Pearls Gone Wild

by Diane Vallere

  “Dude.”

  “Okay, fine. I feel like Loncar and I have an agreement.”

  “You do. You agree to stay out of his investigations and he doesn’t arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

  “That was last year. I think we had a breakthrough around my birthday.”

  We were silent for a moment. “I don’t envy her,” Eddie said. “The holidays are rough for any retailer. Even in quote-unquote normal cities the crime rate rises. At least once a year there’s a shooter dressed in a Santa costume on the news. People are shopping under pressure, employees are burned out, and stores are fighting for every sale we can get. It’s not pretty.”

  It had started as a subtle shift, one that some stores never saw coming. Buyers, like I’d been when I worked in New York, had been the ones to determine what a store would carry. In a way, we were style curators, editing a designer’s collection down from a sea of samples into a cohesive assortment that we felt our customers would want. But designers soon learned that if they embraced the internet, they could offer their entire collection to the world and let customers—not store buyers—make the decisions of what would be produced. Ready-to-wear, a market that could shift quickly, found it more profitable to go direct to consumer and cut out the retailers. The accessories market had it harder because of materials and factory production schedules.

  The changing face of retail meant good things for customers but not so stable for stores. In the simplest terms of supply and demand, the scales had been tipped in the wrong direction. Profit, the money between what a store charged for an item minus the various costs of doing business, had been whittled down to pennies. The easiest way to make a profit was to lower the cost of an item.

  Ribbon, Pennsylvania was the first city to have outlet malls. But the one where Cat worked, the Designer Outlet Mall, had been different. It wasn’t the kind that had been around since the fifties, offering girdles and surplus glassware and dungarees. It was the kind that promoted in-season trends and designer merchandise with the understanding that you’d pay less than if you shopped at a store like Tradava.

  But places like Tradava weren’t exactly pulling in hordes of customers anymore. A tough economy had caused most customers to tighten their belts—or stop buying belts to begin with. Subsequently, the retail stores slashed prices, and the outlet malls were no longer unique. Finding a way to gain a portion of a customer’s wallet had gotten tougher than ever. It was part of my new challenge in the advertising department. How to promote the same trends that everybody else promoted while creating customer loyalty? Difficult, but not impossible.

  “Do you think the murder is connected to the outlets?” Eddie asked.

  “It’s hard not to see the connection. Eddie, I’m worried. Cat’s pregnant and hormonal and her business is at risk and now this. Logan and I are staying with her for a few days. I don’t think she should be alone right now.”

  7

  SATURDAY MORNING

  I dressed in a cream cable knit turtleneck sweater, cream corduroy trousers with pale pink suede knee patches, and pink lizard boots. I blow-dried my hair into a soft bob and filled an empty suitcase with enough clothes to get me into the new year. The doorbell rang as I was sitting on top of the suitcase to get it to zip. I ran downstairs and answered the door. A man in a FedEx uniform stood on my porch.

  “Samantha Kidd?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Sign here.” He shoved a black device at me and I signed the screen with a thin black plastic wand. The signature wasn’t anywhere close to my own. He took the equipment and handed me a box. “Have a nice day.” He turned and left.

  I stared at the package. It was from the Apple store. I held it up to my head. It wasn’t ticking. (It’s good to be cautious.) Logan rubbed his back against my ivory pant legs, leaving a transfer of black fur on my shins. He looked up at me and meowed.

  “We’ll leave in a second.” I pushed the door shut behind me and tore open the box.

  Whatever I expected, a new iPhone wasn’t it. I powered it on. There was one message from the only number programmed in: The Charming and Handsome Nick Taylor.

  I bit back a smile. I wasn’t a hundred percent on board with the Amanda Ries Roommate situation, but Nick got points for making me laugh. I cued up the message.

  “Hey, Kidd, It’s Nick.” There was a slight pause. “Call me when you get a chance, okay? I don’t like how things ended last night.”

