Diane Vallere - Style and Error 01 - Designer Dirty Laundry

by Diane Vallere

  “Put these on in the restroom and meet me out front. I’m taking you home.”

  I hobbled to him, off-balance since I was only wearing one shoe. I couldn’t read his expression. I put a hand on the desk to balance myself before taking the clothes. He put his arms around me and I leaned against his chest, too tired to laugh or cry. He slowly pulled away and held me steady by my shoulders. I didn’t know what strange trick of Fate had brought him there at that exact moment, and I honestly didn’t care.

  His low voice whispered in my ear. “We’ll talk when I get you home. Right now you need to get dressed. Your robe is coming open and there’s a pool going on whether or not anybody’s going to see you naked.”

  I tugged at the collar of the robe and went into the bathroom to change. When I came out, Detective Loncar was waiting for me.

  “Detective, why did you ask me about your outfit?”

  “Ms. Kidd, you were all over the place in there, and you haven’t exactly been honest with me so far. I had to figure out what you were like when you were telling the truth so I could figure out what you were like when you were lying.”

  I leaned in closer and dropped my voice. “And what about Nick Taylor? What’s he doing here?”

  “What, him?” He jerked a thumb toward Nick’s truck in the parking lot. “Prince Charming’s been working with us from the start.”

  Chapter 28

  “What did the detective mean, you’re working with him?” I asked Nick as we walked to his truck.

  “Get inside.”

  “Not until I get some kind of explanation. You owe me that.”

  He unlocked the door to his truck and held it open for me. “Do you want to do this here, in front of the police station, or at your house? Because I can go either way, but I’m not the one wearing borrowed clothes of questionable origin.”

  I climbed into the truck and waited a whole half a block before I asked the question again.

  “Remember when you asked me about being in the competition?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “You said Amanda entered for you, the application got processed and went too far and Patrick disqualified you instead of admitting what happened.”

  “I wasn’t entirely honest with you.”

  “Meaning what?”

  Nick merged from Penn Avenue onto the highway. He didn’t speak until after he passed a large truck with a grocery store logo on the side.

  “I knew Patrick fairly well. He took an interest in me way back, when I was producing footwear for designers’ runway collections. He introduced me to a couple of financiers who put up the money for my first collection, and encouraged me to get out from under the hem of apparel designers, so to speak, and let my shoes stand on their own.”

  “When was this? “

  “Ten years ago? Fifteen? I don’t remember exactly. Before I met you, before you started buying the collection for Bentley’s.”

  “So you knew him. So what?”

  “He knew there was trouble with this competition. He asked me if I’d pose as a finalist, to check things out from the inside.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “Nothing. The morning I saw you at Tradava, the morning we found him, I was there to go over his concerns.”

  “But you’re listed on his files as disqualified, and those files are from before he was murdered.”

  “One of the designers made a stink about me. Said I didn’t meet the eligibility requirements since I already had achieved full collection success on my own.”

  “Do you know which one?”

  “Clestes.”

  “Who is Clestes?”

  “A brother-sister design team. They do some interesting work, but she’s a real fire cracker. She threatened to go public with the news the contest was rigged if I wasn’t disqualified.”

  “She—she who?”

  “The redhead. Catherine. Patrick, Maries, and I all knew I was a bogus entrant but there wasn’t anything else I could do, and once I was disqualified, I lost my inside angle.”

  “But you didn’t. Amanda is your—Amanda kept you connected.”

  Nick exited the highway and turned right onto my street. Two blocks further he turned into my driveway and cut the engine.

  “I don’t want to bring Amanda into this any more than she already is.”

  “But she did, didn’t she? Be honest, Nick. Because if Amanda isn’t your connection to the competition, then she could be as guilty as any of the other designers. What does she say about last night?”

  “I haven’t talked to her yet.”

  “Maybe you should. I bet she has a couple of secrets she’s not telling you too.”

  “Kidd, listen to me. The police are handling it.”

  I got out of the truck and slammed the door. Nick got out too. “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked.

  “It seems like every time you tell me you’re going to be safe, I trust you. But then you go out and something happens and everything gets worse. I’m trying to keep you from making things worse. Now go inside and take a shower, then lay down and go to sleep.”

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you?” I asked with a yawn.

  “We’ll talk more when you wake up.”

  Hours later I awoke and stretched as far as I could, savoring the peaceful post-sleep state. Memories of the previous night, of the gala, the cops, and of Nick assaulted me and I sat up and looked around, expecting not to be alone. But the room was empty, the house was quiet.

  Maybe I dreamt the whole thing.

  I pulled myself to the corner of the bed, ignoring the clothes now folded and sitting outside of my bathroom. They strongly resembled clothes I dreamt I wore home from the police station. That’s why I was ignoring them.

  I approached the window and looked outside, not sure what I’d see in my driveway. Surprisingly, I saw nothing. Maybe I dreamt the drive home too.

