Diane Vallere - Style & Error 02 - Buyer, Beware Read online

  “As you know from last night, I am the owner of Heist. I have a lot of money staked in the success of that store. Millions are already invested between the construction and the inventory. Heist cannot fail.”

  “Some might say that last night’s publicity was more than you could ever have planned on your own,” I said.

  “Last night’s publicity was not the kind we want. And now we have a murder investigation happening under our noses, but the store must still open.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “You demonstrated a unique skill set with the contest. I asked around about you. I want to offer you a job.”

  I wasn’t sure where he was going, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. And we both know that is a big, fat lie.

  “You asked around about my background in retail? About my experience working for Bentley’s New York?”

  “About your short time at Tradava. Your involvement in the murder of your boss, specifically.”

  “That’s not something I want to talk about.”

  “Samantha, I find myself wanting a person on the inside to investigate this matter,” he continued. “I’m prepared to offer you compensation if you can figure out why my handbag buyer was murdered. Are you interested in a job?”

  He wanted to hire me? No more mortgage worries. No more reading the want ads, or polishing my resume, or casing the unemployment office. All I had to do was say yes.

  My dad told me once that this was one of the more common phrases from my childhood. “All you have to do, Dad …” followed with my childish, simplistic ideas.

  Can I have a tree house? All you have to do, Dad …

  Let’s build a soapbox racer! All you have to do, Dad …

  I have a good idea for the science fair. All you have to do, Dad …

  Dad had claimed those six words were the kiss of death, but this was different. Right? I kept myself in check.

  “What did you have in mind?” I asked.

  “Handbag buyer. You were a buyer at Bentley’s New York for nine years, right? You have the experience.”

  It was unnerving, him knowing my background, but I tried to hide my unease.

  “If I’m going to do this, there are things I’m going to need.”

  “Name it.”

  “Clothing allowance. Expense account.”

  He reached into the inside breast pocket of his suit, pulled out a wallet, and extracted two pieces of plastic. One was a credit card. The other was an ID for Heist.

  My name and photo were on both.

  The words “job” and “offer” hadn’t been uttered to me in a long time. At least not by a man who was fully aware of my history since moving back to Ribbon. All I had to do was say …

  “Yes.”

  My dad was wrong. That was frightfully easy.

  “So … I got a job yesterday,” I said to Eddie.

  He’d accepted my invitation to breakfast at Arners Diner. It was seven thirty in the morning, and I was getting back into the swing of being a career gal, so much so that I’d dressed in a navy eighties power suit, complete with linebacker shoulder pads. It had been my interview suit upon graduating college, and I was more than a little excited that it still fit.

  I was going to show up at Heist on Monday morning, ready to be the newest handbag buyer in their corporate structure. I was pretty sure that a maniacal serial killer wasn’t on the loose knocking off buyers, so the fact that I was about to assume the post of the dead woman didn’t faze me much. The fact that I was about to work for a very rich man who expected me to find some answers … that part fazed the living daylights out of me.

  Eddie’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth, dangling a delicate bite of egg-white omelet. On his plate was an untouched piece of multigrain toast. I sliced through the last sausage link on my plate and raised the bite-sized piece to my mouth. Then I took a bite of my English Muffin and chewed a moment, swallowed, and finished off my orange juice. If he wasn’t going to respond, I was going to take full advantage of the opportunity to get a little something to eat. But when his stare continued after I’d finished clearing my plate, I figured it was time to go ahead and let the second shoe drop on the floor.

  “At Heist. I got a job at Heist.”

  “What?” he exclaimed. The waitress appeared at the side of our table and asked if we wanted our coffee topped off. I said no and asked for the check. She pulled a pad out of the pocket not already bulging with straws, flipped a few pages, and tore off our ticket.

  “My treat,” I said, pulling the Heist credit card out of my wallet. Seemed as good a time as any to test it. I waved Eddie’s wallet away. I handed the card to the waitress and sat against the back of the booth.

  Eddie eased himself up and started following the waitress.

  “Dude, I can’t in good faith allow you to rack up your charge card on breakfast when you haven’t even started working yet. It’s not smart. Excuse me,” he called to the waitress’s back.

  I reached out to stop him, succeeding only in grabbing a handful of his Billy Idol T-shirt. I yanked him back enough to get his attention and then let go. “It’s an expense account. I need to make sure it works,” I hissed.

  His eyes widened. When the waitress turned around, he flapped his hands in the air. “Never mind. Sorry to disturb you.”

  He dropped into the booth. “Heist gave you an expense account?”

  I had been debating whether to spill the details to Eddie, but in the end I felt like I shouldn’t be running around with a sign advertising that I was digging into the murders of the Heist handbag buyer. There was no way I could keep my new job a secret from him though, so I told him what I had to tell. My name came up, from my work experience, and I was contacted by someone at the store. It had been too long since I had a job, and maybe Tradava and I weren’t made for each other, but opportunities don’t grow on trees, so I accepted the offer. I start Monday. See, when I said it like that, it sounded perfectly innocent. And it was good that I had a chance to practice, because I was going to have to tell that same story to Nick tonight.

