Diane Vallere - Style & Error 03 - The Brim Reaper

by Diane Vallere

  “I put it there.”

  “You stole evidence from the crime scene?”

  “I picked it up off the floor to keep the blood from getting on it, remember? I must have carried it outside with me when I got sick. I don’t really remember. I found it in my backpack this morning.”

  “You have two choices: call the detective or take the hat back.”

  “To the admissions office? It’s a crime scene. I can’t just waltz in there.”

  “You just said Christian moved up the deadline on the exhibit. How are you supposed to get anything done if you can’t get into the museum?

  “I can get into the museum. I can’t get into the admissions office.”

  “You also can’t walk around with a hat that was found next to a bloody corpse.” From the way Eddie looked at me, I suspected he thought I was being less than supportive, considering the tables had been turned when I’d first moved to Ribbon.

  “What about the gift shop? Can you leave it there? That’s nowhere near the admissions office.”

  “Sure, yes, the gift shop is probably available.”

  “Too bad you left the keys on Thad’s desk.”

  Eddie reached into the zippered pocket on the outside of his backpack and withdrew a set of keys. He set them on the table next to the hat.

  “Well, that changes things, doesn’t it?” I leaned against the back of the sofa and looked at the ceiling. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll take it back to the museum while they’re closed. You can leave it somewhere nobody would look—where’s lost and found? After we leave, you’ll call Loncar and tell him to look for the hat. Tell him you forgot about it until today. You remember it was there but don’t remember where you left it. Let him go back to the crime scene and find it himself. The sooner we get the hat back to the museum, the sooner we can wash our hands of our involvement.”

  The drive to the museum took less than fifteen minutes, and during fourteen-and-a-half of them I kept up a steady chatter so Eddie didn’t have a chance to think about what we were about to do. Before long we were parked outside the Planetarium, making our way toward the museum.

  “While we’re here, look around and see if anything seems out of the ordinary. You can’t do it when everyone else is around. There are too many distractions,” I advised.

  “What about you? Aren’t you a distraction right now?”

  “No. I’m like an extension of you.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  We headed around to the back of the building.

  “Look,” Eddie said.

  “What?”

  “Two suspicious-looking characters making their way through the grounds.”

  I got excited. “Where?”

  He pointed to our reflection in the glass doors.

  “This is serious, Eddie. Do you notice anything?”

  He cupped his hands around his eyes and crept closer to the doors. “There’s a stack of boxes inside, addressed to Hat Exhibit. There’s a whole bunch. The return address labels are torn off.”

  “Let me see.” I pressed my face up to the glass. I counted nine boxes. Do not crush had been printed in a cursive font on the adhesive labels stuck to the side of the boxes.

  “Are those the boxes that were delivered yesterday?”

  “They don’t look the same. Look. There’s an open one.” He pointed to an empty carton. There was a small red number 2 on the corner. “I think there’s something in it. An invoice or packing slip.

  “Eddie, when did Thad give you the keys to the museum?” I asked suddenly.

  He stared at the keys. “Yesterday.”

  “And he specifically asked you to leave them on his desk when you were done?”

  “Yes. He said I should work late but to drop them off before I left.”

  “So he basically arranged it so you’d have access, all by yourself, to the museum and the admissions office. And if you’d left the keys, he could say he knew you’d been there. Are you following me?”

  “You don’t think Thad—”

  “C’mon, forget returning the hat. We have to get out of here.”

  Just then, gunshots sounded from the parking lot.

  7

  Eddie and I dropped to our hands and knees. Eddie’s head went closer to the ground than mine. I looked toward the car but saw nothing suspicious. I pushed myself up until I was kneeling on the grass, and I strained my eyes. If I hadn’t heard the crackling of gunfire, I wouldn’t have believed the sound had taken place.

  When nothing happened after ten minutes of waiting, we ran to my car. I dropped Eddie off at his apartment and went home. It wasn’t until I parked the car safely in the garage that I realized the hat was still in the backseat. I retrieved it and set it on my glass coffee table in the living room.

  The sunlight filtered through the front windows and struck the jet bead that pierced the grosgrain band around the hat. A pheasant feather stood up a full twelve inches. Logan jumped onto the table and swatted the feather. I scooped him up and set him on the floor, and then picked up the phone and called Detective Loncar.

  The call went into voice mail, and I left a message. “Hi, Detective, this is Samantha Kidd. I know you probably weren’t expecting to hear from me, but I have something at my house that relates to your case and I think you should see it. I mean, I think you should have it. I mean, it’s not a gift but it’s from the exhibit—or at least I think it is, but I really don’t know. But probably you should figure that out, not me. Isn’t that how this is supposed to work?” I paused for a moment, left my phone number so he wouldn’t have to dig through my police file to find it, and hung up.

  I wrapped the hat in tissue paper, nestled it in a shopping bag, and then carried it to the garage and set it on a top shelf between Logan’s slate-blue cat carrier and a heavy duty flashlight my dad had bought when he took my sister and I camping when we were kids. I propped an old license plate that my mom had kept (she liked the old state slogan “You’ve Got a Friend in Pennsylvania”) in front of the bag and stepped back. I wasn’t sure what Eddie was going to say when I told him I’d called the detective, but I was fairly sure I’d done the right thing. The longer that hat stayed at my house, the more involved I’d be.

