Diane Vallere - Style & Error 03 - The Brim Reaper

by Diane Vallere

  “Sure, in there.” Milo gestured with his coffee cup.

  The black lab lifted his head off the pillow and watched me cross the showroom floor. I passed shelves of architecture tomes and design manifestos along the back wall. A skylight from above flooded the showroom—which was more like a studio apartment in my humble estimation—with light.

  A round mirror over the sink did little more than confirm my suspicions about my appearance. I dusted some powder on my nose and dabbed on a coat of lipstick, shrugged out of my blazer, and rejoined the two designers.

  “This is Samantha,” Nick said. “It was her idea for us to come.”

  “I thought we could see the Hedy London samples,” I added.

  The designer stared at me. “I thought you wanted to see my collection.”

  That’s when I noticed the lit shelving opposite the room. Hat stands similar in design to the green fixtures in the window of Vera Sarlow’s store, but in their natural wood color, held exquisite bits of feather and fluff that would have made a woman drool back in the fifties.

  I approached a forest green fedora like the hat Eddie and I had found next to Dirk Engle’s body. “This is,” I paused, searching for the right word.

  “Fantastic, right?”

  “Actually, ‘familiar’ is the word I was looking for. I saw this hat two nights ago.”

  Milo glared at me. “Nobody has seen this collection.” He abruptly stopped speaking. He adjusted the hat that I’d touched as if I’d left it displayed at the wrong angle. The phone rang in the background, but he made no move to answer it.

  “Is that one of the Hedy London hats?”

  “No. It’s an original.”

  Nick stepped behind Milo and put his hand up to his throat, signaling me to cut off my line of questions. I backpedaled and went for complimentary. “I do like the nostalgic element to your designs. They remind me of the way people dressed in old movies.”

  “I’m not a copier, I’m a designer. I design.” Milo said bitterly while the phone continued to ring. “My ideas are organic.”

  Clearly this was not going well. I changed subjects. “Do you handle your own marketing and publicity?”

  “I have a team of experts hidden in the back room. You hear the phone ringing off the hook. What do you think?”

  “I didn’t mean …” I tried to figure out what I’d said to trigger his animosity. “You’re a successful designer, consistently getting awards for your contributions to the industry. I’m sorry,” I said, interrupting myself. “Do you need to answer that phone?”

  Milo slammed his coffee down on the table and crossed the room to the phone. He glanced at the display, picked up the receiver, and turned his back to us. I strained to hear what he said, but he hung up before I had a chance. He lifted the receiver again, hit a combination of four numbers, and set the receiver back on the base.

  “What were you saying?” he asked me.

  “I’ve read about you in more than one fashion periodical. It struck me as odd that you didn’t have help. At least a business manager. I’m impressed that you can handle all the aspects of your business by yourself. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “If you want to talk hats and see my samples, you’ll need to book another appointment. As far as my business manager goes, if I were you, I’d forget that question was ever asked.” He stood up and left the room.

  I looked at Nick. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “Misplaced anger. Considering the circumstances, I can’t say I’m all that surprised.”

  “What circumstances?”

  “You don’t know?” He looked surprised for a moment and then quickly recovered. “Nothing, really. He’s had a turn of bad luck, that’s all. Let’s go.”

  I wanted to press Nick about what he’d meant, but he was being evasive for a reason. I followed him out the door and down the stairs, relying heavily on the banister for support. He was waiting for me out front.

  “See you back at the showroom?” Nick asked.

  “No. I’m going back to the showroom. You’re going to get us something to eat.”

  “It’s nine forty-five.”

  “I feel guilty for not eating your sandwich yesterday.”

  Nick looked at me like I was crazy. I smoothed my necktie and looked up at him from under heavily mascaraed eyelashes.

  “You’ll be impressed by how much I’ll have done by the time you get there. I promise.”

  He shook his head. “Bagels and cream cheese? Will that work for you?”

