Diane Vallere - Style & Error 03 - The Brim Reaper

by Diane Vallere

  “Kidd, I know I asked you not to get involved. All things considered—”

  “All things considered, Eddie helped me out when I had similar problems last year. Put yourself in my shoes, Nick.”

  “I am. Eddie’s my friend too. But this isn’t about work, and it isn’t about my showroom. It’s about you. I want to protect you.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m not always going to be your boss, Kidd, and when that day comes, I want you to still be in one piece.”

  The low flame that I’d felt earlier flickered inside me again. I didn’t look at Nick because I was afraid of what I’d read in his expression. With my heart racing, I took his hand again.

  He turned his hand over and entwined his fingers with mine. The palm of his hand felt softer than I expected. He rubbed his thumb back and forth over my life line, my love line, and whatever other lines were etched into my flesh. The longer we sat there, the faster my pulse raced. I knew it would be hard working for Nick, but I didn’t know it would be this hard, this soon. I knew what I had to do and what I had to say.

  “I made a mistake,” I said, my voice husky. I was willing to go out on that limb, to tell him that I should never have accepted this job. “I should have known better, but I didn’t, and now things are complicated …” My voice trailed off as he lifted my hand and pressed fingers to his soft lips.

  “Kidd, don’t apologize. It’s not too late.” His eyes had deepened to a dark brown that threatened to absorb me.

  I leaned my head back against the booth, my low ponytail pressing into the cushion. “But how do we—what do we—what’s next?” I asked.

  “Tell Eddie you’re done. I’ll come up with something.”

  “What does Eddie have to do with us?” I asked, with slow realization that maybe we weren’t talking about the same thing. Clarity pierced the fog of attraction that had clouded my mind only moments ago. “What are you talking about?”

  “The homicide investigation. I’m glad you can see what a mistake it was to get involved, but it’s for the best.”

  I pulled my hand away. “I wasn’t talking about the homicide investigation.”

  “What were you talking about?

  My temperature rose for completely different reasons than it had only moments before. “That’s what you got from this conversation? That I’m going to quit helping Eddie?”

  “You said you should have known better.”

  “About working for you. I should have trusted my instincts all the times you offered to give me a job to float me while I looked for something more suitable.”

  “Your instincts told you to say no to working for me but yes to getting mixed up in a murder investigation? I’m telling you I’ll help you get out. What do your instincts say about that?”

  “Nick, I don’t want out. I want the person who killed Dirk Engle to get caught.”

  “The police are working on that.”

  “But they don’t know any more than we do. They don’t know about the collectors, they don’t know about Cat’s hat-jacking, they don’t know about—”

  “Kidd, for someone who says she’s been turning everything over to the police, you sure have a lot of information in your back pocket.”

  “I don’t need a lecture, Nick.”

  He leaned back and ran his hand over his hair. “I think it’s time we went back to the showroom.”

  “No, Nick, I think maybe I’m done for the day.” I stormed out of the diner.

  I drove home at breakneck speed. I tried to call Eddie but there was no answer. I pulled into my driveway and ran to the front door. “Eddie? Eddie!” I yelled.

  I tossed my handbag onto the side table by the door like I always did, only it dropped to the floor. The table was missing. I took a couple of steps inside and tripped over a chair.

  Everything had been moved, everything had been cleaned. It was as if I’d been ransacked by the Merry Maids, who’d left the place better looking than when they arrived.

  “Eddie! Are you here?” I shouted though the front door, my new greeting replacing the “Honey, I’m home” routine from yesterday. He didn’t answer. I looked for a note of explanation as to where he might be or skid marks on my carpet indicating that he’d been dragged out against his will, but there was nothing. The house was clean once again, so he’d been there at least long enough to tidy up after last night. It looked nice. Homey. He’d even put a mason jar of flowers on the kitchen table. I didn’t know where the flowers had come from. Maybe the next-door neighbor.

