Diane Vallere - Style and Error 01 - Designer Dirty Laundry

by Diane Vallere

  “Ms. Kidd, we need you to come with us.”

  “Let me make some coffee. I have a lot to tell you, but I’m not quite awake yet.”

  They looked at each other. Logan buzzed my ankles while we stood in the front corner of my living room, the sofa in the middle of the room, the blanket and pillows on the floor beside them.

  “Ms. Kidd, I’m serious. “

  “Let me go upstairs and put some clothes on. If you want I can follow you to the station—wait, no I can’t, because I don’t have a car. Give me five minutes to get dressed.”

  “Ms. Kidd, this is no joke.”

  “I’m not joking. I really can be ready in five minutes.” I turned around and let go of the door, thinking they would catch it or come inside or maybe didn’t want to intrude and would stay on the porch. Detective Loncar reached out and snatched my thin wrist in his bear grip and everything about the moment felt wrong.

  They weren’t there to give me news about Patrick’s murderer. And they weren’t there to listen to what I had to say. They were there to take me in. As in, IN.

  I looked at the wrist the detective was still clutching, thinking he would realize I needed the wrist before starting that five-minute routine. He looked down at my wrist too, and the next thing you know he clamped a handcuff on me. What the hell was going on?

  “Ms. Kidd, you are under arrest for suspicion of murdering Patrick …Patrick …” said the new guy. He looked at Detective Loncar.

  “He only has one name. He’s like Cher,” Loncar said, looking directly at me.

  “There have been some new developments in the case,” said the unnamed man.

  “Do I have the right to know what they are?”

  “No. But you do have the right to remain silent.”

  Dizziness hit me. Breathing became difficult and my knees went weak. To make matters worse, I was still in my bathrobe. The officers maneuvered me to the car with a yank on the handcuffs and a nudge between my shoulder blades. It was a black and white, standard issue cop car. The detective opened the back door, I slid in, and he clamped the other cuff to the door of the car. It wasn’t like I was looking for a breakout or anything, but a girl likes to keep her options open. At the moment, I didn’t have any options to speak of.

  Thousands of questions circled through my head, but I sensed it wasn’t the right time to ask them. Maybe if I’d listened to Eddie and turned over what I knew a few days ago, I wouldn’t be in the back of a squad car.

  Or maybe the police didn’t have any new details. Maybe the person who threatened me had hung me out to dry after all, or maybe I had been on their radar all night. Gather your thoughts, Samantha. Plus, being new in town, I didn’t have a lawyer to speak of so I was left trying to reason this out on my own, like the rest of this mess. And still, one question nagged at me. What possible motive could I have?

  By the time we reached the station I knew there was no one to count on but myself. Despite the best intentions I had last night, I wasn’t going to tell them a word until I knew what was going on.

  Ignorance had been on my side that first day I’d gone with Detective Loncar to the police station from Tradava. But now, I knew too much. As we walked from the car to the stationhouse, I tugged at the neck of my robe, painfully aware that underneath I was next to naked. It was a metaphor for the situation. Clothing was my armor. Without it, I was vulnerable to attack.

  The dynamic duo led me down a narrow hallway to a small room. Two chairs sat, facing each other. A white laminate table sat next to the chairs. The walls of the room were the color of smog, with a harvest gold floor. Corners of the linoleum tiles had since come unglued and chipped, leaving murky pockmarks underfoot that matched the paint on the walls. Aside from a camera mounted in the corner above the door, the room was a box: no windows, no art, no distractions. Nothing to take me away from the fact that I was about to be questioned by the cops.

  Detective Loncar unlocked my cuffs. The new officer introduced himself as Officer Smoot. I watched and waited. I was torn between keeping my mouth buttoned up and exposing everything I’d discovered. I thought about things like unflattering orange jumpsuits and ankle monitors that would make me rethink my choices in footwear and decided right there to let them direct the conversation while I played it safe.

  “Where were you yesterday?” Smoot asked, flicking his thumbnail against the underside of his wedding band.

