Latte Trouble - By Cleo Coyle Page 0,84

I’m Lottie Harmon. What does it matter to you?”

“It matters because my friend is sitting in a jail cell and the only way I know how to get him out is to find out what the hell is going on around here!”

“Shhh, lower your voice,” Harriet insisted. Then the woman’s shoulders sagged. “This week has been hell. First the poisoning at the party, then Rena’s death…” She paused to choke back sudden tears, then just began shaking her head and broke down completely.

“I’m sorry about Rena,” I said. “I really am. But I need to know what’s going on. The truth. Why are you posing as Lottie Harmon?”

“Why do you think?” she said after composing herself and wiping her tears. “Harriet was a nobody in this world. Overweight, shy, unglamorous. Never mind that I created half the pieces that sent the Lottie Harmon label to the top of the fashion world in its heyday. Poor Mona, of course, created the other half.”

“And Lottie Toratelli?”

“She was the professional party girl. The very public, very pretty, flamboyant, well-spoken face of Lottie Harmon. I don’t deny she was vital. She made the connections, the front and back end deals. She put the label and its designs in the papers—by making the scene, showing off the jewelry and accessories, bringing in just the right clientele—”

“The Eveready Bunny,” I murmured.

“Who kept going and going.” Harriet said this with such irony I tried to read between the lines.

“Do you mean drugs?”

Lottie shook her head. “Not drugs. Both Lottie and Mona Lisa had some kind of weird, hereditary allergies. But booze, music, and sex with multiple partners—that was what kept Lottie going.”

“But not you and Mona?”

Harriet waved her hand. “Oh, Mona went clubbing a lot at first, but then she got pregnant by some one-night stand and decided to have the baby. She settled down and became the more responsible sister. I tried the club scene for awhile, but the way I looked…well, let’s just say I got tired of buying drinks and drugs for guys who treated me like crap.”

I let the words hang for a moment. “I guess it was tough for you and Mona—working hard and never getting the credit you deserved for your design work.”

Harriet shrugged. “It didn’t matter, really. We were all getting rich. That had been the plan—and the deal—all along. Things were going great, until that bastard Stephen Goldin started playing his games.”

“Fen?”

She glanced away, her eyes glazing a bit. “Stephen was really something back then—brilliant, cocksure—a straight young clothing designer in a business saturated with gay men. Lottie was drawn to him immediately; Mona soon after that. Moths to a flame, as it turned out.”

“So he encouraged both women’s affections?”

“Encouraged? He reveled in it. For years, he played a twisted cat and mouse game with both women—flaunting his relationship with Lottie, while daring Mona to reveal her own affair with him to her wild, possessive sister. Fen was playing a dangerous game, but no one knew how dangerous until it was too late…”.

Her voice trailed off, but I knew where she was going. “Harriet,” I said softly, “I know Mona died in Bangkok.”

Lottie nodded, closed her eyes. “I saw most of the crap come down in that sick menage a tois, but I managed to miss Armageddon Day, which finally occurred in 1988.”

“What happened?”

She sighed, opened her eyes. “Fen took both sisters to Thailand on phony passports. He had one too. They were planning to smuggle gems out of the country and avoid duties and customs. But with his libido, Fen was probably planning to sample Thailand’s notorious sex industry, as well. Anyway, Mona took her little daughter on the trip, maybe to use her as a decoy, so the authorities wouldn’t suspect them of being smugglers. It was all a stupid, tragic mistake. I didn’t find out the truth about Mona’s death until years later. Lottie confessed it all to me herself, at the end…”.

“The only news item I found on Mona’s death said she fell off a balcony—”

“She was pushed,” Harriet corrected, shaking her head.

“Did Fen do it?”

“Fen and Lottie had been bickering—badly. By this time, they were on the verge of splitting for good. The break finally came in Bangkok, but before Fen stormed off and flew back to New York without them, he threw his affair with Mona in Lottie’s face. Lottie had always been impulsive and, at times, short-tempered. The lifestyle she’d been leading—all the alcohol she consumed daily—had made her downright dangerous. She