  Housekeeping efforts notwithstanding, his absence was unsettling. I circled around with nervous energy, not able to sit and relax. Every time a car turned on to my street I hopped to the windows, hoping it was Eddie. Between the drive-bys I checked the answering machine and my cell phone, hoping I’d somehow missed a message. No such luck.

  There was nothing left for me to do but dole out some ice cream and wait. I pulled the rocky road out of the freezer and retrieved a clean bowl from the dishwasher. When I opened the ice cream container, I found a piece of paper curled up inside. Was going stir crazy. Had to get out. No worries, am incognito.

  He was mocking me. He was mocking my cooking abilities. He was mocking my predictable ice cream cravings.

  Mental note: find a way to indicate that I’m not domestically incompetent.

  Mental note #2: have some ice cream first.

  I sat at the kitchen table and massaged my temples while thinking back over the day. I’d gotten distracted by Dante and Cat, by Nick and Tradava. But before all of that I’d met with Dr. Daum. What had he said? Dirk Engle was dead because of the exhibit.

  But the exhibit was still going to open. That meant the murderer wouldn’t stop now.

  But there was a flaw to Dr. Daum’s logic. If someone was after Dirk Engle, it would have been easy to find him at his store. Why come after him at the museum? The fact that he was found at the museum was curious. As in not good. As in his death had less to do with his own business and more to do with the missing hats. And that meant Eddie was in trouble, especially since he’d been the one to find the body and remove one of those hats from the museum. Even though I’d made sure it had been turned over to the police, chances were the murderer didn’t know that.

  I grabbed a pen and scribbled notes across a fresh sheet of paper.

  Dirk Engle: Victim. Milo Delaney Business Manager. Hat store owner

  Christian Jhanes: I-FAD chairman. Museum director.

  Hedy London: Film star. Costume collector. Hat designer.

  Then I thought about Dr. Daum’s casual mention of Milo Delaney and how he’d changed the subject after introducing it to our conversation. I remembered how angry Milo had gotten when asked about Hedy London. I wrote Milo Delaney again. It seemed as though he was the piece that sat squarely in the middle of the puzzle. Something was missing though.

  I turned to my computer and typed millinery exhibit, Ribbon, PA, curator into Google. It was on page 3 that I found an article in the Ribbon Times online edition. “Local Boutique Owner to Consult on Hollywood Exhibit.”

  I was surprised. “Local” was a generous description of the thirty miles between the cities of Philadelphia and Ribbon, but calling Dirk Engle a local boy gave the article a hometown spin. I clicked the link and started to read.

  Turns out, “local” wasn’t a generous description after all.

  The picture featured in the article about the exhibit was not of Dirk Engle. This article was about Vera from Over Your Head.

  18

  “Ace” reporter Carl Collins seemed to have taken special interest in the Hedy London exhibit. I read the article.

  Friends of the Ribbon Museum of Art were notified by private newsletter of an upcoming exhibit at the museum. The unnamed exhibit was described as “cinematic treasures on loan from a high profile collector,” and is to be funded by local retailer Tradava. Vera Sarlow, owner of the hat shop Over Your Head, was mentioned as a consultan
t, indicating that the exhibit features hats [editor note: Sarlow could not be reached to verify details about the exhibit]. Additional names mentioned in collaboration with the exhibit were Christian Jhanes, former I-FAD faculty member, and Thad Thomas, assistant director of the Ribbon Museum of Art. Dr. Daum, recently retired director of the Ribbon Museum of Art, will stay on in a consulting position per a unanimous vote by the board of directors. The exhibit is expected to open as part of the museum’s fall calendar.

  I wished I had that sheet of names I’d printed from Christian’s computer, but, thanks to Thad, I didn’t. I typed “Thad Thomas” into Google and searched. There were more than 5 million hits, seventeen alone on LinkedIn. I narrowed my search: “Thad Thomas director.” That filtered the hits down to 4.9 million. I continued adding words: “assistant,” “museum,” and “Ribbon.” By the time I layered in “Frowick Gallery,” I was down to one.

