Mystery #29: Stacey and the Fashion Victim
Just a lil note based on the cover: Wow, it’s wild that they got Randy Johnson to photograph Farrah Fawcett for Bellair’s! Also love how the back cover calls Bellair’s “Stoneybrook’s classy department store,” which implies there’s a less-classy department store in town and potentially a department store rivalry. Now that’s a Super Special I wanna read.
Anyway, you might have seen “Fashion Victim” in the title and assumed that Stacey would be solving some sort of mystery relating to Kristy or Mallory. Nope. Stacey is modeling in Bellair’s Fashion Week (because of course) and Claudia is interning with the art director, and suddenly it seems like someone is out to get the models. Harmony Skye, the favorite darling of Mrs. Maslin, who’s running the show, gets sick after drinking some tea from the refreshment table and her mother claims she’s been poisoned. Who are the suspects? Oh, just any other model who’s jealous and wants better assignments, the ex of a model who’s in competition with Harmony and trying to win his ex back, and Emily, Mrs. Maslin’s daughter, who resents being treated like a nuisance (but she likes Harmony, so… hmm). Have no fear, though: the BSC is on the case!
Side note: the late 1990s were clearly when anti-smoking rhetoric ramped up, because in the past few books there’s been way more mention of cigarettes than before. In Mind Your Business, Kristy! we are clued in to the fact that Charlie’s new girlfriend is “bad” because she smokes; in this one, Stacey is disgusted by the smoking habits of the models she’s working with. AND on a baby-sitting job Abby catches Buddy Barrett and Lindsey DeWitt about to smoke a cigarette they found in Franklin DeWitt’s briefcase and she and Jessi give the Barrett-DeWitt clan a five-hour anti-smoking lecture. Listen, I’m as anti-smoking as the next person, it’s just funny how all of this suddenly became a point in every book. The kids (and Kristy) then plan the Great Stoneybrook Smokeout, in which they make pledges to never smoke and get local smokers to quit for the day. (Let’s be honest, though, Karen Brewer is going to be one of those people who smokes in college, but only when she drinks.)
The model sabotage is ramping up: someone’s shredding clothes, leaving creepy notes (sometimes in lipstick on the bathroom mirror), and then Stacey and Harmony almost fall off the roof because someone’s unscrewed the railing. Stacey’s starting to get legit scared but also thinks she knows who might be the culprit. The BSC is throwing out random suspects — the son of the Bellair’s owner! the photographer! Cokie Mason’s slimy agent named, seriously, Dylan Trueheart — but Stacey realizes it’s one of her own fellow models, Harmony.
So why would the star model — who’s even named the Princess of Bellair’s for Fashion Week — do all this shit? Because she doesn’t want to be a model, but her pushy stage mom won’t let her quit, so she’s trying to make it seem like modeling is dangerous. Once Stacey figures it out (because she’s a beautiful genius) she, Claudia, Mallory, and Mary Anne catch Harmony in the act. They have a heart-to-heart with her and promise not to out her as long as she stops doing creepy shit. She agrees, and she tells Mrs. Maslin to let someone else be Princess, and then she tells her mom that she’s quitting modeling… much to her mom’s displeasure. I wouldn’t be surprised if Harmony’s mom starts poisoning people and throwing them off roofs now. Let’s see how much Mallory adores a mystery when she’s drawing a chalk outline around bodies splattered on the concrete. Too dark? Sorry.
