Diane Vallere - Style & Error 03 - The Brim Reaper

by Diane Vallere

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d left for the night. If you’d still like to talk, I’m available.” There was a pause, and then he said, “I’ll be waiting.” He hung up and scanned the surface of his desk, lifting a couple of pages and tucking them into his top left desk drawer.

  I shifted my weight, wondering who he’d called. I was disappointed when Rebecca peeked around the door into Christian’s office. Today her ringlets had been brushed out into soft, feminine waves. She smelled like patchouli, a scent I could identify because it had been infused into every pressing of Madonna’s Like A Virgin album.

  “Come in,” Christian called, shuffling through papers that I’d shuffled through earlier that day. He waved toward the chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”

  She perched on the edge of the chair that faced him. Her posture was stiff, like she was balancing a book on her head. Her hands were folded in her lap like an obedient child.

  “What did you want to see me about?” he asked.

  “I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help with the exhibit,” she said in a soft voice.

  He looked at her across the desk. From where I was, I had a sliver of vision between the bottom of the TV monitor and the top of the VCR/DVD player. I wasn’t sure whether I should concentrate on Christian’s expression or Rebecca’s, but knew if I kept moving my head like I was watching Wimbledon, there was a pretty good chance I’d be discovered.

  “Actually, I do have a project for you,” he said. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a piece of paper. “These are the top millinery collectors in the area. They must be contacted about the upcoming exhibit. A few might have concerns that we’re going to cancel, and they need to be reassured that we’re not. They represent a great deal of exposure and a great opportunity for the museum to raise funds. Can you do that for me?”

  I peeked at Rebecca. She leaned forward, and her black silk blouse exposed a lace trimmed bra and cleavage created by padding. Christian’s eyes flicked down to her chest for a split second, and then he continued speaking.

  “They each need to be told only the most salacious pieces of information about the hats that we’ll be displaying. Their interest needs to be piqued to maximize the wow factor. Tell them about the murder, if you think it will heighten the drama.”

  “Christian, is that a good idea? Does the detective want you to talk about it with these people?”

  The director sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “What happened can’t be helped. In light of it, we have a unique opportunity to raise the stakes and gain national coverage. It is better to seize this moment than to avoid it because of an unfortunate event. I hardly think I need to consult with detectives on how to raise publicity. Can I count on you?”

  She cocked her head to one side and her curls fell over her shoulder. “Of course, Dr.—Christian.”

  “Thank you, Rebecca.”

  She looked at the piece of paper like it was a love note, folded it into a small square, and stood up. She watched him for a few seconds more before standing.

  I slouched lower, scared that she’d see me.

  After a few seconds of silence, Christian spoke. “Is there anything else you wanted to discuss?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said. I imagined her tucking her hair behind her ears, if only because that’s what she’d done that first day that Christian had confronted her by the gift shop.

  “Then please close the door behind you. I’m going to finish up with some paperwork before I leave.”

  “Of course.” Her chunky loafers made clunking noises against the concrete floor. The door opened and then swung shut.

  I was trapped.

  19

  I’d taken a chance slipping in while Christian’s back was turned, but there was no way I could get the door open and get out without him noticing. I was either going to spend the night in his office, or I was going to have to figure out a way to get him to leave.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and put it on mute, and then pressed *67 followed by the museum phone number. When the shrill ring tore through the silence of the office, I waited. Christian answered on the first ring.

  “Christian Jhanes,” he said.

  I’d forgotten that his voice would come through my phone! I pressed the phone between my palms to muffle the sound. He said hello a few times and hung up.

  I muted my phone and called him again. The phone rang four times before he answered. Again with the hellos, again with the hang up—this time harder than before. It was working.

  The fifth time, he let the phone ring twenty-six times before answering.

  The sixth, he got up from his desk and stormed out of the office.

  As soon as he was gone, I stood up and followed him. The ringing phone jangled behind me. I ducked out of the office and ran up the concrete stairs to the gallery space. I snatched two empty boxes and headed back to the stairs, getting halfway down when Rebecca saw me.

  “I didn’t know you were here,” she said nervously.

  “Eddie and I are finishing up some last minute things. I’ve been so deep in research that I lost track of time.” I looked around. “Have you seen Thad?”

  “Thad’s here too?” She looked over one shoulder and then the other. “I thought Christian and I were alone.” She blushed.

  “Christian’s here? Are you sure?” I asked, trying out my clueless routine. “It’s been so quiet I thought I was the only one here.”

  “He’s here, or he was. Maybe he left. I—I thought he’d say goodbye.” She looked behind her for Christian, but no one was there. I remembered what it was like to work hard to impress the new boss, and how it felt to go unappreciated. I put my hand on Rebecca’s forearm.

  “Rebecca, if I were you, I wouldn’t get too attached to Christian. I don’t think he’s going to stick around for long after this exhibit is over.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. He’s so passionate about the future of the museum. After this exhibit is over, just think what he’ll do next.” Her eyes grew wide and she blinked deliberately, her curled lashes batting up and down like a little girl afraid of the dark. “I don’t think he’ll leave us for a long time.”