  It was a mention of his post as assistant director of the museum. I clicked on the link and found myself staring at a thumbnail image of Thad next to Christian Jhanes. Below the picture was the caption Assistant Director and Former Chair of Fashion Marketing. I returned to Google. There were no other hits for Thad Thomas. It was as though he’d appeared out of thin air.

  I climbed the stairs and took a long bubble bath, during which I stared at the ceiling. After climbing out and drying off, I dressed in a cashmere hoodie and a pair of black leggings and flopped on the bed, no closer to answers.

  Logan hopped up next to me, settled in next to my thigh, and purred. I’d been neglecting him.

  “What do you think is going on here?” I asked.

  He looked at me with wide amber eyes and meowed.

  “Am I missing something?”

  I heard a faint sound from downstairs. Logan stood up and jumped off the bed, crouched low, his tail getting fat. He started toward the door. I followed him down the stairs. When I reached the bottom step, I froze. There was a man in my living room.

  Afternoon sunlight bounced off his shiny, bald head. His arms held a large bag stuffed with objects.

  I was being burglarized.

  A shiver ran down my spine as I wondered if he had heard the bathwater running upstairs or was even aware that I was in the house.

  Logan rubbed against my ankles and I stiffened, hoping our movement hadn’t alerted the intruder to our presence.

  I reached for a pillow from the sofa and eased it out of its case. I wrapped each end around a wrist and slowly, quietly, crept behind the intruder. He bent down. I threw the pillowcase over his head and pulled the cotton tight.

  “Don’t move!”

  I kneed the back of his legs. He dropped the bag and lost his balance. He hit the floor. I lost my balance and fell into the bag he’d dropped. Shoe boxes spilled out of the top.

  “Dude, get off me!”

  He pulled the pillowcase off his head and looked around.

  “Eddie? Why are you creeping around my living room?”

  “I couldn’t stand sitting around here anymore. I had to get out.”

  I repositioned myself so the corners of the shoeboxes weren’t digging into my ribs.

  He rubbed a hand against his shaved head. “I told you I was incognito. The tapes from the museum showed a guy with floppy blond hair. It was easier than messing around with Ms. Clairol.”

  I leaned back against the sofa and took a longer look at him, noting the contrast between the smooth head and the three days’ growth of beard. “It works on you.” I scanned the piles of bags and boxes on the floor. “What’s all this?”

  “I went shopping.”

  “You bought shoes?”

  “I bought Vans.” One by one he opened the boxes and pulled out sneakers decorated with wild prints: checkered, plaid, camouflage, floral. “Eighteen pairs. I couldn’t stop. I’ve never bought eighteen pair of anything at one time before, and that counts boxers that are packaged in threes.”

  I stood up, pulled him from the floor, and hugged him.

  “Dude,” he said, clearly taken aback.

  “Sit down. There are a couple of things you need to know.”

  I told him about Milo Delaney, Christian’s telephone conversation, the list of collectors, and Vera’s involvement with the exhibit. It has been a very busy day and it hadn’t even gotten dark yet.

  He let me speak, uninterrupted except for the occasional sigh, grunt, and WTF. Only he didn’t say the letters W-T-F. The Lord’s name got invoked a couple of times. I finished by telling him about Cat being mugged.

  “Was she hurt?”

  “No. But she’s shaken up. Like, a lot.”

  He pulled his knees up to his chest and curled his arms around them, like he was trying to shrink himself down into the size of a bowling ball. He started to rock back and forth against the white crocheted afghan that I left on the back of the sofa. I don’t think he knew he was doing it.

  “It all goes back to the exhibit,” he said.

  “How is that possible? Cat said she bought that hat years ago. She’d been saving it for a special occasion, and the first time she wore it she got mugged. Nobody even knew she had it, except for her boss, who apparently is a Hedy London collector, and whoever sold it to her.”

