Diane Vallere - Style and Error 01 - Designer Dirty Laundry Read online

  “No, that’s down the hall. This is the Visual office. I’m the manager, Eddie Adams.” He pulled the Bluetooth device from his ear and tossed it onto the desk. It rolled in a semicircle until it bumped up next to Wonder Woman’s red and white boots.

  “I’m sorry. I made a mistake,” I said. I looped my handbag over my arm.

  Before I had a chance to move, we were interrupted by an exotic blend of black pepper and hyacinths. A reed-thin redhead in an off the shoulder leotard, black harem pants, and geometric earrings that fell to her shoulders and tinkled like wind chimes swept past us.

  “Patrick?” she called out. “Patrick?”

  “Patrick isn’t with us,” I said tentatively. It was an understatement, to say the least.

  The woman disappeared into an office further down the hall. Moments later she returned to the hallway, stopping by a small desk. She flipped through a couple of cards on a Rolodex with one black fingerless-gloved hand while the other hand fiddled with one of her earrings. An overflowing hobo bag covered in silver zippers dangled from her elbow. Files and fabric swatches spilled out of the bag. She ran her fingertip along the card in the Rolodex, then left the desk and approached me.

  “When Patrick gets here, tell him we’re overdue for a meeting. The competition is right around the corner and I need to know where he stands.”

  I studied her face. Her red hair was bone straight, cut into an asymmetrical bob. A smattering of freckles peeked out from under a dusting of powder. She looked more effortlessly stylish than I had in any of the five outfits I’d considered wearing.

  “I’m sorry—” I started to say in a shaky voice.

  “Patrick isn’t here,” Eddie filled in.

  “Never mind. I’ll call him later,” she interrupted and left.

  “Do you know who that was?” I asked Eddie.

  “One of the Patrick parade. There’s a steady stream of designers coming in and out of here all day. Write ‘Red was here’ on a message pad, and he’ll either figure it out or she’ll come back.”

  I picked up a pen. I even went so far as to write the R from Red, before my hand started shaking so badly the pen fell to the desk. “I have to get out some air,” I said, and ran out of the office. I stumbled back into the store. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but halfway through the lingerie department my cell phone screen lit up with an incoming call from the same number as earlier.

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Samantha Kidd?” said a female voice.

  “This is Samantha,” I replied.

  “This is Brittany Fowler. From Full Circle Mortgage? There’s a problem with your application. It seems you are no longer employed, a fact we didn’t know when we approved your application?” She had a way of ending her sentences with questions that made me want to answer automatically.

  “Well, yes but not really,” I said. I’d been so wrapped up in impressing my boss at the new job that, for the last couple of hours, I’d forgotten about life outside of Tradava. Truth was, even though I gave my notice to Bentley’s I still cited them on the mortgage paperwork. Gray area, I figured, since I knew I was about to start working for Tradava. Seems gray was not the mortgage lender’s favorite color.

  “I have a new job. At Tradava, in Ribbon, Pennsylvania.” I said, slowly circling a fixture of nightgowns. “Someone from the store was supposed to fax a letter to you a couple of days ago.”

  “Hmmmm,” she said, in the kind of the tone that suggested she wasn’t happy with my answer. I reached the end of the fixture and headed toward a display of pantyhose. “How long have you worked there?”

  “I just started today.” I stood rooted to the spot, in the corner of the lingerie department, and stared at the carpet.

  “Perhaps we could clear this up now if we could talk to your supervisor?” she asked.

  “That’s not going to work. He can’t verify anything.” I heard a sound behind me and turned. Eddie stood next to the nightie fixture, with a middle-aged man in a short-sleeved plaid cotton shirt and baggy Wranglers.

  “There she is, Detective. That’s the woman you’re looking for. That’s Samantha Kidd.”

  “Ms. Kidd, I’m Detective Loncar. Get your things and come with me.”

