Some Like It Haute: A Humorous Fashion Mystery (Style & Error Book 4) (13 page)

I dug my cell phone out of my handbag, tapped the screen to cue up my contacts, and flipped to the Fs. Under Fuzz, I found the detective’s number. I dialed.

“Loncar,” he said.

“Detective, this is Samantha Kidd.” I waited a beat, then forged ahead. “I’ve been reviewing footage of the runway show and I had a couple of questions.”

“When you say you were reviewing footage of the runway show, what exactly do you mean?” he asked.

“I set my VCR up to record the show.” The phone went silent, and I imagined Loncar cursing the day my parents put the house up for sale. “I figure you’ve seen this same footage. Maybe it would help to bounce theories off each other? Since we’re practically working together on this. I feel like we have an understanding.”

“You might be confused about that.”

“Did you check out the report of my attack?”

“Yes.”

“So you know I’m the victim here. I’m just trying to figure out who assaulted me.”

“What are your questions?”

“Was anybody hurt in the fire?”

“No.”

“Do you know how the fire was started?”

“We’re working on that.”

“Do you have any suspects?”

“Ms. Kidd, I think we’ve tapped out the limits of our understanding.”

“Wait!” I paused for a second. “Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“The way I see it, this has to do with either Amanda Ries, the designer, or Harper, the model who was wearing the kimono. For all I know, I wasn’t even supposed to be the target of the attack. I think I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“How do you figure that?”

“If it was about me, there would have been a second attack. I left the hospital and attended the show as a guest. I wasn’t a threat from out front. Since I left the show, I’ve visited Amanda, gone to the crime scene, and gone home. If someone was after me, they would have had ample opportunity to get me. Which means whoever attacked me accomplished what they set out to do.”

“Where were you when you were attacked?”

“I was on my way to my car. I was backstage, and then I walked past the food table to the exit. Nobody else was attacked, and nobody claims to have seen anything.”

“Is that all you got?”

I thought back to the fitting. “There’s something else. Harper—she’s the model in the kimono. Have you talked to her?”

“We can’t reach her. She’s out of the country.”

“Still? Isn’t that suspicious? That in the middle of the fire and the chaos, she managed to get out of there, get to an airport, and get to Mexico?”

“I’m not at liberty to comment on Ms. Ashton’s role in the investigation.”

“What about the kimono? Harper complained about the fit. Apparently, Amanda specifically picked that garment for her. Do you have somebody at the lab analyzing it for clues?”

“Ms. Kidd, this is not a TV show. Besides, the samples were destroyed in the fire.”

“Was anything else damaged?”

“We’re looking at claims from Warehouse Five, the makeup people, and the designer. If we can’t link this crime to someone, Ms. Ries is going to pay out a pretty penny in insurance.”

“Did anybody else lose property? Amanda’s show was in the main hall of the warehouse, but other artists show their work there. What about them?”

“Outside of the fashion show, everything went untouched. If damages were sustained to anybody else on the property, they haven’t been filed.”

16

So the rest of the tenants of Warehouse Five hadn’t been impacted by the fire, but Amanda was at risk of losing everything. I hadn’t been expecting that. “Thank you, Detective.”

“You’re welcome, Ms. Kidd.”

Three fires at the same location: the one that was part of my attack, the runway show and now the Dumpster. It had to mean something, but what? What exactly did I know? Not much.

Could Gigger be right that the movement I’d seen was a rat? I shuddered. No, if I suspected it was a rodent big enough to catch my attention across the parking lot, I never would have driven over to see it. Someone had been back there. Either the person who set the fire, or the person in the Dumpster. I shuddered again.

Gigger might have assumed that I’d seen a rat, but Dante believed me. It was that belief that kept me focused on finding the truth. Last night, we’d been a team. Not the bumbling Keystone Cops type, but two people focused on finding answers. Already I could see that, when it came to investigation, Dante knew what he was doing. The cover story with Amanda, the camera with the infrared film, the wariness when giving a statement to Gigger all illustrated that. I could learn from him.

