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

by Diane Vallere

  The ironic thing was that I had to turn away business in order to fulfill my commitment. But that’s not what this was all about. Nick had asked me to help Amanda, and that had felt good. He’d probably expected me to say no.

  I should have said no.

  I should have said no, pretended he’d never asked, and gone about my business.

  But I didn’t. Because Amanda, aside from being Nick’s maybe-former girlfriend, was a talented designer, and after a year of false starts in jobs that fell short of my own expectations, I recognized that working with her would allow me to fall back on my passion for the industry. I had a high taste level, proven instincts on trends, and was a good at multitasking. Besides, confronting my own pettiness about Amanda’s relationship with Nick was like putting a pin in it. At least that’s what I’d hoped.

  I pulled up in front of my house. I’d been planning to park the Stingray in the garage, but a brown minivan was in the driveway. I drove past the house, pulled into my neighbor’s driveway, backed out, and parked by my mailbox.

  A disheveled woman stood by the door to the garage. “Samantha Kidd?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She pushed the hood off of her head. “I’m Molly Diers. I need help. I would have made an appointment, but I finally got a sitter and it’s kind of an emergency. Can we do this?”

  It took the better part of a minute for my brain to switch gears from arson and attack to the rest of my life. If the woman in front of me hadn’t appeared so in need of fashion help, I might not have ever made the connection.

  Molly Diers wore an oversized olive green snorkel coat over a pair of pants printed with superheroes. Her feet were shod in dirty camel Uggs that had seen better days, and there was a smudge of something green on her cheek.

  “Follow me,” I said. I unlocked the garage door and walked across the concrete floor to the door that opened at the top of the basement. A wooden staircase led down to my converted home office.

  When I first moved back into the house, the basement had held several mismatched bookcases filled with magazines, memorabilia, and paint cans. The basement had flooded, thanks to my parents never having the foundation sealed, and most of the contents had been damaged to the point of ruin. I’d arranged for a trash pick-up and tossed everything but the clothes I made in high school.

  Once emptied, I was left with a twenty-foot-long room with exposed brick walls. Five packs of yellow rubber gloves, several bottles of vinegar, a jug of bleach, and an industrial fan had removed traces of the flooding. Now the walls were decorated with fashion sketches, the room where my dad had brewed his homemade wine had been turned into a fitting room, and the rest of the space had been outfitted with bars for clothing samples and shelves for accessories. A discarded architect’s table served as my desk.

  Molly followed me down the stairs. I flipped to a blank page on a yellow legal pad.

  “Molly, have a seat. Let’s talk about what you want.”

  “That’s easy. I want to look good again. You should have seen me back in the day. Fashion was my life. I’ve been married for seven years and the bastard left me. After two boys, I don’t even feel like a woman anymore.”

  I jotted single mother-seven years-woman on the legal pad and underlined woman three times. “Tell me about your daily routine.”

  “I get up, feed the hellions, get them off to school. Five hours later I pick them up.”

  “What do you do all day?”

  “I pick Cheerios out of my hair.” I considered writing that part down. “Do you have kids?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “So you don’t understand. You have no idea what kind of a terror two boys can be. They wreck everything. Everything. Meanwhile my rat-ex-husband already has a new girlfriend half his age. He gets the boys every other weekend and the boys think he’s a god. What do I do all day? Once I get them off to school, the house is quiet. I can relax. I have five hours to pretend my life turned out differently.”

  Molly Diers didn’t need a stylist, she needed a therapist. “How do you dress now?” I asked.

  “You’re looking at it. If it doesn’t have an elastic waist, I’m not interested.”

  I felt like I was on the Punk’d version of “What Not to Wear.”

  “I have to be honest, Molly. I don’t think we’re going to be much of a match, style-wise.”

  “You can’t turn me away. I need tough love. I read about you in the paper. You take on killers and whackos and police and you lived in New York. When I was fourteen, I used to walk around my house with a book on my head. These days, high fashion is a T-shirt without a stain. Besides, the boys are back in school and I need to look like I can hold down a job. I need you.”

  Already I felt bad for turning her down. I looked at my calendar. Amanda’s name had been written in, but that job ended with the runway show. I flipped the page to next week and the week after that. All clear. If it wasn’t for Molly Diers, what would I be doing? Looking for arsonists, flirting with Dante, and pining away over Nick. Maybe I needed Molly Diers, too.

  “Fill out this questionnaire and then let’s set up a schedule for you.”

  I handed over a clipboard with a couple sheets of paper on it. Molly looked relieved. I pulled three tissues out of a box on the corner of my desk and handed them to her. “There’s something green on your cheek.”

  “There’s always something green on my cheek.” She scrubbed her cheekbone until the green went away, leaving fresh, pink skin.

  I didn’t know how other personal stylists worked, but when I hung out my shingle, I assumed I could figure it out as I went. I compiled binders of looks that represented the fashion identities I’d once learned from a Cosmo quiz: Casual, Fashion Forward, Bohemian, and Powerful. My own personal style ran along the lines of whimsy, but my goal wasn’t to have my clients dress like me. I sat Molly in a comfy purple velvet chair and handed her a stack of binders. Day One involved identifying the way she wanted to dress, the sizes she wore, and the budget she had in mind. I’d shop and put together what I felt was the basis for a new wardrobe to suit her needs. My take was 10% of her spend.