  I pressed redial. One ring, two rings, three rings, four rings…

  It was a little after seven. Six hour time difference meant it was a little after one in Italy. The phone rang. And rang. And rang. As I was about to hang up, he answered.

  “Nick? It’s Samantha. I was hoping to catch you alone.” I paused, cringing at the words spilling out of my mouth. “Not that I think you’re not alone. Or are. I mean, there are a lot of Italians in Italy, so you’re probably not alone.”

  “Kidd, slow down.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Hi.”

  “Hi. You got the phone.”

  “I got the phone.”

  “Before I left you mentioned something about wanting to upgrade. Consider it an early Christmas present. Your personal private, direct line to me. Whenever you want to talk. No matter what’s going on, if you call, I’ll answer.”

  “Don’t answer if you’re in the bathroom.” He laughed. I turned and walked toward the sofa. “‘The Charming and Handsome Nick Taylor?’”

  “I may have been overselling.”

  “No, I think it fits.” I sat down. “How’d you program me?”

  “If only I could program you.”

  “You know what I mean. Is my number in your phone?”

  “Yes. ‘That Crazy Broad.’”

  “You did not.”

  “You’ll just have to wait until we’re in the same city to find out, won’t you?” He was quiet for a second. “Kidd, I’m sorry about last night. Are you okay with this?” he asked. “With Amanda staying here?”

  Last night. Thirteen hours ago I’d put Nick in the same category as Cat’s husband: men are rats. I thought about last night, about finding George’s dead body at her store. Hours before he’d been found dead they’d fought, first at home and then at the party. Their differences had been over something far greater than letting a friend crash on his sofa. In terms of things to be angry about, this one was pretty small.

  “I kind of have to be, don’t I?”

  “It would make things a lot easier if you were.”

  “Okay,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “What about your dad? Do you need me to check in on him?”

  “If you saw how he keeps the place when I’m not there, you might be scared away for good. Between you and me, he might have met a lady friend at the grocery store. Better give them their space.”

  “If that’s the case, then we’ll have a whole new set of problems when you get back.”

  “We’ll figure it out. I know we both thought I’d be home by now. I really am sorry about the timing.”

  “It’s okay, I understand. You’re lucky the factories weren’t closed.”

  “I had to call in a couple of favors. If I don’t meet with them now, I’ll lose a month of production.” He paused. “So, we’re good?”

  “We are, but there’s somebody who isn’t.” I chewed my lower lip for a second. Telling Nick about things of this nature hadn’t been easy in the past, but I knew that not telling Nick would be worse. “You remember Cat Lestes, right? Her husband, George, died last night.”

  “Isn’t she about to have a baby? That’s beyond tragic. Was it stress? Heart attack?”

  “No, Nick, it was murder.” I left out the details about their fight and George telling Cat he was leaving her. “We found his body in her store.”

  Nick was silent. There was an ocean between us, but that didn’t matter. I half expected a lecture and half expected him to hang up.

  “Be careful, Kidd. I
mean that. I know Cat’s your friend and I know your friends are like your family. And I know you’re going to be there to help her through this. Just be careful, okay? Promise me that?”

  “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  After our call, I packed Logan up in the car and returned to Cat’s house. A short woman in a black wool coat and red scarf with snowflakes printed on it was leaving as I arrived. Cat was inside on the sofa, wrapped in a pink fleece blanket. Logan crawled out of his carrier, jumped up next to her, and curled up in the blanket folds.

  “Who was that woman?” I asked.

  “One of my neighbors. She saw the news and came by to drop off some food.”

  A shiny white plate filled with square cut brownies sat on the glass coffee table in front of her. Small ceramic dessert plates sat next to the tray. “She brought you brownies?”

  “She brought me a casserole. The fourth one today.”

  “You’ve had four visitors already? It’s eight o’clock in the morning.”

