White Collar - as an unofficial novel - part 2

The dress

"Looks like your boy, Dmitri, is heading into a hotel on Madison," Jones told Peter over the phone.

"You think he's staying there?" Peter asked.

"He ain't bringing any luggage with him." It did not say much. Just that he was not checking in. But Peter had a hunch.

"Lock it down. Put somebody on every exit. I'm on my way."

Two hours later Peter and Jones stormed into the hotel room where a fight had been reported. No one was there for them to point their guns at. Dmitri lay on the floor dead with a red cloth tucked in his mouth. Whoever killed him they could not have missed him by much. Peter holstered his gun and pulled out his phone.

"Lauren, get the team over here. Dmitri is dead. Make sure Neal knows he'll be facing a dead guy again."

"Sex games gone wrong?" Lauren wondered as she looked closer at the body.

Neal walked back and forth by the door, uncomfortable. But at least he had come and did his best to stay, Peter noted.

"No. Could just be a message," Neal replied. "Maybe he was trying to shut him up."

"We don't even know if Ghovat was here" Lauren objected.

"No, our ghost was here. The knife wound matches the blade width and angle of penetration on our foreign national killed by Ghovat." Peter pointed at the body. "It's him."

"Do we know how Ghovat got out of the building?" Lauren asked.

Jones came into the room.

"I found a service elevator down the hall," he said. "Wasn't on the reconstruction blueprints."

"Which is exactly why he picked this place," Neal concluded.

"Yeah, this guy is good," Peter agreed and saw Neal's focus shift.

The crime scene investigators had removed the cloth from the body's mouth and unwrapped it on a couch draped in plastic. This was something within Neal's comfort zone.

"Why a dress?" he asked as he approached. A dress? Peter rose and focused on the red velvet too. Yes, it was a dress alright.

"I don't know." Peter studied the dress. "It's not off the rack. There's no tag, which means it's couture." Neal turned his head and stared at him. "We deal with a lot of knockoffs. Ask me what I know about a Prada bag sometime."

"Oh, look at this," Neal called his attention. He had his fingers along a seam. "There's a slit here."

"It's about the size of an electronic security strip," Peter noted and explained to Neal: "A lot of the designers are building them into the clothes."

"So, it's a miniature flash drive?"

"In theory, you could piggyback up to four gigs on one."

"That's enough space to smuggle all kinds of information worth killing for." This was not about knockoffs. It was probably not about clothes at all.

"Lauren, get me a photo book of all the designers who had a show this year. Let's find out who made this dress." She nodded. Peter's focused returned to the body again.

Neal returned to the background again. Peter knew he did not feel comfortable around dead bodies and had told him it was okay. It was bad enough to see a killed man. This man he had talked to twice, shook his hand, looked in the eye.

Someone had killed for a dress and left a message by tucking it down Dmitri's throat. Stolen a possible security strip. This someone had not bothered to take any of the designer's items in the room. Neal opened a jewelry case. The necklace inside was probably made with a particular dress in mind. Dmitri obviously had something to do with fashion after all. Or was it just for show?