  “Home, most of the day. “

  “What’d you have for lunch?”

  “Meatball sandwich.”

  “From?”

  “B&S.”

  “Did you do anything else?”

  “Watched a movie.”

  “What movie?”

  “How to Steal a Million.” I paused. “It’s a classic.”

  “Rented?”

  “No. I mean, yes, I think.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I own it, but the person who loaned it to me didn’t know so I don’t know where he got it.”

  “He?”

  “The person who brought me the food. Is that relevant?”

  “In the afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you said you ate at B&S.”

  “No, I said the food was from B&S.”

  “And you’ve seen this movie before?”

  “It’s one of my favorites.” Until I knew the score, I kept my answers short, contained. It was the only way for me to function.

  “Did you go out last night?” Loncar asked, drumming his fingers rhythmically on the splintered wooden table while perspiration marks appeared under his arms. When I didn’t answer he repeated the question. Dangerous territory.

  “I went to the museum last night. To the Designer’s Debut Gala.”

  Smoot stood up and leaned against the wall. Arms crossed, he jumped in where Loncar had left off.

  “You just said you didn’t have a car.”

  “I took a taxi.” I perked up a little. “My car is at Tradava, I was stranded. Can you tell me what this is about?”

  They exchanged another look. Loncar spun his watch in a circle around his wrist. I wanted to reach across the table and tighten the band so he’d have to stop, but that was close to assaulting a cop, and considering my situation, I refrained.

  “Why is your car at Tradava?”

  “Two nights ago I was knocked out in the store. Someone gave me a ride home, and I left my car there.”

  “You were attacked?”

  “Yes!”

  “Did you file a police report?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.”

  “Are you confessing, Ms. Kidd?”

  “To what? Being knocked out at Tradava two nights ago? Yes, I guess I am.”

  “What were you doing there?” asked Smoot.

  “I was—” I didn’t want to admit to rifling through Patrick’s mail looking for the museum invitation. “I can’t say. Will you please tell me what this is all about?”

  “Why can’t you talk about Tradava?” Loncar asked.

  “I was with another woman’s boyfriend,” I said dramatically. If this were a Lifetime movie it would have gotten a reaction. “He drove me home. I didn’t want anyone to find out. End of story.” Telling the truth wasn’t so hard. That was probably the most honest thing I had said since I’d arrived.

  “Who’s the guy?” Loncar asked, flipping through a file.

  “What?”

  “Who’s the guy who gave you a ride home?” He shut the folder and looked at me. Smoot watched me closely too, gauging my reaction.

  “Why does that matter?”

  Loncar suggested this mystery guy might corroborate my story. That suggested to me someone was planning to tell Nick what I said. And that suggested I might want to clam up.

  “I don’t want to say.”

  “Who are you protecting?” Smoot said, leaning forward on his palms.


  Duh. I was protecting myself.

  Loncar sat back and stared at me. “Let’s take a break. You want anything? Need to go to the bathroom? Want some coffee?”

  I looked back and forth between their faces, hard lines etched in flesh that gave away nothing.

  “No, thank you,” I said automatically. The two officers left the room, presumably, to make me think about my situation. A couple of minutes passed. I grew restless. More time passed. I went from restless to nervous. When I’d gotten home from the gala I was ready to confide in them but now something was off and I didn’t know what. I wasn’t sure how long they left me alone with my mounting paranoia. All I’d wanted was a chance to get on that other path in life, the road peppered with dreams and hope and imagination. But who was I kidding? Even if I found that road, the entrance ramp would probably be closed for construction.

  The door reopened and Detective Loncar came back in, this time alone. My hands were locked together in my lap. I tried again to read his face, and again I got nothing. He set a bottle of water on the table next to me. After a couple of seconds, I reached for it and took a sip, then screwed the cap back on.

  “Ms. Kidd, you work in fashion, right?”

  “Yes.”

  He lowered himself into the chair in front of me.

