The Craigslist Murders - Brenda Cullerton [2]
The press didn’t report the murder until two days later. Skimming the headline inside the Post: “Model, Homemaker Murdered!” the article also mentioned that the 25-year-old “victim” (Fashion victim, maybe, Charlotte had snorted to herself) had died of blunt-trauma injuries after being hit in the head with an unknown object.
Even if police checked the girl’s e-mail correspondence and made the connection between Craigslist and buyers visiting the apartment, Charlotte wasn’t worried. She’d set the whole thing up under a pseudonym on a public-access computer at Kinko’s.
2
FOUR WEEKS LATER
Taking a tiny sip from her glass of chilled Stag’s Leap, Charlotte entered the museum’s vast new atrium. The immensity of the space left her breathless, giddy. The ceilings that seemed to soar up forever, the 80-foot sheet of single-pane glass overlooking the gardens, the marble and sea-foam slate floors. It reminded her of the first time she’d ever set foot in a mosque, the glory of all that uninterrupted space. What a spectacular backdrop for tonight’s dinner.
People who say money reeks have never smelled real money, she thought, while checking out the intimate groupings of snow-white, linen-covered tables. No, the money made by trustees of this museum had been so thoroughly laundered; all that was left was the discreet scent of Creed. How ironic, Charlotte sniggered. Most of the men in this room had done such unspeakably dirty things to amass their billions. But they all looked so pristine, so immaculately clean.
They lived clean, too. Smiling coyly at the male waiter and nibbling on a bit of billowy puff pastry, Charlotte thought some more about this generation of freshly-minted money—a generation that did everything but spend and exercise in moderation. They didn’t smoke. They didn’t drink. They barely ate. The women were so self-consumed, there was nothing left of them but skin and bones. Faux blondes with Sulka-smooth faces and foreheads as shiny as Granny Smith apples, they all looked the same. More identity theft, Charlotte thought as she waved to a knot of women clustered near the bar. Some were former clients and others, friends of clients.
Back in the flush of her “brilliant, breakthrough success” (who could forget a rave like that from Architectural Digest?) Charlotte had been invited to lunch by a new client.
“I don’t do lunch,” she’d replied, offhandedly. When the woman’s personal assistant phoned the next morning to cancel her contract, Charlotte panicked. The remark could have killed her career. She hadn’t meant to sound haughty. She simply had better things to do. Like work. Now, she lunched twice a week. As Charlotte continued to survey the room, she noticed a guy staring at her, pointing at her shoes. What the hell was his name?
Even at thirty-seven years old, Charlotte knew that she was one of the best-looking women there. It wasn’t just the shoes—satin slippers, actually. She was wearing one red and one black from separate pairs that she’d picked up on sale at the Liwan boutique in Paris. And it wasn’t just her clothes—a beautiful old Beene shrug of hand-sewn red paillettes and a blissfully simple black jersey jumpsuit. It was the pale, creamy skin, emerald green eyes, and shock of fiery red hair that encircled her face like a halo—“the halo from hell,” some hideous ex-business partner had once called it.
Charlotte had a lot of ex-partners. But this isn’t why women are staring at me tonight, she thought. They’re jealous. Style, like happiness, can’t be bought. Not real style. And Charlotte had it. “Elle sait faire” she’d overheard Caroline say about her to friends. Considering Caroline was the chicest French dealer in town, this was quite a compliment.
Oh