Diane Vallere - Style and Error 01 - Designer Dirty Laundry

by Diane Vallere

  “Maybe she was.”

  “No, she was talking to the person in the store, weren’t you, Florence?”

  “I’m a little mixed up between the phone call and the attack. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember much about the phone call.”

  “I told you who I was and your voice changed. You said ‘Get away from me’ then you said you would call the cops if I didn’t leave.” I turned to Freckles. “I thought she was talking to me.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because I was on the phone with her!”

  “Ms. Ingram, can you corroborate that?”

  She held out the business card she had shown me. “The person who attacked me left this behind.” Freckles took the card and rubbed his thumb over the edge of it.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t catch your name,” he said to me.

  “Samantha Kidd. Yes, that Samantha Kidd. Only, I didn’t drop that card and I didn’t attack Florence. I came to the store when I realized what happened and I waited until you arrived to make sure she was okay. Would I do that if I had attacked her?”

  “Ms. Kidd, what’s your contact info?”

  I rattled off my phone numbers, home and cell. Considering I’d stopped carrying my cell phone to avoid contact with the mortgage company, I figured there was no harm. I suspected I’d be hearing from Detective Loncar shortly but didn’t suggest that to them. They were getting paid to make those kind of deductions, and at the moment I was unemployed. I had a stronger sense of people needing to work for their paychecks these days and didn’t feel like cutting them any slack. They sure weren’t cutting me any.

  I took surface streets home, my mind abuzz while I drove. For now, the cops were treating the attack on Florence as a burglary. But it was her card, the one Patrick’s Rolodex had been open to, that had led me to her store, and it was my name handwritten on a Tradava business card left behind at the scene of the crime. There was a connection, I could feel it. Now I had to find out what it was. Because the cops would be looking for a connection too, and even I had to admit I was in the middle of something. If the cops were looking to connect the dots between the murder, the attack, and me, there were dots aplenty.

  When I got home I pushed the sofa in place in front of the door and wedged two wooden dining room chairs between the sofa and the hall closet. Tracks from the feet of the sofa were starting to tear at the shag carpeting, but I didn’t care. I wanted to feel safe. I shut down the computer, folded up the calendar pages, and put anything else related to Patrick in the junk drawer, then poured a generous glass of wine.

  In my former job, the one I’d left behind, I’d demonstrated I was a problem solver. It was on every review I received. My problems these days were as big as they came and it was time to see if the executives at Bentley’s really had seen something of that skill set in me.

  Logan rubbed against my ankles and I scooped him up, held him close, and nuzzled my face into his shiny black fur. He licked at my fingers. The warmth of his body vibrated against me. I carried him to the bedroom and dumped him onto the comforter. I tore my clothes off and dove between the sheets. So far, my move to Ribbon had been a disaster, but tomorrow was another day. Logan crawled on top of my chest and extended his paws so they touched my chin.

  “The only person who can take care of me is me,” I said to the furry black generator purring on my chest. “Starting tomorrow, I’ll show the world what a risk taker I really am.” I closed my eyes and failed miserably at getting sleep until the rising sun told me to stop trying.

  Eddie started calling at eleven. I didn’t tell him about the fabric store. I told him I was fine. I told him I was laying low. I told him I would not get into trouble. I told him all of this while sitting in my car in the parking lot of the Ribbon Designer Outlets. And after I hung up, I turned off the phone and stashed it in my glove box.

  Patrick had said Ribbon was not New York and on some level that’s why I liked it. Ribbon was neither a booming metropolis nor a small town but resided somewhere in the middle. Its population had been on the decline since sometime in the thirties, but it had its own Pagoda on a hill overlooking the city. It was home of the first outlet mall in the country but had the fifth highest crime rate of cities its size. You had to search far and wide to find good Mexican food, but it had the best pretzels money could buy.

