Diane Vallere - Style and Error 01 - Designer Dirty Laundry

by Diane Vallere

  “If you want to make a call, make it out here. No cell reception in our part of the building.”

  I flipped the phone shut. “I have to talk to Human Resources first, straighten a couple of things out.”

  He pointed to the store, where people still stood outside. “I don’t think they’re letting people back in yet.” He scratched the side of his head and a chunk of blond hair spiked straight out. “Go home. Take a bath, relax, pretend the last twenty-four hours never happened. Try to forget about this morning.”

  As much as I would have liked to do just that, Logan would have been mad if he didn’t get a gourmet meal. Logan has a bit of a temper, and has been known to punish me by, well, getting funky in my shoes when I don’t feed him on time. Logan, of course, is my cat. My second favorite thing besides my cat are my shoes, which says a lot about me and my priority system.

  It didn’t matter the stuffy air in the police station had long since turned my straightened hair to frizz, or the events of the morning had left me looking more vice squad than fashion police. I drove to the grocery store, and endured the silent judgment from the cashier that suggested black lace and torn fishnets weren’t de rigueur in the fifteen-items-or-less lane. I was in need of a magnum of wine, a box of pretzels, an hour-long shower, and a do-over.

  “I’m a very respectable person, you know,” I said to her as I handed over a twenty-dollar bill. She counted out my change but said nothing. I bagged my own groceries while a couple of older customers stared at me and I wondered if my fashion sense was helping or hurting my new life. If nothing else, it was getting me noticed.

  As I carried my bag out of the grocery store, I couldn’t help remember the last time I sat outside the grocery store, the day I first met Patrick.

  It had been the last day of my vacation. I’d spent it in Ribbon, helping my parents pack a lifetime of belongings into recycled cardboard boxes before the movers came to empty the house and transport the boxes to California. I had planned to make the drive back to Manhattan the previous night but nostalgia kicked in, big time, and instead I stayed behind by myself.

  The following morning I stopped off at the grocery store before starting the drive back to Manhattan. After loading the groceries into the trunk I unloaded Logan’s carrier and walked with him to the park bench in front of the store. Side by side we sat, staring at an empty parking lot of a shopping center anchored by Tradava. The parking lot was set off by the marquee of a ninety-nine cent theater, the same theater where I’d gone on my first date. Logan yowled periodically in protest of the blue plastic cage.

  “It’s not often you see a women in tweed and fishnets outside of the market,” said in a proper voice behind me. I turned around and there stood the most nattily dressed man I’d ever seen, and working in fashion, I’d seen my share. Navy blue suit with a chalk stripe through it. Pink shirt, pink ascot, pink pocket square. Pencil-thin mustache, black pomaded hair, parted on the side.

  “I’m sorry, I’m a bit of a mess.” I dragged my index fingers across my under eyes to eliminate any possible mascara smudges.

  “That’s impossible. You cannot be a mess when wearing Chanel. It’s the rule.” He smiled, and the tips of his mustache pointed up with the corners of his mouth. “Patrick,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Samantha,” I replied in like fashion, but it felt incomplete. “Samantha Kidd,” I finished.

  “And who do we have here?” he asked, peering into the cat carrier.

  “Logan.” As if on cue, the little devil started to purr.

  “Tell me, Ms. Kidd, what brings a fashionista like yourself to my corner of the world?”

  “I’m thinking about buying a house here.” I surprised myself with the words. “My parents are selling my house. Their house. The house where I grew up.”

  He studied me.

  “It’s not even a great house. It has wood paneling and shag carpet.”

  “How very 1974.”

  “I never remembered it that way.”

  “What way?”

  “Seventy-four.”

  He tipped the cat carrier back and looked down his ski slope nose into Logan’s cage. A black paw pressed against the inside of the door and Patrick gently stroked it with his index finger.

  “Seventy-four was a good year. The maxi skirt. Wide ties and Qiana shirts.”