  Eddie asked enough questions to feel comfortable that I knew what I was doing and we parted ways. But my instinct to tell someone what I was really up to led me in a very scary direction.

  I headed to the police station.

  5

  “Is Detective Loncar here?” I asked the portly man behind the desk.

  “Yeah, he’s here. Is he expecting you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  On some level, Detective Loncar might have been expecting me to drop in since the first murder investigation I’d been involved with. On another level, perhaps one laced with wishful thinking on both of our parts, he might have hoped to never see me again.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I have to talk to him about a situation that has to do with a homicide.”

  The cop looked at me sideways. “A situation, huh?” He tipped his head backward. “Yo, Charlie! You got a visitor!”

  The door behind the portly guy opened up and Detective Loncar looked into the hallway. For three solid seconds our eyes held, until he turned, looked back into the room where he had been, and then turned to face me again. “You here to see me?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s a first.”

  “Can we go somewhere to talk?” I asked, ignoring his cop humor.

  “Follow me.”

  We started down a linoleum-tiled hallway that could have benefited from a once-over with a mop. At the end of the hallway he made a right and turned the doorknob of a splintered door. The sign on the door said QUESTIONING. I stepped backward.

  “Isn’t there another room we can use besides that one?” I pointed to the door.

  “We’re going to my office. It’s through here.” He held the door open until I took my first step, and then turned his back to me and walked past a small wooden table. He opened another door and went inside, this time me tripping over his heels. The door
shut behind me and I stood, uncomfortably, looking around the makeshift office of a homicide detective.

  “Have a seat. What’s on your mind?”

  I sat in a worn chair with a maple frame and brown vinyl seat. The cushion made a pffffft sound when I sat, like a whoopee cushion with motivational issues. Neither Loncar nor I commented on the sound.

  I told him about the job offer from Tony Simms. Detective Loncar already knew about the dead body, and he already knew about my ability to insinuate myself into a murder investigation. What he didn’t know was that I was capable of growing, learning from my mistakes, and partnering with the boys in blue.

  After telling my story, I laid my cards on the table. Literally. I pulled the credit card and ID card out of my wallet and set them in front of the detective. He picked up the credit card and stared at it for a couple of seconds, leaned back in his chair, and then stared at the ceiling. He tapped the plastic card against his dimpled chin. When he put the chair back on all fours, he pressed a button on his phone.

  “I need a credit check,” he barked into the speakerphone, and rattled off the sixteen digits on the front of my card. He scribbled a series of numbers on a tablet and pushed it toward me. “Is that your social?”

  I looked at the paper. My social security number stared back at me. “Yes.”

  “Print it and bring it to me,” he said back into the phone. He hung up and drummed his fingers on the worn wooden desk. His nails had been bitten to the quick, and the calloused tips made a hollow sound against the wood. Badarabam. Badarabam. Badarabam.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking. You could actually help us with this thing if you’re willing to cooperate with us. Are you willing?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Well, that is a pretty big first step. Okay. Who knows about this besides me?”

  “Tony Simms.”

  “Who knows that you’re here?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You planning to keep it that way?”

  “I think so.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “You think so? You don’t know so?”

  “Okay, sure. I plan to keep it that way.” The fingers crossed in my lap countered the conviction in my voice.

  “Good. Give me a couple of hours to put a plan together. I’ll call you tonight with details.”

  “Do you know what time?”

  “Why, you got something more important to do?”

  I thought about Nick’s impending call, and what I was going to tell him. I’d rather talk to him before any more conversations with the cops, less to hide. But still …

  “Whenever is fine.” Turning various shades of red, I left through the back door.

  No matter how you looked at it, I was back in the fashion industry, so I had to look the part. I also had to snoop around and spy on people and somehow try to figure out why the last handbag buyer got knocked off. No matter how you looked at it, my life was about to change.

  I headed home from the police station and took a very long shower. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to wash off the memories of being in police headquarters or the common sense that had taken me there, but half an hour later I was scrubbed clean, hair up in a towel turban, plush terrycloth robe covering my body, fluffy pink slippers on my feet. I padded into the kitchen and searched the fridge for food.

  Logan swirled around my ankles and swatted at the pompoms on the front of my slippers. I scooped him up in my arms and nuzzled my face into his fur. His front paws curled over my shoulder and he head-butted me. The light on my ancient faux-wood answering machine—a relic of my parents’ life before they’d sold me the house—was red. I pushed play, peppering Logan’s head with kisses between his pointy ears.

  “Ms. Kidd, this is Tony Simms. I’ve arranged for you to go to Heist tonight. Call this number”—he rattled off nine digits— “and make arrangements with security for what time you’d like to arrive. Gabe Gaithers is expecting your call. He’ll give you a tour and some shopping time.” He disconnected.