  “What do you think of my outfit?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My wife says I shouldn’t wear plaid.”

  I shrugged one shoulder, tipped my head to the side, and crossed my arms over my chest. “You can pull it off.”

  “What about these shoes?” He pushed a foot out in front of him, giving me a clear view of a pair of thick, round toed black sneakers with black soles and black laces. Standard issue orthopedic.

  “Do you have foot problems?” I asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “They’re not particularly attractive.”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “Tell me what you do in the course of a day,” I asked. I uncrossed my arms and leaned forward. He stared at me a couple of seconds, like he didn’t understand my question. “Do you walk a lot? Drive? Run? Sit?”

  “All of the above. This isn’t about work. My wife has been nagging me to update my, um, style.”

  “You want to know what I think?”

  He nodded.

  “She’s right. Lose the plaid shirts. Go for something with a vertical stripe. Definitely a collar, and never ever ever wear a V-neck T-shirt. Keep the jeans dark. And you have to do something about those shoes.”

  “They’re that bad?”

  “They tell the world you’ve given up.”

  He looked down at his feet for a couple of seconds, then nodded. “I guess you’re right.”

  As we sat there, him staring at his ugly shoes, me staring at the top of his head, working up the nerve to suggest a different hairstyle, I realized how easy it was to say what needed to be said and how hard it was to keep it all bottled up.

  “Detective?” I said tentatively. “I’m ready to tell you about yesterday.”

  He looked up from his shoes and nodded, once. Details poured out of me. I told him about Nick and the meatball in my lap, and the threat on the envelope. I told him about Patrick’s computer and the password, the file of quote unquote businessmen. I described the sewing machine set up in Patrick’s office and the bump on the back of my head, and the person in the shadows outside of the museum, the photo under Michael’s phone that said GET HER with an arrow pointed to me, and the note I’d found in Patrick’s office that had been taken from me, that I’d discovered again on the laptop.

  It felt good to clear the air. There was no stopping me, and I wondered for the briefest moment why I’d been so scared to talk to the police, why I had ignored the voice of common sense that should have prompted me to confide in Detective Loncar days ago. I told him about the fabric store and my conversations with Red, Amanda, Michael and Nick when he cut me off.

  “What about the attack?” Loncar prompted.

  “At Tradava? I told you all I can. I didn’t hear anybody, didn’t see anybody, but I was knocked out.”

  “Not that attack.”

  “The attack on Florence? I told you what I know about that too.” I leaned back in the chair and crossed my arms over my chest, then immediately uncrossed them. I kicked my heel against the metal leg of the chair.

  Loncar leaned forward, one elbow resting on the table to the side of us. His face was inches from mine. “We know you were at Tradava when the break-in happened, and we found your fingerprints all over the office. We want to know what you were looking for. We have enough to connect you with Patrick’s murder, the fabric store, and last night’s attack.”

  “What attack?”

  My chest tightened, my palms were sweaty, and the air I gulped didn’t seem to reach my lungs. The room spun. I bent down to try to control the nausea.

  Loncar picked up the water bottle and held it out to me. I waved it away. Where were they getting their information?

  I dug deeper into details that twenty-four hours ago I had hoped to conceal. About the taxi to the museum, the walk from the coffee shop, the surveillance by the duck pond. I told about hiding in the shadows and enlisting the help of the groundskeeper by looking for a nonexistent kitten.

  For every detail I provided he asked for something concrete to corroborate my story. I had paid the taxi driver off to forget I was his fare. I ditched the purple fedora so as not to draw attention to myself. I had no hope with the groundskeeper, since he had already said he was going to deny helping me. There was no kitten named Max; there was no taxi reservation to take me home. The chances of finding the high school kids from the coffee shop were slim to none.

  I described the clothes I had seen at the event. I begged him to do the research to see if I was right. I personally thought the detail with which I described some of the outfits should have proven the accuracy of my story, but he seemed to think anyone could identify black tie ensembles with such precision. If only there was a way to prove I had been at that benefit–

  “Talk to Maries Paulson,” I begged. “She knows I was there.”

