Diane Vallere - Style & Error 02 - Buyer, Beware

by Diane Vallere

  He set two cups of black coffee on the table and pushed one in my direction. “Not sure how you liked it.”

  “This is fine,” I answered.

  “You’re the new handbag buyer at Heist, aren’t you? Samantha Kidd?”

  “I am,” I answered, mildly surprised he knew that much.

  “What brings you to Tradava today? Are you shopping the competition?”

  “I was meeting a friend here. Much like you were probably meeting a friend at Heist the night of the gala,” I threw in.

  “I don’t want to be reminded of that night, if you don’t mind.” The brown cardboard ring that kept his coffee from burning his hands sat at the base of his cup on the table. He spun his cup in circles. He was concentrating too hard on such a mundane task.

  “You get noticed a lot, probably. You’re an attractive man.”

  “So I’ve been told.” He picked up his coffee and drank. I was thrown by his emotionless acknowledgement of a fact most people would take as a compliment. “I’m smart and talented too, in case you’re interested.”

  “Interested in what?”

  “In finding out what’s below the surface.”

  I felt like a ball of yarn being swatted about by a frisky cat. I had no desire to be Kyle Trent’s ball of yarn. “I’m not interested,” I said, perhaps too quickly. “Besides, you could probably get any woman you want.”

  “Not any woman.”

  “Belle DuChamp? Is she the woman you want?”

  “Belle’s different from the others.”

  “Why? Because she’s married?”

  “Because she saw the smart and talented part.”

  “Did Belle get fired because she was caught—” I tried to think of an appropriate word and gave up and settled on Eddies—“canoodling with you in the boardroom?”

  “Is that rumor still alive and well?” He laughed and for the first time in our conversation, it felt like he’d let himself go. “You should check your sources. Besides, some people think Belle is still on the Tradava payroll.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve heard things about you too, Samantha. You’re smart—tenacious. You’ll figure it out.” He slapped his palms down on the arms of the chair, elbows pointing out. He hoisted his lean body out of the chair like a swimmer heaving himself out of a pool. “Pleasure talking to you. Good luck at Heist. You’ve got some big shoes to fill.” He picked his cup off the table and walked away, leaving me staring at the back of his very trim double-vented suit.

  As long as I was at Tradava, I figured I actually would shop the competition. No reason not to, especially after two different people had made it relatively clear they didn’t want to be sitting around talking to me.

  I sweet-talked the creamer away from a nice old couple sitting one table away and diluted the coffee to a drinkable shade of camel. After I finished, I went to the handbag department.

  There was noticeably less foot traffic here than at Heist, partially because of the hype of a new store coming to town, I’m sure, but still, it had to be hurting Tradava’s business. That was how it went with new stores—big opening, big hoopla, and then how to keep up that level of interest and shift the customer loyalties from the stores they always shopped at to the new one, long term.

  It was a delicate time for both competitors. Tradava had to put their best face forward: charming customer service and a familiar setting had to trump deep discounts. The history of Tradava, a family owned fixture in Ribbon, had to prove it was more important than the novelty of Heist. Tradava would definitely suffer in the short term, and no one knew what would happen in a couple of months, let alone a year.

  I picked up a black and white fur handbag and turned it over in my hands. It was connected to the fixture with a thin wire that disappeared into a small locking system, much less obtrusive than the in-your-face theft deterrents at Heist. But somehow Heist owned their concept so completely that Tradava’s hint at protecting their profits against shoplifters seemed more of an insult. I was able to open the clasp and pull the tissue out, inspecting the powder-blue suede lining and interior pockets trimmed in black patent leather to match the handle. It was such a pretty color combination, and the lining would be tarnished shortly after the wearer loaded in the assorted items she needed to get through the day. My own handbag carried a three-inch ballpoint pen mark, a smudge of cranberry lip liner, and a grungy corner from where a small bag of pretzels had emptied.

  I snapped the bag closed and placed it in the crook of my arm so I could admire my reflection in the full-length mirror. It was lovely. An associate headed my way with a smile on his face, and I sensed I was in for a compliment and a sales pitch. I put the bag on the table and stuffed the tissue back inside. That’s when I noticed the small gold metal vendor tag affixed to the interior cell-phone pocket. VONGOLE. My split-second moment of awareness gave the sales associate the time needed to reach my side.

  “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

  “She sure is,” I replied.

  He held the bag in the light. “One of the best bags they’ve done recently. We used to carry a lot of Vongole’s bags, but lately not too many.”

  “Is that because of Heist?”

  “No, they have good prices but don’t carry the same quality of merchandise as us.”

  “They carry Vongole, though,” I said.

  “Yes, but Vongole’s collection is big, and our buyer keeps our assortment streamlined. We don’t need to carry every bag they make, just the good ones. Like this.” He smiled, letting the black and white fur bag rock side to side from his index finger not unlike a hypnotist dangling a watch. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’m going to have to start packing my lunch so I can treat myself soon.” I smiled graciously and checked my watch. “I’m already running late. Thank you.” I turned to leave before he had the chance to hit me up with a new charge application, but my path was blocked. Kyle stood in front of me, fidgeting with the knot in his tie.