  “Platform shoes and bell bottoms,” I added.

  “The Russian peasant look.”

  “And Halston,” I added with a smile.

  Patrick picked up Logan’s carrier and sat next to me on the bench. “What do you do, Ms. Kidd?” he asked while he and Logan played the finger equivalent of patty cake.

  “I’m a buyer. Bentley’s New York. Ladies Designer Shoes.” I pulled a crinkled business card out of my breast pocket and held it out, as if to prove something. He placed it in his own suit pocket without looking at it.

  “Are you serious about buying the house?”

  It had surprised me that I was, but I simply answered yes.

  “Ribbon is not New York, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you trying to find something you lost along the way?”

  I considered his question before answering. It wasn’t that I’d lost something but what I had didn’t feel right. “I’d like to find my own corner of the world, I guess.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded slightly, as if he liked my response. “See that store?” he pointed to the white brick building that anchored the strip mall. “That’s Tradava. I’m their fashion director. As it happens, I’m in need of a trend specialist.”

  I knew the store. It’s where I had gotten the red cotton pantsuit I wore on the first day of eighth grade. It’s where my mom bought the charcoal gray and neon pink outfit I had worn on that first date to the movies. It’s where I picked out my white eyelet prom dress. I didn’t say any of this. Instead, I said the only I could think of.

  “How soon can I start?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Samantha Kidd, I like your style. Call me tomorrow and we’ll work something out.” He stood up and the creases fell effortlessly from his navy blue trousers. “Pleasure meeting you.”

  He crossed the parking lot to the store. I waited until he was all but a moving dot that disappeared into the doors on the side of the building.

  “And so goes either my savior or some nutcase,” I said as much to Logan as to myself. I stood up and carried the cat cage to my car. We started the drive to New York, not knowing we’d be back in the span of a couple of weeks.

  What Patrick had offered me was a fresh start. My life was like fabric in the clearance bin. Sure, some of my yardage had already been used, but there was enough left on the bolt. With a little planning, and if I cut corners, I could still make something really fabulous out of it.

  My new life is about four days old, counting last Friday when I celebrated in the empty house with a large pizza and a bottle of pink champagne. Saturday the boxes arrived, along with the reality that I lived in a seventies split level house with avocado appliances and shag carpeting. Yesterday I dug through the attic to see what kind of treasures Mom and Dad had left behind while a That Girl marathon ran in the background.

  And today I found my boss dead in an elevator.

  A slight pre-autumn breeze wafted through my open car windows and washed over me as I pulled into the driveway. Crabapple trees in the front yard had blossomed and discarded soft papery white flowers now covered the ground. Miniature apples lay scattered around the base of the tree, produce cadavers to be pecked at by birds and squirrels and chipmunks running through the yard.

  Inside the house, I peeled off my Day One outfit, the one I’d so carefully selected when the biggest crisis in my life had been what to wear to work, and kicked it into a corner. After a hot shower meant to rid myself of the day’s bad juju, I pulled on a silk kimono, then headed to the kitchen. I checked the messages on the brown faux-wood answering machine that sat on the counter i
n the kitchen next to a stained Mr. Coffee machine. The only call was from the mortgage lender and it was almost exactly what she’d said on my voicemail. There was nothing for me to tell her until I straightened things out with Human Resources so I deleted the message.

  While Logan swatted a felt mouse across the linoleum-tiled floor, I flipped through the mail, past credit card applications and a catalog for customized stationery addressed to RESIDENT. My mind was racing with thoughts, and now seemed like a good time to sort them all out.

  What if what the waitress said was true? Patrick’s body had been at Tradava. I’d seen it. But if his body had gone missing, what happened was anything but routine. Why would someone murder the fashion director? And how? Patrick had a heart attack. The EMT confirmed it before she wheeled Patrick away. She said it was textbook and I believed her, although it was my first experience with a dead body, murdered or otherwise, and it occurred to me I didn’t know what textbook was.