  “I’ve been up since five. I needed junk food so I made brownies after you left. Help yourself.” I reached for a dessert plate and stacked two brownies on it. “The doctor wants me to eat more vegetables, so there’s spinach and cooked carrots in them.”

  I put one of the brownies back. “How are you feeling?” I asked. “Any better? Any differently?”

  “Better, maybe. I don’t think I can cry anymore. Differently, I don’t know. My parents are on their way from Florida, and George’s family called this morning to find out when the memorial service will be. The phones won’t stop ringing so I turned them off. I’ve already gotten five emails from Fidelity about what to do with George’s 401K. It’s like an automated machine. ‘loved one dies—initiate sequence five.’” She wrapped the blanket around her a little tighter and Logan meowed. “I feel like a fraud. He left me, Sam. He walked away from me and our marriage. Yesterday I hated him for what he did, and today everybody’s suffocating me with what a great guy he was and how sorry they are that I lost the love of my life. I feel like I’m lying to everybody by not telling them that our marriage was over.”

  “Cat, I need to ask you something.” She looked up at me. “What did George say to you at the party that made you throw your drink at him?”

  “He told me to go home. He said considering the circumstances, I was making a fool of myself. And then he threatened me. He said if I expected anything from him in the future, I needed to stay out of his business. I know throwing the drink was childish. I didn’t even think about it. I was so angry with him I wanted to spit in his face!” Her eyes grew wide and she clamped her hand over her mouth. Logan let out a long, low growl, as if he didn’t like the direction the conversation had taken.

  I picked Logan up and cradled him against my arm. I stroked the fur on his belly, which was still rather large thanks to the overeating situation. He closed his eyes halfway and purred.

  “You had every right to be mad at him, and throwing a drink was a lot nicer than spitting in his face.” Logan opened his eyes and meowed again. “I know what happened. You know what happened. But the rest of the world doesn’t have to know. People want to support you right now so let them. You need to let me help you. Except for some last minute Christmas shopping, my schedule is clear.”

  Unlike Eddie, who’d been fighting a losing battle of merchandising standards vs. customer shopping destruction, Retrofit for Tradava had put the spring/summer issue to bed two weeks ago and my last minute request for time off the week prior to Christmas had been approved by the director of marketing.

  Merry Christmas to me.

  “I can’t expect you to spend your first real vacation helping me at my store. Not the week before Christmas.” She ran her hand over Logan’s head. “Besides, I already made arrangements for help.”

  “You hired someone to help with the funeral planning?”

  “No. I called my brother.”

  8

  SATURDAY MORNING

  Cat’s brother Dante had made more of an impact on me than I would have expected. Between the two of us, Cat was the normal one. My friendship with her had grown from when we’d first met during a design competition, to our joint participation in a local publicity stunt, to my becoming a regular customer at her designer boutique. I’d had a brief flirtation with Dante during my breakup with Nick, though Cat had appeared not to care either way that the flirtation had been short-lived.

  It didn’t seem appropriate to ask the questions that sprung to mind: when is he coming? Where is he staying? Does my hair look okay? Especially since I was in a relationship with The Charming and Handsome Nick Taylor and had only recently shown great maturity and acceptance about the fact that he was sharing his apartment with Amanda.

  I temporarily forgot about the vegetables in the brownie and ate it. It was surprisingly good. I reached for the plate and picked up another. There was a shave-and-a-haircut rap on the door. A couple of seconds later, a familiar voice spoke. “C’mon, Sis, I don’t have all day.”

  Cat left the blanket on the sofa and answered the door. “It’s about time you got here,” she said.

  Dante entered. He wore his trademark black leather motorcycle jacket over a faded zip front hoodie and T-shirt. His black hair was pushed away from his face, and his normally long sideburns had recently been trimmed. He carried a casserole dish covered in clear plastic wrap in one hand and a large black canvas bag slung over the other shoulder. Cat shut the door behind him. He dropped the bag on the floor.