  “Kyle. We meet again,” I said in a friendly manner, hoping to get out of there quickly.

  “Samantha, a word of caution. I’d watch my step around Heist if I were you.”

  I wanted to laugh off his threat, but I didn’t. “Kyle, I don’t think I have to point out that I know you were at Heist the night Emily was murdered.”

  “Of course I was with her the night she was murdered. It was a big night for her. Why wouldn’t I be there?”

  His cavalier attitude left me speechless. Before I knew what to say or do, Eddie stepped forward from behind a fixture and put a hand on my elbow. “Sam, Kyle was at the gala as Emily’s date. They were engaged.”

  16

  Kyle and I left Tradava together. I was fairly sure Eddie wanted an invite, but if I was going to stay true to my word, work with the cops and not bring anyone else into this mess, I was going to have to shut Eddie out.

  I had absolutely no idea what was on my schedule for the balance of the day at Heist, but I doubted it would be more important than talking to Kyle. We walked in silence to a diner in the corner of a parking lot at Tradava.

  It wasn’t until we were seated at a booth in the back, empty seats all around us, that I spoke. “Is that true? You and Emily were engaged?”

  “Yes. I proposed two months ago. I wanted her to work at Tradava. She’d been with Heist, the store in center city Philadelphia, for a long time. I thought it would be a good step for her. Only she saw things differently. She wanted me to leave Tradava and work for Heist.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “Market week, years ago. We were both handbag buyers. No matter how hard the vendors tried to keep us on opposite schedules, it was inevitable that we’d finally meet. Every couple of months we’d run into each other in New York or Milan. Last year we got stuck at the airport together. Our flight was cancelled and we sat up all night and talked. By the next morning I was calling her my girlfriend.”

  “Your stores didn’t mind
the conflict of interest?”

  “We tried to keep our relationship a secret at first. When Tradava found out, they thought it was unethical. Belle DuChamp had always been a mentor of mine, but that was a turning point for us.”

  “She was angry?”

  “She actually warned me my job was on the line if I didn’t reconsider how I spent my spare time. That’s one of the reasons we were keeping the engagement a secret. We both knew it would complicate our work situations.”

  “But what about that rumor?”

  “I never said I was a saint. I had a life before Emily, but that’s all I’m saying. Anything I say now impacts how people will remember her, and that’s not fair. I loved her. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with her.” His eyes turned bloodshot, but no tears appeared.

  The waitress approached our table and asked for our order. Kyle suddenly stood. “The lady is going to dine alone. It’s on me.” He peeled a twenty out of his wallet and tossed it on the table.

  “Kyle—wait,” I said.

  He stood by the table and looked down at me.

  “Is there a way I can get in touch with you? If …” My voice trailed off.

  Kyle reached inside his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a small leather business-card case. He slid an ivory card out and tossed it on top of the twenty. “My cell’s below my work number,” he said.

  I slid the card across the table and tucked it into my wallet next to my library card.

  “Did you want to order something, ma’am?” the waitress asked.

  “Yes,” I said. I leaned sideways and looked out the door, making sure Kyle had left. “I’ll have a BLT to go.” I dropped my voice so the people in the next booth couldn’t hear me. “Hold the bread, lettuce, mayo, and tomato.”

  It was five o’clock when I pulled back into the Heist parking lot. The only thing calming my nerves from being gone four hours was the fat from five pieces of bacon and the knowledge that my job offer from Tony Simms came with a fair amount of job security. I speed-walked through the store to my office but stopped short when faced with the assortment of flowers on my desk.

  An orange bromeliad sat next to a square vase lined in bamboo shoots—similar to yesterday’s floral arrangement. The card, clipped to the vase, said REPLACEMENT FLOWERS. There was no doubt in my mind. This arrangement had come from the cops.

  Two arrangements of flowers was overkill, which meant the earlier arrangement wasn’t from Detective Loncar. I texted Nick’s phone: Thx 4 flowers.

  A couple of seconds later I received a response: ???

  Uh oh.

  Mallory came into my office as I was sticking my phone back into my handbag. Her own bag was over her shoulder.

  “He must be quite a guy.”

  I cocked my head, shaking it in a you-don’t-know-the-half-of-it manner. My cell phone beeped with a text message. I ignored it. “Sorry I was gone so long. Did I miss anything here?”

  “You didn’t miss anything, and nobody missed you. And considering you took a four-hour lunch on your second day, I’d say you were pretty lucky.”

  “Let’s get something straight. It’s not my job to report to you.”

  She glared at me in a manner not unlike the kid from The Omen. I stood my ground even though my left boot pinched my toes and I really, really, really wanted to sit. My cell phone buzzed again before I had a chance to say anything else.

  “I was here early this morning, and I’m going home now. You’d better check your phone. Sounds like someone’s looking for you,” she said.

  She hoisted her oversized brown leather bag onto her shoulder and sashayed out of the office without looking back once. I pulled the cell phone out and keyed up the text message: turn your flowers around before you leave. Honestly, Detective Loncar was turning into a high-maintenance fake boyfriend. I was ready to chuck the cell phone and cut all ties with him when I noticed who had sent the message.