  Logan wriggled his way out of my arms and thumped onto the floor. He stretched, walked over to his food bowl, and meowed. I pulled the top off of a can of moist cat food and dumped it into his bowl.

  I called the number that Simms had left. A deep voice answered after three rings, and I introduced myself, unsure what else I should say.

  “Samantha Kidd, yes. Tony told us you’d be calling. Come by tonight if you want. Park by the south doors. I’ll let you in.”

  I changed from terrycloth to a navy sheath dress that was slightly more au courant than the eighties power suit. My newly cut hair would have taken too long to straighten, so I pulled the curls into a low ponytail and knotted a printed scarf around it. Jackie-O glasses covered my five-minute makeup routine, and I was off.

  Heist was less than two miles from my house, and don’t you dare say a word about how I could have walked there. A large bald man in a slate-gray, button-down shirt and pleated pants that didn’t quite match the shirt opened a door.

  “Are you Samantha Kidd?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Gabe.” He tipped his head toward the inside of the store. “Follow me.”

  We walked through the same store I’d wandered through two nights ago, but this time it was different. Instead of being mesmerized by the gritty photography or the merchandising standards, I thought about what it would be like to be a part of this team. It had been well over six months since I’d been a buyer, and even though I’d been a good one, I’d chosen to leave that life behind. I didn’t doubt it would return to me once I understood the store’s demographics, spreadsheets, and profitability standards, but there was a certain pressure that came with that job. That pressure was why I walked away from the job in the first place.

  Hindsight and unemployment had glamorized my memories of being a buyer. More recently, I’d been the unwanted jobseeker. Despite the best well-wishes from my friends, both those who knew me in Ribbon and those I’d left behind in New York, I still wondered if it had been the right decision to leave a successful career behind in an attempt to rediscover myself in my old hometown. I had set out to simplify. So far I’d found one homicide and another had found me. Nothing simple about it.

  “We just got in a truck of merchandise and I have to get to the dock. You okay by yourself?” Gabe asked me.

  “Sure.”

  He handed me a set of keys. “Mr. Simms said you’re to bring whatever you want to our office. We’ll see what we can process tonight. These keys will unlock the fixtures and the fitting rooms.” He left me in the middle of the designer sportswear department while he disappeared through the store.

  The fixtures surrounding me were filled with clothes that begged to fill my closet, and I could have lost hours trying on 85 percent of their offerings. Instead, I wandered to the handbag department to see what kind of assortment decisions my predecessor had made.

  “Samantha Kidd?” asked a singsong female voice from behind me. When I turned around, it took me a second to place the face.

  It was the general manager from Tradava.

  “Belle. Belle DuChamp.” She held out a perfectly manicured hand and shook mine. A bracelet of gold links and aged antique coins clanged around her delicate wrist like chimes. “Welcome aboard our team.”

  “Our?”

  “Heist. You’ll be working with me. We never got the chance to work together at Tradava, and after what you did for them, I say it’s a shame. You’re a talented gal, and we’re lucky to have you here. Stole you out from under their noses, I’d say, even if that’s not exactly the way it happened. But I believe”— she extended an arm in front of her, inviting me to join her walk through the aisle—“right place, right time. And no better time than the present.” She winked at me. “Don’t you agree?”

  I was taken by her bravado, though I still wasn’t entirely sure what we were talking about. “Ms. DuChamp?”

  “Belle! Don’t Ms. DuChamp me. Tradava may have had th
ose ancient political ideals and stuffy policies, but Heist is a young company. We’re all on first-name basis. Even Tony Simms.”

  She didn’t seem to have fond memories of Tradava, and considering my spotty work history with them, I was wondering if I should suggest we start some kind of a club.

  “Come to my office. We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

  I trailed behind her taupe jersey jacket and fluid pants. Her collar was flipped up and framed her décolleté. She had the figure of a twenty-year-old and the attitude of a woman in her fifties. Confidence seeped from her like she’d bathed in it.

  We reached a glass door, which she pushed through, much like the glass ceiling I imagined she had hit at some point of her career at Tradava. I followed her down a carpeted hallway to the last office. It overlooked the parking lot. A wooden desk sat off to the side, and a glass top conference table sat by the window.

  “Have a seat.” Again she gestured, this time to the red and brown plaid chair in front of her desk. The store hadn’t even opened and her desktop was in disarray. “Don’t mind all of this. They’re still a little paperwork heavy around here, getting the store open and all.” She pushed a pile of papers together, squared them off at the corners, and set them inside one of her drawers. “Tell me everything I need to know about you.”

  Clearly I’d misunderstood Tony Simms when he’d been at my house.

  “I didn’t come prepared for an interview,” I said.

  She threw her head back and laughed the kind of full-on laugh that most women are too shy to release. I counted five fillings—three on the bottom, two on the top—before she closed her mouth.

  “Samantha–Sam, can I call you Sam?”

  I nodded. She reached over and patted my hand. “Relax. You got the job. Tony said you’re highly recommended. I just wanted to get to know the newest superstar on the Heist team.”