Grand Theft Retro (Style & Error Mystery Series Book 5) Read online

  “I wasn’t expecting any visitors,” she said. Her voice held a faint accent. Russian? Slovakian? It was hard to pinpoint.

  “I’m Samantha Kidd,” I said. “I work at Retrofit Magazine. I understand you gave permission for us to view your collection—”

  The elegant woman stretched out her right hand. “Hello, Samantha Kidd. I’m Jennie Mae Tome.” I shook her hand. Light tinkling sounds came as a collection of gold bangle bracelets on her wrist rushed against each other. Judging from the way the gold shone, even in the dim room, I guessed them to be at least 18K gold. At a glance, I estimated that there were fifty of them. Whoever Jennie Mae Tome was, she wasn’t poor.

  “Mr. Charles, why don’t you bring Miss Samantha and I some tea?” she said to the man in the suit. I looked at him and found him scowling at me. His expression changed slightly, though he didn’t go out of his way to hide his opinion of my unannounced visit.

  “Right away.” He disappeared into the next room, presumably the kitchen. Jennie Mae gestured toward a rocking chair. “Please, have a seat.”

  I lowered myself onto the wooden chair and felt something brush my ankles. When I looked down, I saw a black and white cat skulk across the room, his tail pointed straight up in the air. Another cat sat in the corner by a large canister of six-foot-tall peacock feathers. A third came out from a narrow opening that I already knew led to the stairs that led to the attic.

  Jennie Mae reached down and scratched the black and white cat’s head. “I hope you’re not allergic,” she said. “I’ve always loved cats. They keep me company in a way people don’t.”

  I reached out and stroked a calico that jumped onto the arm of the divan. “I understand completely. My cat knows more about me than anybody else.”

  “Ah, you’re a cat person too. And clearly you have style.” She smiled. It felt funny sitting in the dark with her, both of us dressed in caftans with head wraps. I wondered if this really was what the Seventies were like. Surely more than one person dressed like Rhoda, didn’t they? Did anybody care that while they sought individuality, they often weren’t the most unique person in the room? Come to think of it, it wasn’t that different from today.

  “Now, what brings you here?” she asked.

  “Like I said, I work at Retrofit,” I said, expecting her to put two and two together. She didn’t react, so I continued. “The online magazine that focuses on looking to the history of fashion in order to predict the future?”

  “You enjoy fashion, don’t you?” she asked.

  “I do. It’s what I’ve wanted to do as long as I can remember.”

  “I must admit, I’ve never heard of this magazine.”

  “I thought—I understood that you gave permission for us to view and photograph your collection.”

  She leaned back against the divan and ran her hand over the head of a fluffy white Persian cat. “My friend Mr. Charles must have arranged that. I leave anything involved in running the estate to him.” She looked at the cat, who settled in next to her. “Tell me about this project.”

  “It’s to be our first print magazine. The concept behind Retrofit is to show people how to take items from the past and incorporate them into the present. Our premiere issue is going to be dedicated to the style of the Seventies, highlighting the top designers, showing how things were worn then and how to interpret individual items now.”

  “It sounds fascinating,” she said.

  “We’re relatively new. My boss officially launched it last year. But what Nancie has been able to accomplish in that time is amazing. She’s a visionary. I’m lucky to be on her team.”

  Mr. Charles reappeared from the swinging doors. He held a tray filled with two tea cups, a ceramic pot, and a small canister for sugar cubes and for milk. A saucer of lemon wedges sat next to a plate of sliced bread. From the scent, I guessed it was banana. He set the tray down between us.

  “Will that be all, Jennie?” he asked.

  “For now.”

  He looked at the tray, and then at me. His features looked less friendly than judgmental. I felt like he was trying to send me a message. It might have been don’t-overstay-your-welcome, it might have been get-out-of-here now. Hard to tell.

  He left the room through the door that led to the upstairs.

  “Jennie, how well do you know Mr. Charles?” I asked, wondering how I was going to go about implying that her employee was possibly involved with Pritchard.