  “Maybe I’m wrong,” I said. “It’s been known to happen.” I carried the empty boxes past the gift shop as she turned off the light behind the counter and pulled a cloth cover onto the register.

  “Do you want me to throw those boxes away for you? I’m on my way out with the trash from the store.”

  “That’s your job?”

  “We take turns. Today’s my day. It’s not a big deal, we just line up the plastic bags behind the building. The trash man picks them up every Tuesday morning before we open.”

  “Thanks.” I handed the boxes to her and headed back up the stairs, happy that she’d offered. She’d just given me my next idea.

  I spent the next two hours cleaning up the exhibit space. From the lack of sound in the rest of the building, I figured I really was alone now. When Thad hadn’t shown by nine thirty, I called it quits. I carried a black plastic garbage bag outside and set it next to the row Rebecca had already left. I untied the knot on the top of one of the bags but couldn’t see the contents. Same with the next, though the scent of coffee was present. In the dark, the exterior of the museum was horror-movie creepy. I moved the row of garbage bags—eight in all—to the edge of the property line. I jogged to Eddie’s car and moved it to the row of trash bags and stuffed them into the backseat. The last bag I stuffed inside was the one I’d brought out myself, filled with Eddie’s sketches, schematics, and notes.

  A light came on in the gardening shed in front of me. I crouched beside the trash bags and watched. Was that Thad? He had expected Eddie to meet him tonight, but I’d seen no sign of him so far. Had it been a mistake to come here alone? A figure came out of the shed. He had on a dark jumpsuit and wore a hat pulled down far over his head. He turned off the light and ran toward the parking lot. I stood up
to see where he went but lost track of him in the darkness.

  My heart thumped like a bass drum keeping time for a marching band. I had a bad feeling about what I would find if I looked in the shed. I ran across the yard and cupped my hands around my eyes, trying to see the interior. I couldn’t make out details. A silver padlock kept me from entering. In the distance, I heard the wail of a siren. I backed away from the shed until I was halfway to the car, and then turned around and ran the rest. I stopped about fifteen feet from the car. The driver’s side door was open and a black plastic garbage bag like the ones I’d stuffed into the back rested on the passenger-side seat.

  I lifted the bag. It was light. I slammed the passenger door and ran around to the other side. The sirens grew closer. I had a very bad feeling.

  I started the engine and drove the car out of the lot. The lights were still off. I waited, wondering what would happen next. Within minutes, strobe lights punctuated the parking lot between the museum and the planetarium. A couple of uniformed officers went to the gardening shed with a man in a khaki trench coat. Flashes of light popped out of the widows, like someone was taking pictures.

  Lights went on in first one and then two of the houses near where I’d parked. I knew what that meant. Curious people notice curious things and at the moment, sitting alone in Eddie’s VW bug after midnight on a Monday night, I was the definition of curious. As much as I wanted to stay and see what had happened in the gardening shed, I couldn’t risk it. I threw the car into reverse and backed away from the museum, turned on a side street, turned on the lights, and headed home. An ambulance passed me in the opposite direction. That wasn’t good. That meant someone was hurt—or worse.

  It wasn’t until I was inside the safety of my garage that I stopped to think about the trash I’d taken from the museum. I lined the bags up against the back wall, the one with Eddie’s notes on the left. The last bag I took from the car was the one that had been left for me. Inside, wrapped in a large sheet of Bubble Wrap, was a turquoise pillbox confection of felted wool, satin, and rhinestones.

  While I’d been wondering what someone was doing inside the shed on the museum property, someone had broken into Eddie’s car and returned Cat’s missing hat.

  20

  I left the hat in the bag and the bag in the garage. Eddie was asleep on the sofa, and I would have left him in that condition too if I didn’t need to tell him what had happened.

  “Wake up,” I said, shaking his shoulder.

  He rolled into the back of the sofa and grunted something.

  “Eddie, come on.”

  He flung a hand at me. I stepped backward and he missed contact.

  I went into the kitchen and opened a can of tuna, took a pinch, and set it by Eddie’s collar. Logan jumped on him and licked it off. Eddie woke up.

  “Good cat,” I said. I lifted Logan away from Eddie and gave him a bowl with the rest of the tuna inside.

  “Wake up. We have to talk.”

  “What time is it?” Eddie asked.

  “It’s something’s-not-right-o’clock. I’m serious. Do you want some coffee?”

  Eddie blinked a couple of times and reached into a pocket low on the outside of his cargo pants. He pulled out a bottle of 6-Hour Energy and downed it. He opened his eyes really wide and relaxed. “What’s up?

  “I went to the museum like we agreed. Thad wasn’t there. I had a chance to talk to Rebecca, and she tipped me off that the garbage gets taken out every Monday night.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “So I got to thinking that maybe if the garbage has been sitting around the museum for a week, maybe there’s something we should know about.”

  “So what, you want to go get the garbage?”

  “I already did. It’s in the garage.”

  “Dude.”

