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

by Diane Vallere

  The look that I gave the two boys probably didn’t do much to prove I wasn’t a witch.

  I turned back to Molly. “The room is empty now. You can go in and change.”

  She leaned into the doorway, more tentatively this time. When she was convinced no more tattooed bikers were lurking about inside, she closed the door behind her.

  “What are you doing here?” I hissed at him.

  “You told me to come here and develop the film, remember?”

  “Are you finished?”

  “The prints are drying. Who is this woman? Do you trust her? Because every photo I took today is hanging in there.”

  “She’s a client.” The door opened slowly and Molly Diers poked her head out. “Samantha, can I ask you something in private?”

  I left Dante and crossed the room to her. “Yes?”

  “These photos are of you. What are they from?”

  “I’m writing an article on a local designer and needed some art. Last minute thing—no time to hire a model.”

  “So he’s your photographer? Do you trust him?”

  I looked at Dante, who was fiddling with one of the Rubik’s cubes while the boys watched.

  “More than I probably should,” I said.

  “I wish I met the kind of men I could trust.” She shut the door again and I went back to Dante.

  “This woman just went through a nasty divorce. Her ex-husband has a girlfriend half his age, and her in-laws invited her and the kids to their golden anniversary party this weekend.”

  “I know you’re not seriously asking me to be her date.”

  “God, no!” The clicking of the plastic toys in the background stopped. I froze and looked at Dante. He looked behind me. He smiled at them. The clicking started again.“If I’m going to help her, I need her undivided attention. That means no you, and no them.” I tipped my head toward Joseph and Not-Joseph. “As in, can you do make them go away? Like, to the kitchen?”

  “You think their mom is going to let me take her kids?”

  “I think their mom would pay you to take her kids.”

  The door behind me opened and I turned to look at Molly’s head, poking out from behind the door. She looked nervous.

  “Come on out,” I said.

  She stepped out from the closet, wearing a close-fitting jersey wrap dress. Until today, I hadn’t realized what a body Molly had under that snorkel coat. The jersey molded to her long, lean torso, nipping in at the waist where she’d cinched the wrap-around tie. Behind me, I heard the click of a shutter. Molly copped a couple of poses and pouted and Dante clicked a few more frames.

  “You’re a natural,” Dante said.

  “It’s the dress,” Molly said. She stepped in front of the full length mirror and studied herself.

  “Molly, if it’s okay with you, Dante can take the boys to the kitchen for a snack and that’ll give us a chance to concentrate.”

  “Yes, please,” she said to Dante. He went over to the boys and said something. They looked up at him in awe. He tipped his head toward the stairs. “I hope you guys like ice cream and pretzels,” he said. He looked at me. I made a face. Not-Joseph giggled, and then the boys followed Dante.

  “Who is he, the Pied Piper?” she asked.

  “He’s a friend.”

  “You think he’s busy this Saturday night?”

  “If I were you, I’d make other arrangements.”

  * * *

  The impending in-law anniversary celebration had shifted Molly’s priorities from single mother getting by to wardrobe overhaul. By the time we were finished, she’d chosen two thirds of what I’d assembled in my high speed shopping trip at Tradava, including a paisley printed tunic, several pair of boot-cut pants, an amber cowl neck sweater with an asymmetric hem, two suede skirts, and the jersey wrap dress for the party. She wanted to pair it with fishnets and stilettos. Not entirely appropriate for a fifty-year wedding celebration, but if it was between that and her snorkel coat, I knew which way I’d cast my vote.

  After Molly left with her boys in tow (freshly tattooed thanks to Dante’s skills with a waterproof eyeliner pen), I opened and closed the cabinets, looking for food. I wasn’t known for going for long stretches of time without a meal, and turning down Dante’s lunch invite had left me hungry. And when I was hungry, I had a hard time focusing. I pulled a package of frozen chicken breasts out of the freezer and set them in the sink, and then stared out the window into the yard next door.