  Chapter 3

  “Detective?” I asked. The phone fell to the carpet.

  The man in the plaid shirt stepped forward and showed me a badge. “Detective Loncar. Ms. Kidd, it’s about this morning. It’s important we talk. Now.”

  “Can we talk here?”

  “No.” He turned on his heel, took a step, then turned back to face me. Red-faced, I scooped the phone from the floor and disconnected the call. I returned to the trend office and collected my bag, then walked with him too close for comfort out of the store. Employees had started to arrive, milling about the parking lot, and that humiliating walk past people I hadn’t even met yet would be hard to overcome. It was like the first day at a new high school; I’d never get another chance to change this first impression.

  I landed in a black and white squad car, which made the detective’s plainclothes an ironic choice. It was hot. I unzipped the satin motorcycle jacket and exposed the black lace camisole I wore underneath. When we arrived at the police station, I followed him through the front doors, where a small group of cops eyed my Aqua Netted hair, my camisole, my torn fishnets. I zipped the jacket back up and dealt with the sweating.

  In a small office, with dirty windows and a checkerboard linoleum-tiled floor in shades of gray and gray, Detective Loncar grilled me about what had happened that morning at Tradava. Sitting in a small, stuffy office with bright light bulbs and closed windows on an unseasonably hot day would elicit a confession from anybody, only I didn’t have a clue why we were there in the first place.

  “Ms. Kidd, what were you doing at Tradava this morning?”

  “I work there. I’m about to work there. I just moved back to Ribbon.”

  “So you’re new in town?”

  “Not really new-new but new by your standards, I guess.”

  “And you’re new to Tradava?”

  “Yes, though technically I haven’t started working there yet.”

  He made a note on a lined notepad. Pieces of torn off paper stood out at a jagged edge from the binding. I leaned forward to read his handwriting upside down. He shifted the notepad so I couldn’t.

  “Tell me about this morning.”

  “What do you want to know?” I asked. I wasn’t trying to be flip. I was scared shitless, which, I’ve learned, prompts me to act unnaturally obtuse.

  “What did you see?”

  “Patrick, in the corner of the elevator.”

  “Patrick who?”

  “Just Patrick. He only has one name. Like Cher.”

  He stared at me intently and I fought every instinct to look away. “What else?”

  “An EMT arrived in a separate elevator and took him out of the store through the sub-basement.”

  “How do you know that’s where they went? Did you follow them?”

  “No, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  He made another note. “Did you notify security?”

  “No, the EMT did.”

  “Did you call 911?”

  “No, Nick did.”

  “Who is Nick?”

  “Nick Taylor. He was there too.”

  “Does he work for Tradava?”

  “No. He’s a shoe designer.”

  “And he was with you?”

  “He was with me, but he wasn’t with-with me. Did you talk to him? Didn’t he tell you about me? We should have planned this better.” I uncrossed my legs, revealing the tear in my fishnets. My left leg started hammering the floor, and I crossed the right leg over it to keep it under control.

  “Planned what?”

  “This morning. I mean, this. Now. Not this morning. We didn’t plan anything this morning!”

  “Ms. Kidd, do you and Mr. Taylor have a history?”

  “Yes, well
, not a history-history, but I know him.”

  “And do you know what Mr. Taylor was doing at Tradava this morning?”

  “No.” The detective waited for me to elaborate. I didn’t. His questions mixed me up, and the answers, to more than one of them, eluded me.

  “How did you get to the trend office?”

  “I climbed the stairs.” He glanced at my feet. “Yes, in these shoes,” I added.

  “Why?”

  “Because they go with the outfit.”

  “Why did you climb the stairs?” he repeated without missing a beat.

  “Because that’s where I was supposed to be.”

  “The job you claim you were about to start.”

  “I don’t claim it, it’s true. Ask Human Resources.”

  “Mr. Adams told us he never saw you before this morning when he found you at his desk.”