  “That’s not all.” I stood up and paced back and forth. The laces on my left sneaker had come undone, and Logan swatted at the plastic aglet on the end. “Something happened at the museum. I don’t know what. I saw a light in the gardening shed and saw someone run out. I tried to look inside but it was too dark. When I got back to the car, there was another trash bag.”

  “How do you know it was another one?” he asked. I could tell he was slowly fighting the clouds of sleep, but he seemed more alert than he’d been five minutes before.

  “The doors to the car were open, and there was a bag on the passenger seat.” I sank into one of the black and white chairs that faced the sofa. “It was Cat’s hat wrapped in Bubble Wrap.”

  “The one that someone jumped her for?”

  I nodded.

  “But that doesn’t make any sense. That hat has nothing to do with my exhibit. It has nothing to do with the museum. Why would someone put it in my car?”

  “I don’t know. The way I see it, either someone wanted to get rid of it and they saw me put bags in your car so they added it to that pile. Or someone knows Cat told me she was robbed. Or …” I hesitated. “The person who stole her hat has something to do with the exhibit.” It wasn’t a stretch to see that the third option was probably the right one.

  “You said you saw someone by the shed?”

  “Yes, and that’s the part that doesn’t make sense. The person in the shed ran away from me, away from the car. How would he have gotten back to the car without my noticing? That makes me think there were at least two people there. And that makes me think at least one of them saw me.”

  “That’s a problem?”

  “Depending on why the cops and the EMTs were there.”

  “You didn’t say anything about the cops.”

  “Eddie, listen to me. I have all of those trash bags in my garage. If somebody saw me take them, and they don’t know I’m me, they might think I’m you.”

  “Yeah, because we’re like twins,” he said sarcastically.

  “I was driving your car. I was working on the exhibit. And I kind of led Rebecca to think you were with me. What if Thad was the person who left the hat on the seat of your car? Or worse, what if Thad was the person I saw by the shed? What if he’s the one who called the cops and told them to investigate, thinking you’d be the natural suspect? How well do you know Thad? What if—”

  “We don’t even know what happened.”

  “We have to find out. But first, we have to find a way to hide those trash bags.”

  The next morning I maintained the menswear routine with a black and white tweed blazer over a white cotton shirt and black pinstriped pants. I threaded a red silk scarf through the collar and tied it like a necktie, and then buckled my feet into black and white spectator d’orsays on a three-inch heel. It had always been my conviction that pattern goes with pattern as long as the scale of the prints varied. I might be late, and I might be tired, but darn it if I wasn’t going to look put together. I drove to the Ribbon Designer Outlets and found Cat straightening her shoe racks.

  I carried the garbage bag with her hat into her store and set it on a display of jewelry. I pulled out the hat. “Does this look familiar?”

  Her face broke into a smile, and she rolled up on to her tiptoes and clapped twice. I wasn’t used to seeing Cat so animated. “It’s my Hedy London hat! Where did you find it?”

  “I didn’t find it, it found me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was at the museum last night, and somebody left it in Eddie’s car.”

  “Did you leave the car unlocked?”

  “No.”

  “So how—”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I have to say, I’m impressed. You should start a business. ‘Missing Fashion’ or ‘Stolen Style,’ something like that. Dante told me I was a fool for wearing it in public. He’ll be impressed.” She turned the hat over in her hands.

  “Is there someplace we can go to talk?”

  She looked at me funny. “My office. Follow me.”

  Cat’s office was a closet-sized room that sat off to the side of the stockroom. She took the
seat behind the desk, and I took the small folding chair in front of it. Nice power play for interviews.

  “Have you been following the news about the exhibit?” I asked.

  “A little. I know there’s supposed to be a big show this Thursday, and I know the hats are missing.”

  “Do you know about the murder?”

  “I heard about it, but to be honest, I don’t know details.”

  “Dirk Engle, the owner of What’s On Your Mind, was murdered at the museum a few nights ago. We—Eddie and I—know it has to do with the Hedy London hats, but we don’t know how. When you were robbed two nights ago, it seemed like there was a connection. Thad Thomas, the assistant director of the museum, called Eddie to make sure he was going to be there. Same thing last night. Both times I went in his place. I drove Eddie’s car. Someone left your hat on the passenger side seat. Someone has put two and two together.”

  “Well, I’m thrilled that they did. Thank you. Let me know if I can ever return the favor.”

  “Um, Cat? There’s one thing you can do for me.”

  “What? Oh, I know. You want a discount? Sure. How’s 30 percent—”

  “No. I mean, sure, but no, that’s not what I was going to ask.”

  “You want more? I guess I could go to forty, but you can’t tell anybody I did this.”

  “Cat, slow down. I don’t want a discount.” Who was I kidding? Of course I wanted a discount. “I, um, need you to hold on to something for me for a couple of days.”

  Her eyebrows pulled together, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t want to get into details here, but I have some trash in my car and I need it to not be in my car for about twenty-four hours.”

  Her arms crossed over her beige leather jacket.

  “It’s normal trash. Nothing weird. I was helping Eddie at the museum last night, and I threw out some stuff and think maybe I threw out something he needs. So I took the trash and now it’s in my car, but I don’t think that’s a very good place for it.”