  And it occurred to me if it wasn’t for my desire to change up my life, I’d still be sitting at my desk in New York, recapping the previous week’s business, fielding calls from my vendors about what sold and what didn’t, planning my next set of appointments to look at new shoes, and working on budgets for upcoming seasons. I’d still be Bentley’s number one employee, working sixty-five hours a week, trading my personal life for an extra percentage of gross margin. If life had seemed difficult then, in all my years at Bentley’s, I’d never found a dead body.

  Finding Patrick’s body complicated just about everything.

  While the shower had taken off the vice squad stench, it provided little in the way of comfort. My plan: Haagen Dazs for dinner, except I needed more than comfort food to get through the night. I needed answers. I called Nick’s number.

  “Nick?” I wasn’t sure why it came out as a question. “It’s Samantha.”

  “Kidd. I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m okay,” I said, breathless for no reason other than the sound of his voice. I wound the curly phone cord around my finger until I came to a point where a kink interrupted the coil. I unwound to my starting point and repeated the pattern, stopping at the kink each time.

  I looked out at the backyard where my dad had taught my older sister Sasha how to mow the lawn with the riding mower. She was twelve at the time; I was eight. I’d watched them drive in ever-shrinking rectangles over the back yard. It looked like fun. I asked him to teach me too. You’re not ready yet. You’re just a kid he had said, laughing at my request. To this day, I over-planned everything, making sure I was ready before I did anything. You’re just a kid. The four most defining words of my life. It was why I’d moved to New York in the first place and become such an overachiever at Bentley’s, all to prove I was an adult.

  “Are you still with me?” he asked, reminding me that phone conversations generally require words.

  “Do you want to meet me for dinner?” I asked abruptly.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  The clock read seven thirty. I was in pajamas, no makeup, wet hair. I could have spent the night with Logan, a carton of ice cream, a vat of wine, and an old movie. Nobody would have been the wiser.

  “Meet me at Briquette Burger in twenty minutes,” I said, throwing caution to the wind.

  Eleven minutes later, the doorbell rang.

  I know it was eleven minutes, because it takes me exactly four minutes to apply makeup, two minutes to run the requisite amount of serum through my hair, and five minutes to blow dry my natural curls into something I can live with. That’s why I was still in my kimono when I answered the door.

  “Hey, Kidd,” Nick called through the door. “Can I come in or are you going to let me stand out here looking like a Peeping Tom?”

  “Not a bad idea.” I secured the sash on my kimono with a square knot and opened the front door. I looked at him suspiciously. My brain was already filled with questions, so you’d think it was full, but apparently there was room for things like How did you know where I live? and Since when does Meet me at the restaurant mean Show up at my house?

  “How do you know where I live?” I asked, trying to make my voice sound casual.

  “You told me all about this house last May. Remember, we went to dinner at that little French restaurant off of 57th Street? As long as I’ve known you, I always knew you were good at your job. But that night was the first night I think I ever saw you come alive.”

  I looked down, a slow blush warming my face. “You wrote the address down on the back of your business card and I kept it. I wasn’t all that surprised when I heard you bought the place.” He stopped talking for a couple of seconds, and when he started again, his voice was softer. “I’ll never forget the way you looked that night.”

  “It was the pie,” I said quickly, and turned to the refrigerator to get the magnum of wine. Truth? I never expected Nick to use my address, and here he was standing in the middle of my kitchen.

  I splashed a bit of wine into two juice glasses left behind in the cabinet. “Did you talk to a detective this morning?” I asked.

  “Briefly. He wanted to know what I saw. If you think about it, neither one of us saw much of anything.”

  “I saw Patrick. Dead. I saw him. You saw him too. Don’t pretend you didn’t, Nick.”

  “Kidd, Patrick’s corpse never made it to the morgue. And since we’re the only two people who claim to have seen his body, the cops think we’re the likeliest two people to be involved in whatever it is we’re saying happened. And since we don’t know what happened, the whole thing is a little unclear.”