  Ribbon is not known to many people who aren’t from the Tri-state area, but those who do know it think fondly of it for two reasons: the pretzels and the outlet malls. Pretzels are a staple, ready to snack on at basketball games, picnics, and quilting bees. Okay, I haven’t actually been to a quilting bee, but if I were to attend one, being raised in the eastern Pennsylvania region, I’d be pretty upset if they didn’t offer me some pretzels. We proudly call ourselves the pretzel capital of the world, offering an unparalleled assortment of the salty snack.

  As proud as we are of our pretzels, we are even prouder of our outlet malls.

  The off-price outlet mall can be traced to Ribbon. The first of their kind in the country, discount shopping venues on Moss Street and Penn Avenue offer everything from jeans to home furnishings to Japanese fighting fish. You could pay a couple hundred dollars to get a discount Ralph Lauren ensemble that originally cost closer to a thousand, or you could pay ten bucks for a velvet portrait of Elvis. I wanted neither a velvet Elvis nor a Japanese fighting fish. Today, I wanted information, but I had no idea what it would cost. I consulted the mall directory and located Catnip in the grand maze of retailers. Instead of heading there directly I ducked into a few shops along the way and charged up a respectable amount of merchandise so as to look like a non-threatening customer. Three return policies (confirmed) and one phone call to the credit card company verifying I wasn’t shopping with a stolen Visa, I reached my destination.

  Catnip had softer lighting and far fewer customers than the other stores in the mall which indicated two things: exclusive merchandise and higher prices. Designer clothing, even severely discounted and bought off-season, cost more than a lot of people were willing to pay. Red stood by a fixture, adjusting a display of leather skirts so the hangers were each an inch apart. She looked over her shoulder and said hello seconds after I entered the store, then moved to a table of cashmere twinsets and refolded the lavender stack.

  Her striking red hair swung easily around her face in a blunt cut bob. She was either less than one percent of the population, or had a great colorist; I couldn’t tell which. Tall and lean, with a body that was less curves and more angles, she approached me with confidence. She didn’t acknowledge we’d met before. With an armload of packages, I looked like the perfect customer, and on a slow day, she wouldn’t want to risk offending me. She offered to hold my packages behind the counter and I took her up on the offer, because it would be a lot easier to focus if I weren’t bogged down with bags of merchandise I already knew I couldn’t afford.

  I headed for the designer racks, trying to hatch a plan to chat her up, but she beat me to it.

  “You look like you’re losing your steam,” she said.

  “I think my last cup of coffee has officially worn off. All that’s left is a desire to accessorize,” I said casually, flipping through a rack of satin blazers marked 75 percent off.

  She laughed. “A desire to accessorize can provide a lot of fuel, I know that first hand.”

  She was good at making small talk, which must have helped her store move its higher-priced product. That might help me get her talking about other things, like why she was at Tradava the morning I’d found Patrick’s body, and what her connection was to the competition. I waited for her to acknowledge she knew who I was. She didn’t.

  She motioned to the racks that stood toward the front of the store. They were peppered with signs identifying their creators: Donna Karan, Gucci, Escada, Nina Ricci. Other, smaller fixtures surrounded them, a mixture of merchandise from lesser known designer collections.

  “Your assortment is fantastic,” I commented. �
��I’m not familiar with a few of your collections. Is this one new?” I asked, pulling an olive green satin army jacket from a fixture signed Clestes. It was one of the names in the design competition.

  She took the hanger and held the jacket in front of her. “One of a kind-handmade couture.” She brushed her hand against the fabric twice, smoothing out invisible creases.

  “Clestes,” I said slowly. “Is it a man? Woman? “

  “Both. It’s a male-female team. Mostly unknown. He designs the textiles, she designs the patterns. I don’t think their timing was very good, but I do love the clothes. Would you like to try it?”

  “No,” I said a little too quickly. “Olive green isn’t my color,” I added.

  “Perhaps this is more your style?” She held up a pinstriped suit from a neighboring rack.

  “That’s fabulous!” I exclaimed. I snatched the hanger from her and ran a finger down the black satin piping that set off the lapel. It was a menswear-inspired jacket, but the subtle feminine touches made it sexier than a sheer black lace dress. There was no label inside, only a couple of threads to indicate that one had been removed. “Who designed it?”

