Rosella Salazar laughed. “I think I fit perfectly in mine, Phillip. Thank you!”
The detective was wearing a simple but elegant full-length, flowing black gown that Luster had literally designed and made in under two hours. Looking at her move, you’d never have known she was pregnant.
“Let’s hope the stitches hold in both of your dresses,” Luster said, offering an arm for each of them to take. They swept into the room, where guests were already crowding the tables and the bars to either side of the front door.
“Where are we sitting?” Salazar said. “I have to get off my feet for a few.”
“Table four,” the fashion designer said. “I’ll take you. Bree, could you get me a glass of champers? The rosé Taittinger, please?”
“I could use one of those myself,” Bree said and got in line.
A well-put-together woman in her forties in front of her turned and smiled.
“I know absolutely no one here, so I’ll introduce myself,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m Addie Wells.”
“Bree Stone,” Bree said, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you, Addie.”
“Are you in fashion?”
“A friend of a designer at Tess Jackson. How about you?”
Wells said, “I was invited by an agent who’s trying to convince me to buy a book set in the fashion industry.”
“You work in publishing?”
“I’m an acquisitions editor. And you?”
“Former police chief in DC and now a private detective for Bluestone Group.”
The editor’s eyes sparkled. “Really? How exciting. I publish a great deal of true crime and crime fiction. I’ll bet you have a hundred stories to tell.”
“More than a hundred,” Bree said and laughed.
“Can I give you my card?”
“Why not?” Bree said, and she reached in her purse for her business cards, pushing aside the small Ruger nine-millimeter she always carried to find them.
Wells’s cell buzzed after they’d exchanged cards. She looked at the phone and grimaced. “Oh, dear, it’s my nanny. My kids must be on a rampage. We’ll talk again?”
“I look forward to it,” Bree said.
The editor walked away, finger in her left ear, cell phone pressed tight to her right.
Carrying two flutes of pink champagne, Bree found table four and Detective Salazar, who had her black sneakers up on the adjacent chair.
“Where’s Phillip?” Bree asked.
“Over there, blowing air kisses with the one-percenters,” Salazar said. “He’s not happy with the sneakers or me putting them up on the chair. But I can’t help it. My dogs are aching.”
“He’ll get over it,” Bree said. “He was miffed at me for wearing flats, but how tall can a girl be?”
The detective laughed and looked around. “Amazing place, huh?”
“One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been in.”
Salazar looked longingly at the champagne. “Another time, another place, I could use four or five of those.”
Bree laughed. Salazar grinned. They liked each other. A lot.
“But nothing’s stopping you,” the detective went on. “Tell you what, I’ll live vicariously through you drinking four or five of … uh-oh, here comes the trouble we’ve been waiting for.”
Bree turned to look over her shoulder, noticing that the din in the room had dropped multiple decibels. She spotted Frances Duchaine moving through the throng by the bars, flanked by the same two bodyguards who’d thrown Bree out of the fashion designer’s estate.
CHAPTER 89
IT WAS FASCINATING TO watch the crowd react as Duchaine swept deeper into the venue. Heads snapped around. Guests whispered about her presence to other guests and provoked more low murmuring and craned heads trying to spot her.
Even though the scandal had no doubt damaged her brand, the fashion designer seemed to revel in the moment. Frances was the center of attention and knew it.
Luster was suddenly standing there next to Salazar and Bree. “I can’t believe it. I didn’t think she’d come even after she said she would.”
Bree said, “Well, it looks like she’s coming right to us, Phillip.”
“I am the gala’s cochair,” Luster said. “She has to pay her respects.”
“Why?” Salazar said, taking her feet off the chair.
“Because Frances is the other cochair,” Luster said as Duchaine came closer, nodding to some in the crowd and ignoring others, while the buff white bodyguard and the buffer Black bodyguard kept their eyes sweeping the crowd.
Duchaine walked right up to Luster. “Phillip, how wonderful to see you.”
“Frances, dear, how are you holding up?” Luster said and blew a kiss past each cheek.
Duchaine kept up the charade, murmuring something to him, then caught sight of Bree and Salazar standing on the other side of the table. The detective had been in the news a lot with the killings at Paula Watkins’s home, and Duchaine clearly recognized Bree from Greenwich. She retreated from Luster, stared at him coldly. “I can see whose side you’re on now, Phillip. I wish you had told me.”
“What are friends for, dear?”
Enraged, she pivoted and strode off with bodyguards in tow. They took three seats at a table two rows away.
Duchaine ate barely two bites of her entrée before murmuring to both bodyguards; they set their utensils down and rose. Bree watched her make her excuses to the other guests and start toward the front door.
Salazar leaned across Luster and said to Bree, “Let’s trail her a little. Let her know she’s still a target.”
Luster said, “I love it. I really do. Tell me everything she does!”
Bree and the detective got up and walked across the venue and out the front door. Duchaine and her bodyguards were standing about twenty feet away, scanning the traffic on Forty-Second and Lexington. The blond guy was on his phone.
It was seven thirty in the evening in midtown Manhattan. Traffic was heavy but flowing, at least in the eastbound lane of Forty-Second Street.
The blond guy must have seen the car he was looking for because he raised his hand. Bree caught a driver about ten cars back wave in return just as a cream-colored utility van floated into the near lane and stopped.
Cars behind it began honking.
The side door to the van opened. Three men in black hoods leaped out carrying pistols; they aimed at Duchaine and her bodyguards and opened fire.
CHAPTER 90
FRANCES DUCHAINE TOOK MULTIPLE bullets in the chest and torso at close range; she stumbled back and fell, dead before she hit the sidewalk.
The bodyguards, shot in the face and neck, were down before they got their weapons drawn. Pedestrians screamed and tried to get away.
The assassins turned and ran east on Forty-Second toward Lexington and the van they’d come in, which was still rolling. Bree and Salazar, both with years of training, took off after the assailants.
Bree had a federal firearms license and a permit to carry, and as she ran, she dug the Ruger from her purse. Salazar pulled up her gown as she half ran, half waddled, found her backup weapon in a thigh holster, and drew it.
The van crossed Lexington just as the yellow light turned red, the gunmen in close pursuit. The detective shouted, “NYPD! Stop!”