Diane Vallere - Style & Error 03 - The Brim Reaper

by Diane Vallere

  “So why’s my outfit a problem?”

  “I need you to be my liaison with the sponsor.”

  “Who’s the sponsor?”

  “Tradava.”

  Tradava. The local department store that had promised me a job but delivered a homicide investigation—and then sent me a very polite letter that said they were dismantling the very department I’d been hired to work in.

  As soon as I heard the name of the store, I tensed. I turned away from Eddie and pushed my fingers into my long brown hair, boosting the roots, while delivering a mental pep talk at the same time. Tradava would be lucky to get me back.

  “You’re the curator?”

  “Guest curator. More like exhibit merchandiser. Last year the museum sponsored a visual competition between a few different retailers. Tradava won. The prize was the chance to guest curate an exhibit. It took a while for the board of directors to agree on the exhibit concept and for the director to obtain loans from collectors, but once they green-lighted it, I’ve been on an almost impossible deadline. If you’re looking for something to tear you away from your job search, I could use your help coordinating the exhibit.”

  “Maybe I should forget about Tradava. Maybe what happened is a sign that I shouldn’t work for them.”

  “Sign-schmign. You need a job. They’re hiring. Sounds like a match to me.”

  “You don’t believe in signs?”

  “I believe in stop signs and sale signs. Everything else is woo-woo.”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked, turning to face him, my hands on my hips.

  His eyes went wide. I looked down to make sure I hadn’t accidentally lowered my neckline with my stance.

  “Dude! Move!” he cried out. He jumped out of the chair and came at me with the force of a cannon, catching me off guard and knocking us into a shipping container of Styrofoam peanuts. A crash sounded behind him. I lifted my head and looked at where I’d stood. A beam of track lighting had fallen from the ceiling, landing on the white mannequin Eddie and I had assembled. She lay crushed on the floor, a pile of broken limbs.

  2

  The box collapsed under our weight. Eddie rolled off me to the floor and looked behind him. I yanked up the top of my jumpsuit.

  The thin black man from the office scaled the staircase. “What happened?” he asked. His eyes went from the light fixture in the middle of the room, to me in the middle of a shipping container of Styrofoam peanuts, to Eddie.

  I struggled to get out of the box with little success and even less decorum. “The light fixture fell.”

  Eddie and Frye Boots looked at the ceiling. Eddie’s arms dangled by his sides. Frye Boots crossed his over his chest. They studied the mess on the floor. The track sat, bent at an unfortunate angle, on the exact space where I’d been standing. The head of the mannequin rolled back and forth. Eddie put his sneaker against its cheek to make it stop.

  With a little momentum I flipped the box onto its side and rolled out. I got on all fours and pushed myself up to a standing position, dusting residual Styrofoam bits off my tush.

  “I’m okay, thanks for asking,” I said.

  “Let’s try a formal introduction here,” Eddie said. “Thad Thomas, meet Samantha Kidd. Samantha’s here to help with the exhibit. Sam, Thad’s the assistant to the museum director.”

  “We met downstairs,” he said, ignoring my outstretched hand.

  Thad turned to Eddie. Afternoon light from the museum windows glistened off his almond-colored, clean-shaven cheeks. “Milo Delaney is on his way with the collection. You’ll have time to unpack everything and start setting up today.”

  He handed Eddie a janitor-sized key ring on a lime green D-clamp, which Eddie fastened to the waistband of his already-low jeans. “Keep working as long as you like. Drop the keys off in my office before you go.” He turned his back to us and left down the grand staircase without saying goodbye.

  “Is everybody around here so rude?” I asked.

  “Never mind him. Are you okay?”

  “I think so.” I looked at the lamp and then up. “Has that ever happened before? A light fixture falling from the ceiling?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  We stared at the ceiling for a few more seconds.

  He tapped the ring of keys so they bounced against the palm of his hand. “Remind me to put these in the admissions office before we leave tonight.”