  “Do you know where she bought it?” Eddie asked.

  “She said it was through back channels. I don’t think they’re listed in the phone book.”

  “So now she’s a Cat without a hat.”

  “I don’t think she took out an ad in the paper to tell people she was going to debut it. Who could have possibly known what it was? It seems like a totally random act of violence.”

  “I have to talk to her. I have to find out what she knows.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk about it.” I switched gears. “What do you know about Milo Delaney, the hat designer?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “He’s the one producing Hedy London’s collection.”

  He thought for a second and scratched the side of his head. “Nobody said anything about him. To be honest, nobody’s told me much about the whole history of this thing.”

  “How were you approached when it came to this exhibit?”

  “Two weeks ago the regional director of visual merchandising called me down to his office. He congratulated me again on winning the contest and said the museum wanted me to work on this exhibit. I admitted I was surprised. When I won, I thought there would be a little fanfare when it came to the exhibit, but the more time that passed, the more I thought it was one of those never-gonna-happen things.”

  “You said something about a promotion.”

  “Yes. He said if I could pull it off, I’d get a bump to director of visual merchandising. Nicer title, better pay.”

  “Not that you don’t deserve it, but it seems like they really sweetened the pot on top of the whole contest win. I mean, is that normal? Win a contest, get a great opportunity as your prize, and then get a raise and promotion too?”

  Eddie pulled the white afghan around his shoulders like it was a superhero cape and walked into the kitchen. I followed him and we sat at the table.

  “When I told you about the promotion, I wanted to impress you. I didn’t tell you the other part.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Or less. If I don’t pull this thing off, I’m out of a job.”

  “I think it’s time someone rewrote Tradava’s employee-relations handbook,” I said.

  Eddie smiled, but it seemed as though the effort was almost more than he could manage.

  “Tell me exactly what you remember from the day you were given this assignment.”

  “My boss told me a personality conflict at the museum was holding up progress on the exhibit. Tradava had a lot of money invested in the collection, and they’d been counting on something big from the museum to give them national press.”

  “So before you were onboard, it was just Dirk Engle. Right?”

  “Right.” Eddie picked at a loose thread on the afg
han.

  “And now he’s dead.”

  “Right.”

  “Tonight I found out that before Dirk Engle, Vera was involved.”

  “Vera from Over Your Head?” he asked with surprise.

  “One and the same. And Christian wants you to keep working on the exhibit, even though there was a murder there.”

  He lowered his head to the table and rested his forehead on the placemat for a few seconds. When he lifted his head, the imprint of a grid remained on his skin. He burped and set his head back on the placemat.

  I didn’t know if it was because I was still hopped up from finding Eddie in my living room or because I felt helpless not doing anything, but I had to get out of there.

  I pulled on a pair of pink wrestling sneakers and grabbed Eddie’s keys. “Is Thad expecting you to be at the museum tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Two Hedy London movies came from Netflix today. Watch them. I’m taking your car.”

  The sun descended as I drove. Within the hour, it would be dark. Instead of pulling into the parking lot, I parked Eddie’s Bug on a residential side street about a half a mile from the museum and walked.

  I let myself in with the keys Dr. Daum had given me to give Eddie. A single light glowed from behind the counter by the gift outpost, casting weird shadows from the object d’arts and merchandising trinkets. I passed the gift shop and went down the stairs that led to Christian’s office. A beam of light ran between the bottom of it and the floor. I tiptoed across the marble, quiet thanks to my rubber soles, and pressed my back up against the wall, listening for signs of conversation.

  When I heard nothing, I put my hand on the knob and pulled the door open.

  Christian stood by a fax machine that was spitting out paper. His back was to me. I slipped into the office, dropped to all fours, and crawled past his desk to behind the same metal audio-visual cart I’d hidden behind yesterday.

  Christian seemed satisfied with the information that came off the machine. He ran his finger through his golden-brown hair, the same way he had the day we’d first met, and then turned to the desk and picked up the receiver.