  “I didn’t know it was his desk. I’d never been there before.”

  “But you claim you were supposed to be working there.”

  Ah, we were back to that.

  “Ms. Kidd, can you tell me anything else about what happened this morning?”

  “What exactly did happen this morning?” I asked. He didn’t answer. “I can’t help you with details, Detective. With all due respect, I passed out as soon as I recognized Patrick.”

  “Do you have a habit of passing out?”

  “No. I don’t know. I mean, not usually, but I’m not in the habit of finding my boss dead in an elevator either.”

  He leaned back in his chair and flipped the pen upside down. He tapped the end of it on the table in front of him. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.

  Our conversation continued to go round and round, arriving close to where it had started. Nowhere. Despite a month of the kind of planning that filled notebooks by day and Post-its by night, I was about as far off-base as I could have been, and it was starting to piss me off.

  “Why am I here? Patrick had a heart attack. The EMT told me. She took Patrick out of the store through the receiving dock so there would be less attention.”

  Detective Loncar sat very still. After an awkward amount of time, I started to count. He shifted his weight when I hit seventeen but didn’t speak until I reached twenty-two.

  “Ms. Kidd, there was no EMT. There was no body. You keep telling me a man died but we don’t have a corpse. You’re here because I heard about a 911 call from Tradava, and when I got there I found out you’re the only person who was at Tradava who has no reason for being there.”

  “What about Nick?”

  “This Mr. Taylor you mentioned?”

  “Yes, him. Why was he there?”

  “For now let’s focus on why you were there.”

  “I work there!” I said.

  He didn’t have to say it this time. I knew what he was thinking.

  Despite my forthcoming attitude about what little information I had to share, I left as in the dark as I was when I arrived, with the mortgage company conversation nagging at me like a bad song from the eighties I couldn’t get out of my head.

  It was after eleven when I was returned to the store. All of the energy I’d put into impressing Patrick on my first day was gone, like the wind had been knocked out of me the moment I saw his body. Ever since our first meeting in the parking lot outside of Tradava I had been looking forward to working with him. But now that would never happen.

  I slowed as I approached the store. Crowds of people stood outside, sharing cigarettes and talking on their phones. It looked like a fire-drill, only the odds of that were low. Eddie emerged through the crowd and jogged toward me.

  “You want to tell me why you left here with a detective?” he asked.

  “P-P-Patrick,” I stuttered.

  “Patrick isn’t even here.”

  “H-H-He’s not going to be here,” I said. My voice shook as the words escaped my mouth. “Ever. He’s dead,” I blurted. I didn’t care Eddie was a relative stranger. It was a relief to speak the words to someone who had a chance of taking me seriously.

  Complete silence. They’re right about that pin drop thing. “Patrick? Dead? How? Where?” His head jutted forward and his eyebrows shot up. A gust of air lifted his blond hair straight up, and, for a moment, caused him to look like a startled chicken.

  “In the elevator.” The fresh air countered the wooziness, but I wasn’t sure how much of my morning I was capable of replaying. “Didn’t you notice the elevators weren’t working when you got here?”

  “I take the stairs.”

  Great. I needed comfort food and this guy was probably going to bust out into yoga moves.

  “How about we get out of here and you tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

  Crowds of people milled around the store entrance, and pieces of their conversation floated to my ears. Who’s she? Some new girl. I hurried in my stilettos to keep up with sneaker-clad Eddie and separate myself from the staffers eager to gossip. For the moment, “some new girl” hadn’t been identified, though by the way a few of the associates looked at me, torn fishnets and all, I was climbing the list of candidates. By the time we returned, that phrase would probably be embossed on my nameplate.

  “I’d rather not walk through the store again today. Not until everybody leaves.”

  “Even if you wanted to, you can’t. They made us all leave and they won’t tell us if we can get back in. Nobody knows why. Come on,” he said, and led the way to a Volkswagen Beetle.

