back to you.”
“She shouldn’t have talked to you, Clare. And she should have told me that Hazel was living in New York.” Breanne glanced away; her clipped tone softened. “I never met my niece, but I would have helped her if I’d known she was here.”
“Hazel didn’t want you to know. She knew you wanted your privacy. And she had her own pride, too. That’s how Rhonda put it. She said her daughter came to New York to make it on her own like her aunt did. Maybe Hazel never met you, Breanne, but she greatly admired you.”
“Is that so? And is that why she dressed like me to strip?”
“She only did it twice. The look-alike agency regularly booked her out as other celebrities. It was Randall Knox who saw the resemblance and paid her to imitate you. Your sister had no idea Hazel was hiring herself out as an exotic dancer to make ends meet.”
Breanne paused, the steel in her eyes softening. “How is she? My sister. Is she holding up okay?”
“She was very sad, of course. But she seemed okay, a survivor. Her husband came with her. She said she has two younger daughters and a son back home.” I stepped up to Bree’s desk and put down a piece of paper. “This is her hotel and phone number. She’ll be in New York until tomorrow morning if you want to see her before she leaves.”
Breanne bit her lip. “Rhonda’s daughter was shot instead of me.” She closed her eye, shook her head. “It’s my fault the girl’s dead . . .”
“That’s ridiculous. You didn’t gun her down. And your life was in just as much danger.”
“But if I had known that Hazel needed money, she wouldn’t have had to do the exotic dancing. I could have helped her—”
“Like I said, according to your sister, Hazel didn’t want your help. She was proud of her looks, her talent. She wanted to make it on her own.” I raised an eyebrow. “Sounds a lot like you, from what Rhonda told me.”
Breanne met my eyes. “And what else did Rhonda tell you?”
“That you were barely out of your teens, yet you quit college to take care of your younger sister and brothers on nothing but food stamps and welfare checks. What you did was admirable, Breanne. I don’t understand why you’re trying so hard to hide it.”
“My father was a criminal, and my mother was an alcoholic who ended up in a mental hospital. Not a very pretty past, Clare. I also did things, illegal things, for extra money. Did Rhonda mention that?”
“No.”
“Well, what’s the difference? In for a penny in for a pound, right? I didn’t have to do it for long. A family friend helped me get a legitimate job at a local department store.”
“Rhonda said you were very smart, you made friends with the store buyers.”
Breanne nodded. “I wrote articles for local publications about new products. But there was one story that broke me out.”
“The one on the Vogue cover? How did you manage that from a trailer park in West Virginia?”
Breanne’s hard blue gaze softened again. “There was a clothing buyer at the department store, a very nice man. He told me about a famous architect who was collaborating with a fashion designer to create a new line of women’s clothes. So I took a bus to Pittsburgh, where the architect lived, interviewed him extensively, and put a slick piece together with the help of one of my old community college teachers. Before she retired, she’d worked in New York as a reporter. She was the one who made a few calls, found out which editor at Vogue would be receptive to the piece.”
“And Vogue bought it? Just like that?”
“Fortune favors the foolish, I guess. The circumstances were unusual.”
“What do you mean?”
“The architect was no spring chicken. The man suffered a heart attack and died right before fall fashion week. The clothing line he helped create was a huge hit, and I had the only interview.”
“So your article ran as a Vogue cover story under a pen name you invented: Breanne Summour.”
She nodded. “By then Rhonda was old enough to take care of my brothers. So I moved to New York and, with a completely fabricated résumé, landed a job at New York Trends.”
“But I still don’t understand. Why did you have to hide your past?”
Breanne’s laugh was sharp and cynical. “I didn’t have an Ivy League degree—or any degree. I talked my way into the