  “I don’t think there’s much of a chance of you forgetting, considering they’re compromising the waistband of your pants.”

  He looked down. A band of elastic with Joe Boxer stamped on it rested under his washboard stomach, his loose pants a good two inches below on the right-hand side thanks to the weight of the keys. He tucked his index fingers into the belt loops and hiked them back up. As soon as he let go, they fell again.

  “Who’s the extra in a hip hop video now?” I asked under my breath.

  He made a face at me and let the keys dangle. “The engineers were trying to figure out a way to remove the track lighting yesterday. Maybe they started the job and nobody told me, which is possible since I’m not even supposed to be here right now. Either way, until somebody moves this thing, I’m at a standstill.”

  I bent down, wrapped my hands under the steel track of the light fixture, and then lifted with my back the way most chiropractors tell you not to do. The beam lifted a few inches, but I was able to do little more than move it to the left.

  “This is not good.” He leaned down with his head between his knees. His hands were on his head, and after sitting there for upward of a minute, he mussed up his hair and pushed his hands out front. I joined him on the pile of Bubble Wrap.

  “I get the feeling the light fixture is only part of the problem,” I said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “What’s there to talk about, really? Tradava has been trying to build their reputation as an affordable fashion retailer. Somebody on the board thought it would be a good idea to start hosting events every market week, to give the city of Ribbon something ‘fashiony’ to participate in and connect back to the store. I’m working with the head of the history of fashion curriculum at I-FAD and the director of the Ribbon Museum of Art to put together an exhibit that Tradava’s sponsoring.”

  I-FAD was Philadelphia’s answer to Parsons, FIT, and FIDM. If you couldn’t afford the move to New York or Los Angeles but wanted a creative background to help break into the fashion industry, I-FAD was your college. Half the buyers at Tradava graduated from there.

  “You really think my helping you will lead to a job?”

  “Who knows? I heard they’re putting the trend department back together. You could get that job you moved here for.”

  That job was trend specialist, a job I could do with both hands tied behind my back with last year’s must-have scarf. I wanted—no, needed—a job. Since moving back to Ribbon into the house I’d grown up in, I’d burned through two job opportunities and the majority of my savings account. I’d moved to Ribbon for a chance to change my life. Well, to change my life and buy the house my parents vacated. And an overwhelming need to establish my own identity and prove I was a grownup. And—

  “Earth to Sam,” Eddie said, snapping his fingers in front of my face.

  “What?” I asked again.

  “Pay attention.”

  I looked around the open gallery at the naked mannequins and the boxes and the Bubble Wrap. “Unless the trend has something to do with the Emperor’s New Clothes, it seems you’re missing a vital element of this fashion exhibit.” I used the first two fingers on each hand to make air quotes around “fashion exhibit,” just in case Eddie missed the sarcasm in my voice.

  “That’s the thing. With the current interest in all things retro, Tradava wanted the exhibit to be both art and merchandise. The head of fashion merchandising from I-FAD is connected to some Main Line money. Apparently the closets in some of those houses are better than the archives at the Met.”

  “So the entire exhibi
t is on loan?”

  “Most of it. Tradava signed a licensing agreement to produce an accessories collection. We’ll showcase the originals in the exhibit and have knockoffs for sale in the store and here the day after the exhibit opens.”

  “Whose idea was this? It doesn’t sound like the kind of exhibit the museum usually puts together.”

  “Christian Jhanes, the guy from I-FAD, arranged it. There’s a curator in charge of the whole exhibit, but Tradava wanted me to work with him to make sure the store’s visual stamp was on the final display. Make the new clothes look as good as the vintage accessories, so people will flock to the store to buy them. And then when we get the accessories, I can set up the visual standards at Tradava in the same way.”

  “The guy from I-FAD, I think I met him. Bald guy, glasses, suit, T-shirt?”

  “No, that’s Dirk Engle. He’s the hotshot curator.”

  “He was the hotshot curator. The way he stormed out of here proclaiming he quit makes me think he isn’t coming back.”