Dante hadn’t chided me for the way I’d handled the police. He didn’t warn me away from danger. Ever since I’d found the evidence that he had a whole other life, one that had started long before he and I met, I wondered what else there was to get to know about him. But even that bothered me too. Was he just another mystery that I wanted to solve? And once I saw him as a real person, not a dangerous semi-stranger, would the attraction dissipate?

I hoped I wasn’t that shallow.

More and more, as questions about the fire and subsequently the job with Amanda came up, I questioned my involvement. There was a bigger personal issue here, one that transcended the investigation and the dangerous situations in the past. It was my ongoing need to find where I fit in.

Giving up my job at Bentley’s New York and moving back to Ribbon had been intended to help me figure that out, but being back in the house where I’d grown up had had an unexpected side effect of grounding me somewhere in my childhood. Here I was, over a year into that move, and no closer to finding answers.

I loved the city of Ribbon, with its pretzel factories and Pennsylvania Dutch restaurants. What I didn’t love was feeling like I’d somehow reverted back in time. In my professional life as a buyer, I’d known what I was doing. I had confidence in my abilities. And even though I knew I’d chosen to leave that job behind, it seemed I’d lost something of me in the process.

I hummed the Japanese pop song that I suspected would be stuck in my head indefinitely and made a long-overdue phone call. Dante returned with the coffee a few minutes after I hung up.

“What were your plans for developing that film?” I asked.

“I’d like to get to it today, but first I need a darkroom.”

“Take me to the crime scene so I can get my car. You can come back here. There’s a small room in the basement where my dad used to make wine. I’ll give you the keys and you can do whatever you need to do to set it up as your darkroom.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

“I have some personal business to attend to.”

Dante didn’t pry. I respected him a little more because of that. And even if he did ask, I wasn’t sure I’d tell him where I was going.

Back to Bentley’s New York to talk to my former boss. Because a year was long enough to flounder while trying to figure things out on my own. Life didn’t seem to be headed the right direction and there was a very small chance that, I’d need to give up everything I thought I wanted in Ribbon and go back to the life I’d left behind.

After we retrieved my car from Warehouse Five, Dante followed me back to my house. I showed him the darkroom and left him alone while I showered and changed into a black leather skirt, black tights, and black over-the-knee boots. I pulled on a red motorcycle jacket, grabbed my keys, and took off.

Two and a half hours later, I pulled into a public parking lot across from Bentley’s New York and spent more on parking than I had on a pizza last night. The air was pungent with the mixture of Chinese food and cigarette smoke. I held my breath and jogged to the customer entrance on Broadway. Once inside, a determined perfume sampler added a spritz of the latest Estee Lauder fragrance to the olfactory mix.

Good times.

As if an autopilot program had been activated, I bypassed displays of new merchandise and hopped into the Up elevator. When I reached the fourteenth floor, I got out, climbed three steps, followed a long hallway, and turned left. My former boss’ office was the third on the right.

“Knock, knock,” I said, lightly rapping my knuckles against the nameplate that read ‘Marcia Dann.’ Marcia looked up from her computer and smiled.

“Well, hello, stranger,” she said. “Come on in.”

“Do you mind if I shut the door?” I asked.

“Go right ahead.” She didn’t seem surprised that I’d asked. “How’s life in the small town?”

“I’ve found the simple life not so simple.” I smiled. “It would appear that I’m having a hard time transitioning from being a city mouse.”

“Personally or professionally?”

“Both.”

“Have you talked to your parents about this?”

“My parents told me to sell the house and move in with them until I figure things out.”

“You’re not moving in with your parents. Life is about moving forward, not backward.”

“So I guess you don’t think it would be wise for me to ask for my old job back?”

She leaned back and tapped a soft pink sculptured nail on her desk. “You could have asked me that question over the phone. Why did you really drive a hundred and fifty miles to come see me?”

I collected my thoughts for a few seconds, while fragmented memories of my nine years at Bentley’s filtered through my mind. “You took a chance on hiring me, and I learned more working for you than any other time in my life—at least until I moved back to Ribbon.”