  Dante was a freelance photographer who occasionally picked up hours working for a private investigator. His background was slightly blurry: never been married, worked odd jobs, lived in Philadelphia. He was a flirt, a willing participant in my sometimes ill-conceived investigations, and a really good kisser. When Nick and I talked about Dante, it was mostly about the private investigator stuff. Otherwise we veered into the same territory as when we talked about Amanda.

  Dante showed no surprise at seeing me. “Hold this.” He shoved the casserole at me. When I took it, he turned to Cat and wrapped her in a giant, brotherly hug. “You okay?” He asked. Her head nodded against his shoulder.

  When their hug ended, Cat took the casserole from me and went to the kitchen.

  “So, Sammy the Kidd. How’s your boyfriend?”

  “He’s good. We’re good. Everything’s good.”

  “Good.”

  “What about you? Everything good?” I asked. My vocabulary was going to require a good-ectomy if this kept up.

  “Truth? I’ve been a little lonely.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  He shrugged. “Believe what you want.”

  Dante was baiting me. He’d crashed my life about two years ago and had been in and out ever since. I’m not going to lie. There was some serious chemistry.

  But.

  Yes, I was attracted to Dante. He was equal parts Marlon Brando and Adrian Zmed. (Don’t even pretend you haven’t seen Grease 2. You know what I’m talking about.) He was the stereotypical bad boy dressed in a black leather motorcycle jacket and tattoos. Except as I got to know him, I realized he was anything but stereotypical.

  Dante kept me on my toes during the time we were together, but showed me that we could connect on a deeper level too. We shared a bed but didn’t sleep together. He told me about his son. I told him about my fears. It was an exciting week that opened up my world a little more than when life was about my career as a former shoe buyer and my ongoing flirtation with Nick. It gave me a taste of what life with Dante would be like.

  Maybe that’s why I ended things. I wasn’t a hundred percent confident that anybody could have a life with Dante. He was a loner.

  Dante could throw his belongings into a backpack and ride his motorcycle into the sunset. That wasn’t the life for me, but the short time I’d spent close to his flame had made me view my own life differently. I’d confronted the issues that had kept me from finding steady employment. I took the rose-co
lored glasses off and examined my life and saw what it was that I wanted.

  Logan walked the length of the sofa and then jumped onto the floor and sniffed the bag that Dante had dropped. Dante scooped Logan up and scratched his ears. Within seconds, Logan purred like a lawnmower engine.

  “I missed your cat,” Dante said.

  “Sounds like he missed you too.”

  He carried Logan to a large club chair and sat down. “Okay, sis, what’s the plan?” he called out.

  Cat came back from the kitchen and sat down. “I don’t have a plan. My whole life is falling apart and I’m trying to hold it together.”

  Dante looked at me. “I almost hate to ask this question, but do you have a plan?”

  “I’m more of a first-things-first strategist.”

  “Okay, so what’s the first thing we need to tackle?”

  Cat replied. “Your priority is the store. Detective Madden called and said they released the crime scene.” Cat’s complexion turned a shade of green. “I’ll be right back.” She jumped up from the sofa and ran down the hall to the bathroom. Even though she slammed the door, it wasn’t hard to guess what she was doing. (I only hoped it had to do with the pregnancy or the thought of her store as crime scene and not the vegetable-laced brownies.)

  I looked at Dante. “How much do you know?” I asked him.

  “Not much. Talk fast.”

  “George told her he was leaving her yesterday morning. She didn’t take it well. We went to his company holiday party last night. They got into a fight in front of a lot of people and then we left.”

  “And his body was found in her store later that night.”

  “Yes. When we got there, we thought we were alone, but we weren’t. Somebody dressed in all black was there to rob the store.”

  “Burgle.”

  “What?”

  “Robbers rob people. Burglars rob stores. The store was closed, so it was a burglar, not a robber.”

  “Whatever. I don’t know if it was a man or a woman but I keep thinking it was a man. He smashed the jewelry case with a tire iron.”