  “I don’t know. This came from a lot of designer apparel I bought, sight unseen. The price for the lot was worth the gamble. Now, what size should I pull for the pants?” She asked.

  Red stayed by my side as I shopped. Every time I got close to bringing the conversation toward Patrick she redirected my attention back to shopping. I finally admitted I was too tired to try anything on, and she took that as a cue to direct me to the register. As we continued to talk, I wished I’d met her under different circumstances, where I could invite her to lunch and we could talk about fashion instead of murder.

  “You know a lot about the industry,” I commented, mentally weighing my word choices, looking for a way to bring Tradava into the picture.

  “I was thinking the same thing about you. Where do you work?” she asked.

  “I’m the trend specialist at Tradava,” I answered in an oh-what-the-hell moment. “Remember, I was there when you came looking for Patrick, the morning he—” I stopped talking when I saw the color drain from her face.

  She turned around, put my selections on a small fixture, and punched a code into the register. As she started scanning the tickets I knew she was violating Rule #1 of customer service by keeping her back to me. If her behavior up to now had been any indication, it seemed something I’d said had shaken her up.

  “What do you think about Patrick’s murder?” I asked point blank.

  She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin slightly. With the back of her hand, she pushed her hair off her forehead and looked toward the stockroom doors then looked me dead in the eyes.

  “You want to know what I think? I can’t say I’m surprised. Sooner or later, if you make that many enemies, the odds turn in favor of something like this happening.”

  Chapter 17

  The brakes slammed on my shopping trip. If it hadn’t been a metaphor, the store would have smelled like burning rubber.

  “How well did you know Patrick?” I asked.

  “Well enough to know he probably had it coming.”

  Our conversation was interrupted by a tall muscular man with tattooed forearms and sideburns who called out to her from the stockroom. “That detective you called is on line two.”

  “Excuse me,” she said to me and walked away.

  She’d called Detective Loncar? When? And why? Maybe she had recognized me from the morning at Tradava. Maybe she’d been chatting me up the way I thought I thought I was doing with her. But no matter what, if Loncar was coming to her store, I didn’t want to be there when he arrived. He would have learned about my involvement in the attack at Pins & Needles by now, and might not understand my reluctance to return his calls. I wasn’t ready for that face to face conversation but despite five or six shopping bags of merchandise, I hadn’t yet gotten what I came for.

  She returned quickly. “I’m sorry about what I said. I’ve never been Patrick’s biggest fan.” She twisted her fingers in the long strand of pearls around her neck. It was the first nervous habit I’d noticed, and it had started at the mention of the police. “Can I get you anything while you continue to shop?”

  Information, I thought. I need information more than I need anything at this entire mall. My interest in fashion was definitely not insignificant at the moment and I had to figure out a way to keep her talking.

  “You were at Tradava the morning he died,” I said, pushing the conversation in the direction I wanted it to go.

  “Fashion’s a big industry but a small world.”

  “And how did Patrick affect your world?”

  “I’d rather not talk about Patrick,” she said. By now the necklace had become a knot. We stood facing each other, separated by a table of clearance cashmere sweaters and the kind of static you’d get by rubbing the sweaters against a balloon.

  “Look. I know he has a great reputation in the industry, but I’m not one of his fan club. I think my assortments are better than what I see at Tradava, but I have to play the game just like everyone else, and at the moment, respecting Patrick is the name of the game.” The man from the stockroom waved her over. “Excuse me again,” she said for the second time, leaving me by the clearance rack.

  I flipped through a couple more fixtures, then carried the pinstripe suit and a purple fedora to the cashier. I wondering where she’d put my purchases and if she’d notice if I fled the store and left everything behind.

  Red returned before I could leave and totaled my purchases. She set the receipt in front of me, along with a pen, and set to work tissuing the hat.

  “Do you need help carrying everything out to your car?” she asked politely.