  “Oh yeah? You talk to her last night?”

  “Outside of the museum. She was mad at me.”

  “You two fought?”

  “She accused me of—” Loncar leaned forward and instantly I knew it wasn’t wise to finish that thought. “Ask her. She’ll tell you I was there.”

  “We would ask her if we could. Only, she’s definitely not talking. She’s lying unconscious in a hospital bed.”

  Chapter 27

  Before I could ask any more questions the door opened. A young woman in a white shirt and navy blue Dickies motioned Loncar into the hallway. I was in the middle of a very real, very scary crisis, and I only wanted things to get better. Nothing had gone right since the day I’d left Bentley’s. I wanted to go back in time. I wanted to go back to New York, back to the sixty-hour work week and the monotony of prime time TV as my social life. I may have lived between muggers and crack heads in New York but at least I’d known what to expect, every second of every day. Here? Not so much.

  By the time the detectives reentered the room I was beyond exhaustion. Loncar’s thick fingers were wrapped around an old, creased mailing envelope bulging with contents, a stack of well-worn file folders, and a couple of videotapes. He dumped the pile on the table next to my elbow. I closed my eyes. It must have been hours since we’d arrived, though time had become an abstract concept that mattered less than it ever had in my life.

  “Tell us about Nick Taylor,” said Detective Loncar.

  “We used to work together, when I was a buyer at Bentley’s department store in New York. I was the designer shoe buyer and he was one of my vendors.”

  “You still consider him a friend?”

  “I don’t know what I consider him,” I answered truthfully.

  “Do you consider him an enemy?”

  “No.”

  “How
did your relationship with Nick Taylor impact what you did yesterday?”

  “Nick knew I wanted to attend the Designer Gala at the Museum but he thought it was a bad idea. He showed up with dinner and a movie and I pretended I was in for the night. As soon as he left I changed clothes and took a taxi to the museum.”

  “What were you planning on doing at the museum?”

  “I don’t know. I was looking for something suspicious. Someone wants me to look guilty and I’m trying to figure out who. Maries Paulson said someone was extorting money from her, that she was supposed to hand it over last night. Whoever it was warned her not to go to the cops.”

  “How long have you known this?” Loncar asked. I looked at my hands in my lap and didn’t answer. “Ms. Kidd, if you had cooperated with us all along—”

  “They told her they’d kill me,” I said in a small voice. “Somebody made a grab for me last night when I was leaving. If I cooperated with you all along I might be dead now.” I hung my head down, my chin touching my chest. I didn’t sob. I didn’t wail. No one said a word for several minutes.

  “Ms. Kidd? You’ve told us a lot of crap today.”

  “No, I haven’t. I told you the truth. I even told you the truth about your outfit.” Smoot’s face scrunched up and he looked at Loncar, who continued to look at me. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “If I’m guilty of anything, it’s of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and if there was a way to prove any of this, I’d do it.”

  Slowly, Loncar unwound the string on the envelope and pulled out a dirty, Dalmatian-printed shoe. He held it between his hands for a second, then handed it to me.

  “Put this on,” he said slowly.

  I set the shoe on the floor and slid my foot into it. Despite the clumps of mud caked to the heel and sole, it fit perfectly. I looked up at the detective, who scratched the side of his balding head. “Freakin’ fairytale around here.” He looked in a ratty brown folder that had been recycled once too often, then turned to the door. Before he left the room again, he turned back to face me. “Thank you for your cooperation. The police would like to offer you an apology.”

  “That’s it? I can leave?” I wiped the last of the tears away from my face. The woman in Dickies reentered and told me to follow her. We walked down a narrow corridor to the front desk. The clock on the wall read ten forty two. Nick leaned against the wall, talking to a couple of officers. When he saw me, he stood straight. I couldn’t read his face. He picked up a sweatshirt and pants from the desk next to him and held them out to me.