  I changed into a satin caftan top that I’d gotten in Chinatown for seven dollars, and a pair of black leggings. Most people assumed people who worked in fashion wore only designer apparel, but I also enjoyed the “disposable” street fashions of New York as much as the designer togs we carried at Bentley’s. The top had a kaleidoscope pattern in shades of teal, yellow, black, and white. The problem with this piece was, Logan liked it as much as I did, and now the thin band of black satin that bordered the collar, sleeves, and hem showed the telltale signs of tiny cat teeth and claws from a particularly eventful day of burrowing into the laundry pile. The top was now part of my lounging-around-the-house wardrobe.

  I went outside and picked up the mail—a pet store ad and new catalog from Tom Sturgis Pretzels—and found a rubber-banded copy of the Ribbon Times on the grass halfway between my neighbor’s and my house and carried it inside. I didn’t have a subscription, but I figured if my neighbor did, he’d complain and the accuracy factor of delivering said paper would stop being an issue. Technically, this was probably a case of possession being nine-tenths of the law. Not that I had any legal background to rely on, outside of what David E. Kelly’s TV shows had taught me in the nineties.

  My mind returned to the image of Dirk Engle wrapped in Bubble Wrap in the admissions office. The gallery had been filled with packing materials, and it would have been easy for someone to get a piece from our trash. I thought about the argument I’d overheard when I first arrived at the museum, and the way Dirk had stormed out. There had been tension between him and the person in the admissions office. Had that been Christian? Or Thad, the assistant museum director? I’d talked to them both, but the voice I’d overheard had been distorted by Dirk Engle’s cell phone.

  Th
at was another thing. What was Dirk doing back at the museum? He’d quit earlier that day. Had he returned to pick up some of his personal belongings? Or had someone lured him to the admissions office? Or maybe he’d been there to sabotage the exhibit he was no longer part of?

  I turned my attention to the newspaper. Eventually I reached a two-page fold-out dedicated to fashion and art. A feature story on a pair of local sisters turning quilts into jackets was sandwiched between a What’s Hot/What’s Not list and a sidebar on Hawaiian shirts. The rest of the page was littered with shopping ads and coupons. It was hard to believe that local boutiques and retailers—Tradava included—actually believed these ads were going to generate business. The copy was boring, the ads were stale, and the placement was a waste of money. Who read the paper anymore? Why weren’t they modernizing their approach with e-mail blasts and postcard mailings?

  Because this was Ribbon, Pennsylvania, not Manhattan, New York. We were 130 miles east of the Big Apple, which some days felt like getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

  I scanned the rest of the page. One ad stood out from the rest. A fifties-style cursive script was laid out next to a photo of a stylish woman with one hand touching the brim of her hat, another hand resting on her hip. The model stared at the copy:

  “Cloche” call? Not at all! OVER YOUR HEAD carries the finest assortments from around the world, including one-of-a-kind vintage selections in mint condition! Come Thursday to meet designer Milo Delaney and preview his collection. New merchandise arriving daily!

  Absentmindedly I tore the ad from the paper and folded it down to a handbag-sized bit of flotsam. I flipped through the rest of the newspaper, looking for something a little deeper to sink my teeth into. Between the automotive and the sports pages I found the arts section. New movie openings this weekend, a touring performance of Romeo and Juliet coming to town, and an article: “Hollywood Comes to Ribbon.” It was about Hollywood memorabilia that had been tagged for local display.

  Hollywood memorabilia.

  I leaned forward and read the article with interest.

  Few celebrities find themselves in Ribbon, Pennsylvania, but that is exactly where film star Hedy London plans to be next Thursday. London, 70, star of noir films The Reaper Wore Red and Murder After Midnight, has entered a partnership with local retailer Tradava to license a collection of millinery under her name.

  London was discovered on the pages of a men’s magazine in the early sixties. She pouted in a way that would have made a pin-up girl proud and caught the attention of an entrepreneurial film director who was casting roles in his homage to the noir Murder After Midnight. The moment Hedy London appeared wearing a translucent silk negligee trimmed in marabou, the audience was enraptured.

  In the months following the movie’s launch, she was never seen in anything other than vintage-inspired styles, thus launching a fashion frenzy for all things retro, and solidified London’s ties to the fashion community.

  Most people thought it was a publicity stunt. Cameras followed her to the grocery store, the mall, the dry cleaners, waiting for the inevitable photo opportunity of her with her guard dropped. They were disappointed. Hedy London was never out of character. Slowly but surely the public accepted that this was who she was. Soon after, the fashion magazines followed suit, styling models in her likeness to showcase the glamour.

  I looked at the byline. Ribbon Times staff reporter Carl Collins’s article was more of a love letter than a hard-hitting piece of investigative reporting. I scanned the rest of his article. He went on to say that London’s style became bigger than her acting talent. Fashion designers sent hommages to Hedy down the runways. In the fickle world of fashion and entertainment, she seemed untouchable.

