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

by Diane Vallere

  “I found the file on her computer. She scanned letters from magazines and made up the notes. Once I knew she invented them, I knew she’d never go to the police. It was perfect. But then you came along. You were never supposed to get involved. Why did you? She’s your ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. You should hate her as much as I do.”

  I coughed several times. Conscious and unconscious thoughts twisted in my mind. I had to fight to stay with her. I couldn’t let her see how close I was to letting go, giving up, drifting into darkness. I channeled the Dread Pirate Roberts and addressed her while I conserved my strength. “Don’t compare yourself to me. We’re nothing alike.” I wouldn’t be caught dead in men’s jeans. “You won’t get away with any of this. You’ll never see a dime of insurance money once the arson investor learns you’re the person behind the fire.”

  “Prove it.” She smiled at me. Tiny was no less intimidating when she smiled.

  With every ounce of energy that I had left, I reached inside my bra and pulled out the cluster of thread that I’d found inside the Warehouse. I held it up.

  “This isn’t thread like everybody thinks. It’s a wick. You had it trail from the sleeves of Harper’s kimono and you lit it from backstage. When the fire caught up to the garment, it erupted.”

  Her smile froze. She opened the car door and stepped out. I couldn’t let her take it from me. This was the only evidence that I had.

  I wrapped my arms around the tree next to me and pulled myself up. Lights from an oncoming car indicated we had company. Tiny’s car was blocking the road, but her lights were off. The oncoming car would have to stop. She turned around and shielded her eyes.

  When she turned back to face me, I slugged her with everything I had in me.

  And then the approaching car slammed into hers, knocking it off the road. The car hit Tiny, Tiny hit me, and we all crashed to the ground.

  33

  My new hospital room was pink. Despite the charming hue, I wasn’t any less freaked out than the last time I’d woken up in one. A curtain had been pulled shut between me and the other bed in the room, but I didn’t know if I was alone or not. A few feet from the wall was a table that held a tray filled with food. If it wasn’t a meatball sandwich, I wasn’t interested.

  A woman walked in and checked my vital signs. “Are you up for visitors? A couple of people have been waiting to see you.”

  “Sure.”

  If I’d known my first visitor would be Detective Loncar, I might have given a different answer.

  “Don’t ask me what happened, because I don’t remember,” I said.

  “Maybe I can fill in some of your gaps.” He sat down in the chair next to the bed. “Tiny was arrested on suspicion of setting multiple fires around Ribbon.”

  “I was sure it was Molly Diers. She has a history with Clive Barrington. Did you know she’s Harper’s sister?”

  “We knew all about Ms. Diers.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “She came to us in confidence. There was nothing illegal about her arranging for her sister to leave the country, but she wanted us to know in the event that rumors about Harper’s disappearance created a diversion from the arson investigation.”

  “That’s where she got the sourballs. She took them from the bowl on your desk.” It was the tiniest connection, but if I’d been paying attention, I might have realized it sooner. “How did you know where to find me? Last time we talked, you didn’t say anything about suspecting Tiny. I only figured it out at Warehouse Five.”

  “When the report came in of the fire, I knew something was up. I called Inspector Gigger. He found the two of you on the ground about a mile from the warehouse. Nobody’s sure how you got there considering the condition you were in. Apparently you were holding some kind of metallic thread.”

  “It’s what Tiny used as the wick to light the kimono. I should have noticed it earlier. It was on the parking lot macadam by my car. I thought it was cobwebs.”

  “Gigger recognized it for what it was. Amanda gave him permission to examine the garments at her showroom and he found the same threads. We pulled in a computer guy who found an invoice on Tiny’s computer for two dozen spools of microscopic metallic wicks. They were paid for with her personal credit card. It was enough to connect Tiny to the garments in the showroom, the garments at the show, and the garments that returned to the showroom. And the fire that took place two nights ago.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No, that’s not all. I thought you’d be interested in knowing that Ms. Anderson legally changed her name to Tiny several years ago. Prior to that, it was a nickname.”

  “What’s her real name?”

  “Clementine.”

  I closed my eyes. It was exactly the calling card I’d suspected, only Santangelo wasn’t the culprit. Tiny had played off my injuries as if I’d made them up. Refusing to acknowledge that the attack had happened had been the perfect cover for her considering she was the responsible one. I tried to relax against the flat hospital pillow, but every position brought on pain.

  “We followed up with Oscar LeVay too. Doubloons,” he said, shaking his head. “That was a good one.”

  “What about Molly and Harper and Clive?”

  “The statute of limitations on Ms. Diers’ accusations has long since run out. Mr. Barrington is free to do as he sees fit. As for Ms. Diers and her sister, I think they’re officially out of the business. Ms. Diers gave us an address for San Francisco.”

  Bohemian capital of the country. Figured.

  “Ms. Kidd,” Loncar said, “I appreciate your help on this. That last fire would have destroyed any evidence left. I’m not sure we would have put it together if it wasn’t for you.”

  I swiped the tears from my face and tried to act like his praise didn’t affect me. Loncar stood up and held out his hand. I shook it. He left the room.