  Considering the brown rice and chicken option Eddie had offered me yesterday, I thought it was darn near perfect. “Works for me.”

  I waited until Nick got into his car and started the engine before I hopped in mine and peeled out. Nick knew something I didn’t, but not for long. I ran a couple of yellow lights and possibly one red. After unlocking the showroom and dumping my handbag on the floor, I ran to his desk and booted his PC. When the search engine came up, I typed “Milo Delaney business manager.”

  No wonder Nick didn’t tell me what he knew. Milo’s former business manager was the dead man, Dirk Engle.

  15

  By the time Nick walked into the showroom, I’d scanned in all of his inspiration photos and images and had mocked up four separate boards for his approval.

  He set a cup of coffee and a brown paper bag in front of me. “Kidd, we need to talk.”

  I could tell by the look on Nick’s face that something had changed. Gone was any trace of the attraction I’d seen on Saturday night and it hadn’t been replaced by appreciation for my efficiency.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” he asked.

  “About?” I adjusted my necktie and focused on the desk calendar in front of him.

  “Did you honestly think I wouldn’t find out that you’re digging into Dirk Engle’s murder while you’re on the clock?”

  “Nick, it’s not what you think.”

  “So you haven’t been to the museum since the murder?”

  “How did you find out?”

  “After the way you interrogated Milo Delaney, I had a hunch. You just confirmed it.”

  I sat back in my chair and took a breath. Our voices had been steadily rising, and while we were very lucky that we were in the privacy of Nick’s showroom and not a public arena, it did seem best not to go on shouting about things like dead bodies.

  “I did the right thing, Nick. I called the cops from the museum. I talked to Detective Loncar that night. And when I found out Eddie had taken a hat from the crime scene, I arranged for Loncar to pick it up my house. Inviting the detective to my house? That is so far from digging into Dirk Engle’s murder that it’s completely unlike anything I would have done under former circumstances.”

  “That doesn’t make this any better, Kidd.”

  “I think it makes it a lot better. I’ve been a normal upstanding citizen since we found Dirk Engle’s body.”

  “You wanted to meet with Milo after you found the body. Why is that? I know you. You’re trying to get involved.”

  “No, I’m not. You’re the one who set up the meeting. And you knew—you knew!—Dirk Engle was Milo’s business manger. You’re more guilty in this particular scenario than I am. I was an innocent victim of timing. I only went because I’m working for you.”

  “I didn’t tell you Dirk Engle was Milo’s business manager.”

  “Yes, you did. You said you weren’t surprised, all things considered.”

  Nick’s face went red. “Is that why you wanted me to get you food? You wanted to find out what I meant. You could have asked, Kidd. I would feel a lot better about all this if you had just asked what I meant. But you didn’t. You came back here—raced back here is more like it, because I saw how you blew through two red lights on Penn Avenue—because you wanted to do some research without my knowing.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I paused and clenched my jaw so hard I felt it in the filling in my
back left molar. “It was one red light and it was on Perkiomen Avenue, not Penn Avenue.”

  “I think what bothers me the most is that you lied to me. You said you wouldn’t get involved and you did.”

  Nick sat back in his chair and put his hands on the armrests. He shook his head slowly. His temples pulsed as he clenched and re-clenched his teeth, and I wondered how many fillings he had and if he felt it too. I suspected he was thinking through what I’d said, checking to see if I was really and truly an innocent bystander or if I’d taken advantage of circumstances to ingratiate myself into an investigation.

  “Call Detective Loncar. You’re friends with him, right? Ask him if I’ve been a help or a hindrance. Go ahead. Call him.”

  “I’m not going to call the detective to check up on you.”

  “Well, you could. He’d back me up.”

  Nick shot me a look that suggested now was not the time to suggest the detective would be on my side of this particular argument.

  “Are we done here?”

