I shoved the caramels into my back pocket, where they sat against the papers. Helen took a tentative slice off the edge of the lasagne. “I just can’t believe someone would do this to my Ashley. She never did anything to hurt anyone.”
Not entirely true.I thought of Ashley’s smug face as I passed her in the hall outside Marcus’ office, and the way she’d make snide comments about other girls’ outfits whenever she met someone more powerful than her, and even the way she used to torture poor Darren in secondary school. “Have the police told you anything?” I asked. “Do they have any leads?”
“They said they’re narrowing in on a suspect, but they won’t tell me any more than that.” Helen stared at her plate, moving the vegetables around with her fork, but not raising it to her lips. “They’ve been asking lots of questions about Ashley’s time in New York, about her friends, even about you, can you imagine? My daughter is lying on a metal slab, and they’re wasting time looking into her best friend.”
“Right, yes, well, they’re just doing their jobs.” I squirmed in my seat, Ashley’s papers burning a hole in my pocket. “And I did find her, so they have to look at me. I’m sure it’s just routine.”
Just routine.As much as I tried to tell myself that, and that Jo was right and this text they found might exonerate me, I had a chill in my spine that said this nightmare was only just beginning.
I sat with Helen for another couple of hours until the girls came home from their grandmothers. As soon as the house was a screaming mess again, I left. Helen needed to be with her family.
I passed by the bookshop. It was now past closing and the front door remained locked. I noticed the lights on in the upstairs windows. Something twisted in my gut. I didn’t want to go home to Mum and her wobbling stomach. Not tonight, not yet. I wanted to show the guys what I found.
I banged my fist against the door, then realized there was no way they’d hear me from upstairs, especially if Morrie had his gaming headphones on and Heathcliff was determined to ignore the outside world. I pulled out one of Helen’s caramels from my pocket and tossed it at the upstairs window.
After a second caramel hit the glass, the window slid open and a shadow appeared over the ledge. “Who’s there?” A voice called.Quoth.“Who’s rapping at our chamber door?”
“It’s Mina. Can you let me in?”
“Sure. As long as you stop wasting perfectly good caramels.”
Quoth let me in through the back door. Once upstairs, I found the guys exactly where I expected them to be – Heathcliff by the fire, Grimalkin curled up in his lap and a book draped over the chair arm. Morrie at his computer. Quoth retreating into the shadows.
“I just visited Ashley’s mum.” I flopped down into the chair across from Heathcliff and tossed the caramels onto the table beside him. “I found something hidden in her suitcase. Want to see?”
That got a reaction. Morrie shot across the room like I’d offered a foot massage. Heathcliff leaned forward in his chair, tipping Grimalkin onto the floor where she glared indignantly at her master before leaning over to lick her arsehole. Quoth slipped from the shadows and draped himself over the back of Heathcliff’s chair, his black hair spilling in a luminous waterfall over his face.
There was a standing lamp on a long arm beside my chair that hadn’t been there earlier. I pulled it across so it shone on my lap, and spread the pages underneath the circle of light. They were fashion sketches – women with impossibly long legs and nipped-in waists adorned with frou-frou layered skirts shot with leather details, leather jackets with high collars and lace inserts, and high-necked blouses with PVC cuffs – an ingenious mix of Victorian mourning and rock’n’roll chic.
Are these Ashley’s drawings?She’d never shown them to me before.I held each page up to my face and inspected the lines.No, not Ashley’s.For one thing, they wereamazing. The structure of the garments, the level of detail… they read more like a professional designer than a first-year intern. But something about them did seem familiar…
“They’re just drawings of really naff clothes.” Morrie held up the lace and leather jacket beside Quoth’s face. “Hey mate, this looks like your style.”
“These are Marcus Ribald’s designs, I’m sure of it. But I’ve never seen these pieces before.” I squinted at the tiny scribble in the corner – yup, there was Marcus’ signature. There was some writing beside it, too small for me to make out. I passed the drawing to Heathcliff. “Can you read that?”
Quoth snatched it from Heathcliff’s hands. “It says Couture, PFW.”
I sucked in a breath. “This is Marcus’ upcoming collection for Paris Fashion Week. No way would he ever let these drawings out of his sight, let alone out of the studio. We all have to sign a non-disclosure agreement when we start work for him to keep concept drawings secret from his competitors. Marcus would never let one of us carry them around like this. He was too worried about—” I clamped my hand over my mouth.
“What is it, gorgeous?” Morrie leaned forward, an evil grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Did you just figure out your friend was selling these to the highest bidder?”
No way. No way would Ashley sell Marcus’ designs. She worshipped Marcus just as much as I did, and if she got caught her fashion career would be over. She wouldn’t blow her chances by…
Holy Isis.
Last year, rival designer Holly Santiago previewed a crimson coat with Persian embroidery on the runway a few weeks before Marcus released his Empire collection. Commentators dragged Marcus through the tabloids over the similarities, calling him a copycat and unoriginal for his take on the coat. Marcus was pissed about it, convinced someone in the office had stolen his design and sold it to Holly. But I’d reassured him it was just a coincidence. After all, Marcus couldn’t have been the only one to think of combining ancient Persian culture with high fashion.
That same week, Ashley was showing off a brand new Louis Vuitton bag… she said the company gifted it to her because of her Instagram following, but that was an expensive bag to just be giving away to someone who was a virtual nobody… and now Ashley had been killed with a knife from that very show and here were drawings for a never-before-released Marcus Ribald collection in her purse…
At the bottom of the stack was the white envelope. Ashley’s name was written across the front in a scrawled print I didn’t recognize. There was tape on the corners of the envelope, and some paper had been pulled off when the tape was ripped away. It looked a little like the page in a book, but it was hard to be sure.
I slipped my finger under the tape holding it shut, and pulled out a stack of hundred-quid notes.
Chapter Sixteen
Istared at all that money in my hands.
It’s true.