  “I know him better than I’ve known anybody in my whole life.” She patted the afghan on her lap and the fluffy white cat woke up. “Have you been formally introduced to my kitties? This is Navajo.” She scratched the cat’s ears and the cat tipped its head back, exposing an exquisite turquoise and red Indian beaded choker around its neck. “The tabby is Harvest Gold, and the calico behind the piano is Bohemian Rhapsody.” She smiled at them. “You can take the girl out of the Seventies, but you can’t take the Seventies out of the girl.”

  “Has Mr. Charles been in your life all along?” I asked. Not that I didn’t enjoy meeting the cats, but Jennie Mae was either trying to distract me or was getting off topic.

  She poured the tea into her cup. “We lost touch for a long time. Quite by chance, he learned that I was living in Amity and he looked me up. We discovered that a friendship remained in place of what we’d once had. Plus, he knows exactly how I like my afternoon tea,” she said. “I hope it’s not too strong for you.”

  “Strong? I’ve always been more of a coffee drinker, but I’m sure this’ll be fine.”

  She filled my mug and set the pot back onto the tray. She added a few sugar cubes to her mug and stirred, and then took a sip. Her eyes closed and she sat back against her chair, a smile on her face.

  I reached for my own mug and blew on the hot liquid. I set the cup on the saucer and looked at Jennie Mae.

  Her smile grew more broad. “A good cup of tea does make a difference, doesn’t it? This is just the pick-me-up I needed.” She took another sip, and then another. Before I’d even started my mug, hers was empty. She refilled her cup and drank half of her second mug.

  That must be some good tea. I lifted the mug to my lips and swallowed a gulp.

  Whoa! That wasn’t tea, it was bourbon!

  My eyes went wide and I coughed. Jennie Mae opened her eyes and tipped her head. “It’s an acquired taste, I admit,” she said. “But you’ll soon find that no other tea compares.” She drained her second mug and sat back. Navajo jumped onto her lap and she closed her eyes and stroked the cat’s fur.

  Now, I’m not the type to judge people by their clothes, surroundings, or pets, but the combination of all three of these very things, in addition to the spiked tea, was making me wonder if I’d stumbled through the looking glass. I stood up and immediately felt the booze all the way to my knees. I sat down. Maybe it would be a good idea to eat something.

  I ate two pieces of banana bread before I stood up again. The room spun. I was what the kids called “a lightweight,” and drinking bourbon on a mostly empty stomach at one thirty in the afternoon was an unfamiliar experience. And on top of all of that, I had to pee.

  “May I use your bathroom?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said, keeping her eyes closed. “It’s at the top of the stairs through the white door.”

  I carefully stepped around the furniture. My platform shoes made slight indentations in the plush carpeting. I kept one hand on the wall to steady myself until I reached the stairs and was able to grab the wooden banister. This didn’t feel right. My head was cloudy and my feet felt like they each weighed fifty pounds. I reached the landing. The bathroom was in front of me, just like in my own house at home. But the staircase that led to the upstairs attic—the attic that Pritchard had chased me out of just yesterday—was right there.

  Right. There.

  Which brings us to reason #4: No good can come from spying while you’re buzzed on bourbon.

  I looked around. No signs of Mr. Charles. No signs of Pritch
ard Smith. No signs of Jennie Mae Tome. If everybody was so busy, where were they?

  I opened the door that led to the staircase that led to the attic and listened. Nothing. If Pritchard was up there, then he was doing a very good job of pretending he wasn’t. And why would he want to do that? Because he knew I was there and he didn’t want me to catch him doing whatever it was that he was there to do.

  Slowly, I crept up the second set of stairs, careful to keep my footsteps silent as I ascended. I wanted the element of surprise when I reached the attic and discovered him.

  But as it turns out, the element of surprise was for me. Because the fabulous attic-turned-walk-in-closet that I’d seen the first time I was there, jammed with racks, dressers, and trunks of vintage fashion, was empty.