  “Darn near close. Stay out of it, Kidd. Please. I can’t handle—”

  “You can’t handle what?” Shock hit my face like a cold rag. “You’re worried about your reputation. You don’t want me to get involved because I’m working for you. It has nothing to do with Eddie and nothing to do with me. Right?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I grabbed my bag and stood up. “I have to get to the printer to pick up your line sheets,” I said and stormed out.

  I have this thing about approval. It comes from growing up as the kid in the family. My older sister had managed to out-do me my whole life: SAT scores, colleges, marriage, family. She’d become the adult she was intended to become, and somehow I’d continued to be The Kid. Vying for attention and positive feedback had gotten me a lucrative career in fashion. It had severed those close sisterly ties that other families had too, because I’d eventually tired of the feeling that I’d always be the little sister, trying to catch up. My attempts to change my life, to rediscover my roots and get on a different path had changed the direction of my future. But my need for approval remained. Maybe that’s why I drove to the museum in search of my mentor, Dr. Daum.

  As the younger of two sisters, nicknamed “the kid” by my parents and “the kid Kidd” by people who considered that somewhat funny, I’d grown up with a complex that I’d never be taken seriously as an adult. Dr. Daum changed that. He’d been the director of the Ribbon Museum of Art for most of my lifetime, and from the first day we’d met, he treated me as an equal.

  We’d formed an unlikely friendship during the months I’d volunteered at the museum on my summers away from school, him coming to me to share news of a new acquisition or a particularly frustrating meeting with board members who didn’t see eye to eye with his outlook. I’d never questioned why he’d befriended me because I feared just asking would undermine our relationship.

  I made a stop off at the copy store, picked up the line sheets for Nick, and got back in the car. In fewer than fifteen minutes I was within a mile of the museum. I hadn’t figured out where I was going to park or what I was going to do once I got there, but I needed space from Nick and knew Thad was up to something. I’d finally convinced Eddie that it wasn’t a good idea to do what Thad wanted. Not until we knew more.

  I circled through the parking lot, taking note of the cars in the lot: white SUV, burgundy Jaguar, and two unattended police cars. A man in a wrinkled suit and straw hat walked around the front of the museum, a camera around his neck. I drove through the lot to the front of the museum and looked around for him. He stood by the stream in front of the museum, tossing pieces of bread to a flock of ducks. I drove past him, circled back around the museum, and parked in front of a large white brick house. I wrote “rumpled suit ducks” in the notebook, tucked the pen and the notebook into my denim messenger bag, slung the bag across my chest, and headed to the museum on foot.

  The building was quiet. My memories of the museum included field trips in elementary school, visits during summer break in high school and college, and one fateful situation about a year ago when I’d been shut out of an industry party and ended up in a tree out back. Today I might as well have been a patron, if only the museum was open this week.

  “Samantha? My dear, what are you doing here on a glorious Monday morning?” a familiar voice behind me asked. I turned and faced the one person I trusted to talk to about the museum, Dr. Daum.

  “Dr. Daum, what can you tell me about the hat exhibit?” I asked as we matched strides across the freshly cut grass behind the museum.

  “Ah, the exhibit. Christian’s masterpiece. I wonder, I’ve wondered all along what would happen if we tried an exhibit on that scale, what it would do to our small town. We invited trouble into our backyard and now we’ve been caught unprepared for such trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The kind of trouble that comes from too many secrets. Christian wanted to keep things under wraps, and the executives at Tradava are eager to hear, to see what he has planned. There have been mishaps, theft, and now murder. The wrong type of press, if you ask me. He might believe there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but I disagree.”

  “Mishaps—like when the light fixture fell?”

  “That was the most recent, yes, but I’m afraid that was my fault. Your friend Eddie had asked if we could hide the normal lighting fixtures for the exhibit. He said he had an idea. I spoke to the engineer about it but failed to mention to anyone else that the fixtures were being removed. At least the gallery was empty when it fell.”

  “The gallery wasn’t empty. I was in there with Eddie. The fixture almost fell on me. He saw it fall and knocked me out of the way.”