  Still a bit dazed, I followed him to a diner that sat at the edge of the mall parking lot. Minutes later, Eddie bit into an egg-white omelet while I considered whether or not my stomach could handle the four pieces of bacon I’d ordered.

  “I can’t believe he’s dead,” I said as I lined up the strips of meat.

  “Have you known him a long time?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You sound, I don’t know, really shaken up.”

  “He’s Patrick. He used to be very influential in the fashion industry.”

  “You sound like he meant something to you.”

  “He did mean something to me. He was my boss.”

  “Today’s your first day.”

  I didn’t know how to explain the Starting Over Plan to Eddie. How do you tell an almost stranger you voluntarily gave up a high profile job in the fashion industry because you weren’t sure that’s what you wanted out of life? That you had done your job so well you became the problem solver for everyone, only, when your own problem became the fact you weren’t happy, you had no one to turn to? That when your parents announced they were moving to Los Angeles, you did the craziest thing you’d ever done and put in a bid on your childhood house without telling your family you were the buyer? It sounded crazy to me. I couldn’t imagine what it would sound like to him.

  An overwhelming sense of what-have-I-done kept me silent while Eddie flagged the waitress down for more coffee.

  “Deets, please,” he said.

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Start at the beginning.”

  While ‘the beginning’ was slightly ambiguous in terms of my life, the fact remained I needed to talk to someone. I gave him the highlights of the morning and wrapped up my story with a vague comment about Patrick’s crumpled body. Since my portion of the observation ended there, it seemed as good a stopping point as any.

  My cell phone rang and I recognized the mortgage officer’s number. As I weighed the pros and cons of answering, the waitress returned to our table. “You two work over there, right?” She tipped her head toward the window that faced Tradava. Eddie nodded. She topped off our coffee and served up a reality check. “Crazy what happened this morning. A couple of officers said a call came in about a dead guy in the store but when they went to check it out, there wasn’t a body. Crackpot 911 call, they thought.”

  “There was a body,” I protested for the second time that day. “He had a heart attack.” Like the detective, she didn’t seem to believe me. The phone stopp
ed ringing and I dropped it back into my handbag. “I’m not making this up.” I finished.

  She tipped her head slightly but said nothing. “Sounds fishy to me.” She rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead. “Think what you want, but I bet there’s more to this story than any of us know.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  She set the coffee pot on a nearby cart and put her palms face down on the table. “Routine heart attacks don’t make bodies disappear. If you saw someone take a body out of the store, then I’d be willing to bet somebody was trying to hide something. Nothing routine about that.”

  “Are you saying you think Patrick was kidnapped?”

  “I’m saying I think he was murdered.”

  Chapter 4

  I looked at Eddie, and suddenly the waitress’s words struck me. Murdered? The word resonated in my head. “Murdered!” I said to see if it sounded any better as a part of a conversation. It didn’t.

  “You said you weren’t alone when you found the body. Who was with you?” Eddie asked.

  “Nick Taylor.”

  “The shoe designer?”

  “You know him?”

  “We carry his collection.” Eddie’s eyebrow twitched slightly. “So Nick saw Patrick’s body too. I hope for your sake he talked to the cops. Otherwise you’ll be the sole crackpot.”

  The sole crackpot. Another title I wasn’t itching to add to my resume. Instead of asking the detective why Nick was at Tradava I should have demanded they get him to verify my statement. They’d do that anyway, wouldn’t they? For the first time since moving out of New York I wished I’d paid better attention to the crime in the city so I knew what to expect from the cops.

  Eddie paid our check, and I followed him to his car. He nestled his to-go cup of coffee into the cup holder and I pulled my cell phone out and listened to the new message. “Samantha Kidd, this is Brittany Fowler. We were cut off this morning? When I called you? We need to finish our conversation. Please call me back as soon as possible.” I tapped the phone against my thigh while Eddie drove us back to the store.