  While she was busy with the binders, I snuck off to the back corner of the basement and made a call to Dante.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “I’m at my house.”

  “I thought we had an arrangement.”

  “No, you had an arrangement. I had a need to change my clothes and see my cat. I’ll be done here soon.” I glanced at Molly. She had her nose buried in Bohemian. “Can you come over in about an hour?”

  “Sure.”

  Molly and I finished our first consultation and she wrote me a check to cover my initial consulting fee. I thanked her, we set up an appointment three days away, and I walked her out. Dante’s motorcycle pulled into the driveway next to her car as we were saying goodbye.

  “Is he yours?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for a man like that.”

  That made two of us.

  11

  I waited until Molly drove away before I led Dante into the house.

  “You rang?” he asked.

  I held my finger up in a just-a-minute gesture. I was hungry. I opened up the cabinets looking for food and came up with a box of Snyder’s of Hanover Sourdough pretzels. I pulled a fat pretzel out and held the box toward Dante. He waved them off. I bit into the round loop of a full pretzel and leaned back against the counter.

  “I talked to Amanda today. She’s been getting threats at her studio,” I said.

  “What kind of threats?”

  “Written. They look like old fashioned ransom notes with letters cut out of magazines, but whoever made them kept the original and sent her a copy. I’m guessing it’s because whoever did it didn’t want to leave fingerprints.”

  “Nobody’s going to take the time to cut letters out of a magazine.”

  “They did. I saw them. T
he most recent said ‘burn, baby, burn!’ I don’t think it’s much of a coincidence that her runway show went up in a blaze of glory.”

  Dante leaned back against the chair. “Why are you still helping Amanda?”

  “Because I said I would. I made a commitment.”

  “The job is over.”

  Breakup Rule #4: Don’t get into your last relationship problems with the potential new guy.

  Logan was the only one who heard the gory post-breakup details. Maybe if Dante and Logan bonded enough, I could leave the explanation to my cat.

  “The fire investigator is trying to determine whether the runway fire was an accident or arson. Even if it was intentional, nobody was hurt, so it’s not a homicide investigation.”

  “Have you talked to any of the models?”

  “No.”

  “Not even Harper? Weren’t you two close?”

  “Harper was a loner among the girls. We weren’t close, but she didn’t seem to have any other friends. Besides, Harper is in Mexico. Why?”

  “Samantha, I can understand your desire to figure this out, but there’s something else driving you here and you’re not telling me what it is.”

  I looked down at my hands. “The attack was personal. Someone was in the parking lot waiting for me. Someone wanted to hurt me and I don’t know why.”

  “You might never know why.”

  “How am I supposed to move on if I don’t know if it’ll happen again? How do I know somebody isn’t watching me every time I leave my house?”

  “All the more reason to stay at my place.”

  “I’m not going to hide,” I said. “But I can’t live my life constantly looking over my shoulder, either. I don’t know how anybody could expect me to.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  “My plan?”

  “I figure after your meeting with Amanda you came up with a plan. You asked me here because I’m a part of it.” He stared at me for a few seconds. Logan climbed from the table onto Dante’s leg, and then onto the ground. Dante never broke eye contact with me. “Unless I’m wrong, and I wouldn’t mind being wrong.”

  I felt my face grow warm. “I told Amanda to fire Clive and bring you on as her photographer. I need somebody on the inside. Clive was at Warehouse Five today—”

  “You went to Warehouse Five? That’s a crime scene.”

  “I know. Detective Loncar was there with an arson investigator.”

  “I can’t imagine either one of them was happy with you walking around.”

  “Happy? No, but after Clive elbowed me in the ribs, Loncar took my side.”

  “He what?” Dante gripped the table and his knuckles turned white. His sleeves rode up and the flame tattoos around his wrists throbbed with his pulse.

  I waved my hand. “It’s good that he did. I don’t think the detective believed me until he saw I was in pain.”

  Dante looked like he wanted to put his fist through something. Maybe a wall, maybe Clive’s face.

  “He’s out of the picture. You’re in his place. Can you do that?”

  “You said Clive was hired to document the show from inception to completion? Sure, I can step in.”

  “You’ll need to get pictures of whatever you can if we’re going to crack this thing.”

  He leaned back. “I’ll get pictures of samples, sketches, and Amanda’s showroom. If she’ll give me a list of everybody she employed, I’ll get interviews on film. Clive probably turned something over to her already. That’s standard procedure.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d gotten so used to everybody telling me I shouldn’t be involved that I wasn’t prepared for Dante to take me seriously. “Is that okay?” Dante asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Great. I’ll tell her I need to see whatever he’s done so I can stay true to the style of the initial photography and keep the change of photographers seamless.” He sat back in the chair and put his hands behind his head. “That should give us a good start if we’re going to ‘crack this thing’.” He smiled.