  I put the wine back into the refrigerator and shut the door. “So then, what’s the problem? If nothing happened, why do I feel like a criminal? And if something happened, where is Patrick’s body?”

  “I mentioned you were there, but you had passed out. I thought they might not even call you down since they might have decided your statement would be useless.”

  “Useless?” That comment, though sort of accurate, was the icing on the cake that had already fallen. I swirled the wine around in my juice glass and set it back down on top of an existing countertop stain. Useless. A new word to layer into the soundtrack playing inside my head.

  “Kidd, you’ve had a hell of a transition in the past couple of weeks.” He reached a hand out to the satin collar of my kimono and loosely ran his fingers inside by my collarbone. “I can take your mind off things, if you’re willing to hear my suggestion …” As his voice trailed off his touch ignited my skin, like an unexpected spray of grease from a pan of frying breakfast meats.

  “Bacon,” I said, then felt my face grow hot. His hand fell to his side and I stepped away, trying to think straight. I picked up the glass of wine on the counter and took a gulp.

  “Bacon?”

  “Comfort food. Let me change. You’re driving.” I went upstairs to put on clothes. Regardless of what I felt at the moment, this was one night where I didn’t want to be alone. At least not yet.

  Half an hour later, we sat in a booth at Briquette Burger. It was a small restaurant about a mile from my house. It had been renovated since I was last there, but the yellow and red sign on top of the building was as I remembered it. Inside, the first thing I noticed was a refrigerated case of freshly baked pies. I looked away before I did anything rash. We took an available booth and I ordered a cup of coffee. Nick ordered the Briquette Burger Sampler. Neither one of us mentioned bacon.

  “I keep thinking I know something about this morning. That we know something. But I can’t figure out what it is.”

  “Leave it alone, Kidd. The cops will figure it out.”

  “But we were there. We saw Patrick before anybody. And the EMT came from nowhere, and she had a key to take the elevator down to the basement. She seemed so, so normal I didn’t notice anything. Did you?”

  “I noticed you passed out. I noticed you never thanked me for carrying you to the sofa. And I noticed a man was dead.”

  “I noticed
he was dead too, but nobody believes us because his body is missing. That doesn’t get to you?”

  “It’s not your business. It’s not my business.”

  The waiter interrupted our conversation with hot plates of food. We finished most of the sampler platter, leaving only the fried eggplant. Nick paid before I could reach for my wallet, and we walked to his truck in a shared silence. He opened the door for me and I stepped up onto the sideboard, then stopped, and hopped back down to the loose gravel of the parking lot. I stood to my full five foot seven inches and looked up into his soft brown eyes.

  “I could have walked, you know. To the sofa. After I passed out. I don’t faint. I’m not a fainter. I would have gotten up in a second and walked to the sofa. You didn’t have to carry me.”

  “You’re not very good at accepting help, are you?” He stepped backward and walked to the driver’s side of the truck. When we reached my house, he walked me to the front door, even though I said I could make it. I was crashing fast, despite all of the coffee. All I wanted was to collapse in my bed, to wake up, to realize it had all been a dream.

  Nick fidgeted with the remote key to his truck while I unlocked the front door. “Kidd, I think you should forget about going back to Tradava.”

  “I can’t exactly up and quit after one day.”

  “What’s going down there isn’t your business and you’d be smart to stay out of it.”

  “You know something, don’t you?” I said, stepping toward him.

  “I know what’s happening there is none of your business.”

  “Jobs don’t grow on trees, Nick. If you don’t recall, I left behind a very nice job in New York with this as the anchor to my future. The man who hired me is gone. He wanted me to work on his team and that’s what I’m going to do.” Across the street, a light went on behind closed curtains. “Thanks for dinner. See you around.” I wrestled briefly with the locks, then went inside and slammed the door shut behind me. It was a solid twenty minutes later when I realized Nick hadn’t told me to quit my job. He’d told me to stay out of what was going down at Tradava.