  It wasn’t until she was paired to work with a renegade director who decided to use her for his own publicity stunt that the glamorous life of Hedy London encountered trouble. He cast her in a dystopian love story and dressed her in a set of pasties and a pair of torn, acid-washed jeans.

  After a very public argument that culminated in a pricey lawsuit, Hedy London’s name was removed from the picture. Her career trajectory reversed. She could have been the next Kim Novak, but instead, she never acted again.

  Hedy London now resides in Hollywood, California, where she has become a respected member of the film preservationists’ society. She is loaning a portion of her priceless collection to the Ribbon Museum of Art in an exhibit funded by Tradava, which will coincide with the launch of her collection of hats.

  It didn’t take Columbo to recognize that I had a piece of said priceless collection nestled next to the butterfly collection I’d amassed when I was eight that still resided in an old cigar box on a shelf in the garage.

  I checked the clock. It was shortly after four. The detective hadn’t called back. He probably hadn’t gotten my message, so there was no point waiting around for him. I needed to buy cat food and something for dinner. I showered and dressed quickly in a Go-Go’s concert T-shirt from their Talk Show tour and a pair of faded boot-cut jeans. I piled on a couple ropes of pearls, pulled on an olive-green army jacket and a beret, and stepped into olive suede boots. I drove to the grocery store and picked my way through the pet section for food for Logan.

  Only one teenager, pierced on her eyebrow, nostril, and lip, worked the checkout counter. My cell rang while I stood in the line and I fished it out. The word Detective flashed up on the screen. Mental note: edit Loncar’s contact information to minimize anxiety attacks when he returns calls.

  “Hello?” I answered, though I knew who it was.

  “Ms. Kidd? Detective Loncar.”

  “Did you get my message?” I asked.

  “Are you at your house?” he asked.

  “I’m at the grocery store.”

  “Let’s see if I understand this. You have evidence to a murder investigation at your house and you’re at the grocery store. Is that right?”

  “It’s not evidence, per se,” I said. I let two teenagers go ahead of me in line and turned around to see if anyone else was close by.

  Someone was. Dante Lestes.

  Dante was the brother of a local boutique owner. He had pale skin, dark brown eyes, juicy red lips, and tattoos of flames from his wrists to his elbows. He smelled like cinnamon and wore black leather like he’d been born in it.

  The grocery store checkout line got about ten degrees warmer.

  Today, Dante wore a green bandana knotted over his head babushka-style. The last time I’d seen him, his hair had been cut into a buzz that made him look more like a security guard. He’d let it grow out since then. Black hair stuck out the back of the bandana. His face had a couple of days’ beard growth. The motorcycle helmet that dangled from his wrist held a bottle of transmission fluid and a couple of canisters of film.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked.

  “Ms. Kidd? Who are you talking to?” the detective asked.

  “Hold, please,” I said into the phone, and then held it against my chest so the detective couldn’t eavesdrop. “Maybe you should go in front of me too.”

  He raised his eyebrows but stepped past me and put his stuff on the conveyor belt.

  “Hello, Detective?” I dropped my voice. “Sorry about that. I’m here.”

  “At the grocery store.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does this have anything to do with my investigation?”

  “The grocery store? No, I was out of cat food.”

  “Does the evidence have anything to do with my investigation?”

  “We don’t know if it’s evidence.”

  There was a deep inhale on the other end of the phone, followed by an exhale of the same force.

  Dante held out a hundred-dollar bill to pay for his purchases. I suspected by the way he ignored the cashier’s subtle attempts to flirt with him that he was listening to my conversation.

  “Ms. Kidd, what was it that you called me about?” the detective asked.

  “A hat.”
<
br />   “Where did you get this hat?”

  “The museum.”

  “Where in the museum?”

  “The admissions office.”

  “When?”

  “The night Dirk Engle was—” I looked at Dante. He had paid for his film and transmission fluid and made no secret of the fact that he was still watching me. The checkout girl scanned my three cartons of ice cream. I handed her a twenty and turned my back on Dante. There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.

  “Are you still there?” I asked tentatively.

  “Ms. Kidd, I think it’s safe to call it evidence.”

  “Okay. I thought it was better to leave that up to you.”

  “You say you have it at your house? Same address that we have on file?”

  As much as I didn’t like knowing my address was on file with the police department, now didn’t seem to be the time to quibble. “Same address,” I confirmed.

  “I’ll send a car over,” Loncar said.

  I carried my bag filled with ice cream and cat food out of the store.

  Dante leaned against my car. He scanned my outfit as I approached and then looked at my face. “Interesting conversation,” he said.

  “That was my uncle,” I lied. “He’s going to help me rearrange my garage.”

  “Good luck with that,” he whispered in my ear, and then left.

  I watched the back of his black leather jacket, decorated with orange and red flames like his tattoos, as he walked toward the motorcycle at the far end of the parking lot.

  I piled the bags into the trunk and slammed it shut. Dante pulled on his helmet and straddled his bike.

  Was it coincidence that Dante was shopping at the same grocery store as I was at that exact time? Or was it a sign, like the falling track lighting and the forest-green fedora with the knife through it? Was the universe sending me a message?