  “He quit?” Eddie asked.

  “Even if he changes his mind, some other guy told him to be gone by midnight.”

  Eddie’s head went back into his hands.

  “Believe in signs yet?” I asked the top of his head.

  As he sat there staring at the floor under the soles of his Vans, I stood and wandered around the gallery space. Small pedestals, flashlights, wire, and a large plastic bag filled with mannequin limbs sat along the back wall. The flatbed with the lamp that had crashed to the floor and the trail of Styrofoam peanuts occupied the center. I knocked a few peanuts to the right with my instep.

  “Fine. I’ll help you.”

  He looked up.

  “Tell me what I need to know about the exhibit, and I don’t just mean what you already told me. Tell me everything.”

  He adopted a stuffy tone of voice and spoke down his nose. “The exhibit is being pitched as ‘a juxtaposition of film and fashion.’ The general manager told me if this was a success, there’s as promotion in it for me. Director of visual merchandising.”

  If I were the sort to whistle, it would have been a good place to do so. Tradava had very few directors, and a promotion like that would put Eddie squarely in a place others liked to call sitting pretty.

  “Apparently Tradava invested a lot of money in a licensing agreement with Hedy London. She’s a noir actress who started collecting costumes when she retired—”

  “I know who Hedy London is,” I said.

  “Fine. Her accessories are being sent here. Gloves, belts, stoles, and hats. That’s the category the store’s basing their projection on: the hats.”

  “Hats?”

  “Hats. The guy you saw this morning, Dirk Engle, owns a second-generation hat store in Philadelphia.” Eddie picked up a white thumb that had broken off the mannequin and tossed it across the floor like he was skipping stones on a lake. “Figures he’d bail on this thing. Now what am I going to do?”

  “Why does that figure? You mean Thad was hostile toward him too?”

  “Thad? He’s not hostile. He’s under a lot of pressure right now.”

  “Yeah, but pressure doesn’t excuse the need for manners.”

  I looked around and for the first time noticed a row of Bubble-Wrapped heads sitting on the outskirts of the room. “Why would Tradava bring in a hat store owner to curate the exhibit? Especially if they want to get all the retail credit. You would think that’s some kind of conflict of interest.”

  “Rumor has it they wanted him for more than his ability to merchandise millinery. He boasts the largest client list of hat collectors in the country, if you can believe it. I’m pretty sure that client list is what Tradava thought they were buying when they offered him the position.”

  “Do I know his store?” I asked.

  “What’s On Your Mind.”

  “Nothing’s on my mind except the name of the store.”

  “What’s On Your Mind.”

  “Stop it! What’s the name of the store?”

  “Who’s on first?” Eddie doubled over with laughter.

  “And What’s on second, and I Don’t Know is on third. Why are we doing a baseball sketch?”

  “‘What’s On Your Mind’ is the name of the hat store.” This time Eddie used air quotes. “Christian made Dirk sign a nondisclosure agreement. I can’t imagine what he was offered to make that happen.”

  “Maybe he made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Still, this is a pretty outside-the-box concept. I don’t remember the Tradava executives being such forward thinkers.”

  I looked around at the building. It was bare-bones, the kind of blown-out interior that lacked architectural elements or character. The only thing it had going for it was that it was big. I hoped Eddie had access to lots of merchandise; otherwise the exhibit would be dwarfed by the cavernous concrete shell.

  “You were a buyer,” Eddie said, referring to my past. “You know how all that stuff works better than I do. But you’d have to be living under some kind of rock not to notice that every celebrity out there is wearing some kind of hat these days. Even if they don’t know the difference between a fedora and a Hamburg, hats are the last accessory to get the pop-culture treatment. They were all over the runways this season. It’s a high-margin business, and apparently there’s not a lot of competition. Even with the economical issues, Engle’s store keeps posting increases and is getting national exposure.”

