.”

  “Weren’t you a little bit tempted by her offer?”

  “You had to know the circumstances. She and her agent were out to dinner with my wife and me. There was drinking and dancing, and during one of the dances Carla wanted to switch partners. During our dance together she said she was staying at that hotel, and she’d give me her room key if I wanted it. My wife was ten feet away from us when Carla made that offer.”

  “Quite a bold move. Would you have done it if your wife hadn’t been there?”

  “That’s not what I was implying. I was telling you what a brazen woman Carla Strand was.”

  I did detect a little regret now also in LaComte’s voice, and maybe he had more regret when he heard that Carla had slept with the supplier. It was a missed opportunity for Lacomte, and that didn’t necessarily lead to murder, but maybe like my speculation about Rosca, LaComte tried later to gain back that chance, and Carla rebuffed him. Someone like Carla, who seemed to be offering herself around so liberally, could eventually have found herself in a deep pit that she couldn’t dig out of.

  Since Carla has been so free with sexual favors, I wanted to talk to her close friend, Sibbi Prentis to see what was going on inside Ms. Strand’s head.

  The first thing I thought of when I saw Sibbi was that such a large woman could have easily thrown Carla over that balcony wall. However, that was the exact problem. Prentis looked so powerful that she could have tossed Carla completely over the railing. Carla would not have been able to scrape her fingers on that retaining wall. Besides, Sibbi was supposed to be Carla’s friend, but sometimes your closest friend could also be your closest enemy.

  Sibbi got right to the point. “Detective Stolle, I’ll tell you in short words—Carla, never in her life, respected herself.”

  “But she became both a successful actress and maybe even a more successful businesswoman.”

  ‘That’s why she became so successful—because she had no respect for herself.”

  “Explain.”

  “All she had were her achievements. There was no person there, so she needed those successes to keep her going. She had no warmth, no laughter, no kindness—just the empty shell—she had to have something to fill in that huge hole. That’s why she had so much drive; it kept her from thinking about herself. She could always be someone else, either in the movies or in the fashion world, even prancing around showing off her perfume line.”

  “Why were you Carla’s friend? She didn’t sound like a very nice person to be around.”

  “I think I cared about her because I knew there was a real Carla somewhere there, but it was buried very deeply. I wanted to have the genuine Carla come to the surface and rid herself of that other fake person. Instead, both Carlas died that night.”

  “It sounds like you understood her very well.”

  “I had known her since high school. I’ve had many years to observe. But maybe the person who knew her best was Dr. Auden.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Dr. Heinrich Auden. He works at the Brooklyn Clinic. He was Carla’s psychiatrist. He probably won’t allow himself to tell you much, but maybe he can give you some hints as to what Carla was struggling with.”

  “Since you’ve known Carla since her teen-age years, was she always the way you just described her?”

  “No, in that growing up period she was a fun-loving carefree spirit, who wasn’t afraid to say what she thought. She was a delight to be with.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. The change was gradual. I guess I could pinpoint it beginning about her junior year, and by the time she graduated she was the hollow person I’ve known ever since. I went to college, and she didn’t—I lost social contact with her for a few years. We did write a little to each other during that time. Then I heard she’d gotten into movies. I went and saw one of them, and I was astounded. She could completely inhabit a character and make her come alive. She made you want to connect with the person she portrayed, so unlike the Carla I left after high school. When I saw Carla in the movies it wasn’t the person I had once known, but at least on the screen she could invent another personality. I called her a couple of times to compliment her on her performances.

  “The day after she went into the fashion business she called me up to come to New York and work for her. I could tell by talking with her on the phone that it was less about doing something for me and more like a cry for help from her. I didn’t take her offer—at the time I was working for Verizon Communications as an instructor, and liked my job—but a couple of months later I got myself transferred to New York so I could be closer to Carla. I was under the misguided feeling that I could help her. I couldn’t.

  “I didn’t want to work for her—that was too close. One of the ways Carla had changed during those last two years of high school was that she became a very dominating person. I was a co-editor of the yearbook with her, and she controlled everyone, including me. We all had to go by her very whim. I didn’t want that again. So I kept a working distance, but managed to contact her often for social jaunts in the City. I tried to inject some life into her, but, as I said, I failed. Carla was already dead long before she went over that balcony.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Dr. Heinrich Auden had a large office in a modern building overlooking Madison Avenue, not too far from Central Park.

  The man was neatly attired in a three-piece suit, but it looked like he hadn’t combed his hair in years. He wore large thick dark glasses and had a goatee that looked like it had landed on his face by accident.

  “I know why you’re here, Detective Stolle. Sibbi Prentis called me.”

  “You know, then, that I’m trying to solve Carla Strand’s murder. Can you help me?”

  “Absolutely I would want her killer caught, but of course I can’t reveal what Carla and I talked about.”

  “I understand about doctor-patient privilege, but since Carla is now dead, surely she couldn’t be harmed by any information you could give me.”

  “The law had been interpreted every which way, but I have my own set of ethics. I feel there is such a thing as a person’s reputation. I wouldn’t want to resurrect things that could soil Carla’s good name.”

  “Was there that kind of ugly stuff?”

  “I see that I’ve already said too much. We all have ugly stuff, Detective Stolle.”

  “Was Carla getting better because of your treatment?”

  “I wish I could say yes, but I can’t. Carla was a tragic case, a frozen person. I don’t think I really helped her in the two years we saw each other.”

  There was a way that Dr. Auden said, “saw each other,” that seemed beyond the doctor-patient level. Could Carla and the Doctor have been having some physical therapy? From what I had already found out, the way Carla had been loaning out her body seemed to make my theory possible. Possibly this was one of the “ugly” things that Auden had hinted at, connected to the guilt he felt. Therapists were human too.

  “Dr. Auden, can you tell me anything in general about Carla that my help my investigation?”

 
“I guess I can speak in large terms. Carla had not been in good mental health for many years. I know all about her success in the material world, but inside herself she was a wreck. She was screaming for help, and I tried to give it.” Then Auden hesitated.

  “Detective Stolle, just one suggestion.”

  “Yes?”

  “Talk to her father.”

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  It was a chilly morning when I arrived in Syracuse, New York to talk with Sidney Pramp, Carla’s father. Pramp was Carla’s real last name, with her actual first name being Candace. I guess “Candace Pramp” wasn’t the most musical-sounding name for an aspiring actress, so she changed it. It seemed that her father had accepted this change because never once during our conversation did he call his daughter, “Candace.” I noticed that even her high school friend, Sibbi, had called Carla by her screen name. I wondered if anyone close to Cary Grant ever called him his real name, Archie Leach, or anyone called John Wayne, Marion Morrison?

  Whether he had some anxiety talking with me, or it was just a nervous tic he had Sidney kept adjusting his wire-frame glasses every few seconds during our interview. The shape of his bald head seemed to match the outline of his beer-belly, and he hunched over a bit as if he was continually going to reach for something by his feet. He hardly looked at me when he spoke.

  Sidney was filling me in. “Carla’s mother died when she was three, and I had the task of raising her.”

  “Was it a task, Mr. Pramp?”

  “Not really. Carla was a sweet girl, very loving—she was easy to care about.”

  Oh, oh, was the man overdoing it a bit? Danger signals began to flash at me. How could I approach this without having Sidney clam up?

  “Did Candace. . .uh. . .Carla have many boyfriends when she was growing up?”

  “Some boys tried to court her, but I felt none of them were good enough for her—and besides, every one of them were trying to get into her pants.”