  Dante.

  Mallory had left for the day, and I had to use the facilities. I palmed my cell phone and went to the ladies’ room. Once inside, after checking under each of the stalls, I called the number.

  “You got my text,” he answered in lieu of hello.

  “What are you doing sending me flowers?”

  “What are you doing working for Heist?”

  “We already covered this. They offered me a job, and I took it.”

  “Samantha, I know something’s up with you. Just like I wrote on the card, I’m here if you need me.”

  “You’re DL’?”

  “Those are my initials. How many other DLs do you know?”

  “Just one—I mean, next time you should be more clear. I mean, there shouldn’t be a next time. You shouldn’t be sending me flowers.”

  “This isn’t just about the flowers.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “There’s a camera inside the arrangement.”

  “Dante, I might not have been very easy to read the other night, but—what?”

  “There’s a camera inside the flower arrangement. A sugar cube.”

  “Which is it? A camera or a sugar cube?”

  “The camera is the sugar cube. That’s what it’s called, because that’s roughly the size of it.”

  I already knew I was going to regret the next question. “Why are you sending me flowers with a camera inside?”

  “Because you’re up to something and nobody knows what, but considering a woman was murdered, I think you’re in danger. You’re pushing all of us away, which is not the smartest thing to do.”

  “Maybe there’s a reason for my acting the way I’m acting,” I said, wondering if I should just open up and confide in him. He didn’t know me that well. Maybe he’d see my side instead of siding with Cat and Eddie.

  “Sure. Maybe you’re trying to figure out Emily Hart’s murder?”

  I stopped wondering. “What is so wrong about me trying to have my own life?”

  “If that’s all you were doing, sweetheart, there’d be nothing wrong with it. Only I’m having a hard time believing it.”

  “Well, believe it.”

  I would have liked to sit down for a second, but I was in the ladies room and the only place to sit was, well, not where I wanted to be sitting while having a conversation with Dante. I thought about making crackly noises and pretending we had a bad connection.

  “Can we call a truce on this? I was planning to come over tonight after work to visit with Cat, and I don’t want us getting into a thing around her. I think she’s totally fine with me having a new job and wouldn’t appreciate your accusations that I’m hiding something.”

  “Are you kidding me? Who do you think told me to send you the sugar cube?”

  17

  Cat and I may have started out on rocky terrain owing to the murder investigation six months ago, but from what I’d seen since, she was a nice, normal woman. This piece of information put her in an entirely different light. Oh, sure, I was still going by the house to check on her after work, but I was going home and changing out of the fabulous mint-blue and tweed ensemble she’d given me and into something totally offensive and from the seventies, first.

  Logan sat in the middle of the laundry basket, watching me while I changed. He was nestled on top of a pink four-hundred-thread-count sheet. He was rapidly returning to his normal self. The cat had good taste. I scooped him up, planted a kiss between his ears, and set him back down. He turned around in a circle until he ended up in pretty much the same position he’d started in.

  I scribbled the notes I could remember from the day and wedged them into my handbag. Letting my hair air-dry shaved a full five minutes off my getting-ready routine, and the tan—even if it was fake—opened up the door to a whole palette of colors that washed out my normally fair skin.

  It was a warm night. I took the top off my convertible and let the wind have its way with my curly hair. When I pulled into Cat’s driveway, I was more relaxed than I’d been in about a week.
Even having Dante meet me at the door only ratcheted up my pulse the amount any totally hot and slightly dangerous biker would. Good thing I was holding a chilled bottle of champagne to cool me down.

  He stepped back and scanned my orange double-knit polyester scooter dress from the mod era. “I was hoping for the knit dress you had on earlier. I only got a glimpse of it through the sugar cube, but it seemed to hit you in all the right areas,” he said.

  “I didn’t want anything to happen to it.”

  “Shame.”

  The door opened behind me, and Eddie walked in carrying a pizza box. “It’s about time you got here. Follow me.”

  We traipsed, parade-like, through the house to the den where Cat sat on the sofa, tucked in beneath an ivory chenille blanket.

  “Aren’t you hot?” I asked after saying hello and hugging her.

  “It’s chilly in here.”

  “It’s so not chilly! It’s totally warm!” I said, holding the champagne against my forehead.

  “You’re only hot because you’re wearing a plastic dress,” Eddie said.

  “It’s not plastic, it’s polyester.”

  He unscrewed the cap on his bottle of water and dumped what remained on me. The water beaded up and ran down the front of my dress, and dripped on the floor. Cat dabbed at the carpet with a couple of paper towels. “That is not the normal way for clothing to react to water, Sam.”

  “Can’t a girl just come for a friendly visit without getting a fashion criticism?”

  “You’re the fashion person, not me,” Eddie said. “At least you were. I’m not sure who you are anymore.” He set the pizza on the card table in the middle of the room and walked out.

  “I wish he would stop acting like this was such a big deal,” I said half to myself, half to Cat.

  “I know it’s not a big deal,” she said.