  Satisfied I was alone, I opened the bedroom door. A thunderous crash came from the hallway. Footsteps sounded downstairs. I shut the door and leaned against it. Who was here? Where was I to go? Someone knocked on the door. I froze. Footsteps walked away. I opened the door and tiptoed into the hallway and looked down the stairs.

  At Nick. Surrounded by several dozen books, scattered in messy piles around his feet.

  “What was that crash?” I asked, while he bent over and stacked the hardbound tomes.

  “I booby-trapped your door so I would know if you planned to escape without my knowledge.”

  “You what?”

  “You have a habit of lying about your whereabouts, and I wanted to make sure I knew if you got up and tried something funny.”

  A rope had been knotted around the brass knob to my bedroom door. I followed it with my eyes, down the stairs, to the floor by Nick’s feet. “This rope is rigged to my door. What if I tried to go out the window?”

  “I had a different booby-trap for that.”

  I stomped down the stairs until I was directly in front of him. “I don’t need a baby sitter, Nick.”

  As we stood in the living room, having a stare-off, a green VW Bug barreled down the street and swung into the driveway behind Nick’s truck. I looked past Nick to the window and saw Eddie, clutching a greasy paper bag to his white Frankie Say Relax T-shirt. He jogged to the front door and let himself in.

  “What are you standing around for? Burgers are getting cold.” He looked back and forth between us.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I picked up food since it is a well-known fact you are much more forgiving about people dropping by your house when they bring you food and honestly, how much pizza can one person eat?”

  “I’m not talking about the food. Why are you really here?”

  Eddie looked at Nick. “You want to tell her or should I?” Nick shrugged. “Dude, it was your plan.”

  I didn’t like what I was hearing but the scent of onion rings from the greasy bag dist
racted me long enough to get past my annoyance. Eddie thrust the bag at Nick and let him pass us, then pulled me in to a conspiratorial whisper. “Here’s the deal. Nick doesn’t want you to be alone. I’m here to get your car keys, so I can go get your car from Tradava.” He followed Nick into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

  “Your burger is getting cold,” Nick said from the kitchen. I rounded the corner and watched him bite into his hamburger. A blob of mustard remained on the corner of his mouth.

  “Get out of my house,” I commanded.

  Nick stood up with his burger in one hand. He took another bite, then set it on the table. “I can see there’s no way you’re going to eat while I’m here, so I’ll go. Eddie, can I count on you?”

  “No problem,” Eddie answered between chews.

  Nick wiped his mouth and headed toward me. I turned around and he followed me to the front door and tugged on my ponytail.

  “Take it easy, Kidd.”

  I locked the door behind him. When I returned to the table, I stuffed two onion rings into my mouth and bit into a burger before swallowing. With a full mouth, I asked Eddie what Nick meant about this plan of theirs.

  He toyed with the onion rings on his plate. “Who knows? He could have meant anything. It’s an expression.”

  I smelled something that didn’t blend with dinner. “What’s with the baby sitter routine, anyway? It’s all over. Right? I spent the day at the police station and now they know everything I know. What time is it? Five o’clock? We should go celebrate.”

  “You seem to be the only person who doesn’t realize how dangerous it was for you to go to that gala. Nick saved you today, and he’s worried you’re going to go out and get in more trouble, so he wanted to make sure you stayed put, at least for now. He knew about everything: the threat on the envelope, the missing money, the notes in Patrick’s file.”

  “I can’t help I keep ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the police didn’t believe me. I was that good at covering my tracks. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to convince them I didn’t do anything wrong. But you’re right. Even though the cops are on my side now, I still don’t have a job, and I’m still going to lose my house. I’m right back where I started, except the Patrick thing is over. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Sam, listen. The Patrick thing is definitely not over.”

  I lowered myself into one of the wooden chairs surrounding the kitchen table.

  “Nick wasn’t sure I should tell you this but you need to know about it. There was another incident last night.”

  The burger and rings turned over in my stomach. “Maries Paulson, right?” I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  He nodded. “At Tradava.”

  “But she was at the gala.”

  “She must have left or been taken to the store. I don’t know why she was there. She was pretty badly beaten, and was bound with seam binding.”

  “Just like Patrick and Florence,” I muttered. “The three people who controlled the outcome of the competition.”

  “She was found unconscious in his office. When the police swept the room, they found your fingerprints all over.”

  I didn’t know what to say. The threat I received on the invitation said I would be set up if I kept digging, and sure enough, that’s what happened.

  “What are you thinking?” Eddie prodded.

  That the real killer was still on the loose. That going to the cops hadn’t finished anything. That trying to do the right thing had made things worse.

  “My car was at Tradava. It still is. Nick left it there when he drove me home.”

  “That’s why the police immediately thought they could place you at the scene of the crime. Someone said they knew you were there. Turns out they only saw your car. When they talked to Nick, he told them he gave you a ride home the other night, and that you left your car at the store.”

  “Nick saved my ass.”

  “He also told them you were at the museum event.”