  “Take pictures of everything you can. The fire happened after the attack. So did I see something backstage and the fire was set to cover it up, or was someone planning to set the fire and they wanted me gone before it happened?”

  “You need to be careful. If you’re right and somebody targeted you, they’re not going to like knowing you’re poking around their business.”

  “I know.”

  We started at each other for a few seconds, until I broke eye contact and focused on my pretzel. I snapped off the other loop and bit into it. Pretzel dust covered the front of my shirt. I dusted it off, chewed, and swallowed the lump of dough. I felt better already.

  “So what do we do now?” Dante asked.

  “You need to go to Amanda’s studio, introduce yourself, and get the lay of the land. She doesn’t know that I confided in you. Right now, she thinks you’re a fashion photographer who can replace Clive.”

  “So I’m your man on the inside.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on. Be on the lookout for Tiny, Amanda’s business manager, and anybody else who comes along. There was a guy there today named Oscar LeVay. He owns the agency where Tiny hired the models, and he expects Amanda to pay him seventy-five grand for the show even thought it didn’t take place. He may have taken the letters from Amanda’s desk.”

  Dante’s eyebrows went up.

  “I was hiding behind a screen when Oscar arrived. When he left, the letters were gone.”

  “If she went to the police about the letters, they would have kept them.”

  “Maybe that’s why the ones I saw were copies.”

  “Did you see this Oscar guy take them?”

  “No. I don’t even know if he saw them. But if he saw them, and he was responsible for sending them in the first place, he might take them to hide the evidence.”

  “Did you tell Amanda that?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Because Nick was there. “The timing wasn’t right,” I said out loud.

  “Anything else you can tell me?”

  “Clive wasn’t happy when I dropped your name.”

  “You leave Clive to me.”

  I walked Dante to the front door. “Thank you for helping me,” I said.

  “Samantha, just because I’m helping you doesn’t mean I don’t have ulterior motives.”

  “Meaning?”

  He put his fingers on my chin, tipped my head back, and kissed me. On the few occasions when I thought about what it would be like to kiss Dante, I imagined heat-of-the-moment, back-up-against-a-wall type stuff. Like kissing Brando in The Wild One.

  It was just like I’d imagined.

  The world dropped away and the room spun, leaving me dizzy. It was enough to make me forget the name of that shoe designer who’d been on my mind a lot lately. When Dante pulled away, he looked me straight in the eyes. I blinked twice and then looked away. He pulled on his motorcycle helmet, flipped the visor down, and left.

  I took a shower, put on clean undies, and checked my reflection in the foggy mirror. My injuries, though invisible, felt like a corset around my waist, and the elastic on my panties dug into my chicken finger, ice cream, and waffle weight gain. I moved my gaze from my torso to my face. The person staring back at me looked like a stranger. Where was the happy go lucky buyer who turned projects in on time and hit her end of quarter target inventory levels? Where was the overachiever who met sell-through expectations and gross margin goals? Where was the woman who could travel three cities on the contents of one carry-on suitcase and stay under the company per diem of sixty dollars a day?

  She was gone, a distant memory. In her place was an unemployed job seeker with a muffin top.

  Since moving to Ribbon, I’d been suspected of murder, used as a plant in a counterfeiting ring, and trapped in a museum. I’d started a relationship I had long daydreamed about and was pretty much responsible for sabotaging it before it got o
ff the ground. My friends had gone ignored since the attack. Life as I knew it was out of control. I hadn’t even called my parents in California to tell them that I’d been hospitalized. I didn’t want to give anybody any reason to criticize my life. I was becoming isolated. And somewhere along the way, that had become okay.

  As the fog cleared from the mirror, I focused on my reflection. I looked older than I had when I worked at Bentley’s and it had only been a little over a year. My brown hair hung past my shoulders, limp, unkempt. I’d gone from maintenance trims every six weeks to pulling it into a ponytail and ignoring it. My eyes looked tired. My brows needed shaping. My skin looked dull. And don’t get me started on my pedicure.

  I ran a thick comb through my hair and secured it into two low ponytails on either side of my head. Without stopping to over-think things, I picked up a pair of scissors and sliced through the hair on the left side of my head. Whack! Right below chin level. The hair bobbed up around my face. The right side of my hair was long, serious, and staid in comparison.

  I held my hand up to cover the left hand side of the mirror. The person who stared back at me with long straight hair was a stranger. She had seen things I never expected to see and had lived through things I never expected to have lived through. She looked light years older than I’d been when I moved back into this house.

  I moved my hand to cover the right hand side of the mirror. The woman I saw looked fresh. Perky. Ready for anything. Unfettered by straightening irons and blow driers and the fight against killers and naturally curly hair.

  I took the scissors to the ponytail on the right and snipped through the wet hair. The natural curls sprung up, making the hair instantly wavy. I squirted a handful of mousse into my palm and rubbed it onto my strands. I followed with a tinted moisturizer, mascara, and dark red lipstick, and blow-dried my hair upside down. When I flipped back up, I looked at the stranger in front of me. She looked like someone who didn’t care so much that she’d been in the hospital two nights ago. She looked like she might have a plan. I didn’t have a plan, so I liked the girl in the mirror even more.