  “Topeka,” Dante said, joining me in the kitchen.

  “What?”

  “Topeka. Capital of Kansas. The way you were staring out the window, I figured you were doing some mental gymnastics. For me, that’s either state capitals or times tables.”

  “So why’d you say Topeka?”

  “Most people get stuck on Kansas.”

  “I’m good with Kansas. I get lost in the M states.”

  He smiled. “The photos from today are in your basement. You want to go look at them? I didn’t see anything abnormal, but I don’t know what you’re looking for.”

  “Sure.” I went down the stairs again, with Dante behind me. The rack of clothes from Tradava stood in the middle of the basement, covered in cast-offs that Molly hadn’t taken the time to rehang. An ivory dress had fallen from the plastic hanger and lay in a pool of wool jersey on the floor. I tossed it over the top of the bar and then went into the darkroom.

  Dante slipped his arms around me. He'd strung rope along that wall, too, and had clipped large photos to it, photos that held images of me in Amanda’s samples, photos that captured the interior of Amanda’s studio. More than one captured the unflattering view of the unzipped back of the too-small red gown. If Dante hadn’t been the one who took the pictures, I might have tried arguing that it wasn’t me. But now two people knew about the bow on the back of my panties.

  He slipped his arms around me and I leaned back against his chest. “It's getting late. I've developed most of the photos but you’ll probably have a better idea of what to look for. I can come back tomorrow to finish the rest. Unless you want me to stay….” His hands glided upward and his lips brushed against the side of my hair.

  I turned around and boosted myself up on one of the unused counters, legs dangling down the cabinet like Joseph’s legs had dangled from the folding chair out front. The red glow from the bulbs and the intimate setting of the darkroom were navigating our conversation in a direction that made me nervous. Not bad-nervous. Ramped-up-pulse nervous.

  Dante's heat was palpable. His eyes were dark and mysterious. His black rockabilly pompadour gleamed with the red lights reflecting off it, and his lips were more full than I'd noticed until now. And they were about two inches from my own.

  I remembered how it had felt to kiss him last night. Soft. Tender. He placed a hand on the counter on either side of my hips and leaned in so far that his lips almost touched mine. I leaned forward and nipped at his lower lip. His fingers reached under my sweater.

  A knock on the door of the garage interrupted us.

  I pulled away. “That must be the detective,” I said in a raspy voice. “I asked him to come over tonight.”

  Dante hung his head down, his hands still planted on either side of me. “Great,” he said in a voice that matched my own. “We can show him the photos.”

  I hopped down from the counter and left. Dante followed. But when I got to the garage door and looked out the window, I knew it wasn’t great at all.

  Detective Loncar wasn’t alone. The person with him was Amanda.

  23

  “What’s Amanda Ries doing here? With my detective?” I asked out loud. To myself I added while Dante and I were about to cross a line I wasn’t sure I was ready to cross? while also taking note of the possessive pronoun I’d applied to Loncar.

  “Only one way to find out,” Dante said.

  I opened the door to the garage and motioned them in. Loncar’s breath came out in puffs thanks to the drop in temperature. The air f
elt moist and cold. Like snow was on its way.

  “Ms. Ries came to the police station to talk to me. I think you should hear what she has to say.” He looked over my shoulder at Dante. I turned and looked at Dante too.

  “I was just leaving,” he said. The four of us walked through the garage and into the house. Dante shrugged into his motorcycle jacket and zipped it up. I walked him to the door.

  “You don’t have to leave,” I said.

  “I think I do. You went stiffer than a surfboard the second you saw Amanda and I’d place money on what you were thinking. I don’t think it had much to do with the arson investigation. You’re not over the shoe guy yet.”

  I blushed and turned away. The coat closet was opposite the front door, and I reached inside and pulled out a black plaid wool scarf. I draped it around Dante’s neck and kept my hands on the ends. “It’s cold out there.”