  Amanda walked into the room with a vase of orange roses. “I don’t know how to say repay you,” she said. “You saved my life.”

  “You would have done the same for me.”

  “Let’s hope it never comes to that.” She set the flowers on the table next to the bed and tucked a card underneath. “Nancie Townsend called with a couple of follow-up questions to your article. When I heard about the new magazine, I told her she’d be a fool not to hire you.” She picked at the corner of the hospital sheet, and then stopped when she realized what she was doing. “If I were smart, I’d hire you myself. Turns out I’m looking for a new business manager.”

  “Amanda, don’t take this the wrong way, but that’s the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

  She smiled. “You’re probably right.” She pulled a pink envelope out of her handbag and tucked it under the vase of roses, and then left.

  Seconds later, Eddie took her place by my bed. I sat forward and looked toward the door. “Exactly how many people are out there?” I asked.

  “I let them go first. It’s all me until they kick me out.” His blond hair was unkempt, pushed to one side and tucked behind his ears. He wore a Berlin concert T-shirt under a gray hoodie under a faded denim jean jacket. His cargo pants were weighted down by the contents of the pockets by his knees. He pulled two foil-wrapped items out of the pockets and set them on the table between us. The scent of meatball sub filled the room. “The commissary loves me. I’ve been buying meatball sandwiches every day just waiting for you to wake up.”

  I peeled back the paper and bit into the sandwich. Mozzarella cheese, meatballs soft, hard roll, yes. It was good to be alive.

  “So, the stories in the waiting room describe a David and Goliath style fight, but I’m having trouble picturing how it all went down. You were on foot. She was in a car. Care to tell me how you walked away?”

  I looked at my hand and slowly made a fist. My skin was red, raw, and chapped, and a greenish-yellow bruise had formed by the knuckles. I ran my left fingers over the discoloration and remembered the moment when I’d slugged Tiny. A shudder wracke
d my body at the memory.

  “Dude?” Eddie prompted.

  “I guess she just caught me on the wrong day.”

  I didn’t read Amanda’s card until after Eddie had left. It was a generic Get Well, with balloons on the front and a sappy message printed on the inside. But under the message, in Amanda’s neat handwriting, was Nick’s name, followed by a New York phone number. I asked the nurse if I could use a phone. Nick answered on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey Taylor, it’s Kidd.”

  “Kidd,” he said. “I didn’t recognize the number.”

  If he didn’t know about what had happened, he would soon, but that wasn’t why I was calling. “I know you’re probably busy, but I just called to tell you that I was wrong.”

  “About what?” he asked.

  I let a beat of silence pass before answering. “About cake. Nobody should have to eat cake without icing.”

  We spent the next forty-five minutes talking about this and that and nothing important at all.

  It was exactly how I liked it.

  Excerpt

  Read on for Chapter One from

  Suede to Rest

  Book 1 in the Material Witness Mystery Series.

  Now available from Berkley Prime Crime

  One

  --------------

  A breeze rippled through the trees to the left and the right of the storefront. I stood across the street, taking in the blacked-out windows and the once-magnificent sign now covered in bird poop, decades of grime, and spray-painted curse words. Land of a Thousand Fabrics, it said. I wondered briefly if that had ever been true, if my great-aunt Millie and great-uncle Marius had ever actually counted the bolts of fabric in their inventory or amassed that number in order to avoid false advertising. And now that it had been left to me, I wondered if that would become my concern.

  “Do you want to go inside or are you going to stand here all day?” asked Ken Watts. He looked very official in his navy-blue double-breasted blazer with Watts Realtor Agency embroidered over the left breast pocket in gold threads. More official than I remembered him looking the last time I saw him: at our high school graduation ten years ago, when he wore his football uniform under his cap and gown.

  “Nobody’s been in there for years, right?”

  Ken flipped through the pages on his brown clipboard. “Right. Since Mildred Monroe was murd—” He stopped talking midsentence. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Nobody in my family ever wants to talk about Aunt Millie, but I don’t mind.” I took a deep breath and lowered my head, preparing myself to march across the street, into the store. Times like these I wished I had a cascade of hair to hide my face, but my short reddish-brown hair, so overdue for a maintenance cut that it was starting to look like a shag, did little more than tickle my forehead when the wind blew.

  “Poly, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I can arrange for you to sell the store without ever having to go inside.” He stared at me. “You probably didn’t even have to make the trip. I could have faxed the paperwork to your office in Los Angeles. You could have signed it, faxed it back, and it would all be over and done with.”

  “I wanted to come back. I would have come back ten years ago for Aunt Millie’s funeral or memorial service, only there wasn’t one. And now that Uncle Marius is gone, the store is the only thing left of them.”

  “A lot of people were mad at your uncle because he didn’t have a service for her.”

  “My parents said he couldn’t admit she was gone. That’s why he never sold the store.”

  “He wasted a lot of money paying down the mortgage on this place when there was no income. Turned down a lot of solid offers on it, too.”

  “If it protects your memories and keeps your heart from breaking, can it really be considered a waste of money?” I asked, looking again at the once-glamorous sign.