  Chapter 7

  THURSDAY, NOON

  The attic was larger than it had appeared when filled with clothes. I crossed the floor, my shoes making soft thud sounds against the worn wood. I opened the window and leaned out, looking to my left first and then right, expecting to see something amiss. The view was much like the day before, or what I remembered before defenestrating myself. No moving vans were pulled up to the property. No shady looking people were hauling away garbage bags of fringes and gauchos. The only activity in range was a truck of landscapers who were unloading potted plants from the back. If Pritchard had packed everything up and taken it out of the building, Nancie would have told me.

  I ran down the stairs. Nobody was on the second floor. Down the second flight of stairs, half running, half falling, mostly stumbling. Jennie Mae was resting on the divan, snoring slightly. I knocked into a glass shelf that held vases of silk flowers. They fell, and colorful glass pebbles scattered out and pelted the carpet. I pushed through the swinging doors and found Mr. Charles in the kitchen.

  I pointed my finger toward the ceiling. “What happened to the clothes?”

  “What clothes?” he said.

  “The clothes in the attic. They’re gone.” I stopped talking. Nobody knew I’d been in the attic, and if I were going to admit it to anybody, I didn’t think Mr. Charles was going to be my first choice. “I heard from my coworker that Jennie Mae has a vast collection of clothing in her attic. I just took a peek”—I turned, put a hand on one saloon door and leaned forward, checking to see if Jennie Mae was still asleep—“but the attic is empty. I assume someone came for the collection?”

  “No one came for the collection.” The butler moved past me to the living room. He took the stairs two at a time. I lost sight of him after he hit the landing. Seconds later I heard him cry out, “No-no-no! We’ve been robbed!”

  I picked up the wall mounted phone and called 911. “Nine-one-one, please state your emergency,” said a male voice.

  “There’s been a robbery,” I said. I gave them the address even though I knew it was displayed on their screen. I heard a sound behind me and turned around. The saloon-style doors to the kitchen swung shut, as if someone had been holding them open. I stepped closer to them but the short phone cord yanked me backward. The sudden movement, coupled with the bourbon, the empty attic, and the banana bread all came together in one giant nauseating punch to the gut and I dropped the phone and threw up in the sink.

  Reason #5: snooping eventually leads to the police.

  I sat on the front step to Jennie Mae’s house. The breeze picked up the edges of my caftan and blew them around. A uniformed officer looked at me and then gestured behind him to a man in white. “We need a medic over here,” he said.

  I held up a hand. “I’m fine.”

  “I’m not taking that chance.” He instructed the medic to give me the once over, and then he went inside the house. I stood up and followed the man in white to the medical van. After checking my blood pressure, pupil dilation, and pulse, he handed me a bottle of Muscle Milk and a straw. “You need protein. Drink this and wait here.”

  “I have to go back inside,” I said.

  “The cops won’t like that,” he said.

  “They never do.”

  I downed the beverage and handed the empty carton to the medic. “Thank you. I feel better already.”

  I hoisted my caftan up around my waist and undid the button on my pants. It didn’t help the have-to-pee situation.

  I went back inside the house, leaving the front door open so sunlight could illuminate the dark house. The chair that Jennie Mae had been resting in was now occupied by the black and white cat. Detective Loncar, Ribbon’s version of Columbo, stood next to the tray table that still held the ceramic pot of tea and the empty glasses. He wore a neatly pressed olive green suit with a white shirt and a yellow and olive speckled tie. I’d grown used to the site of his buttons stretching across his belly, but today they laid flat. He must have either lost weight or sized up.

  “Ms. Kidd.”

  “Detective Loncar,” I said.

  “You don’t look too good.”

  “Bourbon,” I said.

  “That’s not like you.”

  “I know.”

  The detective used the end of his pen to lift the empty tea cup and sniff the residue.

  “That’s where I got the bourbon,” I said. He turned to me but didn’t say anything, so I continued. “I thought it was tea.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “Mr. Charles brought it from the kitchen.”