  “I’m not all that worried about the weather. Good night, Samantha.”

  He left. I stood by the door and watched him straddle his motorcycle, pull on his helmet, and back the bike off its kickstand. When he was out of my driveway, he cranked the engine and took off.

  Breakup Rule #7: Recognize when you’re not ready to move on.

  Amanda knew Dante was working with me in the capacity of photographer. She’d fired Clive and brought him on based on my recommendation. Catching him here at my house must have triggered questions about my real relationship with him. And while I doubted she and Detective Loncar had gotten into a discussion of my love life, Loncar had seen Dante and I together at Warehouse Five. Finding him here, after dark, might compromise my story about Dante being the official new photographer for Amanda’s collection.

  “Can I get either of you anything?” I asked, hoping the answer was wine, pretzels, or ice cream, assuming Dante and the boys hadn’t finished off two out of those three.

  “No thanks,” Amanda said. Loncar just shook his head.

  Amanda sat in one of the arm chairs, her back to the window. Loncar kept his hand on the back of the other chair, but did not sit. I, being of the why-stand-when-you-can-sit philosophy, took the sofa.

  “Did something happen?” I asked.

  Loncar looked at Amanda. Amanda looked at the floor.

  “Ms. Ries, I assume you came here to tell Ms. Kidd what you told me earlier. Why don’t you go first?”

  Amanda stared at her hands like she’d just discovered they were there. She wore a set of gold rings on her left hand, and with her right she slid them up to her knuckle and back into place.

  Whatever it was Loncar wanted her to tell me, she wasn’t eager to share. I stared at the top of her head while she played with her jewelry. The clinking of the gold rings against each other was the only sound in the house. She looked up at me, her face pale and gaunt. “Can I use your restroom?”

  “Sure. It’s the room directly at the top of the stairs,” I said.

  She moved quickly. Soon after the door shut, I heard her retching.

  “Detective, what’s going on? Why did you bring Amanda with you?”

  “I didn’t. She must have come here after she came to me. We met up in front of your house.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Logan stuck his head out from under the sofa. The detective held his hand down and Logan sniffed it. “Ms. Kidd, I came here to talk to you about the fire in the Dumpster outside of Warehouse Five.

  “Did you check it out? Did you find anything?”

  “Gigger had the contents of the Dumpster bagged. They’re at his office. You want to tell me what I’m looking for?”

  I picked up a piece of paper and made a quick sketch of the steel disc that I’d seen by the arm hole of Eddie’s mannequin “About three inches in diameter, with a hole in the middle. There are openings like triangles. It’ll look kind of like the bomb shelter fall out signs from the fifties.”

  Loncar stood up and turned his back to me. He wandered into the kitchen and made a call. When he came back, he was looking at the face of his phone, swiping through photos.

  “Is this what you’re talking about?” He handed me his phone.

  The image on the screen matched the steel disc on the inside of the plaster mannequin joint I’d seen at Tradava.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s a piece of metal from a plaster mannequin. It fits around the arm holes and leg holes, so you can snap the limbs into place. That disc says that somebody burned a mannequin. But why? Why throw it out in the first place?”

  “You were pretty sure you saw a leg.”

  “Don’t you see? I did see a leg. It wasn’t a person’s leg, it was a mannequin leg. That’s why you didn’t find evidence of a person inside the Dumpster.”

  He stared at the picture on his phone and nodded. I studied his face, looking for signs of exasperation or disbelief. There was no eye rolling. No shaking head. No rescinding his offer to listen to my theories.

  I continued. “Amanda’s show was at Warehouse Five, and she had mannequins in the lobby before the show.”

  “The mannequins at the mall are plastic. We would have smelled the burning plastic when the Dumpster went up in flames. You were pretty close to the fire. You probably would have had some fluorocarbon poisoning.”

  “New mannequins are plastic, but not these. They’re made of plaster and metal. They’re a lot heavier than the new ones. More durable too. Someone would have to be pretty strong to get one into the Dumpster.”