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  “He’s my great-uncle, and that’s my way of looking at it.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  A truck loaded down with ladders, orange cones, and men in yellow construction hats drove past us, obstructing my view of the storefront. A thin old man with a cane approached from the left. He stopped in front of the store, studied me for a few seconds, then nodded at Ken and continued past us.

  “Who was that?”

  “Mr. Pickers. He’s head of the Senior Patrol. They’re a group of retirees who keep an eye on things around San Ladrón.”

  I watched the man continue down the street. It was just after four, between the lunch and the dinner crowds I expected would fill up the restaurants on the street, and, now that the head of the Senior Patrol had moved on to other pressing matters, it was just Ken and me.

  “Can I have the keys?”

  “You know she was murdered in the store, and you still want to go in? I have the paperwork right here. You don’t have to see a thing if you don’t want to.”

  “Isn’t that my name on the will?”

  He looked down at his clipboard again and tapped the form. “‘New owner: Polyester Monroe.’ Your uncle Marius either really loved you or really hated you.” He looked back at the dingy gray storefront. “Right now I can’t tell which.” Ken juggled his clipboard and pen with a set of keys until he found the one he wanted. “I wouldn’t expect much,” he added.

  We crossed the road in the middle, blatantly jaywalking. I might have walked to the light and waited for the signal to change if I were alone, but figured there was safety in numbers if any traffic cops decided to make an example out of us. Ken fed the key into the gate, a collapsible metal fence that had been pulled shut over the front door of the store and left locked. The key turned but the gate refused to open. Rust at the intersecting joints left it as stiff as the tin woodsman and here we were, armed with keys, legal papers, and a flashlight, but no oil can.

  “Is there a back door?”

  “Let’s see.”

  As we hiked down the block then around to the back, I noticed a shiny black Mercedes sedan with dark-tinted windows sitting alone in a parking lot at the corner. The sounds of talk radio blurred as we passed the car, the only indication that someone was inside the vehicle. The front license plate read MCM. Distracted from the path, I tripped over an uneven seam in the sidewalk and landed face down in the gravel.

  I pushed myself back up and slapped the dirt from my black turtleneck and black velvet jeans. I wore black a lot these days. It hid most of the grime I picked up from sketching, repairing sewing machines, and using a glue gun, but it wasn’t so good for hiding evidence of my klutziness.

  Ken didn’t notice I was missing from his side until he reached the back door and turned around to look at me.

  “I’m okay,” I said, then jogged a few steps to catch up with him.

  “Still as uncoordinated as you were in high school. Remember how you tripped over the hem of your prom dress during the ‘Electric Slide’?” He laughed.

  “Just unlock the door, please.”

  Ken and I had attended the same high school in the neighboring town of Glendora. Upon graduation, he had moved to San Ladrón and gone to work in his father’s real estate agency, while I moved to Los Angeles and attended FIDM. I started working at To The Nines when I graduated and hadn’t been back since.

  He turned the key and pushed the door inside. A stench of stale air, mildew, and something I immediately associated with wet metal hit me. Ken, who had been in front of me, stepped back and let me pass through. “I’ll wait here,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face.

  “Fine.” I pulled the collar of my turtleneck over my nose and mouth to filter out some of the smell, clicked on the flashlight, and entered.

  Tiny dust particles floated through the beam of the flashlight. As I moved farther inside, my eyes adjusted enough to make out large square tables piled high with bolts of fabric. The walls were fitted with shelves
about four and a half feet deep, housing stacks upon stacks of round rolls of fabric, too. I only knew the depth of the shelf because I knew a bolt of fabric was generally forty-eight to fifty-six inches long. At least, the fabrics I bought for To The Nines, the downtown Los Angeles dress company where I worked, were that length. The job wasn’t what I dreamed of when I graduated from the Fashion Institute, but it was solid work in the garment district, and as my boyfriend, Carson, liked to tell me, a steady paycheck is worth more than a treasure chest of dreams.

  As a little girl, I used to play in the store, and “playing” included climbing the fixtures and hiding between the bolts of fabric. And before I outgrew the fun of playing hide-and-seek in the store, I outgrew the fixtures. By sixth grade I was five feet tall; by graduation I was only a few inches shy of six.

  The interior of the store appeared smaller than I remembered, and not just because my memories were from childhood. I noticed a dividing wall that hadn’t been there on my last visit over ten years ago. An unpainted wooden door was in the middle of the makeshift partition. I crossed the room and tried the doorknob. It was locked. I looked behind me for Ken with his janitor-like key ring, but he was still MIA.

  “Ken? Can you come here with your keys?” I called out the back door. “I want to see what’s behind this door.” There was no answer.

  Above the door was a small square window. I pulled a three-rung folding metal ladder under it, climbed up, and tried to look through, but the glass was too filthy. “You break it, you bought it,” I said under my breath. “Good thing I’m the owner.” I swung the flashlight against the glass. It shattered on impact and fell to the floor on the other side of the wall, creating tinkling harmonies in the process. I looked through the hole but made out nothing of interest, nothing that would have been the reason for closing off a third of the store. There must be something back there, I reasoned. Before I decided whether or not I was keeping the store, I wanted to know what it was.