  “Who’s Mr. Charles?”

  “The butler.” Loncar crossed his arms over his chest. “I didn’t say ‘the butler did it.’ I said the butler brought the tea from the kitchen. Those are two very different sentences.”

  “Where did the butler go after he served you the spiked tea?”

  I looked the direction of the stairs. “The last time I saw him, he went up there.”

  Loncar looked toward the doors. “You followed him?”

  “No. I heard him holler something about being robbed and I went to the kitchen to call you.”

  “Ms. Kidd, I would like nothing more than to tell you to stay out of this, but right now, you’re about as in the middle of it as a person can get, so instead I’m going to tell you to answer my questions as honestly as you can. Withhold nothing. Do you understand?”

  I held up my hand, palm-side out. “Before we do this thing that we do when I end up in these kinds of situations, can I go to the bathroom?”

  “Sorry. The rest of the house is off limits. Tell me again what you’re doing here?”

  “I’m here on a job. A paying job.”

  “Who’s your employer?”

  “Retrofit Magazine.”

  “So your employer knows you’re here.”

  I bit my lip. “Not exactly.”

  “Miss Kidd, have a seat. We need to talk.”

  It took Loncar’s team several hours to secure the scene. Jennie Mae Tome’s cats swarmed under the feet of officers who photographed the interior of the house. I watched from the doorway, since I’d been instructed to wait outside. In time, Loncar joined me.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Better,” I said.

  “Can you call someone to pick you up?”

  “I drove.”

  “I think it’s best that you leave your car here for the night.”

  “You can search it if you want. I didn’t take anything.”

  “I’m not accusing you of theft.” He paused. “I’m not convinced you’ve sobered up enough to be safe behind the wheel.”

  I was about to argue when a hiccup escaped my mouth. “I’ll call a taxi.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  The Retrofit offices were empty by the time the cab driver dropped me off. I would have gone straight home, except that I wanted to pick up Logan and I really needed to pee. I went straight to the restroom, and then, after washing my hands, headed to my cubicle. “You are not going to believe the day I had,” I said as I turned the corner.

  “Try me,” said a voice from behind my desk.

  I jumped and turned to face my des
k. Pritchard sat behind it, holding Logan in his arms.

  Chapter 8

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON

  A dark shadow was cast across Pritchard’s face, making it difficult for me to see him. I stepped forward and he turned on a light and shined it directly into my eyes. I shielded them, too late. Spots of red filled my vision. “What are you doing in my office?” I asked.

  He moved Logan from his lap to the desk. Logan let out a low, throaty growl. I closed the distance between us, scooped him up, and retreated to the doorway.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Pritchard said. “I can assure you that I didn’t hurt your cat.” He leaned back in my chair and smiled. Despite his reassurances to the contrary, his presence felt threatening. “You silly girl. If you had done your job, you would have been left out of everything. If you had only minded your business. But you didn’t. People warned me about you. I should have expected this.”

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “How much do you think Jennie Mae’s vintage wardrobe is worth?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know the extent of her collection. I’ve never seen it.”

  “Oh, but you do know, Ess Kay. You saw it the day you went looking for me in her attic. Too bad that shutter didn’t give under your weight. This whole problem would have solved itself.”

  He’d known that I’d been there. He knew about my attempt to hide and the escape out the window.

  “In a wa-a-ay,” he said, dragging the word “way” out into three syllables, “you set this whole thing into motion. And now there’s a ticking clock.” He tapped his index finger on the top of the desk as if keeping time. “How does that make you feel, Ess Kay? That there is a timer running in the background, a specific length of time in which certain acts will unfold?”

  He stopped tapping. “You already know more about what is going on than you should, Ess Kay.” He kept saying my initials phonetically. Ess Kay. He dragged the S sound out like a hiss. Esssssssss. It reminded me of the cobra in Riki Tiki Tavi. “Yes, you know quite a bit more than I like. But I know a lot too. For example, I know you live on West 47th Street in a house that you purchased from your parents. How charming.”