  I couldn’t leave without getting her to tell me more about Patrick. I needed a plan. I scanned the interior of the boutique and I got an idea. “That would be great. But as long as I’m here, I probably should try on that Clestes jacket. As the trend specialist for Tradava, I really should be familiar with the experimental designers as well as the mainstream ones.”

  “I think you’ve done enough damage for one day.” She picked up the packages behind the counter and walked ahead of me to the back door. I jogged a few steps to keep up with her, then pointed to my small black car in the corner of the lot. When we reached it, I popped the trunk and took the bags from her.

  “Your store is great. I really mean it. I’ll definitely be back.”

  She reached up to the lid of my trunk and slammed it down over the pile of packages. “I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, but I don’t want your kind of business.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know you’re not the trend specialist at Tradava, and I know you spent the last hour trying to get me to talk about Patrick. You’ve been ferreting yourself into the design competition and I don’t like it. I have more to lose than I have to gain, so we’re done here. The cops are on their way, and if you don’t want to talk to them, you better leave.” She stepped away from the car. “Consider that merchandise final sale, and find yourself another place to shop.”

  In a stunned silence I drove home. It wasn’t until I sat in front of my house, next to a passenger-sized seat of fashionable booty I questioned her unwillingness to talk.

  It took me four trips to get my packages into the house. Well, three to get the packages inside, and another to round up Logan, who had decided the open door was a chance for him to test his freedom. Fortunately for me, when Logan escaped, he didn’t get farther than a few feet out the door, wondering which way to go. Looked a lot like the way I was feeling.

  It was late afternoon, and it was time for me to process what I knew. Time for me to think. I carried the packages to the bedroom and went back down stairs to check the answering machine before I realized I had turned it off. I switched it back on and was halfway up the stairs when it started ringing.

  “Dude, where have you
been?” Eddie said when I answered.

  “I turned off the machine. Nobody good calls me. I mean, except you.”

  “You might reconsider when you hear why I’m calling.”

  “Why are you calling?” I asked with reservations.

  Silence filled the phone line, until he spoke again. “Loss Prevention called a meeting with all of the Tradava executives. We’ve been instructed to call them if you show up or claim to work there.”

  I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly. Of course, the glass I dropped when he said that shattered on the floor, which might have affected my hearing a little.

  “Say that again?”

  “I don’t think I have to.”

  “No, I don’t think you do.”

  After we disconnected I crossed the kitchen to the pile of fashion newspapers Eddie had dropped off yesterday. The copy on top was the one I’d flipped through during the night I spent at Tradava, the one with the picture of Nick inside. I used it as a dust pan, rounding up the broken glass shards from the floor, then threw it away and went upstairs to escape.

  I filled the bathtub with water and poured in a couple of scoops of powdered milk. Time passed without notice. Without phone calls, without interruptions. It was almost like the beauty police knew I needed these moments of solitude and had run interference with the outside world. I guess that might make them the beauty football team instead of the beauty police, which was fine by me, since I was avoiding the police. Didn’t football teams run interference?

  My thoughts ran in an abstract pattern, resting occasionally on my predicament but quickly moving onto other topics. Who killed Patrick? Would I look as good as Nick’s date at the Designer’s Debut Gala? Did I need to look for another job? Should I cap off my night of pampering with a glass of wine?

  The answers were pretty simple. I didn’t know, better, probably, probably not. The bathwater had lost most of its heat and the milk was starting to curdle. My fingertips shriveled to a pink raisiny texture and the stress had long left my body. The bedroom, now strewn with new clothing, assaulted me with buyer’s remorse. Until I worked out the job situation, I had no business shopping. I belted on my robe, turned my back on the room and went downstairs. I fished the Style Section out of the trash and set it on the table. Nick wasn’t the only one whose picture was in there. Amanda Ries was in there too, and it was time for me to learn how she was connected to Patrick’s murder. I tapped one finger on the picture of two models in red coats on the cover and dialed Nick’s now familiar number.