  A pretty woman climbed the stairs. She had platinum-blonde hair and the eyebrows to match, framing a porcelain complexion half-hidden behind square black glasses. Edith Head meets Lisa Loeb. The paleness of her face contrasted starkly with her black mock-turtleneck, tucked into boxy, hip-slung pants. And despite the low rise of her trousers, there was nary a muffin top in sight. If it weren’t for ridiculously unstylish square-toed loafers on her feet, I would have been jealous.

  “Hat exhibit, heads up!” she said, and giggled at her joke. “There’s a delivery for you downstairs.”

  “I thought the mail already came. What is it?” Eddie asked.

  “A bunch of boxes. About a dozen, I think.”

  “The hats!” Eddie hopped up and jogged down the stairs two at a time.

  “Hi, I’m Samantha,” I said to the woman.

  “I’m Rebecca,” she answered with a smile. “I work in the gift shop downstairs. Are you part of Tradava’s team?”

  “You could say that,” I said. I didn’t add that it would sort-of be a lie.

  The elevator bell rang less than a minute later, and Eddie exited with a cart piled high with matching brown boxes, each secured with packing tape. The corners were numbered. I spied two, five, and eleven and assumed the rest filled in the gaps. Number two had a crushed corner. Rebecca helped him maneuver the cart to the center of the room and then said goodbye.

  “She’s a perky one,” I said after the elevator doors shut.

  “Tell me about it. She’s here before me, and even after I’ve had three cups of coffee she’s still got me beat.”

  “Exactly how much coffee do you drink?”

  He ignored the question and grabbed the box numbered five. “Help me open these.” He waved a sweeping hand past the boxes.

  I picked one up, expecting it to be heavier than it was. I sliced through the packing tape and extracted a long piece of Bubble Wrap. I pulled it from the box, revealing nothing.

  “This box is empty.”

  Eddie slid the blade from his Swiss Army knife through the brown tape. “This one too.”

  We made it through half the boxes and had turned up little more than a hodgepodge of mismatched Bubble Wrap. When I picked up box number seven and shook it, something inside rattled.

  “Give me your pocket knife,” I said. I sliced through the packing tape, folded the flaps back, and then pulled out an object wrapped in a long strip of the clear Bubble Wrap. I sliced through the tape that secured the plastic and unwound it, revealing a forest green felt fedora stabbed through
the middle with a knife.

  3

  I dropped the hat. Eddie snatched it from the floor and put it back in the box. He reached for a tape gun and started to seal the container.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not in charge, and that wasn’t intended for me. I’m going to pretend I never saw it, and I’m going to tell Christian the hats are missing.”

  “Did I hear you correctly, Mr. Adams? Did you say the Hedy London hats are missing?” The dialect was very proper and befitting the person to whom it belonged. And as weird as that sounds, he was a “to whom” kind of guy.

  Eddie dropped the tape gun. It clattered against the marble. I turned to face the man who had entered the gallery space.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met. Christian Jhanes, museum director.”

  “Samantha Kidd.”

  He turned his gaze to me and held out a hand that flashed with a silver ring. A spark of electricity bounced between our fingers when I grasped his hand.

  No denying it, there was an electric air around Christian Jhanes. Steely blue eyes glowed from a tanned face that was framed by highlighted, golden-brown hair. He wore a wrinkled white shirt with bold purple, black, and green stripes down the left side, dark jeans with wide cuffs, and black crocodile shoes that were both expensive and well cared for.

  I tried my best to channel my old professional self. I brushed my loose brown hair back from my face and stood my full five feet, seven inches, but truth be told his name had been an announcement; my name had been more of a mumble. I shrank under his head-to-toe sweep of my strapless jumpsuit, even though I’d defended its style integrity earlier.

  His attention turned back to Eddie, who was paler than usual under his tan.

  I stepped forward. “I think there was a mix-up with the shipment. These boxes are empty.”

  Christian’s forehead wrinkled. He reached over for an open box and checked the label. “Where did these come from?”

  “I don’t know. Rebecca said there was a shipment for the exhibit. I assumed it was the hats.”

  “Have you gone through all the boxes?”