  “How do you know so much about mannequins?”

  “My friend Eddie Adams told me. You remember him, right? Tradava’s visual director who worked the hat exhibit at the museum?”

  Loncar nodded.

  “When these mannequins get broken, Tradava calls a special company to dispose of them. They incinerate the mannequin and recycle the steel rods inside the torso and limbs.”

  “So whoever tried to burn the mannequin must not have known about the steel frame inside.”

  “Or whoever tried to burn the mannequin didn’t care so much about destroying it, they cared about destroying whatever it was wearing.”

  Loncar looked up. “You think this was about destroying the clothes?”

  “The rest of the clothes from Amanda’s show were destroyed, weren’t they?”

  The water turned on upstairs and the toilet flushed. The door opened, and then shut. More throwing up.

  “I think I should see if she’s okay,” I said.

  “When I feel like that I want to be alone.”

  “Do you know why she feels like that?”

  “I get the feeling she’s not entirely happy about the reason she’s here.”

  “Are you going to tell me what it is?”

  “It’s her business to tell you, not mine.” He stood up. “I’m going to follow up on this mannequin lead.” He waved the page with my sketches. “I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.”

  Loncar and I had gone round and round enough for me to know that he really didn’t have to tell me anything if he didn’t want. “I’d appreciate it,” I said.

  He nodded once and let himself out.

  I went to the kitchen and filled a glass with ice and ginger ale. After climbing the stairs, I tapped gently on the bathroom door.

  “Amanda, it’s Samantha. The detective left.” I waited a beat. She didn’t respond. “I brought you ginger ale.”

  “Come in,” she said.

  Of all of the places I could have imagined spending time with Amanda, my bathroom wasn’t one of them. She sat on the fluffy pink carpet square by the base of the toilet with her back leaning against the wall. Her long straight black hair had been pulled back and tucked into the collar of her sweater. Her eyes were bloodshot and framed in circles that had gotten darker since she’d arrived. I held out the glass. She waved it off. She stood up and rinsed her mouth with tap water, dried her face on a hand towel, and sat back down.

  “You must love this,” she said. “Homicide detectives showing up at your door and me throw
ing up in your bathroom. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why’d you keep showing up to help me?”

  “Because after a year of trying to do things that I wasn’t so good at, I wanted to do something that I was.”

  She picked at the pink carpet fibers. “I thought I was good at this. If I’d thought for a second my designing career would go this way, I never would have bothered.”

  “Amanda, you’re a fashion designer. It’s a stressful job. Not arsonists-and-attackers stressful, but it’s not like you spend your day in a glass cage with kittens. No matter what happens you have to find a way to deal with the stress.”

  She sank back down on the carpet and I lowered myself until I was sitting across from her. She took a sip of the ginger ale. “Is this how you felt when you first moved here? Like the walls were closing in around you and there was no way out?”

  “A little.”

  “I didn’t make things any better for you. I thought you were trouble. When Nick suggested I have you work on the show, I was afraid of what would happen.”

  “Are you accusing me of something?”

  “No. But I was afraid that you being there would be too hard for me. My best friend’s ex-girlfriend. Not exactly the qualifications I would have written up on the want ad.”

  “You wanted my help. And after the fire, when I came to your studio, you confided in me about those letters.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Samantha. That wasn’t real. Everything Nick had told me about you said you weren’t going to let this go so I wanted to send you off on the hot trail of an imaginary bad guy.” Her face went even more ashen. “Don’t you see? There’s no anonymous threat.”

  “But your show went up in flames, and the threats on those letters—”

  “Samantha, please, listen to me. I made those letters myself.”

  24

  I heard what she said, but I didn’t believe her. We stared at each other for a few seconds before she spoke.

  “I made all six of them. I cut the letters out of fashion magazines and glued them to a piece of paper and ran off a copy and showed them to you.”