Cereal Killer

to box her ears. “You’re going to be late for your first shoot.”
    “Shut up and get out of here. I’m thinking.” Giggling, Tammy pushed the door open and walked into the bedroom. “Thinking? You mean it takes brains to be a model? I thought I heard you say that one of those supermodels on TV ought to get a real job and stop walking around in her underwear.”
    “If you’re going to quote me, get it right; I said, ‘She should stop prancing around in her knickers there in front of God and everybody.’ And I only said that because she was skinny, and I was jealous.”
    Savannah scanned the list once more, comparing it to the piles on the bed. “It’s not all that easy, you know, being a model. It takes brains, too.”
    Tammy walked over to the bed and picked up a body shaper. She held it up, studied it, looked confused, then laid it back on the bed. “And when did you decide that?” she asked.
    “Yesterday, when Leah Freed started telling me all the crap I’d need to know today.”
    “Why do you have to take all of this stuff?”
    “Because Leah says a professional model carries her model’s kit with her at all times, like a doctor and his black bag. And if anybody asks me for... say... some hairspray or a nail file, or a new pair of body-shaping panty hose, I’d better have them or they’ll get suspicious.”
    “But what do you need body shapers for?” Tammy picked up a long leg girdle and frowned at the spandex panel across the front. “If Leah specializes in plus-sized models, you shouldn’t have to resort to all these torture devices to squash things in. Big doesn’t matter, right?”
    “Wrong.” Savannah laid the list aside, took the girdle from Tammy, and tossed it into the bag. “I got some depressing news yesterday. I’m too hefty to be a bona fide model. Even a plus one.”
    “You? No way!”
    ‘Yep. Get this: The ideal plus model is a size twelve. ”
    “ What’s plus about a twelve? Isn’t the most common size of women in the U.S. a fourteen?”
    “My point exactly. I haven’t been a size twelve since I was twelve. And even if you’re a twelve, you’re still expected to be muscular and trim and superfit. No jiggles or ripples anywhere.”
    “Hence the girdles and pressure-bandage panty hose?”
    “Precisely.”
    Tammy shook her head. “Wow, I’m so disillusioned. And here I thought the plus-model industry was promoting the idea of ‘beauty in all shapes and sizes.’ ”
    “Maybe some agencies do. But Leah Freed’s certainly doesn’t. And unfortunately, she’s the one I’m supposedly working for this afternoon.”
    “What sort of a shoot is it?”
    Savannah tossed four pair of panty hose into the bag: suntan, black, smoke, and nude—followed by three bras: an uplifter, a minimizer, and a longline. “It’s part of that cereal promotion, the stuff that was supposed to cause Cait Connor to lose weight Apparently I’m one of the girls who didn’t eat their cereal, being the robust bigger-than-a-size-twelve that I am.” Adding a couple of swimsuits to the mix, she said, “It’s got something to do with a hot tub. With any luck, I’ll get to sit in a spa and soak all afternoon.”
    “Sounds like fun. Can I go along?”
    “I don’t think models take their personal assistants to shoots... at least, not the models in my category.”
    “Which is...?
    ‘Just starting out. Green behind the ears.”
    “I thought that was wet behind the ears and green around the gills.”
    “Whatever.”
    Savannah laid the big bag aside and began to fill one of three smaller makeup bags with every bottle, tube, and compact of face goop that she had been able to gather. She had raided old purses, coat pockets, miscellaneous drawers, and the stash beneath her bathroom sink, where she threw the drugstore rejects and department store promotion giveaways.
    “I don’t think your heart’s in this gig,” Tammy said as she picked up one of the sample lipsticks and drew a line of Crimson Desire across the back of her hand. “What’s wrong?”
    “I don’t like to go undercover, pretending to be something I’m not.”
    “You do it all the time.”
    “Do not.”
    “Do, too.” She chuckled. ‘You dress up like a hooker all the time to do stings with Dirk.”
    Savannah gave her a dirty look. “I know hookers. Way more than I want to know, having arrested a zillion of them over the years. I don’t know squat about modeling, and it’s just a matter of time until