Thrilled by the success of the evening, I stood outside accepting the praise and thank-yous of the shop’s clientele.
“Promise you’ll have another Stella Stanley Night, Vera,” implored Eunice.
“Yes, do, do,” echoed the bridge club.
“Perhaps when the spring collection comes in,” I answered.
“Wonderful.” Eunice smiled. “Start planning now.”
And plan I did, all the next day, flipping through catalogs — visualizing Stella in a flared lavender organdy garden-party dress; Stella in turquoise sundress and lacy stole; Stella in wide-brimmed straw hat; Stella in long seersucker bathrobe trimmed with white satin. Visualizing Stella in the bathrobe reminded me of last night when Brenda tucked her into the car. Perhaps the show was too much for her. Nearly eighty years old, she literally performed for six straight hours, a feat daunting even to a much younger person. At one-thirty, I called her house.
“She’s asleep,” Brenda said. “She might sleep all day, but that’s okay, and we’ll spend all night reliving that beautiful show. Thanks, Vera.”
Since Brenda sounded tired herself, I didn’t mention the possibility of a sequel, a word that gave me pause. Like any successful producer, I feared the jinx of the sequel.
I needn’t have worried. There will be no sequel. Flash, USA saw to that.
On Thursday, Derrick bounded into the shop, a stack of newspapers under his arm.
“Keep the phone lines open, Vera. Hollywood agents will be calling any time now after they see my face and bod plastered all over Flash, USA.”
My heart sank as Narcissus thumped the tabloids down on the counter and moistened his fingers to hasten their arrival at the middle spread. What he saw did not please him. In fact, what he saw enraged him, and I can’t repeat the words he shrieked. They were directed at Charley.
In the montage of eight pictures, Derrick appeared only once, a shot of him on the runway being kissed by Stella, the back of her head almost completely obscuring his face. As Derrick raved about “double-crossing,” I held my breath, hoping desperately to see tasteful pictures of Stella, but when Derrick moved his arm away, I saw Stella not in ageless glory, but in a most pitiful state.
Under the headline “To Catch a Falling Star,” Flash, USA had assembled seven pictures of Stella dressed only in a slip, furtively concealing items. The only photo showing her fully clothed and not shoplifting was the one of her kissing Derrick. Its caption read, “Still on the prowl for young men.”
The single paragraph of text under the headline explained the other photos as “gotchas” — Stella caught in the act of stealing from a friend.
Derrick stormed out of the store, vowing to dismantle Charley limb by limb. Too upset to join him in the dismembering, I forced myself to study the photos. Had Charley, I wondered, equipped his camera with a zoom lens and taken them outside Stella’s home? If so, why was Stella concealing her own things? That made no sense.
Heartsick and perplexed, I stared at the photos and noticed in all of them a familiar Spanish vase with trailing ivy on the wall of the room in front of Stella. And then I knew — the photos came from our dressing room. They were taken during the rehearsals for the show, but not by Charley, who during that time innocently focused his camera on Stella only when she practiced modeling on the runway. I rushed into the dressing room and immediately found the hidden camera above the vase. And I remembered Derrick insisting that the dressing room be renovated for the star. Charley knew about Stella’s shoplifting habit and enlisted Derrick’s aid to record her weakness. He believed she couldn’t resist taking things when no one was looking.
But someone was looking. Brenda was in the dressing room with her at all times, acting as her dresser. I never saw her leave. And there was nothing missing from the shop. Were the pictures staged, and if so, how? My head was spinning. I picked up the paper to try to make sense of it.
The pictures showed Stella in varying attempts at theft: tying elbow-length gloves around her thigh; clipping a rhinestone necklace onto the strap of her slip; hanging a feathery boa on a hook and covering it with her own jacket; slipping a lame turban into an umbrella propped against the wall; tucking a pearl-studded evening bag into her black clutch bag; sliding gold hoop earrings onto her ring finger; and clipping a sunburst brooch inside her own hat. But all those items made it into the show and most were purchased. There had to be a solution and it had to be in the pictures.
I took a magnifying glass from my desk and scrutinized each one, stopping at the earrings. A vague outline of another hand appeared in back of Stella’s arm. Brenda’s! After the faithful Girl Friday replaced the clothes from the show on hangers, the star was trying to steal the accessories. Undeceived, Brenda had retrieved them and returned them with the outfits. How Charley must have despaired about the possibility of his hidden camera scheme being thwarted by Brenda’s presence! But when he saw the first two films and realized Stella was still shoplifting and trying to hide her attempts from Brenda, he must have rejoiced to realize he simply had to crop out Brenda’s taking back the items.
With dread, I punched in Stella’s number. I had to warn Brenda that the pictures were in Flash, USA. It was too late. After a night of rehashing the show, Stella asked Brenda to get The Lamplighter and made her promise that they would look at it together. When nothing about the show appeared in that paper, Brenda believed the spread would appear the following week. Disappointed but handling it well, Stella went to the front door to bring in the local paper, thinking something might be in there. Flash, USA was propped against the door with a note to open the paper to the center spread. I’m sure Charley hand-delivered it to her door.
“I’m waiting for the doctor,” Brenda said. “Stella’s in shock. She just sits on the floor hugging herself and rocking. How could you have done this to her?”
“I didn’t know about the hidden camera, Brenda. Honestly. I’d never hurt her. Derrick and Charley planned this horror together.”
“It’s a horror all right,” she answered and ended the call.
As I did at many of Stella’s movies, I started to cry, and only stopped when Charley burst in screaming that Derrick had slashed his tires and broken his windshield, demanding to know where “the creep” was hiding. I beat him into the dressing room, ripped out the camera, and threw it at him. I missed him, but scored a direct hit on Derrick’s forehead as he was charging through the front door. A brawl ensued between the two conspirators. I called the police, who were quite busy that day handling phone calls from my irate fashion-show guests. An avid reader of Flash, USA, Eunice saw the pictures and recognized the vase in the dressing room. Her husband and other husbands believed that their wives were being photographed while changing in the dressing room, frequently trying on the shop’s undergarments, and would be blackmailed.
They were right. Charley had a pile of photos to supplement his income from the tabloid. Derrick was hauled in on invasion of privacy issues because Charley fingered him as authorizing the installation of the camera. No charges were brought against Stella for shoplifting after Brenda explained putting the items back and I confirmed her story. Flash, USA is issuing an apology. Derrick is facing a barrage of lawsuits, which will effectively put Be a Star out of business and me out of a job, but I don’t care. I’ve got another job to do.