  “Nick didn’t see me at the museum event.”

  “Well, he may have made a few assumptions on that one. He saw a person outside of the event perched in a tree.” He paused at this statement, closed his eyes and shook his head at the idea and continued. “And he found a shoe stuck in the ground. A Nick Taylor shoe he claims he gave you years ago.”

  “I was saving them for a special occasion,” I said.

  “It’s a good thing you wore them because they might have kept you out of jail. You know, another thing you might want to consider is Nick left the gala early and spent the last twelve hours making sure you were safe.”

  “So Amanda was left on her own,” I said. “I’m telling you, it could still be her.”

  “Whoever it is, they’re still out there.”

  “They found Maries at Tradava. Patrick’s body was at Tradava. And I was attacked at Tradava.” He looked at me, and I looked back at him, and then I continued. “It’s not going to be over until we figure out why everything leads to Tradava.”

  Wordlessly, we formed our own plan. It was time for another overnight stakeout.

  Chapter 29

  Undercover Fashion Chic, I might have called it, if I were writing editorial coverage instead of preparing for a date with doom. Phrases like “death wish” and “bad idea” filled my mind. Eddie ran home to change then returned to my house, giving me ample time to change my mind. I didn’t.

  We had agreed on a uniform to keep me from being recognized. Black knit hat, black sweater. Black cargo pants, though his were canvas and mine were satin. We matched down to our Doc Martens, his buffed to a high polish, mine coated with a layer of dust. I zipped on a motorcycle jacket I’d owned since college and followed Eddie to his car.

  We arrived at the store shortly before closing time and planned to meet up in the trend office.

  “If anybody asks, you’re a freelance visual stylist. Don’t get into a conversation. Just say you’re new and you’re working for me,” Eddie instructed. He unscrewed the cap from a bottle of tomato juice and took a swig, then tucked it into the side pocket of his cargo pants and got out of the car.

  He used the employee entrance and I used the door by Juniors. I took the stairs, all seven flights, back to our corridor and arrived first. Using the key I had lifted from Michael’s desk days ago, I let myself in.

  Following the beam of a pencil-sized flashlight I had remembered to bring, I headed straight for Patrick’s office. It was in complete disarray. The framed cover of Vogue hung crooked on the wall above the purple sofa. The oversized Harper’s Bazaar sat on the floor, the frame and the glass broken in the ransacking. The sewing machine was on its side. I tried not to disturb anything, tiptoeing through the mess to the back of Patrick’s desk. Several sheets of white paper were scattered over the floor. I picked them up one by one and assembled them by page number.

  It was Maries’ speech, a fitting tribute from one legend to another. She started by acknowledging the lackluster mannequins draped in black, explaining her last minute decision to use the display platform to indicate the designers’ mourning for Patrick instead of showcasing their runway creations. Before I could finish, Eddie’s voice interrupted me from outside of the office.

  “Michael’s desk has been cleaned out.”

  He passed the desk in the hallway and entered Patrick’s office. He went directly to the mini fridge and poured himself a glass of lemonade. “He took everything.” As he took a gulp he spun the knob on the side of the empty Rolodex on the corner of Patrick’s desk. It appeared as though someone had pulled every card from the spinner and left the stand behind.

  A red scarf, the same one Michael had worn around his neck the day he picked up his portfolio, was caught in the hall closet. I touched the wool and let the scarf trail through my fingers.

  “Odd that he took everything but left his scarf.”

  “Do you think it’s been him?” he asked.

  “He knew
about the money and he worked close enough with Patrick to maybe even know his password. He said something to Maries to make her distrust me. He was here all along and he had access. But still, I don’t know.”

  Eddie drained his glass of lemonade and crawled behind the desk with me. “How did you do this? It’s not exactly comfortable,” he complained. After a few minutes of watching him try to find the best position, I crawled over to help him figure it out. I was a little curious how I had slept there myself.

  We sprawled out, side by side, staring at the bottom of Patrick’s desk. It was a pretty big desk but with the two of us there, it was close quarters. I folded my hands over my hips and made a steeple. Eddie drummed his fingers on the bottom of the desk drawer above us, a close approximation of “We Got the Beat.”

  “Why are you so willing to help me?” I asked somewhat tentatively. He stopped drumming. I wasn’t sure how far I wanted to push the boundaries of our friendship. And I didn’t realize it when I’d asked but the longer the question hung in the air, the more vulnerable I felt.

  “That thing, in high school, that could have changed the entire path of my life. If you hadn’t come forward, I would’ve been expelled. I had a scholarship to art school lined up. It would have disappeared. And that’s what everybody, the principal, the teacher, the other students thought. That I was the new kid, the troublemaker from another high school. Nobody would have been surprised.”

  “But you didn’t cheat.”

  “Until you spoke up for me, nobody was on my side. I still don’t know why you did it. We weren’t friends before it happened, and we didn’t become friends after that.”

  “That’s because we graduated.”

  “Why did you stand up for me?”