  Dr. Daum’s eyes closed and he took a deep breath that puffed out the narrow span of his chest. He exhaled and opened his eyes. “Samantha, I’m sorry for my negligence. Were you hurt?”

  “No, well, a couple of bruises in places nobody’s going to see since it’s not bathing suit weather.”

  “What were you doing there? The only person who should have been there at the time was Dirk Engle. Where was he?”

  “You mean Dirk and Eddie, right? Because Eddie’s doing the setup for the exhibit. Dirk had an argument with someone and stormed out. Eddie and I were the only two people working in the exhibit space that night.” I paused.

  An awkward silence grew between us as I remembered how we’d found Dirk Engle’s body and how we had realized that all along we had not been alone. New questions pooled in my head.

  I turned around and glanced at the cop cars in the parking lot. “Do the police know about … why …?” I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge the details. “Is that why they’re here?”

  “The police? I suppose they have some theories. They’ve been involved for some time.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This exhibit is worth quite a bit of money. The insurance on Hedy London’s hats is around several million dollars. We advised the police of the risks of such an exhibit. The only people who knew about the insurance were Christian, Dirk, and me. Dirk went behind Christian’s back and had the hats sent to his store. I’m not sure anybody knows his true motivation—gaining favor with his clients by giving them first view or copying the designs for his own inventory—but it seemed as though he were taking advantage of the situation.”

  “If Christian knew Dirk was taking advantage of the situation, why didn’t he fire him? Would that be a bigger risk to the exhibit than keeping him on board?”

  “Christian confronted Dirk, who denied any such allegations. Your friend Eddie was called in to help run interference between Dirk and Christian. I’m quite certain Dirk should have been fired. It was the right thing to do. I never expected him to pull a stunt like that, but a person without integrity has no right to be involved in the business of art, of preservation, or of style.”

  “But the day I came to the museum to help Eddie, Dirk was there. He had a
fight with someone. I think it was Thad or Christian.”

  “Christian was waiting for board approval to terminate Dirk’s involvement with the exhibit. The board was dragging their feet, afraid of poor publicity. Dirk Engle fought with a lot of people about this exhibit. I think the only person he agreed with was the hat designer responsible for the samples.”

  “Milo Delaney.”

  Dr. Daum paused for a moment. “But this is not our business, Samantha. The police will investigate his murder and no doubt conclude that he was involved with some unsavory characters. We’re all in a much better place without his sort, but it’s a shame that in the middle of all of this, the priceless hats have gone missing.” He reached into the pocket of his blazer and pulled out a set of keys. “I understand your friend Eddie was asked to return this set of keys. That was an oversight. Please give them back to him and apologize on behalf of the museum. His mission has been railroaded by unfortunate events, but he is to have twenty-four-hour access to the Frowick Gallery so he can continue working.”

  I took the set of keys. “Thad’s the one who demanded the keys back. What about him? Do you think he had anything to do with Dirk’s murder?”

  Dr. Daum’s face clouded. He stood straight up and looked over my head and then back at me. “My dear, do you have any reason to suspect him?”

  I shifted my eyes to Dr. Daum’s left while I thought back over that first day, when Thad had closed the door to the admissions office hours before Eddie and I found Dirk’s body, and to last night when he’d caught me coming out of Christian’s office. Despite his claims to be helping Eddie, he hadn’t appeared happy to find me. What was the reason for his animosity?

  The police must have questioned him. I’d all but told them to. And Dr. Daum was right—without anything concrete, I had no business going around casting suspicion on anybody, regardless of their disposition.

  “No, I guess I don’t have any reason to suspect him.”

  “Then I’d suggest you worry less about Thad and more about yourself.”

  “Why me?”

  “Perhaps that man with the camera can tell you more than I can.” Dr. Daum pointed over my shoulder to the parking lot, where a rather large telephoto lens was pointed in our direction.