“Yes, I imagine three homicide investigations can do that to a girl,” she smiled. “Samantha, do you remember the year I hired you?”

I nodded.

“You didn’t know everything there was to know about being a buyer. In fact, you didn’t know much about being a buyer at all. But you had a certain skill set: creative and analytical. You watched the other buyers. And you learned fast. By the time you resigned, you were the person other buyers watched.”

“It’s just that—now—something is holding me back. The job at Tradava didn’t work out, and then the job at Heist didn’t last, and, well, something’s got to give.”

“You wanted to leave Bentley’s. Coming back here isn’t going to give you any satisfaction. You thrive when there are problems to be solved. You already know how to solve the problems of retail. Three month projections, overstocked inventory, assorting a department, making advertising choices. You need to apply that same analytical thinking that served you as a buyer to your own life.”

“Do you think it’s that easy?”

“Nothing good in life is easy. But people do things so they can grow. If you haven’t grown from this move, then you haven’t figured out why you went there to begin with.” She leaned back. “Let me ask you this: why did you want to work at Tradava?”

“I was in Ribbon, my parents were moving, and Patrick found me sitting in the parking lot with my cat. We talked for five minutes and we clicked. It felt like a sign.”

“Patrick was a genius and he would have made a good mentor, but you were overqualified for the job. If that had worked out, you would have asked for your old job back a year ago.”

She slid the top drawer of her desk open and pulled out a red business card that said
Retrofit Magazine
. “A friend of mine is starting up her own magazine. She’s looking for a fashion director, someone who can recognize trends and work independently. We’re not talking comfortable little job, here, Samantha, we’re talking international travel for Fashion Week. Discovering new talent. Getting in on the ground floor of something new. ” She tapped the card on the desk. “You could do this if you wanted.”

She held out the card. This was it. This was the opportunity I wanted. I took it.

“Thank you, Marcia,” I said.

She held her hands up. “Don’t thank me. I have no say on whether or not you get the job. There’s probably a hundred fashion bloggers out there who would sell off half of their closet for this opportunity. If you want it, you’re going to have to go for it. And I mean that literally—she’s going to need to see what you can do.”

“Anybody who would sell off half of their closet for this opportunity should rethink the clothes they’ve been hoarding all these years.”

“That’s why I’m giving you the card.”

We caught up on industry gossip before she headed to a meeting and I left. I had driven over two hours for a thirty minute meeting that restored my self-confidence and recharged my core values. I left Bentley’s feeling more inspired than I had twenty-four hours ago, and more resolute that my decision to leave had been the right one.

It was a little after two. Traffic would become an issue by three, although there really was no good time to drive in Manhattan. Still, I couldn’t resist a quick trip to Figaro for an afternoon chocolate soufflé. I mean, it’s important to recognize the really special things in life. And it was right around the corner.

I walked to the corner of 57th and Broadway and hopped out at the light. Figaro was a small European restaurant nestled in the middle of an otherwise residential street. A chalkboard out front listed the specials. It was the only indication that an eatery resided below street level. The chocolate soufflés were legendary to those in the know, and took twenty minutes to rise. The hostess led me to a window table, where I placed my order without looking at the menu.

Eleven minutes into the wait, I saw a familiar person walking down the opposite side of the street.

What was Nick doing in New York City?

He crossed to my side of the street. I picked up my handbag, coat, and scarf and asked the hostess where the restroom was. I gave him five minutes to get past Figaro before coming out.

When I left the restroom, he was being seated.

I glanced at my table. My soufflé sat, alone, next to my water glass. The soufflé was already starting to fall.

Crap. The only reason I knew about this restaurant was because Nick and I used to have business dinners here during Market Week.

My options were limited. I ducked behind a ficus tree and leaned forward, flagging down the hostess. She didn’t look at me until after I resorted to “Pssssst!”

“Can I help you?” she asked.

I kept my voice low. “I have a sudden emergency and I have to leave. That’s my soufflé on the table over there.” I pointed. Nick looked up and I ducked back behind the tree again. “Can I get it wrapped up to go?” I whispered.